Harmony: The Fall of Reverie is a gorgeously animated supernatural mystery
Harmony: The Fall of Reverie is a bit different from Don’t Nod’s previous work. It’s not the setting, as the studio is well-known for supernatural mysteries, whether it’s Life is Strange, Tell Me Why, or others. It’s the look of Harmony, and the form the story takes, that make this a peculiar and intriguing new story for Don’t Nod.
Right away, the difference is felt in Harmony‘s opening. It’s gorgeously animated, as protagonist Polly sets out for the day, surround by near-future tech. There’s a cutting-edge world pinned up against homes made in emptied pools that really sets a tone early on. Polly’s returned home to help search for her missing mother, Ursula, but soon gets swept up in much more than she bargained for in the Reverie.
This alternate world, Reverie, houses the various Aspirations of Humanity: Bliss and Power, Bond and Glory, Truth and Chaos. Here, Polly becomes Harmony, a force that can utilize clairvoyant powers and align with these Aspirations to determine a future, for both Reverie and the world.
Maybe it was the gorgeous art, or maybe it was the deity-driven story, but both reminded me of The Wicked + The Divine. There’s an intriguing element of balance between the two stories, as Polly has to discover why she can access Reverie and what powers it’s given her, alongside the links it has to her mother’s disappearance.
In practice, this plays out in similar fashion to a visual novel. Aside from the aforementioned gorgeous cutscenes, most of the story is told in dialogue boxes between characters, as Polly searches in the world for clues while dealing with seemingly primal beings in the other world.
A big component of this is the timeline. Don’t Nod lays out the path ahead visually, so the branching paths
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