Review: Dread Delusion

I've been meaning to write about this game for quite some time already. I've felt this urge to discuss it with someone, anyone — but for how incredible of an experience I find Dread Delusion (2024) to be, not too many seem to have actually played it. (The word underrated almost escapes my lips, but the manner in which that modifier is carelessly flung around all the time gives me pause.)

One additional reason for why this review has been a long time coming is that I'm almost struggling to put into words the whole spectrum of emotions that this game invokes in me — Dread Delusion weaves such a nuanced and intricate narrative that fixating solely on the "gorgeous art style" or the "exhilarating sense of discovery" is almost a disservice to what is, to me, a surprisingly evocative Gesamtkunstwerk.

On the surface, Dread Delusion is presented as a light, semi-open-world RPG. The gameplay here is, in a word, serviceable; nothing exactly revolutionary, but enough to sustain the overall experience. The main gameplay loop revolves around exploring the world map in smaller segments whilst completing quests and environmental puzzles, periodically returning to the main hub of a particular area to rest and stock up on necessities. It's true: the exploration does convey a strong sense of discovery and achievement, but if that part of the game fails to win you over, you may struggle to retain an interest in Dread Delusion (even if I think you should). I appreciate any differences in taste, which help to explain the somewhat considerable deviation in review scores, but to me these fundamentals felt immediately convincing — something akin to playing a proper Zelda game for the first time.

Combat, on the other hand, is rudimentary and rougher around the edges. It's not great, not terrible — it's there. It does serve its purpose in validating different playstyles, which follow the general outline of RPG conventions. There's the rogue, the sorcerer and the warrior (and combinations of any or all of these), and as long as a warrior is defined by their ability to slice things in half, there better be things to slice in half. The game does a somewhat admirable job of giving the player options to avoid combat altogether and resolve things without violence, but the combat is so trivial (even with difficulty set on hard) that ultimately the choice feels arbitrary and unrewarding.

The combat, then, is not where the game excels, but rather in the richly detailed setting and skillfully told story. Let me paint you a picture: imagine a broken landscape of floating islands strewn with cerulean mushroom tree forests*, dreary hamlets and crumbling ruins of bygone civilizations and renounced liege lords; a bizarre celestial nervous system of pulsating neurons illuminating an inconceivable crimson sky (and consequently revealing something unsettling about the metaphysical essence of the world itself); a land of undead people lamenting their heinous transgressions centuries ago, and another one languishing in a perpetual winter brought by its Kafkaesque machine-bureaucrat-king.

And that is just the surface, or the beginning of something much greater in scope and profundity. Beneath that lo-fi veneer of (admittedly well-told) grimdark fantasy aesthetics lies a pretty remarkable tale of struggle and desperation, of hope and perseverance. Because Dread Delusion makes frequent allusions to both historical and topical political developments, it almost feels like a political treatise at times, but at its core is always that beating heart of an inherently human story.

The story never comes off as preachy or dogmatic while still avoiding the pitfalls of so-called "enlightened centrism", where the message gets lost in wishy-washy platitudes or shallow and timid "both sides" comparisons. The ideas, perspectives or issues highlighted in the game aren't necessarily all that revolutionary or unprecedented in themselves, but Dread Delusion has this effortless, cool post-modern leaning that breathes life into these socio-political vignettes.

The story is told through very concrete metaphors that are somehow both obvious and insightful at the same time. For instance, a certain realm — that takes quite a many cues from the historical example set by the Soviet Union and the like — has the "state apparatus" substituted with an actual machine. This all-powerful machine also shapes reality by manipulating a universal language that gives form to all perceivable things, so the references to real-life phenomena such as propaganda, the suppression of information and the power of the narrative (and also programmer humour, evidently) basically write themselves.

In another example, a kingdom ravaged by civil war is inhabited by literal walking dead and the very land itself now exudes the qualities of a rotting carcass, both physically and culturally. Then there's the Apostatic Union, central to the game's overarching main story: a union of smaller fiefdoms that joined forces in order to — again, quite literally — kill their own gods in the name of freedom, and in freeing themselves from the tyranny of these malevolent gods ushered in a new age of brutal repression and crackdowns on all forms of theism and worship.

All of these different examples converge around the same themes of oppression, socio-economic and political pessimism and apathy. It feels almost eerily relevant without being too zeitgeisty; I was constantly in awe of the finesse with which Dread Delusion channels all this real-life angst in service of its story. When all of it comes together, the game asks very real questions about what is justifiable in those circumstances and what is the cost of change.

(I also applaud the elements of inclusivity in the game. I wasn't initially aware that Dread Delusion is a GLAAD Media Award nominee, but I appreciate the recognition the game's received apropos its representation of minorities.)

Having said all this, the critical consensus with regard to Dread Delusion seems a bit... misinformed. Most of the effort has went to analysing the more superficial elements of the game: the graphics, the gameplay, the visual presentation. They are an integral part of the overall experience, but the game's writing is where it shines — and that is also what I've chosen to focus on in this review. This game deserves a deeper examination of its narrative elements, and it truly rewards those that do so.

I hate review scores, but some people throw a fit when they're omitted. I give Dread Delusion five out of five gargantuan flying molluscs. Play the game and you'll know.

* ...and this is where the Morrowind comparisons shall begin and end, I say.

• Dread Delusion (2024)
• Developer: Lovely Hellplace
• Platform: PC (Windows), Nintendo Switch 2, PlayStation 4/5, Xbox One, Xbox Series S/X