Side Quests: After Us Review
What comes after humanity? It's a question in which, by its very nature, the answer will never be fully known by our kind, but that hasn't stopped video games, movies, and TV shows from offering a few guesses. After Us, the latest from Barcelona-based developer Piccolo Studio, throws us into one of those hypotheses – a bleak one at that – while also offering a solution in Gaia, a small girl with bright white hair that's tasked with bringing all life back into the world. What starts as an interesting conversation quickly turns into a long and one-sided monologue, as After Us's key takeaways are lost in what is, frankly, a boring experience.
The premise of After Us is a fascinating one, as it's basically the «nature is healing» meme made manifest. Gaia is the antidote to a world poisoned by its more prolific inhabitants, and we must fight through the muck to restore the natural balance of the planet. We do so through platforming challenges, the occasional battle against corrupted humans with blazing red eyes, and re-awakening the voices of the planet which are represented by animals spread out across the world.
I really should put «animals» in quotation marks there, as the key landmarks we must reach in order to awaken said voices are those animals' corpses . That's right, the main waypoints of this platforming adventure, our main objectives, are the long-dead remains of an eagle, a shark, and more. The first one we reach, the very first objective of this game , is a dead Dachshund whose spirit springs out of the cadaver once we reach it. Inspiring!
That's one major caveat about After Us: this is by no means an uplifting tale of how the world can be saved. This game is bleak ; one wrapped up in cynicism and disdain
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