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⚙️ Preface

Walking simulator is a genre that is really close to my heart - every single title contains a hassle-free, short and bittersweet narrative told mostly through papers or diaries. My favorite one is Firewatch - I played it when I was around 13 years old, and it had a huge impact on me in different aspects.
Surprisingly after that, I noticed this impact on the whole genre as well. Most games released after in one way or another took a piece from Firewatch and integrated it into its own world.
However, Paradise Lost is a completely different case: Firewatch didn’t serve as an inspiration - rather the developers mimicked everything that worked, in order to create a memorable experience. Sadly, they haven’t succeeded.


📓 The Story
The game takes place in an alternative timeline where the second World War continued for 20 more years and then concluded with a massive nuclear war. Our protagonist, Szymon explores a bunker, built by the Germans in order to uncover the mysteries about the world as a whole, and also about his own family.
Both Szymon’s and the world’s history will get deeper as he progresses further into the bunker - however, it didn’t have any noticeable impact on me at all. The story mainly serves as a supplementary feature, as it only tells us just a bit above the necessary details. In each level, there are 10-15 readable documents maximum, which will widen our knowledge about recently discussed events in the story, but after finishing the game I still couldn’t really see the big picture - maybe there isn’t one after all.

The game features another character named Ewa, who serves as a guide and a partner to our little explorer. In the game’s description, we can read that Szymon is 12 years old - however, the dialogue between Ewa and Szymon felt much more mature and I don’t think it’s possible for a boy like him to have grand visions about morally questionable questions. Their “storyline” also didn’t have much meaning, as it mainly proposed new questions for me, instead of answering past ones. Also, the choices through the dialogues serve no purpose at all - in the end you can get multiple different endings by answering the final 3 questions (which need to go to the book of worst design decisions of all time - since this is a linear game, theoretically you would need to play it 3 times in order to get all the achievements… ).


This phenomenon also occurred at my first encounter with EVE - the complex system built by the Germans. Even after finishing the game, I don’t understand its place in the story, nor why did it exist in the first place. It was a pleasant GUI animation sequence, but that’s all.
Summa summarum: there is a wannabe complex story, but I don’t know why.


🖼️ The Graphics and the Performance
Given the genre’s nature, the story isn’t the most important part of the game in my eyes: actually, it is the graphical design - which is working amazingly in Paradise Lost.
The game operates with dense and detailed scenes that contain high-quality 3D models - the style mostly leans towards realism, but it also has some elements from stylized graphics.

The game is entirely played underground, so I need to give kudos to the developers because most of the levels feel completely open with the massive and robust buildings and props - the aforementioned denseness also applies here. The levels have an acceptable number of interiors, which haven’t completely blown me away: the inner parts of the scenes were mostly repetitive with only a handful of interactions - I actually froze a bit when my only interaction was at the beginning of the game to examine a teacup. So much potential was wasted here since a story also could’ve been told through personal belongings, flyers, etc.
I’ve experienced some technical issues throughout my playthrough, most notably the saving issue - when you load a save file you cannot walk. I can’t see how the developers didn’t fix this issue after almost 2 years since its release - for me, this only speaks of their neglect.

Another thing that bugged me was the facial design - sadly the developers didn’t properly make the 3D models, so in most cutscenes people were looking and animated poorly. Thankfully there are only a couple of these throughout the story - given that they are only 4-5 seconds long, I don’t know why they even bothered with them in the first place…


🎧 Sound Design
Another strong point of the game is its sound design which serves as a base for constructing the atmosphere - which is insanely good! If I weren’t aware I might have mistaken this as a horror in some parts… The game has a 3D sound solution, which places sounds in different areas, making the levels much more believable.
The game features voiceovers, which are nice additions, since the characters both use English and their native language, Polish. The voice actors did a great job adapting the characters, maybe the accent wasn’t the most realistic, but that wasn’t a problem at all.

Final Verdict
Paradise Lost was one of my most blank experiences storywise in a while - while it looks and feels great, it fails to deliver a memorable experience or actually anything new to the table. It might be a good time killer to enjoy the scenery, but if you want to get engaged in the story sadly you will have a hard time.

Follow our Curator page, Summit Reviews , to see more high-quality reviews regularly.

[h1]Visually stunning, but completely blank experience. [/h1] [hr][/hr] ⚙️ [b]Preface[/b] Walking simulator is a genre that is really close to my heart - every single title contains a hassle-free, short and bittersweet narrative told mostly through papers or diaries. My favorite one is Firewatch - I played it when I was around 13 years old, and it had a huge impact on me in different aspects. Surprisingly after that, I noticed this impact on the whole genre as well. Most games released after in one way or another took a piece from Firewatch and integrated it into its own world. However, Paradise Lost is a completely different case: Firewatch didn’t serve as an inspiration - rather the developers mimicked everything that worked, in order to create a memorable experience. Sadly, they haven’t succeeded. [code]Sidenote: Firewatch In case you have yet to come across this title, Firewatch serves as one of the first walking simulator, that become popular after its release in 2016 - mostly because famous YouTube content creators created playthroughs of it, but also because it featured a new kind of storytelling. Firewatch showed me the importance of good dialogue, lovable characters, environmental design, and also small details. If you played it, you will get a similar experience here with a different storyline - and vice versa.[/code] [b]📓 The Story [/b] The game takes place in an alternative timeline where the second World War continued for 20 more years and then concluded with a massive nuclear war. Our protagonist, Szymon explores a bunker, built by the Germans in order to uncover the mysteries about the world as a whole, and also about his own family. Both Szymon’s and the world’s history will get deeper as he progresses further into the bunker - however, it didn’t have any noticeable impact on me at all. The story mainly serves as a supplementary feature, as it only tells us just a bit above the necessary details. In each level, there are 10-15 readable documents maximum, which will widen our knowledge about recently discussed events in the story, but after finishing the game I still couldn’t really see the big picture - maybe there isn’t one after all. The game features another character named Ewa, who serves as a guide and a partner to our little explorer. In the game’s description, we can read that Szymon is 12 years old - however, the dialogue between Ewa and Szymon felt much more mature and I don’t think it’s possible for a boy like him to have grand visions about morally questionable questions. Their “storyline” also didn’t have much meaning, as it mainly proposed new questions for me, instead of answering past ones. Also, the choices through the dialogues serve no purpose at all - in the end you can get multiple different endings by answering the final 3 questions (which need to go to the book of worst design decisions of all time - since this is a linear game, theoretically you would need to play it 3 times in order to get all the achievements… ). This phenomenon also occurred at my first encounter with EVE - the complex system built by the Germans. Even after finishing the game, I don’t understand its place in the story, nor why did it exist in the first place. It was a pleasant GUI animation sequence, but that’s all. Summa summarum: there is a wannabe complex story, but I don’t know why. [b]🖼️ The Graphics and the Performance[/b] Given the genre’s nature, the story isn’t the most important part of the game in my eyes: actually, it is the graphical design - which is working amazingly in Paradise Lost. The game operates with dense and detailed scenes that contain high-quality 3D models - the style mostly leans towards realism, but it also has some elements from stylized graphics. The game is entirely played underground, so I need to give kudos to the developers because most of the levels feel completely open with the massive and robust buildings and props - the aforementioned denseness also applies here. The levels have an acceptable number of interiors, which haven’t completely blown me away: the inner parts of the scenes were mostly repetitive with only a handful of interactions - I actually froze a bit when my only interaction was at the beginning of the game to examine a teacup. So much potential was wasted here since a story also could’ve been told through personal belongings, flyers, etc. I’ve experienced some technical issues throughout my playthrough, most notably the saving issue - when you load a save file you cannot walk. I can’t see how the developers didn’t fix this issue after almost 2 years since its release - for me, this only speaks of their neglect. Another thing that bugged me was the facial design - sadly the developers didn’t properly make the 3D models, so in most cutscenes people were looking and animated poorly. Thankfully there are only a couple of these throughout the story - given that they are only 4-5 seconds long, I don’t know why they even bothered with them in the first place… [b]🎧 Sound Design[/b] Another strong point of the game is its sound design which serves as a base for constructing the atmosphere - which is insanely good! If I weren’t aware I might have mistaken this as a horror in some parts… The game has a 3D sound solution, which places sounds in different areas, making the levels much more believable. The game features voiceovers, which are nice additions, since the characters both use English and their native language, Polish. The voice actors did a great job adapting the characters, maybe the accent wasn’t the most realistic, but that wasn’t a problem at all. [b]Final Verdict [/b] Paradise Lost was one of my most blank experiences storywise in a while - while it looks and feels great, it fails to deliver a memorable experience or actually anything new to the table. It might be a good time killer to enjoy the scenery, but if you want to get engaged in the story sadly you will have a hard time. [quote]Follow our Curator page, [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/41449676/] Summit Reviews [/url], to see more high-quality reviews regularly.[/quote]