Despite seeing a lot of talk about Whispers of a Machine for a while, I wasn’t planning on playing it myself. You see, the game was developed by two development teams, one of whom previously made Kathy Rain and the others The Samaritan Paradox and I’ve dropped both of those games after a few hours of playing. They just weren’t all that good, despite both having cool ideas of their own. Then, as it occasionally happens, this game landed in my library due to a game bundle so I’ve decided to give it a go. I’m glad that I have.
This is a point and click adventure game made on the Adventure Game Studio, so expect certain technical limitations. Yet, it does work in widescreen, which is still somewhat rare for the games on AGS, and it looks and sounds really well. What has been a treat with titles of this sort for the past decade, ever since Wadjet Eye pushing the quality hard with Blackwell series, is the voice acting. All characters are nicely voiced and even though you will be recognizing the actors from other games, they all do a great job. Luckily, the script they read off is also of high quality, with good dialogues, solid characters and interesting world design.
The main “gimmick”, so to speak, with Whispers of a Machine, is that it goes into the world of detective/mystery games mixing the concepts from classic point & click adventures with something that you’d more likely to find in a title from Quantic Dream. The good parts that is. The game completely discards the manual saving and almost removes the “fail states”, while also creating a system that shapes the main character’s behavior based on the player choice. There are 3 main “branches” – empathetic, analytical and assertive, – and dialogue choices and decisions nudge the character personality in one of those extremes, which changes how the character talks and reacts in minor or major ways down the line. Which is also tied into the fact that main character is also augmented and her personality will define how those augmentations “evolve” down the line, leading to several different ways you will be able to tackle the same problems based solely on how you played before.
It’s handled really well in the game as well. While it’s less nuanced or stunning in the amounts of callbacks and changes like something that was attempted in Lamplight City (which I will also cover), it’s also far better paced with the game flowing far more naturally. Perhaps, some would prefer a more complex, more in-depth approach of Lamplight City, but I’m sure that the majority of players will actually find simpler, but ultimately more fun and engaging, storytelling of Whispers of a Machine more enjoyable.
With how good the game is, I’m almost ashamed to say that when I finished the game I didn’t find it as exciting as I hoped it would be. And even though there are multiple different playthroughs available, unlike the fantastic Unavowed, I wasn’t motivated to replay the game and see other variations. It’s hard to nail what exactly it is about the game, but perhaps it just didn’t feel as ambitious as it could’ve been. Than again – that could’ve been for the best, as it nailed what it wanted to do without any major missteps.
Either way, I can easily recommend playing Whispers of a Machine who likes a good adventure game and a cool detective story with cyberpunk flavor. It’s one of the easiest to get into “classic” point and click adventures released over the past decade and one of the most enjoyable ones too. Maybe I won’t consider it to be among the absolute greatest, but it did a damn fine job and I was very happy to play it.