Wacky mystic thriller that gets too bonkers too soon

My first contact with Indigo Prophecy (or Fahrenheit, as it is called in German) was with the demo that came with an issue of the Gamestar magazine - great, twice the nostalgia in one sentence! In the 10-minute sample, we play the beginning of the thriller and watch one of the protagonists, Lucas Kane, who stabs a man in the toilet of a typical American diner, controlled by strange forces. No sooner has the atrocity been committed than Lucas regains consciousness. His mood, one of the game's elements, understandably plummets, but that's the least of his problems. He has to get rid of the murder weapon, hide the body and find out who or what drove him to murder a complete stranger.

The atmosphere is dense and menacing, the characters act believably. Quantic Dream 's game remains pleasantly consistent: if we don't let Lucas wash the blood off his hands, he attracts attention when he leaves the restaurant. If he doesn't hide the murder weapon, it will be found more quickly by the detectives. And here comes the other story twist: in addition to Lucas, we also play two other protagonists, Carla Valenti and Tyler Miles from the homicide squad. So we embody the hunter and the hunted, although the game doesn't make it too easy for us. For example, the game cuts away when Lucas hides the knife so that we, as detectives, don't immediately know where to look.

Cliché? Okay!

The character design doesn't fall into the cliché box, but instead dives straight in head first. On the one hand, we have the ever-hip and reggae-listening Tyler, who plays basketball with paper waste in the police station and who radiates funk even when he walks - because he is black. Or Carla, the Italian detective who could have stepped straight out of an American crime series à la Law & Order . The familiar stereotypes also appear outside of the main characters: the brother, a devout pastor who looks at Luca's crime from a spiritual perspective, or the crotchety old woman who oracles our future as a blind medium. The dynamics among the characters, especially between the two detectives, are fun and one of the game's greatest assets, especially as the relationships are largely believably influenced by our decisions.

Unfortunately, that's where the positives end. Although the game keeps building up tension by having us make decisions under time pressure, this is unfortunately not enough to maintain the pace from the beginning. The flashback sequences in Luca's childhood in particular, combined with the mediocre gameplay, impede the flow of the story and the frequent quicktime events, which can quickly degenerate into trial-and-error, ensure that the pace of the narrative is also slowed down. Unfortunately, the other major point of criticism for me is the confusing story, which I will of course not spoil here. I have to say, however, that at a certain point, memories of the messed-up series Heroes come to mind, until the story finally shoots itself completely into absurdity with stupid twists and The Matrix-like tropes.

Summary

Halten wir also fest: eine spannende Prämisse, in der wir sowohl den Täter als auch seine Häscher spielen. Check. Eine temporeiche Geschichte, die stark anfängt, aber schnell an Drive verliert. Check. Und ein Gameplay, was okay funktioniert, an vielen Stellen aber an der schlechten Steuerung krankt. Leider auch check. Was bleibt, ist ein guter Ansatz mit einer mangelhaften Umsetzung. Für mich taugt das super als Appetitanreger auf die anderen Quantic Dream-Spiele, die ich wegen Konsolenexklusivität bisher noch nicht spielen konnte – bis jetzt. Denn die sind mittlerweile auch auf dem PC erschienen, was bedeutet, dass ich die endlich nachholen kann. Und wenn sie meine Kritikpunkte an Fahrenheit angepackt haben, dann freue ich mich schon, wenn ich endlich Heavy Rain, Beyond: Two Souls und Detroit: Become Human zocken kann. Alle Infos zum Soundtrack gibt’s übrigens hier: Music Review Fahrenheit.