Fort Solis – Review

Release date: 22 August 2023

Genre/Topics: interactive and cinematic narrative, sci-fi, psychological thriller, isolation and alienation in space, conspiracy theories and paranoia, dark sides of human psychology

Developers: Fallen Leaf Studio

When I completed Fort Solis after circa 5 hours, I was really delighted and satisfied. Maybe not a masterpiece, not the best interactive narrative game ever, but really a good one that everyone should play. I would like to play mature and serious games like this more often. So, I’m very angry about the mixed reviews on Steam! Absolutely undeserved! Many people play without understanding what game they are playing! It’s like going to watch a romantic movie thinking it’s an action movie instead! And then judge it as if it were an action movie! And obviously a romantic movie can only receive negative ratings from those who judge it as if it were an action movie!

What is Fort Solis? It’s not an action game for sure! Forget it! Are you looking for action, combats, shootings, easy fun, usual challenges and achievements, jump scares, hard puzzles, etc? Forget it! It’s not the game for you!
So, what is Fort Solis? It’s a psychological sci-fi thriller based on thick deep atmosphere, great acting, good dialogues, very good story, compelling interactive narrative, impressive mo-cap animations, wise direction and one of the best graphics ever in a videogame.

Not enough?
I cannot believe the care developers put in the design of the Mars environment and sci-fi scenarios, better than many sci-fi movies. Extremely detailed and realistic graphics, impressive lighting and visual effects, state of the art soundscape: Fort Solis takes literally the player to Mars, period! You’re not watching a movie: despite the poverty of narrative branches and a quite linear path , you can explore and contemplate the wonderful scenarios at your will and pace, you can decide what to do first and next. I played for 5 hours and I have not explored the whole map, I have missed several places, clues, audio and video logs and documents.

This is a game you have to taste slowly as a vintage red wine, not fast as a lager beer!
Some people pretend that a person wearing a bulky, heavy and rigid space suit on a low-gravity alien planet and a helmet equipped with an oxygen respirator should run and act like in an action movie set on planet Earth! They make me laugh! They remind me of those players who expected the blind little girl to move quickly in the game Beyond Eyes! Is that the average intelligence of gamers? OMG! I’m still laughing! Fortunately Fort Solis is a realistic and serious experience with great care for such details. I really really enjoyed the direction of the whole experience, very serious, mature, realistic, plausible, with the right pace suitable for a psychological thriller set in space that pays a lot of attention to the characters rather than stupid action scenes at all costs or easy jumps scares or puzzles and challenges that are dissonant with the narrative.

Actors are so incredible, I barely remember such good acting in any videogame; the quality of the mo-cap is so good that characters have life-like expressions you can barely distinguish from flesh and bone actors. Fort Solis reaches the next level of technical achievement thanks to wise implementation of the latest development tools, finally a next gen not-VR experience that put at good use my beefy PC!
And believe me, story is so good, not what you expect, very smart, so ambiguos, I would say courageous, so far from every easy and blatant trend based on special effects or super powers; it’s centered on human psychology, almost in contrast with the sci-fi context, I really appreciated it. Not everything is perfect in the screenplay, looking through the lens you can find very very few and small flaws, nothing remarkable, the experience will give you hours of smart and deep entertainment and many deep insights into human nature.

It’s not without complaints. There is no innovation in interactive narrative. Gameplay intertwines in a completely natural and fluent way with several but short and state of the art cinematic cut scenes, often triggered by Quick Time Events. It’s ok, we are used to such kind of experience in games from Dontnod, Telltale, Quantic Dream; anyway I would like less cut scenes and QTE and more interactions where player doesn’t lose control of the avatar. I would like more innovative interactive mechanics. However narrative is good and compelling, you feel like the protagonist of a movie, immersed in the virtual experience, that’s what matters more.

No multiple choice dialogues in Fort Solis, it’s not necessarily bad; in Quantic Dream or Telltale games they give you the chance to take important decisions, to influence the ending or to change relationships. However sometimes the outcomes are contradictory, it’s like writing several stories and try to make them coherent. On the contrary, Fort Solis makes you the protagonist of a coherent story, the story that the developers took great care of and want the player to experience in an interactive and immersive way, as if you were the protagonist of a movie. There are two endings, but they are quite similar and they depends just on the outcome of ending QTEs. Not a defect in my opinion, I loved the story that the developers wanted me to star in. A real trip into the dark sides of human psychology, able to make you feel the anguish of isolation and alienation on the alien planet, which does not disappear in the face of other famous games, movies or novels in the sci-fi genre.

I would thank developers for the trip, I hope they can develop many more titles like this despite the conservatism and lack of maturity of the gaming market.

Rating: 82/100

And now, as usual in my reviews, let’s give a closer look to the story. If you have not played the game yet, don’t go further, lot of spoilers coming!

IMHO the story is deliberately ambiguous. You cannot say whether it’s a case of paranoia and conspiracy or the compound 26 is really dangerous. Maybe the isolation made Wyatt go mad, he got paranoid, he started to create conspiracy theory in his mind and started to spread fear and paranoia to the already worn out team. Isolation in space is a big serious problem well known to NASA or ESA. Or is the compound really dangerous? You can see the plants of the early experiments affected by accelerated growth and death. However the bees are still alive, even stronger than before, they don’t die when they lose the sting; the plants of the latest experiments with the latest compund 26 are still alive and fresh. The few cases of illnesses can be explained by exposure to radiation during mining work or by the spread of an influenza virus cited in many of the documents or logs collected. Hand tremors can be explained as a sign of fear or paranoia and madness or drugs (sometimes even coffee makes hands rattle). Everyone can see that Wyatt has really gone mad!

I loved such unsolved ambiguity that makes the screenplay very original, smart and mature, a real trip into the dark sides of human psychology, very actual in the today society suffering from conspiracy theories, paranoia and fake news.