Chorus – Spotlight
Nara, the protagonist of Chorus, is a pirate hunter for a group called the Envoy when you begin controlling her. The Circle, a fascistic space cult, is slowly spreading across the star system, and she leads the group in its fight against it.
Nara, on the other hand, is a warrior for The Circle when she first appears in the series. As a warrior, she’s one of the most trusted members of the cult and has been given the task of eliminating an entire planet that refuses to join. By her own estimation, she has killed billions of people. “Are we the baddies?” Nara asks herself after she commits intergalactic genocide. She then leaves The Circle and joins the Enclave, where she is unknown, to try and restart her life.
As Nara, the protagonist of Chorus, players must fight against the cult as they destroy its outposts and ships, while also aiding the resistance movement that has grown against it over time. When confronted with her own memories, Nara often asks the players to sympathise with her, and the game frequently shows her in vulnerable moments. That’s a request I’m not sure I could abide by. After blowing up an entire planet, Nara realised the cult she was a part of (which uses psychic totems to subjugate groups of people into submission) was evil.
To say that the Circle is to blame for Nara’s actions would be an understatement. I couldn’t think of any other way she could atone for them that wasn’t fighting the Circle. Her involvement in the resistance was, in fact, a reluctant one. She didn’t want to return to the world of brawling and bloodshed she had left behind. Would it be possible for Nara to avoid confronting her past? Would it be possible for her to avoid making up for what she’s done? A selfish, immature character, she was written into a villain-to-hero storey that required the most forgiveness I’ve ever encountered.
When seen in the context of the entire plot of Chorus, Nara is only a minor character (albeit a very large one). The game frequently introduces new characters while keeping a small number of characters who reappear to advance the storey. These minor characters, on the other hand, are nearly impossible to form any kind of relationship with at all. This means that all of the NPCs you encounter in Chorus are really just voices in ships that are shown on the right side of your screen.
With no movement, these characters are nothing more than disembodied sounds. I didn’t feel anything when one of them was killed in battle. I’m sure it wasn’t anything special. In addition, the game’s other characters aren’t all that interesting because of the way they’re presented.
To be fair, that’s in line with Chorus. I didn’t feel emotionally invested in the game’s narrative as I played through it. In the game’s open world, I didn’t feel the need to rush to my next storey mission because of a sense of urgency. It takes a long time for anything to happen, and the stakes are rarely as high as they appear to be.
When I finally had the opportunity to shoot at other ships, the tedious cutscenes and dialogue of Chorus were a little more bearable. Exquisitely well-done space combat makes me feel like an unstoppable force. While the majority of encounters are with smaller ships, larger vessels are where the action really begins.
Battles on the Death Star take place with players weaving through laser beam fire and systematically destroying turrets and thrusters. A ship’s core is eventually blasted to smithereens by players, and they must flee before the entire ship explodes. These battles are as visually stunning as they are action-packed, requiring players to use every tool at their disposal.
Rock-paper-scissors, but with chainguns, lasers, and missiles in place of the traditional weapons. All of these weapons are capable of taking down a specific type of defence, with guns easily tearing through a ship’s hull, lasers quickly dismantling shields, and missiles destroying spaceships’ armour. Changing back and forth between the three options. Nara’s Rites, magical abilities that let her teleport behind enemies or scan the area, required me to constantly change my controller inputs.
But combat and gameplay in general are harmed by some questionable decisions that not only make the game frustrating but also detract from its accessibility. The game’s HUD and UI, both of which appear to have been designed for ants, are the most obvious examples. Small circles appear on the screen’s outskirts if an enemy isn’t directly in front of the player. If you use a scan to ping other objects or goals, they appear in the same way, but in the form of triangles.
As a result, the Chorus can be difficult to understand at times. It is necessary to use the ship’s ping to locate objects in large 3D spaces in some missions. There is no distinction between objects that are part of a mission and those that are not. As a result, I was so confused that I thought the game had simply not spawned what I was looking for. Because my vision is 20/20, I can’t imagine what it would be like to use Chorus with any kind of vision impairment.
Subtitling is a necessity rather than a choice, even if you’re listening to a show through headphones. Nara has a tendency to talk to herself while flying through space, which is usually music-free for some reason. For the most part, however, she speaks in an unintelligible tone whenever she has an internal monologue. Chorus’ subtitles can be enlarged in the game’s limited accessibility menu, but the rest of the game’s text cannot be enlarged.
Even though Chorus isn’t a bad game, it’s frustrating because it could be so much more enjoyable. The experience was ruined for me by a slew of strange design decisions, including eye-strain UI and incomprehensible dialogue. It would be less frustrating if this game was designed with accessibility in mind. I would be able to overlook Nara, one of the worst main characters I’ve seen in a long time in a video game. I’d be able to sing its praises for the way its combat feels. Nothing in Chorus, however, hides the game’s flaws, which creep into even the game’s most redeeming moments.
