Aethernaut
Review
Portal meets Talos Principle
by Justin Van Huyssteen
reviewed on PC
A whole load of puzzles
Did you like The Talos Principle's focus on philosophical voiceover while doing puzzles? Did you like Portal's focus on somewhat snarky voiceover while doing puzzles? Did you like the puzzles in either of those games? Because if you liked either of those games, or either of those things, you may just enjoy this one too. Although both the philosophy and the snarkiness are somewhat downplayed here in comparison to those other games. But hey, you do still get some of both while doing puzzles!
The puzzles are where the game focuses most of its attention. Players start out with some light puzzles oriented around two different coloured lights that power various items, such as lamps or cubes, and then use those items to depress panels and/or illuminate door mechanisms that use these lights as a power source. However, as per usual, explaining puzzles in abstract terms tends to just render it confusing. So, let’s rather use an example - the player has a room with a locked door. So, players must find a lamp and position it near said door, allowing the door to open. Upon going through that door, players find that there is another locked door. You must then find a way to get that lamp through a door that will close if you move said lamp. Later, there are also time-freezing lights that add further complexity to the puzzles. This means that much of the puzzle mechanics, at least in the beginning, are oriented around moving various context specific items around the puzzle room until you can get to the end of the puzzle and access your little reward.
The reward is always an "aether vial", and you need to accumulate a certain number of these vials to access more of the map (and you eventually need a whole lot of these vials to access the final area in the game). You also get rewarded with some narrative-providing voiceover, but we'll get to that a bit later.
Now, if the game was just this, it would probably outstay its welcome rather quickly, and that's why it ramps up in complexity and offers new aspects. You soon start to encounter both static and dynamic portal puzzles. Some of the portals can be moved around in a similar vein to Portal, albeit with less flexibility and no physics focus, and at other times there will be static portals that operate along with a time mechanic.
That time mechanic can be somewhat complicated to explain. Let’s attempt it anyway. Whenever you go through one of these special time portals, a timer begins. You can then do things around the puzzle room and then return to the portal. When you go through the portal a second time, your previous self, represented as a shadow version of you, will perform whatever actions you did before, and you can now use those actions to essentially act as a second player (such as in Portal 2's co-op mode, but by yourself). And let’s just put this out there immediately: this can get super confusing. But if you like complex, multi-layered puzzles then go for it!
That VO action
As promised, let’s get back to that voiceover stuff. Whenever you get one of these 'aether vials', you get voiceover from a scientist character who was involved in the operations of this desolate facility you find yourself in. In Portal/Talos Principle tradition, you just listen to this. He's kinda snarky at times, but mostly just sounds like a regular dude who walked into a recording booth one day. Which might be my own snarky way of saying that the voice acting isn't perfect, but it’s perfectly functional.
Anyway, our scientist explains the purpose of the facility, his life in the facility and tries to encourage players to keep going through the facility. There is the allusion to an apocalyptic outside world (al la Portal) and you being the last hope for humanity. Now, without going into any spoilers, you do immediately get the feeling that this guy may not be entirely on the level. He withholds information from you, and, as time goes on, you start to hear another voice. One that has its own perspective on what happened to this place.
The closest you come to any kind of real agency in the narrative, aside from the ending (which is not affected by choices throughout the game, but rather by a decision in the last level), are the polling rooms. Basically, after every few puzzles, you will be asked to go to a room that allows you to pick between two binary choices. These questions tend to be lightly philosophical in nature, such as a question about whether we really have free will or if fate exists. These questions more so offer us insight into the character chatting to us rather than anything else, and while it can feel like a rather weak narrative in the beginning, as it drip-feeds you a minute of dialogue every few minutes, you do soon become rather invested.
And now for the technical stuff
All of this would point towards a game that is not for everyone but certainly for puzzle fans. But - and this is a big but - the game has some rather heavy technical issues. First of all, many of the mechanics are not particularly well explained. Which isn't too much of an issue once you get used to them but then you get the technical problems. The game has severe frame rate issues, sometimes dropping into single-digit numbers - and this for a game that is not particularly strong on the visual side of things. This is likely due to optimisation issues rather than the game struggling under the weight of graphical fidelity. It also glitches out quite often, and those glitches are also often because of the frame rate. For instance, a recurring issue I encountered was that doors would sometimes not open.
Upon approaching a door, there are a few bulbs on it that light up and once the last has lit up, the door opens. But when the frame rate is struggling, the door never reaches the last bulb and so the door doesn't open. Doors sometimes don't open at the end of puzzles either, and you may then end up running around everywhere to find out what you did wrong when you eventually decide to just reset the puzzle and try again and this time it works! So, it can be rather unstable at times.
Although, almost in answer to this (and in answer to those who may struggle), there is a puzzle room auto-complete feature for accessibility reasons. This is a great thing! But it should be used for when you get stuck, not because the game has broken. However, if you like some good, challenging puzzles, Aethernaut definitely worth a try, but maybe wait till a few patches have come out and the game has stabilised somewhat.
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6.8
fun score
Pros
Lots of puzzles, a tight focus, gradually evolving story
Cons
Glitches, rampant framerate issues that affect gameplay, pointless binary decisions
