Fairy Tale Spotlight: Valley

[Some spoilers ahead.]

I recently got around to finishing a video game called Valley. It is an indie title released by developer Blue Isle Studios in 2016. Where it is not the best game I have ever played, there were aspects of it that I liked which leads me to writing out this review.

The story centers around a male or female (of your choosing) heading out into uncharted areas looking for some fabled thing called the life-seed. Along the way, you find out that Nazis had already found it in WW2 and were trying to make a super weapon out of it. Right... because Nazis.

Honestly, the story of this game is kind of crap. I never really felt very interested in any of it. The Nazis barely even came across as believable. They just seemed like silly mad scientists trying to win a war. Even if that's partly true, I felt a lot of it was lost in the writing.

Another problem with this life-seed business is its connection to the earth. It's connected to all life on the planet, and using it basically just drains all the life in the world in order to... Gosh, I'm getting bored just writing this. It was basically a pagan, environmentalist, Gaia plot-line. Like I said... it was crap.

There was a reason I kept on playing though. Two reasons. The first was that the game is genuinely fun to play. The gameplay itself, not the story. The story can take a hike off a high cliff. The protagonist gets a special mechanized walking suit called a L.E.A.F. It makes you run faster, jump higher, and all around makes you feel like some sort of super hero. It has weaponized abilities as well for when you start fighting... things later. I got addicted to this runny jumpy gameplay and didn't want to stop until I had played through its 5 hour campaign.

Another thing I liked about the game was the fairy tale aspect of it. Well, that's sort of where the pagan stuff didn't bother me as much. They, at the very least, did a little research there. The game is quite beautiful and filled with little fairy creatures that really gave it a wonderful atmosphere.

The story also spoke about these ancient giants that roamed about with a taste for eating human flesh. There were a lot of statues of them with their toothy maws wide open. They looked like humans. This is likely a misinterpreted Nephilim reference. The thing that rather horrified me is how games like this are almost trying to make monsters like this seem victimized. It is as if they have every right to devour us for our sins against nature. I applaud them for their representation of these creatures, but I dislike the the way they are being framed.

Do I recommend Valley? Sure. I mean... there's a lot here that's still very good. Just playing the game felt very relaxing for me. It's a stunningly beautiful world that feels like they really managed to take it from concept art into the realm of 3D. And even the pagan aspects of the game are cool. It's just the story itself is sadly uninspiring and uninteresting. The good news is that it was fairly easy to ignore. Play it if you can look past such things. Avoid it if not.

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