Dustborn Review

Developer Red Thread Games was founded in the early 2010s, comprised of some adventure game veterans from Funcom that once worked on well-regarded games such as Dreamfall and its sequel The Longest Journey. The decade-old studio, however, hasn't quite been able to land on its feet thus far. Their first major project was a long-awaited follow-up to that series, but Dreamfall Chapters failed to live up to the same standard of storytelling and emotional engagement, and the overextended episodic release schedule didn't help. Their sophomore effort Draugen also got a lukewarm reception. With their third title Dustborn, Red Thread Games are seemingly pivoting to what they believe to be the modern narrative adventure game formula, but it's an all-around faltered effort.

Dustborn is a single player, third person narrative adventure that follows a group of characters on the run. The year is 2030 and they have just stolen something important from the Puritans, an oppressive government group that runs what used to be the California area. They don't know what they stole, but a big payday awaits them in Nova Scotia, the Canadian province on the east coast. The group also wants to escape from the oppressive and fractured United States because they are so-called Anormals – humans with special abilities that must be kept hidden for fear of prosecution. After getting aboard a bus, they begin the cross-country trip while pretending to be a music band on tour.

Over the course of this road trip-style adventure, the group will visit various locations, and experience a variety of situations, from escaping bike gangs to fighting the military factions and helping the locals. New characters will also join the trip over time. The initial hook of the story isn't bad, per se, but it's also not exactly unique, and the plot gets lost in the generic supernatural weeds by the halfway point. The campaign follows a predictable and often dull pattern of stopping somewhere for an escapade, then regrouping around the campfire so that characters can all discuss the day's events and their feelings, and then continuing on. The similarly structured campaign in Road 96 had arguably more memorable execution of a road trip adventure.

The longer the adventure goes on, the more its story and writing runs into trouble. The cast is one of the initial big problems – it just isn't very good. Players control Pax, one of the four members of the initial main crew. She is a woman with some typical past trauma, who not only has special abilities because she is Anormal, but uniquely can also learn new ones. As the main protagonist and player-controller character, Pax is mostly the calm and centered woman that you'd expect to be the lead, without any specific quirks or memorable traits. On the other hand, the rest of the group, and some members that join later on, are typecast and occasionally irritating. Sai is the best friend, whose power lets her become very strong physically, but who has the mental fortitude of a young child. Theo is the instigator of the heist and father-figure, but has no backbone and apparently no understanding of the world, unable to keep up with jokes or understand common sayings. Noam is an ex-partner of Pax, and they/their main ability is to basically calm people down. All of these are very typical character archetypes that you've seen too often in games and movies before.

Another reason that this cast doesn't work is because the dialogue is very poorly written, and yet there is so much of it. It's filled with cursing, teenage mannerisms and millennial slang, alongside the behavior to match. In other games, when teens are talking and behaving like this, there can be some resemblance of making it fit. The problem with Dustborn is that all these people are over 30, which just makes the whole experience extra cringy. The other main reason the game's themes and narrative are so unwieldy is because the experience is hyper focused on social commentary and politics. It crams the messaging down so forcefully that there is no respite, and no way for the characters to breathe outside of their labels.

There are scenes such as when someone calls Pax a Divergent, presumably another term for people who have these super powers, but she is quick to correct them and state their preference is to be called Anormals. The game offers no background on why this distinction is important, it's just an act of being in the right, being a rebel. Characters often experience a mental health crisis and need to sit down for a chat, even though nobody is ever really in any tangible danger (which is a problem for the game as a whole, as well). These sorts of examples continuously make appearances, and it never gets any more cohesive or believable. The game offers no insight or perspective – it's just a group of self-proclaimed rebels, victims of oppression, who are loud and proud and offer nothing more of substance. Representation is important in gaming – but instead of handling it as part of natural storytelling and handling it with tact, such as in the cases of Tell Me Why, or even the weirder side of things in Goodbye Volcano High, Dustborn goes for the Life is Strange 2 approach.

There is an overload of political messaging in the world, too, even outside of the immediate story. The central city of America is called Lebanon, everyone is apparently a fascist, and any Anormals that are caught are reportedly sent to camps, never to be seen again. The destination for this road trip is in Canada, as the map on the bus has Socialists written across it, and is separated from the south by the Great Northern Wall of Canada. The wincing just doesn't stop no matter where you look – and yet so little of it affects the immediate story, which plays along like a mostly happy-go-lucky teenage adventure, where the biggest problem is making sure everyone in the group has their feelings validated.

Even if you look past the set dressing, the actual dialogue and voice acting is equally disappointing. As already mentioned, these grown adults talk like teenagers, and so the writing is full of fluff and dirty jokes that never land. The writing can be simply strange, as well – there is a self-narration text that pops up at the top of the screen, which reflects on Pax's thoughts as well as provides insight into available dialogue choices. But there is far too much of this inner monologue, and for some strange reason Pax addresses herself as "kid", in third person. The other characters also have three possible personality types that they can lean into depending on how the talks unfold, but it's not clear what effects this has.

With all this chatter (and there is a lot of it), at least on a positive note Dustborn does not feature the annoying time limit to select your responses, as so many other games seem to insist on. In many conversations, players are also given free camera control, to spin the view around and try to entertain themselves with interactivity while the characters deliver unskippable dialogues to explain the lore. And there is a lot of lore, which describes how humanity got these powers (there was some broadcast that power-beamed too much information and made some people crazy, and gave others powers). There are also leftover floating echoes or ghosts from this broadcast, which can roam and attach themselves to people and make them erratic again. Pax thankfully has a unique special device that lets her see and capture these echoes through a minigame. It's all unnecessarily deep, and at one point Pax has to literally sit down and explain this lore to another member of the group (but obviously for the benefit of the player). Similarly to New Tales from the Borderlands, every scene and conversation drags on beyond its engaging point, which leads the game to be over 15 hours that should have been cut down.

The gameplay also follows the typical modern formula. There are sections that are on rails, where you have little control other than just to converse with others as you stand around, or sit at a camp fire, or sit on the bus. And during roaming sections, you get to explore small levels with some minimal interactions, to solve some puzzles that usually involve traditional elements such as getting access into an area. Sometimes you have to call upon other members of the group to use their abilities – but the answer is always obvious. Anything that requires strength goes to Sai, Theo is the hacker, and Noam can calm people down. Rarely, more than one option will work, but it's usually less effective.

While walking around, you can speak with a few select characters, and interact with some items. Some things can be picked up as simple collectibles, while others are designated as gifts and can be given to other group members (the meaningful effect of doing so is unclear). With plenty of dialogue and using some of these items during interactions, Pax will be able to make choices – or in many cases, use her powers to make other people do things she wants. Whether it's shutting people up or pushing them away, she manipulates others at will and players can get things done in a few ways, during some key moments. However, major choices and morally grey areas are rare, and while there are different enough outcomes and endings, it's probably not worth the replay.

The locales are also typical – a gas station, a school (albeit underground), a mall, a motel, an encampment in the woods, and so on. Given the alternative history setting, it's all a bit dull. Some of the situations that the group find themselves in are also unintentionally comical. In one case, Sai refuses to leave the bathroom because she is having a stressful episode, and there is an option to lure her out with jerky. In another case, Ziggy (Pax's sister that reluctantly joins the trip and later develops a crush on a man almost ten years younger than her) is unable to cross what must be the shortest beam above danger in video game history, because she is afraid of heights; what makes it absurd is that her power is literal teleportation, which she then has to use to get through a wall instead with much emotional support from Pax. The game has many off-beat silly situations like this that are played straight and for some kind of emotional effect.

Pretending to be a band means that you will get to perform a couple of songs. Yes, this is another 2024 adventure game that has music as a somewhat central component, following titles like Stray Gods, Goodbye Volcano High, and Until Then. Unfortunately, Dustborn sets a new low bar in this department. From the barebones melodies to the awkward lyrics (which are often also trying too hard to be political), the songs here are rather poor. The QTEs themselves are the typical button presses in timing with the on-screen prompts. The other gameplay mechanic has Pax capturing those echoes that float around. Collecting these via a minigame serves as a way to progress certain scenes as well as earn currency, with which you upgrade your baseball bat. It's simplistic and forgettable.

You'll sometimes have to fight in small areas during brief encounters with enemies such as the militaristic police of the state, biker gangs, and others. Wielding a bat, Pax can swing away and relatively easily defeat all opponents. You can throw the bat for a ranged option, and constantly swinging results in simple combos that deal more damage and slow-mo that knocks the enemy away. By landing a bunch of hits, you build up a special meter that lets you unleash shouts – the special abilities that are the same as sometimes used in the story. It lets you temporarily stun enemies, knock them back, make them fight each other, and so on. On occasion, you can do a follow-up big damage hit with another crew member. The only caveat here (and in the world overall) is that the special powers don't affect robots, which are occasionally your enemies, companions or NPCs you encounter.

The enemies are generic and have few abilities, from melee fighters to snipers and those who can throw explosives. Bigger boss enemies also don't pose much of a challenge and may require you to actually dodge or block some attacks. The combat is mechanically decent but lifeless, with no feeling of impact to your hits, despite some environmental objects being destructible at a basic level. The more combat scenarios you encounter, the more tedious it gets.

With by-the-numbers gameplay mechanics, the visuals are also not overly inspiring to the imagination. The game uses a cel-shaded look, but at a lower fidelity level than something like New Tales from the Borderlands. The textures are basic, and so are the environments and visual effects. Shadows and lighting is flat, and so are the character's facial expressions. The lip sync and general movement animations are rather crude. Some of the scenes have rough cut transitions, and so there's not as much of a cinematic feel as you might hope for. Perhaps the best part are the comic book pages that you get at the end of each chapter, which act as a recap and also show how your choices compared to those of other players. It's again very typical, but at least presented with some good comic book art style. Sadly this style doesn't translate to the gameplay much, beyond some very basic expression icons that sometimes appear above characters – it's certainly no Hi Fi RUSH when it comes to commitment to the comic book style. And while the game runs decently well for the most part, there are moments of serious framerate dips during exploration, and the game crashed a couple of times on Xbox Series X.

Dustborn is an unfortunate misfire, even with its lower price point. It's a road trip that seems promising initially, but it quickly succumbs under the weight of ham-fisted political and social commentary, with no insight or depth to go along with it. The miscast crew of characters behave like they should have been two decades younger than they are, and the writing doesn't do them any favors. The typical campaign structure and mechanics grow tiresome over the course of the overlong adventure, while serving up some poor music. Developers Red Thread Games were formed from the foundations of a memorable adventure game series, but have been unable to recapture that magic, and trying to chase the modern design trends with Dustborn regrettably results in near-catastrophe.