Video games are no strangers to sadness. Pixelated melancholy has become so commonplace that the Sad Dad game is a genre unto itself. But a lot of sadness in video games is tinged with a sense of violence. People are sad as a result of violence, or their sadness propels them into violence. Sadness cannot just exist, it must be consequence or catalyst. It cannot just be. In 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Goodbye Volcano High, sadness just is. It's in this confidence to be sad that Goodbye Volcano High offers one of 2023's most moving tales.
You already know how Goodbye Volcano High is going to end when it begins. 💛It details the last year of the dinosaurs before the meteor hit, reimagining the dinosa⛦urs as modern day teenagers about to leave school and head off into the big wide world, a world that will not exist by the time they are ready for it. This reimagining is not just a kooky quirk - the game is not really about the dinosaurs at all. It is about us, and our teenagers growing up in a rapidly boiling world that feels like it has no future.
It centres mostly on Fang, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:a musician with major talent to go plaওce🌳s, but whose band isn't really along for the ride. Fang writes new, soulful indie pop and has real love for their craft, not to mention a haunting voice and serious guitar skills. But the band would rather chill than practice, and miss the old days of playing shitty punk with in-jokes instead of lyricism. They just want to be friends who sometimes play musical instruments, not a band that plans a future together.
Even without the fiery shadow of the meteor, Goodbye Volcano High depicts a time of sadness. The last year of school is when you leave friends behind, give up on dreams (or realise you never had any to begin with), and taste true freedom for the last time. And you know it, so it all tastes bitter. But all of this, no matter how much some of it hurts, it tinged with hope. You can escape this town. You can chase that rainbow. You can be that you you never could be here. That last taste of freedom is bitter, but it's stronger too. It's a freedom you've never known. Through it all, there is something to look forward to, something beyond. And then the meteor came.
Goodbye Volcano High's genius is that it strips away the hope. No sugar coating. These creatures are doomed. Staying positive is not a cure for the world burning down. When you leave school, it feels like the world is ending. Your parents will never understand. You will never reach or even figure out your goals. You will never see these friends again. It feels that way, but it's not really true. In Goodbye Volcano High, it is true. All they can do is live through it.
It was able to drag me in so much because of the range of sadness it depicts. Though we see the story through Fang's eyes, and watch their dreams dissolve before them, there are other characters with other dreams, other lives, other reactions to everything going on. Some of them accept their fate early. Others ignore it. Some believe, pointlessly, that it will be okay. This is a game where everyone dies, it's no one's fault, and you can't ever stop it. But what it's really about is one kid who is so damn good at music, and they're never going to be able to do anything with it. Their parents will never see them for who they really are. It's a human (or dinosaur) tragedy far more than it is a cataclysmic one.
Goodbye Volcano High's version of sadness is not for everyone. Using misty eyed high schoolers to carry the narrative, it can seem at times trite. It also doesn't offer you as much control over whose stories you see as it thinks it does (near the end I was locked out of talking to certain friends despite having never made conscious choices to set this up), and can be overindulgent with its flourishes, disrupting its pacing. Our reviewer could not connect with it for thes﷽e reasons, as well as encountering far more bugs on PS4 than I noticed on PS5.
If it is for you though, Goodbye Volcano High will hit hard and leave an asteroid-sized crater in your heart. The ragtag teens we meet are all versions of characters we've seen before, but they feel fresher. Deeper. Maybe they're just sadder. Maybe they're sadder and they're allowed to be sad. Goodbye, Volcano High. I'm gonna miss you.