To Beseech Old Sins

Adapted from a SpringThing24 Review

Played: 4/4/24
Playtime: 30 min

Up front, the game told me this was part of an ongoing series to which I had no prior exposure. These disclaimers immediately prompt the question, ‘Am I too background disadvantaged to appreciate this?’ My success rate with these kinds of things is pretty high - Series like Little Match Girl and Lady Thalia notably ease new players in without friction and quickly get us in the swim.

Beseech didn’t quite achieve those heights. Interestingly though, for a while, it used that opacity to its advantage, creating an interesting frisson between a world that of course knew who our Power Throuple was, and me who was desperately trying to catch up. If I’m honest though, that frisson was kind of an artificial boost. There were some narrative choices and gameplay choices that didn’t play for me, and absent that ‘gotta figure out what’s going on here!’ charge, would have tired of it much sooner than I did.

The first narrative sin, for me, was the Power Throuple themselves. Cast as uber-Space-Marines who were so valuable that military structure bent over backwards to accommodate their flagrant insubordination. You know what that kind of double standard does to unit discipline? No, the work does not know. And worse, the Throuple were so, so, so smug about it. About the only time I can tolerate this kind of archetype is either when they subvert their competence somehow, or when we fast forward into outlandish pulp adventure. Beseech did neither.

The second narrative sin, though perhaps specific to new readers, was that their identity was revealed so offhandedly, so late in the story, that it was very much a ‘burying the lead’ moment. They are (Spoiler - click to show)Horny Space Demons! Maybe I could have learned that a lot earlier, certainly before they go on a mission? The reveal was so vastly underplayed as to effectively be anti-climax.

The last narrative sin was lack of interesting conflict. They were presented at the jump as final-resort weapons of irresistible effectiveness. They were employed as such. Sure enough, they lived up to that reputation. There were no reversals, no intricate plans, not even any portrayal of HOW irresistible they were. Hell, there wasn’t even any conflict - (Spoiler - click to show)the antagonist surrendered without protest, and in fact went out of his way to say how awesome they were. Uncharitably, the arc of the piece was ‘We are awesome. The enemy agrees. Now reward us!’

Now, as part of an ongoing series of games, maybe this isn’t so terrible? Maybe this is just a low-stakes interlude (as suggested by introduction) between high stakes adventures. It’s not unreasonable to see it that way. For me though, as a standalone story without background literacy, it did not work.

The narrative was not my only friction with this piece. The Twine link-select UI also chafed at me. Visually, it was attractive. A futuristic font with unique highlighting on choice links. The problem was, there were two types of links. The first was an aside - some comment on things going on. These were actually the best part of the piece. The wry aside observations from the protagonist were funny in their often blatant horniness. The second kind of link was the ‘proceed with story’ link. I did not detect any links of the ‘affect the narrative’ variety. The problem was that the words chosen as links gave no clue which type they were- not in phrasing or position. An example (choices bolded):

"There was no hail of gunfire, no clouds of smoke and war. Instead we were greeted with something shocking. Something none of us thought we would ever see in our life times."

You might expect from that construct that the first link would provide some additional detail, while the second would naturally push the scene forward. No, it was the opposite. The work did this ALL THE TIME. This example is somewhat atypical anyway, in that more often, the highlighted words seemed arbitrary. Like if they were ‘There was no’ and ‘thought we would’ in the above sentence. Even worse, many times there were multiple paragraphs, where the natural thing to do would be select links as you read them, except the first link might move the story forward and expect you to have read the whole page! Independent of any narrative quibbles, this link confusion drove me to distraction.

Between the character, plot and UI choices, this was not for me. I could certainly see this playing better in context of a larger series, and hope longtime fans appreciate this more.

Mystery, Inc: Daphne
Vibe: Horny Space Demons
Polish: Textured
Gimme the Wheel! : If this were my project, the UI is where I would put my energy. It is a linear novel of sorts. I would give a lot more thought to the link architecture and its impact on how the piece is read. I would especially make sure those nifty asides are consumed in a natural way.

Polish scale: Gleaming, Smooth, Textured, Rough, Distressed
Gimme the Wheel: What I would do next, if it were my project.

I was drawn into this one by the stylish UI and the character-focused setup, immediately interested in our three MCs’ circumstances and their relationship. Their teasing, comfortable dynamic was fun to read about, especially with the sense that these were some precious, stolen moments in an otherwise strictly regimented life. However, the introduction to these characters’ lives doesn’t match up with what actually plays out in the story; the setup gets quickly got thrown out the window, especially when the cozy domestic moment we start out witnessing becomes an urgent mission.

As other reviews have mentioned, I think the confusion definitely comes in part from this being the third in a series. Not having played the preceding games, I couldn’t follow what was going on with the mission, completely lacking a frame of reference for it. This ended up creating a major disconnect between me and the characters, which was the opposite of my experience at the beginning, when I thought I understood what they might be thinking and feeling.

A final issue is that most of the game’s passages contain two types of links—ones that lead to brief asides and return you to the passage you came from when you're done, and ones that advance to the next main-text passage. However, both types of links are colored and styled exactly the same, and the game has no “back” button, meaning that if you inadvertently miss an aside, there’s no way to rewind and see it. While I was able to crack the code as to which type of link is which—single-word links are asides, multi-word links advance—signaling the difference in a more obvious way would have been a better design choice.

To Beseech Old Sins is a linear sci-fi Twine story, part of a larger series, where you play as Epsilon, a superpowered (if you will) golem, part of a Throuple/Trio SpecOp team. Though your behaviour goes against every directive ever, you and your team are barely reprimanded because you are the best of the best. And this is why *you* get to go on a daring mission to win the war (or at least the battle). All the odds are against you, but luck is weirdly always on your side.

Yay, I thought after reading the long introduction to get here, some action, I get to do something! Let's take over the ship and... oh... they immediately waved the white flag. Ah... ok, then. Let's just read about how great we are, I guess.

While I do not have gripes with the kinetic type (having made and played plenty), I was sorely disappointed to see that I would not have any input in the story. The blurb talks about an admiral (your boss) wanting a swift victory but nothing goes as plan, and I sort of expected we would have to get down and dirty and fight (of some sort) or be forced to escape some sort of prison. But no, you just read about how you strut around with desire in your eyes (which is fine, just not what I expected).

I think my biggest issue with the piece was how I kept playing Guess What the Link Will Do throughout the whole game. Was I going to read a snarky observation or continue with the story? I could never tell, as all the links looked the same, and the one to move forward with the story never had the same position between passages (it was only obvious when only one link was on the screen). So, every time I moved to a next passage on the first link, I kept wondering what I had missed (was it important for me to understand? would it have helped provide more context?). It really made the experience frustrating.

OK, anecdote time: when I was in high school, my summer job for a couple years was as a busboy at a country club. This was less exciting than it sounds – and believe me, I’m under no illusions as to how exciting it sounds – but one fun thing was that there was a team-building day where we saw Rent on Broadway (the club was on Long Island). This necessitated a bus trip, and whether or not said bus was formally licensed as a party bus – I rather suspect not – my coworkers decided it would be prudent to avoid inflated NYC liquor prices by getting blasted on the way in, and further decided it would be amusing to peer-pressure the 17-year-old into having a couple of beers (reader, I’d like to say I put up a fight, but I was nerdy and was moved that they cared enough to make the attempt). I only had two drinks, but I was an inexperienced drinker and weighed like 120 pounds, so that was enough to throw me off-kilter for the remainder of the trip as well as – and here we’re finally getting to the point of the anecdote – the entire first act of Rent.

There’s a whole lot of incident that plays out over that initial hour or so, and I’m sure a more sober critic of theater would have found a lot to unpack, but I have to confess that all the relationship melodrama and demimondaine cris de coeurs were lost on me, because in the flush of my first drunkenness, I’d decided that actually the most important thing on that stage was this one particular chair. All the frenetic dancing and singing happening all around it, I was sure, was just meant to provide a counterpoint to the stolid immanent quiddity of this humble chair; people sat in it, gripped it from behind, leaped over it in impressive jetes, but rather than see the chair as providing a backdrop to their actions, the musical’s author clearly wanted the audience to see the cast as a backdrop to the furniture.

I dried out over intermission so thankfully my impressions of Act Two are much more normal, but that experience of fixating on something that in retrospect was clearly of at-best tertiary importance persists; obviously I was totally off base, but maybe I was chasing some elusive insight that could unlock the greater meaning of the piece?

All of which is an excessively long intro to explain why throughout To Beseech Old Sin’s Sturm-und-Drang space opera, I was only half paying attention to the narrative and wondering how sexual harassment laws worked in the far future.

See, the story has the trappings of a Halo or a Warhammer 40k – there’s this squad of giant armored supersoldiers, who are ordered to make a desperate assault on an enemy capital ship – but the shooty-shooty business is largely underplayed, while the setting, as well as the personal and ideological stakes of the game’s main conflicts, are underexplained. I’m typically allergic to extended infodumps laying out a game’s premise in unnecessary detail, don’t get me wrong, but here I missed them, because it’s both the case that the elided details were necessary to build investment in a generic, and ultimately low-key, shootout, as well as seeming intriguing in their own right (the supersoldiers are referred to as golems, and seem to have alchemical script tattooed onto their bodies, which is part of what empowers them as sets them apart from ordinary humans? Yeah, I’d like to hear more about that).

That vagueness extended to the trio of main characters, consisting of the protagonist plus two squadmates – none of them felt like they had especially distinct personalities or voices, and making their names Greek letters fuels the genericism. And the game’s choices don’t feel especially impactful; mostly links either provide more detail or just move the story forward, and this is a low-risk mission that seems impossible to mess up too badly, so while it’s pleasant enough to click through the attractively-presented text, there isn’t grabby gameplay or any moments of high drama to liven things up.

So in the absence of more traditional engagement points to latch onto, the thing that mostly stood out to me was the contextually-inappropriate cuddling. You and your squadmates aren’t just a trio, you’re also a throuple, and seem to spend most of your downtime half-naked and spooning. And that’s fine! Office relationships can be challenging to navigate, but everybody seems into it and I’m sure space combat is super stressful so this seems like a nice, healthy way to blow off steam. Except the three of you keep up said canoodling even when the admiral commanding the squadron comes down to give you your mission briefing, which isn’t just an accident but a deliberate provocation as it’s made clear you knew she was coming but decided not to put pants on nonetheless. Sure, the admiral is presented as a romantic interest – she blushes yet seems intrigued, and your dialogue options with her range from double entendres to point five entendres – but c’mon, this is her workplace, and almost the exact same scenario plays out a second time towards the end of the game. If you really think you’re vibing ask her out for a drink once she’s off-duty, but right now this is textbook hostile work environment sexual harassment.

To stop kidding for a minute, I do get the sense that there is meant to be more depth here; the author’s note indicates that these are recurring characters, and there’s an “other stories in the anthology” link on the festival page. So I’m guessing that some other game provides more in the way of backstory for the characters, establishes deeper themes for the milieu, and otherwise offers more in the way of on-ramps for uninitiated players. Indeed, the author’s note positions To Beseech Old Sins as a lighter interlude from an overarching story that trends grim; in that context, and with more investment in the characters, I’d probably have more to focus on than the state of employment law in this imagined world. So okay, it’s still mostly my fault that I fixated on a mostly-irrelevant detail this time out, but unlike with Rent, I do think the author could have given me a little more help.

This game is centered around three essentially immortal space marines (or equivalent) who love to make out and who are the last resort for armies to employ.

The game looks cool visually, and the writing is descriptive.

The plot was a bit hard for me to follow. A lot of it is just the main characters really enjoying laying on top of or close to each other. There is a fight, and at first I thought there'd be a big twist as they see something amazing, but it's just (Spoiler - click to show)the other side surrendering, which is what was implied would happen anyway.

Some of the links move the story forward and some are 'asides', but there's no back button and no way to distinguish the two links. I'd appreciate some way to know if a link is side info or 'go forward irrevocably'.

Overall, I found it polished and descriptive, but had difficulties with the interactivity and felt a reduced emotional impact due to confusion with the story.

If there were more games in the series, it would really cool to learn about the characters backgrounds, or major differences between them, or how they 'work'.