It’s very easy for games to fall foul of ‘style over substance’. The medium inherently sets developers up for this trap, as so many components make up any given game that leaning too much on one or two aspects sacrifices the substance to enhance the style, and it is a balancing act that all too often fails and leaves the game worse than it could be.
Backbone, the new game from developers Eggnutt is, unfortunately, a Style over Substance game. It looks great with a cool jazz tinged noir theme that runs throughout, but gives way to a hard pivot into a twist that comes out of the blue with little setup and makes no sense given the world that has been created up to that point.
You play as Howard Lotor, a private detective in a Dystopian version of Vancouver. He is also a raccoon, as this version of Vancouver is populated by anthropomorphic animals, ruled over by the apes, who are the higher class. The story sets up an interesting world of class and social issues, gangsters, drugs and all the same rubbish stuff that we humans have to deal with - just with talking animals.
It starts off with Howard getting a fairly normal P.I case, as such post-noir stories do, with a wife wanting to know if her husband is cheating. From there, it becomes a fairly standard point and click adventure, with a heavy emphasis on talking. The dialog is the game's main thrust, and at first it seems that paying attention to what is happening really does help. Unfortunately, that feeling doesn’t last long, and you soon begin to question if you are actually affecting any conversations as while you might be able to be an arse or be nice and understanding, if at first it does seem like you have messed up it will always loop around and get the result you need.
This is disappointing, because it makes the conversations you have feel kinda pointless, and you can just button mash through without paying attention as the game will always feed you the right thing. Once you find out there are no multiple endings, it makes it all the worse, as that would allow multiple playthroughs and make the conversations feel meaningful. As it stands, when you complete you game you feel like your time was wasted a little.
That feeling is compounded by the fact that there is very minimal sound in the game. I appreciate that Eggnutt is a small developer, and that voice acting is expensive and beyond many studios, but Backbone is a game that could have really done with it. The minimalist sound design makes the game more than a little boring, and voice acting could have really helped with it. This is a nit pick that isn’t really the developers fault, but the other issues with the dialog just adds to the idea the game wasn’t respecting your time.
I will say that the graphics look fantastic, with great animation for the characters when moving around and background art that really invokes the dystopian city feel. It is enough to propel you through the story, though again, those other issues do make the game's completion feel wasted.
The story itself, without getting to spoiler heavy, is weird. As I say it starts off with a standard ‘cheating husband’ case, and spirals out into a deep, conspiracy heavy and potentially world changing mission from there. The problem is that the game invoked in my head one story which would have been really cool to see play out, but that twists into a story that makes absolutely no sense, has no real resolution and the motives in the final act for some of the characters seem completely at odds with the overarching narrative on display. The game would have been so much better had it leaned into it’s early politically motivated ideas and had real, grounded characters that made sense in the world, but that twist just sends it off on an completely unneeded tangent that spoils the rest of the game.
Had this happened, some of the genre splicing the story does would still work, it would just make a hell of a lot more sense and give a much more satisfying conclusion. It's a shame that it doesn’t because it would have made for a very cool detective story, an in-over-his-head tale in the best traditions of the thriller genre, just with a talking racoon as a protagonist.
If you plan to pick up Backbone, do so on Xbox Game pass. It makes the sting of how it all ends and lack of multiple endings less painful. It will provide a game that looks great, but is ultimately disappointing and makes little sense. Be warned.