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When I look at concept art for gameworlds it usually feels like the original designs had to be simplified in order to be achievable within the game engine. The world in Nobody Wants to Die feels like you're walking through that initial concept art; all the ambition and detail is carried over into the 3D space. It's one of the most visually impressive worlds I've ever seen in a game. Unfortunately, it fails to feel like anything more than that.

You play as a classic noir detective in a cyberpunk future where everyone is immortal, the only catch being that you have to upload your conciousness into a different body in order to keep living. I really like cyberpunk stuff and detective stuff so this seemed like a perfect fit for me. The concept for the world is so interesing but they never really give you the option to dive into the intricacies of it. I really wish Kojima directed this because this is a rare game where I want to know how everything functions!! TV shows where people kill eachother?? Body swapping fetishes?? What are the laws?? They briefly touch on concepts like rich people getting all the young bodies while the working class is stuck with lower-quality ones that come with things like allergies, but they never go as deep as I would have liked. Just some documents would have been fine!! this is a walking simulator!! It's such a frustrating experience.

It starts off incredibly strong though! The initial scene where you're at the drive-in and open your car door to reveal you're 1000ft in the sky is great. It captures the same feeling as when you first arrive in Rapture during Bioshock. The voice acting is nice and the setup for the mystery hooked me right away. Then you get to the gameplay portion and it's kind of railroading you and telling you the solution to every puzzle but it's the first mission! They'll stop doing that pretty soon, right??? right?? it carries on through the entire game!!




The main gameplay loop (excluding one small minigame you do 3 times) is centered around using all of your high-tech detective gear to reconstruct crime scenes and figure out what happened. You mainly do this using a time-rewind tool like the one from the Arkham games to rewind time and see the scene play out infront of you. You'll need to gather data like bullet holes and bloodstains in order to fully understand what happened before you reconstruct. This SOUNDS really cool, but the way it's executed is so disappointing. Every single piece of evidence, every scratch mark, bullet hole and document is marked with a giant checkpoint for you the second you need to go up to it. They even switch to the correct tool for you! Sometimes you'll need to use a blacklight or an X-ray machine to see through walls, and if you do the checkpoint will just switch you to that when you walk up to it. Every single morsel of potential gameplay has been sanded away in what i can only assume was an attempt to make the gameplay more accessible. As a result, there is no longer any gameplay. You walk up to a checkpoint, click, use the tool they already selected for you and then do it again. and again. and again. and then the sequence ends. It's so boring!! I'm only guessing, but it really seems like the systems in place were designed with a more puzzle-like approach to them. You'd have to locate bullet holes in the walls yourself and select the appropriate tool to analyse them. Maybe this didn't work well in playtesting or something, because there's no gameplay now. You could watch a video of this game and the only thing you'd be missing out on would be the meaningless dialogue choices. That minigame they make you play 3 times is kind of fun though i guess



The story follows a string of murders, that all seem to be connected, in which the victims have all suffered a 'true death' (they cant get put into a different body). The first two crime scenes you visit set up the mystery really well and I was intrigued to see where it was going. After that though, it kind of wanders for a little bit and then goes off course completely. It doesn't fully commit to becoming something else, though? You're still visiting crime scenes, but you dont really seem to be getting anywhere. Then there's some really poorly written sequences that just lead into the end of the game. It falls flat overall, and the ending feels weird and unsatisfying. I think it's a cool idea, but they should have committed to it fully instead of going halfway. It's also pretty confusing? I think I got the idea but I could see alot of people being very unclear on whats happening by the ending. One cool thing about it is that you actually have to connect the dots yourself on what's happening in order to get the good ending. I got the good ending of course because im cool and awesome

A dialogue tree is also in here I guess. It's actually not that bad at all, I'm just really tired of playing games that include them. Some of your choices from previous conversations will unlock choices in future ones. Some of them will also impact how the story unfolds, but they're all pretty similar - 'kill these people or.. do not kill these people'. That comes up like 3 times. I was trying to play as a cop who's trying to get back on the straight and narrow, which it pretty much accomodated for. I made the morally correct choice at every opportunity and didn't drink the entire game (except one time I was forced to). It's a nice touch I suppose and acts as the sole area of the game that you're given any agency.



It's unfortunate that a game that looks this good isn't great at doing anything else. It's more like that Matrix UE5 tech demo than it is a video game. Alot of my favorite moments in the game are the ones where you're sitting on a balcony smoking, or sitting on the hood of your car drinking and looking at the city. It really does look amazing. Nobody Wants to Die, ironically, is at it's best when the screen looks like a piece of concept art. A view of a city from a distance. If you start to look too close, you'll begin to notice that there's not much more on offer at all.