Sometimes a game comes along and sucker punches you right in the gut. You can be completely aware of the premise going in, but some element of the setting or the mechanics takes a broader theme or commentary and makes it deeply, intensely personal. Papers, Please got me like that. My job at the time involved identity verification and, while it was nowhere near as life or death as the game, it still made it all too real, too visceral. Dragon Age: Inquisition completely caught me off guard, with NPC reactions to my Qunari Inquisitor feeling way too close to my experiences as a very visible trans woman.
Nobody Wants to Die reviewDeveloper: Critical Hit GamesPublisher: PlaionPlatform: Played on PS5Availability: Out now on PC (Steam), PS5, Xbox Series X/S
Nobody Wants to Die is a work of dystopian science fiction, so I was expecting some hard hitting moments. I’m hardly the first person to point out that the last few years have felt increasingly like living in a cyberpunk novel – only without the ability to get shiny chrome replacements for my ageing knees. As a disabled person with a veritable laundry list of health conditions forced to rely on the underfunded NHS, the games’ medical themes hit way too close to home.
Nobody Wants to Die is set in New York circa 2329, which, in a completely shocking and surprising twist, looks a lot like New York circa 1929, complete with tommy guns and prohibition. The sci-fi angle brings flying cars, 500+ story high apartment blocks and, most importantly, immortality. The discovery of a substance called ichorite allows brains to be encoded and transferred to new bodies, making death little more than an inconvenience, other than on the rare occasions that ichorite is completely destroyed. It’s all very Altered Carbon, really.
The really dystopian bit is that there doesn’t seem to have been any comparable advancement in cloning or artificially grown bodies. Instead, fresh bodies for the rich and powerful come from regular folks who haven’t been able to pay their subscription fees. Yep, in 2369 you no longer own your body, you merely rent it. If you can’t keep up, you’re arrested, your body is auctioned off to the highest bidder and your ichorite is locked up in the Memory Bank.