But how is the bailiff? I have no debts! – review of the game “Bailiff: Unrepentant”

Who of you is more familiar with the military and post-apocalyptic areas of native fantasy than I am, probably knows who Michał Gołkowski is and will quickly associate that the Unrepentant takes place in the “bailiff” universe of his novels. Nevertheless, knowledge of books is by no means necessary to enjoy the game. The discussed visual novel from Sylen Studio is a separate story with a quick and neat introduction, thanks to which we will easily find ourselves in the presented world and after a while, with a gladius in hand, we will start to fulfill our duties – after all, service is not the best man!

What is it like to be a debt collector and why it’s not about taking televisions out to people

Do you remember 2012? If not, you’re too young to play Unrepentant – don’t read on, shh! To the sleeper! And if so, you know it was a special year – the Mayan calendar, these things – and a lot of people were more or less seriously expecting something to happen. Something unusual, supposed to be the end of the world, and thus confirming old prophecies and other warnings. If there was an apocalypse then, forgive me, I didn’t notice it… but it could have happened otherwise! For example, as in Komornikwhere that year ended humanity and the Earth as we know it, and began the time of reckoning in which humans are subjected to final trials before their inevitable death and going to the Creator. What about those who resist? Well, someone has to bother with them and “help” them a bit in going to the other side. That someone are the bailiffs.

Our avatar – Aniketos the First – is such a bailiff, whose everyday life largely resembles the life of a hired killer. From commission to commission, Aniketos traverses the world torn by the apocalyptic cataclysm, hunting for the next sinners appointed by the Mountain, known as Debtors. Although they, of course, like to cause problems, their tricks are not afraid of him: as a Bailiff, he can perfectly use his assigned weapons (Roman gladius) and the burning powers of Incense. And even if this is not enough by some miracle, our protagonist will simply come back and try again, because the person included in the ranks of the bailiffs cannot be killed just like that – a knocked down servant of God will soon be restored to the world by the so-called Re-Creation.

Ordinary people do not pose too much of a threat to us … but unfortunately not only people we meet on our way. We will see what trouble this can cause us soon, because Aniketus’ current assignment – the search for a certain Elijah the First – will prove to be much more complicated than we might initially suppose.

Kosher or non-kosher, that is the question!

Although the bailiffs are not particularly closely supervised and to a large extent are left free to perform the task, they still remain at the service of the Mountain, which looks favorably on some things, and on the contrary to others. The members of the bailiff’s corps derive their supernatural abilities from the connection with the heavens, which provides them with an inflow of power called the Purple. The better the connection, the better the energy flow and the greater the enemy’s combat capabilities. How can you take care of them? Well, by living in accordance with the commands of the Mountain, that is, kosher. In fact, humans are expected to abandon all post-biblical technology, clothing, and practices in the end times. This is reflected in the game mechanics – if we want to keep kosher, we must eat only simple,

However, if we have something of a renegade in us, we can also do whatever we like, whenever no one is looking at our hands, which, unfortunately, will result in our character being awarded a “blasphemous” level of cleanliness and will be at risk of being detected and punished by other collaborators Mountains. There is also a way in between, involving infrequent and less drastic violations of the rules, which will result in us only being classified as “non-kosher”. The transition from one status to another is quite smooth, and most often one decision to take an action or take / abandon a specific item is enough to determine our purity. However, it should not be forgotten that despite its flexibility, this mechanic is key to the plot, because at each step, certain choices or dialogue options will be opened or closed for us based on our current state. Therefore, we do not have to stick to one approach, but in general, each decision will adequately narrow the range of possibilities in the next few scenes.

What builds and what spoils it

What undoubtedly distinguishes the Unrepentant is his specific atmosphere. First of all, we have a lot of overwhelming, gloomy atmosphere characteristic of “eastern” visions of the post-apocalypse (if you’ve read our earlier article , Caps or Cartridges – Post-Apocalypse in Games of the East and West , you know what’s going on). It can be seen in desperate and brutal character creations, graphics full of cold gray and rotten yellow, as well as the very construction of the world inevitably heading for destruction and now full of terrifying, shocking scenes straight from nightmares to which the characters have already become indifferent.

This is enough to make the Bailiff ‘s universe “heavy” and disturbing, but the icing on our macabre cake is also the biblical wrapper of the end of the world, showing characters and plots from the mythology of the Abrahamic faiths in a movingly ruthless, inhuman and alien light. After all, it is hard to find a worse situation than the one in which both angels and demons enter the Earth, but both of them turn out to be torturers for humanity, albeit for different reasons and motives.

But if, on that basis, you think the Unrepentant is a deadly and dark end-time tale, well… you are wrong. The game is full of quite non-standard humor, rich in absurdities, references to pop culture or Internet culture, as well as willingly reaching for profanity or texts taken straight from memes. At some point, there is even a slight breakthrough to the fourth wall, in which Aniketos ironically mocks the clichéd and not necessarily logical construction of the task set before him, woven into the plot. While it sounds pretty good in theory, we get to the point where I have to start complaining.

Perhaps you will find that I am Mr. Foolish, the destroyer of fun and smiles of children, since the game is distracting me by humor. Therefore, I am in a hurry to explain – I am bothered not so much by the presence or nature of the jokes as by their execution. First, the curses. They have a function in language and can be very successful in expressing emotions or enhancing the bluntness of the message, they also have the most comedic value. Nevertheless, many of the dialogues and descriptions in the Unrepentant seem simply littered with them. Both the NPCs and Aniketus (even in internal monologues) scurry left and right, and most of the time it doesn’t seem to carry any particular intention or deeper meaning – they just say so.

We can, of course, ponder whether this is not to increase our immersion and help in painting the image of the “fallen” world, in which no one cares about preserving good taste, but the final effect quickly became simply tiring for me. The more that some expressions are so meaningless and unrelated to anything that we would hear every day from a real person, that it is really difficult to suspect them of being anything other than a line “mixed up” by force of random profanity.

The same applies to memes. They, too, as well as curses, were stuffed quite a lot into the otherwise short game. And while with the first of them we smile and feel winked at us, on the third or fifth we start rolling our eyes and wondering if this narrative treats us – and itself – seriously at all. The choice of these references also remains at least strange for me. Most meme jokes are stale – that’s the most appropriate word I can use here, because it’s not just about the quality of the memes, but also their “stale” character. If you thought that in your year 2021, using the cat “what am I crying” for humorous purposes may not be the best idea, you are right. And this is the epoch to which the Unrepentant is reaching .

At first, it seemed to me that the use of this type of relics was intentional, and related to the fact that the world depicted “ended” in 2012, and with it the Internet there. With this conviction, I continued the game and I was not surprised either by Paweł Jumper or making a somersault. The bubble, however, broke when some time later references to the recent MCU creations or Bronx ponies appeared . For this reason, I can’t really say why these memes were chosen and who should be the target here. Today’s teenagers hardly know them, and they will pass over half the references indifferently, and in turn, I, who was there three thousand years ago when they first appeared, are unlikely to laugh now at the stupid things that amused me at the age of fifteen.

A unique world, but a game of many

Considering all this, my feelings for the Unrepentant One are mixed. The Bailiff ‘s universe seems interesting and to a large extent unique, so the world presented wants to get to know each other, and the plot of the game itself can draw you into the monitor for a few hours, even if no one calls it a masterpiece.

On the other hand, it is nothing less than just another visual novelty on the Steam market. Whatever the competition previously proposed in such titles as Vampire: The Masquerade – Coteries of New York or Werewolf: The Apocalypse – Heart of the Forest , you will get in Unrepentant in a similar release. Mechanically and technologically, the game does not stand out in its genre, being neither longer, nor less linear, nor in any way more complex. The only thing that can persuade the player to reach for the Unrepentant , and not any other visual novel , is the noticeably Polish nature of the production and the attractive universe created by Michał Gołkowski.

While I don’t regret the time spent with the title, it’s not something I recommend to everyone. In order to have fun, we must like this standard formula of visual novelties, as well as share the specific sense of humor and language of the narrative – or at least be able to turn a blind eye to them for the possibility of communing with the plot.