Nobody Wants to Die - noir madness

Stop calling Nobody Wants to Die cyberpunk, it's not cyberpunk at all! Nobody Wants to is a thoroughbred noir detective story set in the future, and it's a damn good noir.

Yes, there are some elements of dystopia here that can be confused with cyberpunk, but it's definitely not. In the Nobody Wants to Die universe, almost all high technology is not really that high. With the exception of some technological breakthroughs, this world seems to be stuck in the middle of the 20th century. There is no virtual space, no free-spirited hackers, and no omnipotent AI. And in fact, the "cyber" in "cyberpunk" is not very good. Computers are at the level of the 1970s, e-mail exists, but everyone prefers to use pneumatic mail. There are no cell phones, only radios and such.

What Nobody Wants to Die does well with is the social stratification. The thing is that in the game's universe, people have learned to live forever. As in the science fiction novel Altered Carbon by Richard Morgan, or in the Netflix series based on it, wealthy citizens can change their bodies, transferring their consciousness into a new shell. But there is one caveat: after you turn 21, you have to pay rent for your own body; if you don't have the money, your body will go to auction and your consciousness will go to a memory bank. So rich people have an unlimited choice of bodies for entertainment, sexual experiments, etc., while poor people can't even afford their own bodies.

The protagonist of Nobody Wants to Die, detective James Carra, was involved in a terrible train accident a few weeks ago, hasn't recovered from the loss of his wife, and is having problems with his new body, which is a bit glitchy due to a lack of synchronization. But he wants to get back to work as soon as possible, so he gets a conditional clearance, a supervisory officer, Sarah, who is present only as a voice in the phone for most of the game, and a simple task - to deal with the suicide of one of the wealthiest people in the city...

But here's the thing... it doesn't look like suicide at all, but a premeditated murder, and the murder is final, the victim's ichor (in the game it's a substance that contains the consciousness of a person) is completely damaged and he is not threatened with resurrection. It seems that someone is hunting for influential members of society, and perhaps this has something to do with the law on lowering the age of body rental that they are trying to push through.

It seems that all the employees of the Polish studio Critical Hit Games, the authors of Nobody Wants to Die, are big fans of the noir genre. The game is stylized as a noir detective just perfectly. And unlike the Mars Express cartoon, in which noir narratives were transferred to science fiction scenery, the game's authors have carefully preserved not only the characteristic plot moves, characters, and their motives, but also the style of the 1930s and 40s, adapting it only slightly for the future.

Yes, there are flying cars here, but they are classic 1930s cars like the Cadillac 16, Maclaughlin-Buick Series 90, or Buick Roadmaster, but instead of wheels, they have something like gravity engines. All skyscrapers in New York resemble the Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building, or the American Radiator Building. All interiors, decoration, book design, documents, fonts, menus, inscriptions, appliances, etc. are made exclusively in the Art Deco style. The New York of 2329 from Nobody Wants to Die is stuck in the 1930s like a gnat in amber.

As for other noir features, the endlessly drowned protagonist smokes a lot, of course, looking thoughtfully into the endless rain with neon glare (there is no sun in the game world at all, it's smog), constantly reaches for the bottle, and comments on his actions in a hoarse, sexy baritone. Of course, there's a femme fatale, several of them, corrupt cops, corrupt criminals, conspiracy, and all that. And yes, everyone who knows about noir can guess what awaits our hero in the end.

In terms of genre, Nobody Wants to Die is a walking simulator, an interactive story like the recent Still Wakes the Deep, but without horror episodes, or The Invincible by Starward Industries, also from Poland. James Carra has to investigate several crime scenes, find evidence, reconstruct what happened, and draw his own conclusions about the killer and his motive.

Several devices help our detective investigate crime scenes. An X-ray lens that "sees" wires, buttons and safes hidden in the walls, internal organs, and even bullet trajectories. An ultraviolet lamp to look for traces of blood, fingerprints, footprints, etc. And, most importantly, a device for reconstructing events, which, based on the information collected, allows you to "rewind time" and see what happened at the crime scene, look at the participants in the drama from different angles, find new evidence, "rewind time" again, search for new data, and so on. In fact, this is not time travel, but rather a reconstruction of events, but it looks exactly like our detective is looking back in time.

Just like the authors of The Invincible, the developers of Nobody Wants to Die are true fans of 20th century technology, so they carefully recreated dial phones and combination locks, radios and receivers, watches, and more. And most importantly, they animated all these fantastic devices used by Detective Carr in a very realistic way. It's a pleasure to watch him work.

In terms of graphics, Nobody Wants to Die is a real treat for the eyes. Unreal Engine 5 is responsible for the picture, and artists and models did a great job on the style and successful angles. This is a stylistically perfect game.

As for the narrative part, everything is not so smooth. We have questions about some of the actions and conclusions made by the characters, and at times the narrative becomes a bit confusing, so not all players will be able to understand what exactly happened at the end of the game and who is the killer James Carra is looking for, who killed his wife, whether she was killed at all, and why this whole chain of crimes is necessary. But if you pay attention, listen to the characters, and read all the texts, it's not hard to figure it out, as there are plenty of hints throughout the investigation.

Nobody Wants to Die has about 5-6 hours of gameplay and four different endings, which depend on what you did or said during the previous acts and what conclusions you came to. It's a good detective adventure that is somewhat reminiscent of the series of Sherlock Holmes games by Kyiv-based Frogwares, and somewhat of the aforementioned The Invincible based on the novel by Stanislav Lem.

Despite the fact that Nobody Wants to Die puts an end to this story, I would love to see a sequel, because the world created by the developers from Critical Hit Games is really impressive and attention-grabbing, and it's a shame not to use it again.