If you haven’t heard of this game, there’s a good reason. However, in reality, Unknown9: Awakening is a title with good intentions and far from being devoid of potential. This action-adventure game turns out to be the first production of the Montreal studio Reflector, founded in 2016 by Alexandre Amancio, whom players know for his work on the Assassin’s Creed and Far Cry franchises. With such a resume, all the ingredients seem to be there to give birth to a real success. But it’s clear that the result is far from living up to expectations. And that, Unknown9 has been a long time coming.
The project was announced at Gamescom's Opening Night Live in 2020. The title was released four years later with a launch on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series and PC on October 18, 2024. While these four years are nothing unusual in the video game industry where AAA productions are taking longer and longer to appear, it should be remembered that Unknown 9: Awakening does not fall into this category. This game is a fully assumed AA, from its price range (€49.99 at launch) to its development under Unreal Engine 4, less complex and less expensive. Today, many studios are trying to prove that there is no need to produce AAA to succeed in the industry. Reflector tried to ride this wave, but ultimately bites its fingers. In both its gameplay and visuals, Unknown9 feels more like a low-budget licensed game from the PS2 era than the surprise it initially promised.
A messy start that sets the tone
Unknown9: Awakeningtakes the stance of a story anchored in an alternate version of our world. In it, humans called Questor can commune with the Reverse, a strange parallel dimension that grants them supernatural powers. The introductory cinematic tells us that humanity faces an endless cycle of extinction, with the exception of nine members of the very first civilization. That's a lot to remember in a very short time, and we come out of these first moments of the game with the impression that someone is trying to drown us under a mountain of lore. The title spreads out a whole bunch of notions without ever delving into them and quickly enters the sad model of "shut up, it's magic".
The adventure places us in the shoes of the young protagonist, Haroona, and barely takes the time to introduce her, making it difficult to get attached to the character in the first few hours of the game. Especially since the entire introductory chapter is meant to be quite dramatic in trying to introduce the heroine's motivations, which then only fall flat. Exploring supernatural themes in a fantasy version of our planet is an excellent pitch for an ambitious adventure game, but the writing still has to keep up. Ultimately, the player finds himself facing a protagonist with an uncertain character and a not-so-alarming threat, drowned in a mishmash of vague information concerning the Revers. And unfortunately: the gameplay and visuals of Unknown9 do nothing to try to make up for the weaknesses in the story.
A title that does not make you want to continue
We said it earlier: Unknown9 wants to be an AA game, which does not necessarily mean a less good or less ambitious result. The overbidding of AAA games in recent years has quickly made us forget that some of the best titles of previous generations fell into this category. Reflector's production tries to emulate the charm of games from that era, in vain. All that Haroona's adventure seems to borrow from PS2-era adventure games is outdated visuals and lackluster clashes. In reality, it is above all on the side of character modeling and their animations that the title suffers. The environmental artists have probably managed to get the most out of Unreal Engine 4, as the sets and special effects are generally quite convincing. But as a result, it reinforces the lack of effort put into the humans.
The faces seem devoid of any soul as the gazes are so empty. A shame for a game in which the heroine's power requires a spiritual resource called "Am". The storyline already doesn't make it easy to immerse yourself in this universe, but the animation of the dialogues gives the impression of following the story on the lips of amorphous puppets. We almost fall into the uncanny valley. The difficulty that Unknown9: Awakening has in transcribing human movements is also found in the gameplay. The combat phases are absolutely not intuitive and almost push you to hammer the attack buttons, even on higher difficulty. Moreover, these have been placed on the triggers, enough to push the feeling of discomfort even into the handling.
The game tries to take advantage of Haroona's powers in many infiltration scenes, all as frustrating as the rest of the adventure. You can try to throw enemies against elements of the scenery, to stun them... But nothing works. The AI spots us far too easily, so much so that we always end up coming to blows, much to our dismay since the combat system is absolutely not satisfactory. This title may offer a fairly sustained pace, but we find ourselves experiencing the story as a series of barely striking sequences, for an average whole at best.
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