The Deserter

Adapted from an IFCOMP24 Review

Military works can be quite divisive. Historically, media has lionized our fighting forces, not without some valid kernel of a reason. As a volunteer force, people making the choice to serve something larger than themselves, at potentially great personal physical risk, is a laudable choice. In an imperfect world, when outside forces have few qualms about inflicting death and destruction, a response in kind is a basic need of a nation. (Just ask Ukraine.) Where we get into trouble is that ‘volunteer’ is a loaded term when economic opportunity is not truly equal, and when the choice to employ force is, by design, outside the volunteers’ hands. You might as easily be asked to liberate people from death camps, as slaughter civilians in the name of lower gas prices. It is fair to say only one of those things is an appealing cause to volunteer for. It is rendered even more complex with the stunning lethality of modern weapons, and only half-assed attempts to increase precision through the fog of war. Even the most noble of causes can be tainted if retaliation is indiscriminate.

It is against this very fraught backdrop that Deserter introduces us to a future mech-based war, and a soldier bent on quitting the fight. It is a choice-select work, and the player is given no options to stay and fight. I mean, fair enough, the title kind of unambiguously points that way. But it does so with NO table setting, no background in the conflict. Early on, it is not clear whether this is a noble or craven act. The work clearly WANTS us to perceive it as the former, but absent context it is far too charged and unclear to be a given, and that doubt drives a wedge between player and protagonist.

In particular, the work seems to have only an action-movie understanding of soldier dynamics. One of the oldest tools militaries use to secure loyalty is religious fervor. The SECOND oldest (probably, I didn’t do the math) is to ensure every soldier’s highest allegiance is to his fellow soldiers. You are not fighting for God here. You are not fighting for political leaders. You may be fighting for ideals, though that pull is uncertain if those ideals are removed from your own turf. No, you are fighting for the soldier next to you on either side, so you all come home together. This coopting of humanity's social impulses is a fundamental aspect of human warfare and is the strongest counterweight against desertion. It is also completely missing in this work. It is not that it HAS to be present here, but its absence certainly should be addressed. It is precisely this lack of dynamic that raises the spectre of cravenness in the protagonist.

But desert he does! As the escape progresses, we are treated to a not-great use of interactivity: choices to make with nothing to analyze to inform the choice. Go left or right? Only the vaguest of context. In heat of battle, this is not a bad design in and of itself. The fact that the work later makes those choices irrelevant begs the question, why bother creating an unfair choice the player will angst over? Other interactive opportunities run afoul of the scenario itself. Because the protagonist’s motives are so cloudy, subsequent available choices: to explore a cave rather than continue an escape make little story sense, but turn out to be the only way to get character context! Too, events seem overly contrived - despite being minutes from an active war zone, the protagonist not only can (Spoiler - click to show)run across refugees, those refugees can include (Spoiler - click to show)HIS OWN FAMILY. For a topic as loaded as modern warfare, combatant culpability, and the price paid by non-combatants, I found the work too shallow for its setting. It relied on motivations without justifying them, and contrived unconvincing events to drive its message home. The unconvincing nature of its plotting and interactivity actually undermine what it is driving at by putting the player in a skeptical frame of mind.

Its heart is in the right place, I’ll give the work that. This prevents this from being truly Bouncy, but its shaky narrative did not engage me. The gyrations needed to uncover its deepest context were both unrealistic and convoluted so it wasn’t even until third playthrough that the protagonist’s motivations approached clarity. At that point, the charge of discovery was so well and truly muted that it was too little, too late.

Played: 10/3/24
Playtime: 25m, three endings: (Spoiler - click to show)escape, save boy, escape with stuffed bear
Artistic/Technical ratings: Mechanical/Notable text artifacts
Would Play Again?: No, experience feels complete

Artistic scale: Bouncy, Mechanical, Sparks of Joy, Engaging, Transcendent
Technical scale: Unplayable, Intrusive, Notable (Bugginess), Mostly Seamless, Seamless