1000xResist Review – Review – Nintendo World Report
What makes genres malleable? I think when looking at all sorts of media, we like to consider genre as a sort of comfort. When watching a horror film, we can prepare ourselves with a specific mindset before watching the blood spatters fly across the screen. When playing a platformer, the feeling of control through movement is what drives us to explore levels and find collectibles. But what immediately peaks my interest is when genres are bended, merged and broken. 1000xRESIST bends, breaks, and builds its world, setting, and characters in so many ways that it is hard to describe what mindset you should prepare going into it. Even after rolling credits I am still unsure as to how to categorize this game. But what I am certain of is that this is a story that needs to be told and deserves to break all the rules.
The world in 1000xRESIST starts out fairly abstract. You live in a futuristic commune where you and your many identical looking sisters are tasked with serving the Allmother. A benevolent figure who holds the key to immunity to a disease that has taken hold of the world. She has given command to six sisters, with each their own domain and a given name: Fixer, Bang Bang Fire, Knower, Healer, Principal and you, Watcher. Unlike the other sisters who serve a clear function, it is Watcher who is tasked with observing and understanding what is going on within the commune. Her relationship to the other sisters is therefore complex and even more strained when she has to prepare a special ritual called a communion, in which she can travel to distant memories that are part of the Allmother’s story. As you learn more about who the Allmother is, and weave together her history, that of her parents and how the commune came to be, Watcher starts to question her role and who the Allmother is.
1000xRESIST is primarily a narrative driven adventure game that is played in the third-person point of view. As Watcher you traverse between different memories and learn more about the sisters living in the commune. A lot of this boils down to you walking around and talking to people, but the highlight are the communions in which you explore memories set in different time periods and can swap freely between them. Sometimes this means zipping around between floating orbs in space, but it also gives Watcher the ability to view certain scenes from different perspectives. The game is entirely lineair, with a couple branching story choices. But it is that narrative that kept me fully engrossed into the world of 1000xRESIST. The themes are masterfully woven together and relate to topics such as the abuse of power, fighting oppressive forces, the influence and consequences of parental decisions and how one’s self is defined. A major element in all this relates to the experience of immigration and fleeing political persecution. I wish I could speak to these themes more broadly, but aside from the relative spoiler-sensitivity, I also feel it is not my place to talk about this subject as a white man who’s lived in western Europe for his entire life. I do encourage people who have played through the story to seek out writing by others who have a better understanding of this topic as I think it is vital to getting to terms with why 1000xRESIST is a story that needs to be told. That is something you can rarely say about stories in video games, but like a good drama RESIST embraces its themes of dealing with occupation, control and hierarchy, while letting the player experience this throughout the story.
Presentation wise the game has a fully voiced cast and they deliver an excellent job. Some of the voicework shifts and adapts throughout the game and while at first it left me feeling confused, by the end it helped make these characters come alive. The game also has a striking visual style. Here however is where some of the issues on Switch become apparent. The Switch version really looks quite bad in the visual department. Jagged edges on character models, mediocre resolution and in particular visual effects have been massively downgraded. I played most of my time in handheld mode and while its visuals do not subtract from what’s most important here, the story, it did feel like I was playing an early PSP game at times. I also found navigation to be quite cumbersome. There isn’t really a map to find your way around the commune and while you do have the option to enable waypoints, it takes quite some time to learn where to find and meet the cast of characters. I also had one game-breaking bug in a later part of the game. Thankfully the auto-save was fairly frequent, but after that I did save after nearly every conversation to make sure I did not need to redo them. Finally the loading times are frequent enough and can last upwards of twenty seconds, which can really take some of the urgency away from the narrative.
Like I stated at the beginning of the review genres are malleable and 1000xRESIST fully embraces the freedom that a genre like Science-Fiction brings. Every aspect of the characters, world and setting are used to tell a story that feels more relevant than ever in our global climate crisis and countless political issues. It focuses on the stories we often lose when talking about grand narratives, in particular that of the diaspora. As a narrative 1000xRESIST is perhaps one of the greatest accomplishments of the year so far, with a tale that will stay with me for quite some time. It paints in a canvas that is similar to stories like 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim and reminded me so often of rebellious worlds like that of Umurangi Generation. As a game however, and in particular on Switch, it falls short at times. Visually in particular, but also the trappings of the narrative adventure game that can get a tad repetitive over time without too many moments that shake up the gameplay. This all does not subtract from the astonishing writing and performances in 1000xRESIST and I urge those who are looking for boundary breaking storytelling to truly dive into this world blindly. It may even help you find the strength in these times to learn what it means to resist.
