From Software is trying VR with a tale of faeries and friendship.
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The PSVR has been graced with some rather quaint and lovely titles in its two-year history, including the likes of Moss that sees you control a heroic little mouse, and now Déraciné has landed on the platform to bring something very similar. It’s a game about love, loss, friendship, and faeries (not fairies, mind you), and what better studio to bring us such a delicate tale as this? Why, From Software of course.
Yes, you did read that correctly – the masterminds behind super hardcore action-RPGs Dark Souls and Bloodborne are here with something much calmer and a whole lot less murderous. To be a touch more specific about the premise, you play as a faerie who is invisible to the naked eye, and by jumping between various points in time you interact with school children – most likely in the 19th-/early 20th-century – as they grow to know and trust you.
It’s worth noting right out the gate that this isn’t compatible with a DualShock 4 controller, meaning you’ll need a pair of fully-functioning PS Move batons to act as your in-game hands. It’s an experience where you very much interact with the world in a tangible way – moving and picking things up as you see fit – and we can’t really see it working any other way. Of course, this is a disappointment to those with regular controllers, but it does add to the immersion.
The ever-present question of locomotion has been addressed here by only allowing you to travel between certain fixed spots on the floor, although when you get to points of interest (people, drawers) they are the focal point you move to instead, rotating around them so you can examine them better. By simply clicking the middle button on the right controller you can teleport between them, and X and O rotate your view at snap angles. We didn’t feel motion sick once, and it’s actually so easy to use that you can find yourself rushing through the school with ease.
This also works to keep frustration to a minimum. It isn’t always the easiest to explore environments in VR, especially with free movement, but with these fixed points you know what you can and can’t interact with, which makes deducing solutions for puzzles a lot simpler. These aren’t overly easy, we should say, and require you to collect objects in the school and listen to clues by activating contextual prompts (which here are glowing orbs that trigger voices, much like in Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture).
There are a few other mechanics thrown in there, like a stopwatch that lets you travel to points in time once you finish each level, a ring that can transfer life energy from one being to another, and a few other bits and pieces to make life easier, like a button to read information on documents and another to crouch. It all works very well in terms of the format, and in each point in time (an epoch, as they say) you’ll find doors opened and closed to confine your search, as well as cats (faeries don’t like cats, you see) so you don’t get too lost either.
Most of the characters you’ll see are either transparent (a memory of an action) or stationary as you move around them, frozen in time. The only time that the world moves is when you alert those in the school to your presence, at which point they’ll talk to you and give vital story clues. In this sense, it works a bit like games such as The Return of the Obra Dinn and Tacoma, except here you are more of an impact on the world rather than simply an outside observer.
Charming is always a very vague word when assessing something, but it’s apt here since the school children all grow to love you as you help them with their innocent day-to-day activities, and your friendship with them is really sweet to see. All of the characters talk with frightfully posh accents, and we’re very much intending the pun when we say it’s got a fairytale tone throughout.
It’s not all happy in this fairytale, though, and while we won’t spoil the details, there is also some tragedy in Déraciné, especially when it comes to the adults. Not everything is as it appears in the schoolhouse, and there are various twists to the tale that happen later on as your relationship with the children grows.
Environmental storytelling is used really well by From Software, and while a lot of the story is dictated to you, to see the full history of the house and its inhabitants you’ll need to examine various artifacts in the environment, from old documents to photos. There’s a lot of things to see and plenty you can miss if you’re not careful, and with extras like collectible coins to unlock a secret box, there’s enough reason to replay and explore the whole of Déraciné.
As if the classical Victorian schoolhouse and the crisp spring sunshine piercing through the windows wasn’t serene enough, the experience is overlayed with a lovely soundtrack that’s subtle enough so as to not be invasive, while also adding poignancy to the relationship you’re building throughout.
Perhaps the biggest issue with the game is its ending though. We’ve mentioned before that the game sees you jump between multiple points in time, and at the end, this becomes not only muddled but also frustrating as you have to move back and forth to make changes in the past and see if it affects the future, like trial and error. If you don’t have a really solid grip on the dates you’re moving between it can get confusing as to where you are in time and what you’re doing.
Déraciné works so well because it recognises the limitations of the medium and doesn’t try to overextend with ambitious movement controls and mechanics. By moving between fixed points and giving the solutions to puzzles in easy-to-access locations, everything runs smoothly from start to finish, and even the slightly muddled ending doesn’t detract from a wonderful little VR game. It’s got a great story and some really touching moments, along with a bundle of surprises to make it worth your time.
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Keyword: Déraciné