Heaven's Vault is not a traditional adventure, but rather an adventure in which you seek to uncover the secrets of ancient civilization through scripture. And a bit of that and a bit of it, all replayable, because there are choices to the lover of all independent stands and hair on the back. But can it be played?
The previous titles of inkle production were not bad. Neither 80 Days nor Sorcery were lost. They found their audience - loudly crying out for the originality and the amazingness of tearing the established game principles into tiny pieces - they found. Apparently there were enough fans to lean on the three-dimensional journey with the taste of adventure archeology. However, the thing is that although we all occasionally complain about the lack of originality, we do not always really want it and reject many changes without blinking.
Heavens Vault is not a bad game, but the gameplay is somewhat lost and it seems to be moving around senselessly. Even the big-mouthed statements about choice and different stories did not impress. Because the plot and storytelling itself is - here and there, more or less - actually ordinary, mediocre, with a minimal chance of capturing for more than one weekend afternoon. The gradual uncovering of the mysterious scripture, which you must decipher to get everything to the root, has a pace more than slow. It does not have to sit down for everyone and immersion in the plot initially has serious cracks. Strange worlds combining futuristic technology through robots and a way of life hundreds of years ago have the potential to be intrigued. Finally, they seemed unnecessarily empty, without the possibility of greater interactivity with them and the subsequent immersion in the secrets.
And that's a major problem with Heaven's Vault. You are looking for a colleague, you have a strange brooch, you fly classic worlds between worlds through space jets and everyone has strange names there. However, adventure is only about walking around desolate sites where you do not collect, use or combine items. Marching along the corridor is enriched by the occasional finding of a recess with an object that can help you decipher an ancient language. The developers will entrust you with the female character Aliya - a stubborn woman whom Professor Myari of the University entrusts with a search for Renb. He revealed something, and the secret could be saving the universe. Approaching darkness returns in cycles and one of them is just closing. Robot Six could help.
Initially, the distrust among the main protagonists will gradually begin to change by opening up new worlds, exploring the environment, searching for artifacts, translating ancient speech. It is this drive that offers less diversion and more interesting gameplay. Individual phrases consisting of fragments of different lengths - or if you want words - gradually open up more and more possibilities. Hieroglyphs are initially Spanish villages, but revealing or correctly interpreting one word is sufficient and you may move further in other phrases. Exploring the strange script has its positive side, can attract. However, not as a mechanic who is the only one to stick out of the crowd. Everything else is shallow in Heaven's Vault.
The plot itself has a good enough base, but the level of dialogues and descriptions and monologues has stagnated in meaninglessly lengthy passages where it is talked just to "not be silent", with many lines of text ) is asleep with pathetic attempts to delve into the plot. The only result of the long and longer talks between Aliya and Six is the gradually falling head of the player, who, due to disgustingly hollow-boom gravity, hits the keyboard and takes over the neighbor opposite. The embarrassingly inanimate moments in which Aliya solves her contempt for the robots or returns to the past, or suddenly, precisely and with a change of nature, only yawn and waving their hands. Another quasi-independent and deep patina.
The problem is not what Heaven's Vault wants to say, but how it says it. Boring. You don't need litany to draw you in. On the contrary, at the moment when developers could better and more closely present existing worlds, environment, society or active objects, it leaves everything empty. Aliya walks only here and there, crying one futile after another, asks Six again, remembering the past and the time it came into being and the poor machine constantly tumbles the same thing. If this is to be an independent production symbolizing art, the last one goes out.
Traveling between different worlds through a ship is quite tragic. A predetermined tunnel, or currents that carry you in one direction, sometimes branches, and you have to choose whether you choose right or left. Slow sailing can sometimes be accelerated by flipping the sail wings, but the total emptiness and sluggish speed devalue the experience to a level of absolute monotony. You make a wrong turn - and not on the route that leads to the selected destination, you must restart your position. During the voyage, a conversation is occasionally called, which is interesting enough to be bored twice despite the weaker level of dialogue. Maybe someone had the idea of relaxing during the flight, but ultimately watching fireworks as a screensaver is a much more fun way to spend your free time. Emptiness and boredom, yet some of the routes already passed on some sections can be left to Six. Instant move to destination does not take place.
Evaluating the technical processing of smaller projects is very challenging. With budget and experience, independent production cannot be compared to the titles that hundreds of graphic designers work on. I can forgive many, but only if someone can estimate their options. And the three-dimensional environment is often a stumbling block, as it requires much more creativity, human resources and, above all, details. Heaven's Vault cannot deny a vision of a specific design. You do not need to notice the emptiness, lack of clarity or coolness of the environment in still images. Despite the colorful places in character, Heaven's Vault is all but exciting. It looks dead, artificially.
The only place that can evoke a positive response is the botanical garden, which thanks to the objects rich environment. Everything else is just a Potemkin village that does not have a sufficiently characteristic spirit. The design of the environment is drab and too ordinary, interchangeable with other games. University, farms, markets, forgotten temples and settlements. Motion animations try to strum on an artistic string, but the few motion-picture frames seem rather ridiculous. Why did anyone try to make a three-dimensional world when the characters move jerky, stiff, pace, and mock-up? Maybe I just don't have the right artistic feeling and I'm a cultural barbarian.
Dubbing only happens occasionally and it is useless to evaluate those few sentences, but the music component is much better. The individual compositions are able to impress the environment, at least in part, to seal the interest in exploring the unknown, the forgotten civilization, the past, which can greatly affect the future. Cello and piano are sensitively involved in the action and refresh otherwise monotonous wandering. The interface deserves further criticism. Interviews are not overwhelmed and individual sentences must be watched throughout the screen, as the dialog box is not fixed at the bottom of the screen (except for monologues when leaving the world and the passage where you decide what to say), but at the heads of characters. Sometimes the camera goes into the unknown, you see nothing, sometimes it moves, sentences with it. Constantly wandering his eyes on the screen, the chaos of watching which character said the sentence at all, and the headlines fading away - the original approach didn't pay off at all. After all, the comic has its own rules of how to read.
