The Revenant’s Lament, by 30x30
The Faust legend is an old one – Marlowe’s take goes back to the early 17th Century, and of course there are many medieval and classical antecedents similarly featuring deals with the devil. But it’s one that’s got many modern incarnations, too: Thomas Mann reworked the story to juxtapose Mephistopheles with the Nazi regime, The Master and Margarita does the same with the Soviets, but there are lots of other more or less elastic adaptations. The mere fact of reinterpretation perhaps doesn’t mean that much in our current reboot-heavy culture, but Dr. Faust has a couple hundred years even on Spider Man, so it’s worth considering what’s responsible for the myth’s longevity. Beyond the obvious vicarious pleasure of seeing all the joys that a life of sin can offer (portrayed inside of a moralizing frame offering plausible deniability, of course), the fun of a capering, too-clever-by-half devil, and the compelling image of a scholar who’ll stop at nothing for knowledge – surely there are more than a few literary critics who flatter their egos by seeing something of Faust in themselves – it also satisfies a primitive desire for punishment: Faust makes a rash deal, promises something he shouldn’t, and has to face the consequences. Even if he is sometimes saved in the end, he earns his redemption, and the story as a whole reifies the idea that a moral order exists, which is comforting even if the details of said order may or may not be defensible.
The protagonist of The Revenant’s Lament, John Cassidy King (who winds up going by a variety of names and pronouns over the course of the game, so I’m going to stick with King and they/them pronouns for ease of discussion) certainly seems to believe in the reality of punishment, and even crave it to a certain extent. This is an EctoComp entry so tortured protagonists are de rigueur, but the details here are compellingly specific: King is an Old West cowboy, born as a girl but living now as a man, who escaped a domineering, vicious father though not without committing some crimes in return. They ride their father’s stolen horse but expect it to turn on them at any moment, and it’s not surprising that that guilty conscience seems to hover over the conversation they have when a white-clad stranger shows up at their campfire, offering any wish King pleases just for a song and the warmth of the flames – the narration is close-third on King throughout, but it still judgmentally notes that King is being selfish when asking what the visitor can offer as a gift. And when it appears that the stranger can make good on his extravagant promise, what does King wish for but to live forever, to forestall the day of reckoning as long as they can. And when that decision has consequences – because of course it does – King fights mightily against their fate, but still seems half to believe they deserve what’s coming to them.
Tragedies can’t hold the player in suspense as to their outcomes, so they need a solid dose of pathos to really deliver, and this Revenant’s Lament has in spades. The prose here is very good, propulsive and showing equal facility with drawing characters and displaying well-turned images. Here’s an early bit of scene-setting:
The trading post is just across the street from the post office, the hitches outside occupied by tall, painted horses who graze on sparse grass, shuffle and snort and wait for their riders to return. The type of creature to make John nervous, beasts so assured of their own existence that fear becomes an afterthought.
And here’s the devil himself:
The lonesome stranger doesn’t look old. For the briefest of seconds, he looks like John’s father, smiles in the same crooked way, his thin lips curling back into a snarl or sneer, nothing real in the expression. A coyote grin; knowing something John doesn’t. And then he’s a stranger again, one with short, slicked back salt and pepper hair and the shadow of a beard across his jaw, one with eyes black as a clouded night, empty, dull, filled with flame.
Every once in a while it does tack on one clause too many after a comma, or get a small detail wrong (the dead man’s hand was a pair of aces and a pair of eights, not a full house), but that’s only the kind of thing that you’d notice if you were taking notes for a review (er.). The themes here are relatively straightforward ones – identity, sin, all that stuff – but they’re played with a lovely richness of tone, elevating what could have been merely pulp material in lesser hands.
The interactivity is also nicely handled. King is something of a passive character, often deferring their choices to what others wish, and this is nicely mirrored in choices that wind up channeled into a single outcome (either through narrating abortive attempts that turn out futile, or graying out seemingly-valid options to make clear that there’s only one path forward). There is one significant moment of choice at the end, leading to substantially different denouements; by that point events have progressed so far that the outcome is always tragic, but it is an engaging moment of agency by way of contrast with the rest of the game. And this approach does mean that the moments when King does take the reins and articulate what they want for themselves stand out, and land with some force.
The one thing holding the Revenant’s Lament back is its pacing. The plot here is compelling, with a lot of incident – I was very invested in following King’s story to its end – and the characters and prose also help sustain interest. But nonetheless there are a few sequences that felt quite slow to me, notably an extended series of vignettes towards the middle of the story that went on a bit too long, and ill-judged timed text at both the opening and closing of the game which undercut the moments that should have been the most powerful – I know the intention was to slow down and emphasize the significance of what’s happening, but the reality is that I alt-tabbed to check my email until I could actually read the story again.
If I wound up spending a bit longer with King as a result, though, that’s hardly something to lament. The game offers a compelling character study, with a meditation on guilt and violence that’s entirely in line with what the Western genre does best while interjecting unique themes and story beats I’d never exactly seen before – it’s a worthy addition to the deal-with-the-devil canon, even if the reader does wish King had been able to be better at forgiving themself.
Thanks so much for the review!
