I’m not intimately familiar with the antics of John Yesterday, the protagonist of Yesterday Origins, so I didn’t really know what to expect going into the preview build that Microids provided us with.
The story goes that John Yesterday has found himself imprisoned some 500-ish years ago during the Spanish Inquisition. Not a good time for him then. You’re probably wondering what this guy did to land himself in a Spanish slammer. He committed the heinous crime of… Speaking multiple languages. Well, that is a bit of an understatement really, as he seems to speak just about every language – though I severely doubt he speaks Welsh; not even the people of Wales speak Welsh…
So, this guy has got himself locked up for being a satanic heathen because he’s a bit of a smart-arse. The olden times were really quite odd, weren’t they? John is now chained to a wall, so I wiggle the controller to see what’s up. Alas! I can move! Though only the length the metal chain wrapped around my ankle will allow me, but it’s enough to get scope of the room and see what’s what.
Yesterday Origins is a point-and-click adventure game, so naturally the controls need to work in tandem with traditional controllers. I’m not really the biggest fan of the genre, though I played my fair share of the hilarious Monkey Island series. It’s weird, then, that I actually found myself quite engrossed by Yesterday Origins and poor John’s plight. Looking around the different objects in the room was easy enough, but figuring out what to do with the information was a little mind-boggling; there weren’t really any hints to give me, a relative simpleton, a bit of a, well, hint.
Mooching past the chained up pig (he committed sacrilege, but we’ll leave that for now) I made for the cell door and pressed the action button. Oh, look, another room! And there’s a fat guy getting wasted in the corner. I chatted with the fat guy (I can’t remember his name) and learned that he’s the guy who will be torturing me and that he seems to quite like his job. Sadistic bastard… The dialogue wasn’t just a sit-and-watch affair, and I was free to pose my own questions from a list of pre-written ones. One thing that stuck out like a sore thumb was that my would-be torturer (let’s call him Dave) was speaking with a thick – though obviously fake – cockney accent. What’choo fink ya doin, mate?! I suppose it’s an artistic decision by the developers, but it’s one that always rubs me the wrong way. I digress…
After a good couple of hours of hitting the buttons, walking around, and figuring out how to interact with the inventory (please, for the sake of gamers across the lands, let there be a tutorial!) I’d managed to free myself from the shackles, engage in a bit of self harm, and tried to poison an already-dead corpse. Fair to say, then, that I’m more than a little intrigued for the full game which will see the game flick between the past and the present. Sounds… Groovy. [Ed: Groovy?! Really? Urgh…]
Yesterday Origins is set to release on November 10th for PS4 and other platforms.
Preview Disclaimer: This preview was carried out using a preview build made available by the developer. Unfortunately we couldn’t get any hands-on time with the PS4 build of the game, so we had to make do with PC code via Steam. Rest assured that our PS4 review of the game will be based completely on the PS4 version of the game.
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