Here’s a bit of advice: if you’re designing a game where the player is able to make life decisions for one or more characters, make absolutely certain that they know exactly what decisions they’re actually making. Which is to say that after less than an hour with The Way of Life: Definitive Edition, a paid-for elaboration of The Way of Life Free Edition (that’s not an oversight on my part; the free version indeed lacks the colon of its paid counterpart for some reason), I felt incredibly dirty. Everyone is selfish, and this is baked into the game to a certain degree—even a story in which the choices were clear and I was able to wrap things up in a less-selfish way was still plagued by flashbacks in which all of the characters acted in unreasonably selfish, egocentric ways. When I went to try and help someone, only for the game to interpret my aid attempt as an attempt to humiliate them, though, I mentally checked out of the entire experience. Having to deal with so many comically self-absorbed characters lacking in basic humanity is bad enough, but contributing to their ugliness because player and character intentions aren’t remotely aligned is just too much.
If you can’t be a hero…
I thought I was being so clever when I decided to instead start making all of the obviously “bad” choices, though the fact that such choices exist in the first place is an issue of its own. The Way of Life isn’t an impartial observer in its many scenarios; the developer has a very noticeable bias toward certain decisions and viewpoints, and there’s really no escaping sanctimonious dialogue regardless of how you play. There are numerous examples of this, from a series of “war/violence” themed experiences to your inability to not be a horrible, unsupportive father in another, but it’s the little admonitions that I found most aggravating. In one scenario, I fed some ducks and saved some ants, but because I knocked down a beehive instead of throwing a rock at a raccoon attempting to steal honey, it ended with the character remarking like a sociopath, “If I don’t like something, I break it” because “one person’s actions can’t make that much of a difference.” Here’s the thing: bees can rebuild their hive, while throwing a rock at a raccoon balanced on a tree branch could kill it. Regardless, I ran afoul of the developer’s preordained marker of morality, and thus what I did was evil and wrong. The whole game is like this.
The funniest example of this came after I decided to be evil. One scenario required taking the subway, so I found the first seat that could be interacted with and waited for the slow ride to end. Then I found a kid separated from his parents. The game wanted me to reunite them, obviously, but the fact that he followed me around meant that I had to try to kidnap him. When I left the area, however, the main character said something about the ugliness of racism as though that had factored into anything. I have no idea what he was talking about there. There was a guy on the subway with a vaguely Muslim-looking hat, but he was never interacted with, and the kid looked like the same race as the playable character. Apparently I was accidentally racist?
I thought I was recording in order to help the bully get out of whatever trouble they were in. Instead, the game decided that I was doing it to humiliate them.
Disconnected stories
Some of the stories share characters, though there are enough similar-looking characters that you could be forgiven for having no idea that any of these stories are intertwined. Basically, the game works like this: there are numerous doors you can enter that each have a theme (love, war, technology, etcetera), and you can choose to play through these as either a child, an adult, or an old guy. You have to play through everything as everyone to reach the ending, though, so it’s not technically a choice. Regardless, you’d think that these age groups would represent distinct characters that remain consistent throughout the game, but you’d be wrong. The “war” scenario can see you killed as the kid, for example, and yet parts of the game later in the chronology still feature a kid. Playing as an old man, you sometimes spend some time with a kid, but it’s not the same one you play as (which is obvious because you can also get that kid killed). The way everything bounces around from character to character, none of whom are ever named, makes it impossible to follow the story threads or get attached to anyone, and this makes it all the more strange when there’s suddenly a callback to a different story. You’re not even experiencing the same events though the eyes of different age groups, as each group has its own totally separate events. This is probably the game’s single biggest disappointment; it seems like it’d be effective emotionally to show how age and experience start to color one’s perception of the world around them while focusing on a smaller cast.
Disconnected minigames
At its core, The Way of Life: Definitive Edition is a walking simulator with occasional minigames thrown in. These range from decent-but-poorly-explained powerup collecting to tedious memory games and first-person platforming, even managing to fit a little unbelievably awkward stealth in there for good measure. Most of the time, the minigames are just there to keep you busy for awhile. The same goes for the walking speed, which is abysmal when you play as the old man. Since moving the story forward often requires moving up to a single very specific thing in the map and interacting with it, moving with the speed of an old man with a cane can become absolutely infuriating. Accurate, granted, but it’s bad enough that I eventually performed a good act because finding a way to be a jerk was taking too long.
Trying to kidnap a kid doesn’t make me a racist, game.
Interesting visuals and repetitive music
If there’s anything that I like about The Way of Life: Definitive Edition, it’s the visuals. Granted, the low-detail style makes it difficult to differentiate characters, but certain scenes can be incredibly pretty regardless. There’s a strange tendency to wash out all of the colors, though, as well as some less than wonderful blurring and noise effects that come and go. Overall, though, I’d say that I like the visuals. The same can’t be said about the music, which is decent, but so absurdly repetitive that it’s hard not to come out resenting it. In fairness, that’s the gameplay’s fault more than the music’s since running (or as is more often the case, walking slowly) around and accomplishing very little gives the tracks plenty of time to repeat and start to get on your nerves, but it’s one more example of things not meshing here.
*A Steam review key for The Way of Life: Definitive Edition was provided for this review
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