The possession leads to a six month narrative gap in which the character leaves a bloody trail in their wake, before their eventual liberation thanks to the Unavowed, who are your companions for the rest of the game. The origin story sees the player character, no matter their background, possessed by a demon and forced to do terrible things, and a particular moment in the actor's prologue widened my eyes in a way that I didn't think this kind of pixel art could. This seems like a very inclusive setting, with its djinn, muses and mages. Most recently, I saw the actor background, which digs into Greek mythology, adding yet another category of fantastic possibilities. The backgrounds might colour later conversations but the main effect I've seen is a Dragon Age: Origins style prologue for each. In total there are four companions and your own character can have one of three backgrounds, and can be either male or female. There's a fire mage, a sword-wielding half-djinn half-human and the next in the line of Blackwell's “bestowers of eternity”, a person with a link to the paranormal world, whose ghost guide allows him to speak to the dead and, perhaps, release them from the bonds that tie them to our world. That's not to say the scenery won't be recognisable, and the backgrounds are more detailed and evocative than in any of the Blackwell games, but magic and monsters have come to the streets and waters of NYC, and the characters you control are effectively a fantastical RPG party. Though still set in New York, “this isn't a story about the city in the way that Blackwell was”, he tells me. With Unavowed, he is making an explicit move into Urban Fantasy. Gilbert himself has something of the gumshoe about him. Among them is Joe Gould, who may have been something of an obsession and muse for Mitchell, and for Gilbert as can be seen in this non-fictional investigative story. People not just marginalised by their social or class status but by their entire way of life. His most famous essays and studies focus on true eccentrics though. One of the most important aspects of his written portraits is that he doesn't describe the job, position or role, but the person enacting it. Mitchell was down in the engine room talking to the people elbow-deep in the guts of the thing. It's easy to look at a city like New York and think of so many of its people as cogs in the great machine. It makes sense that he'd be interested in Mitchell (“Inspired by” is the phrase he uses to describe the relationship) both men are natural storytellers, driven by a strain of humanism that values the eccentrics and the workers. Joseph Mitchell, one of the city's great chroniclers, is an important figure in the games and, Gilbert tells me, in his own life. What are the stories people will remember about us and tell after we are gone? What tale will the manner of our death tell to those who didn't know our life? How do we make sense of a world that often seems nonsensical? The highlights of Wadjet Eye's back catalogue are found in the Blackwell series, Gilbert's own quintet of New York stories, which show a city haunted by the ghosts of its own past (and its own popular culture), and often feel like a collection of thoughts about storytelling as well as a ghostly set of mysteries and mysticism. With Unavowed, his next game, Gilbert is incorporating ideas from the RPG world into a point and click adventure, and the combination could lead to his most interesting release to date. That includes games that he publishes as well as those he creates, and while I haven't adored every single release, I've always found something to admire. Since I first played The Shivah in 2006, a murder mystery more concerned with the Jewish faith than gangsters and gumshoes, I've felt I'm in safe hands with almost anything Gilbert puts out under his Wadjet Eye label. I'll always be excited when a new Dave Gilbert game is on the horizon.
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