Exhibition

I loved this one when I was younger. The first time I played it, years ago, I think I cried. But playing it again, it's much worse than I remember. It's odd how time can reverse your opinions.

The concept: Russian-American artist commits suicide. You learn about his life through the eyes of four different people visiting a posthumous exhibition of his paintings. Creative idea, unique and meta.

But the writing simply isn't good enough to produce the effect the author wanted to achieve. I found the character voices flat and one-dimensional. At times they degenerate into stereotypes. The college student was my least favorite. I remember even in my original playthrough, I was annoyed by her unjustified hatred of the artist, Russians, and men in general. She's a straw feminist, who despite being a humanities major (all the humanities majors I know are extremely passionate about their field of study) demonstrates no appreciation for art or her university education. I found her character shallow. "Boomer caricacture of SJW college student" shallow.

The other characters are similar. Of course the art critic is snooty and pretentious, of course the wife is a meek simple country woman. Even the paintings themselves don't grab me, maybe because the mediocre writing makes for mediocre mental images. And the metaphors are basic. The artist was going through Hell, so he painted Hell, look at these pictures of Orpheus and so on. The artist had a difficult relationship with religion, so here's a painting of a church covered in insects. His last painting, of a noose, was found on his easel after he hanged itself. Too on-the-nose for me.

The pictures suffer from simultaneously too much and too little description: often there's so much going on that the author can barely describe it all. The author is so caught up with character voice that the descriptions mix in with them and you never get a clear picture of the art you're looking at, even though the art is a central point of the game.

And the writing just isn't good enough. Some of the wording is awkward. Characters speak in voice until they don't, so the game can provide you with directions and tell you where the exits are. The painting descriptions have minor missteps, like:

> However, Domokov has done amazing and confusing tricks with perspective, similar to "Cornucopium".

That "done" doesn't sound right to me. It feels inelegant, and uncharacteristic of a learned seventy-three year old critic. There are more than a few places like this in the writing, where the language feels slightly off. I mean, I don't know, maybe I'm nitpicking. But this is a very text-heavy piece, so the tiny issues stood out to me.

I wish the number of paintings was lessened, and the descriptions lengthened. With multiple paragraphs to describe a painting and the viewpoint character's reaction, the concept could work. But Finley tries to fit everything into a few sentences.

"Maudlin", as another review said, is the right word for it. In the hands of a better writer this could be a good story, but it's hamstrung by sentimentality and reliance on cliches.



Disclaimer: Since my past self was enamored with this game, clearly my less-than-complimentary opinions here are subjective. I tried to be fair, but in the end I can't change the fact that this game really didn't cut it for me on the replay. Each to their own, maybe you'd like this one, etc.

If you really hate this review, just pretend I was roleplaying as the snooty art critic or the idiot student or something.