This is the second part of an article about Finnish horror, so if you haven’t seen the previous material, you can check it out here. I welcome everyone else to the final part of the story of the dilogy Distraint.
Three years after release Distraint , in 2018, Jesse Makkonen released a slightly modified Deluxe Edition, and already in 2019 he presented the continuation of Price’s story, which will be discussed today.
Distraint 2
Video version of the article
Plot
Attention, there will be a lot of spoilers for both parts of the duology.
The story of the original game ends extremely tragically. After several years of working for the company Price I finally lost respect for myself, quit my job and started drinking terribly. One day, the same young collector as he was in his time came to him, with very clear intentions. Price told him his story, promised not to interfere with the process of alienation of housing and, having escorted the guest out the door, took a gun. Last frames of the game – Price a young bailiff sitting on a chair with a gun in his mouth and moving away along the corridor.
It would seem that Distraint There shouldn’t be a sequel at all, and if it does come out, it will be dedicated to a completely different character. However, the hero of the sequel was still the same Price and, to the greatest regret, Jesse Makkonen took the most, in my opinion, lazy and hackneyed path that could be invented in this situation – all the events of the sequel take place in the subconscious of the protagonist a moment before the tragedy.
It’s logical that the pool of “characters” this time is frankly meager: it’s himself Price and pieces of his personality, in the form Reason, Greed, Suffering, Love, Loss, Hopes etc.d. etc.n. Well, we already felt it? Alas, your impressions do not deceive you, because the plot Distraint 2 – this is pathetic abstract nonsense, and not postmodern nonsense, where a tree can turn out to be the evolution of a hand, but hackneyed nonsense, unprincipled, cloyingly sweet and five times overcooked.
How I love the characters of Distraint www.slotstarscasino.co.uk 2, here they are from left to right
How I love the characters of Distraint 2, here they are from left to right
There is no need to talk about any kind of character of the “characters”. Love loves, Intelligence ponders, Greed thirsts for profit and further down the list. Not to say that the characters in the original game were anything but multifaceted, but they were people whose motivation and character were not contained in their names. And even McDade, Bruton And Moore, although they were figures born of the subconscious, they tried to maintain the intrigue about their real essence until the very end.
By the way, they will also drop by for a glimpse, but, alas, only as a background during a conversation with Greed. But this scene indirectly confirms the version that McDade, Bruton and Moore are just Price’s alter ego.
Although at some point the game still throws real people at us, but they behave in such a caricatured way that they only make things worse.
The same goes for the general mood and feeling of the sequel: the first part masterfully maintained the balance between hallucinations and reality, but the second is one huge trip into the subconscious. And this is not a spoiler at all, because the game tells us this from the very beginning. And therefore, from the very start, the ending becomes approximately clear, because you have to arrange a many-hour journey inside yourself in order to end where, as it seemed, the original ended Distraint, it would simply be pointless.
This does not mean that there are no interesting grotesque and psychedelic scenes in the sequel. The problem is that at a generally high level of conventionality of what is happening, they are not perceived properly
If in the original such scenes popped up quite rarely, otherwise leaving at least some connection to reality, then the sequel throws them around tirelessly, which is why they simply get boring
But what Jessa managed to do again (literally in one moment, but still) was to pull off a trick of deceiving expectations, when a terribly boring scene, as if stolen from Sesame Street, during a poker game suddenly turns into a bloody mess. But even here, apparently, the author himself realized how shameful the mercilessly stalled action was, and decided to shake up both the players and himself a little (it’s a pity that this didn’t work out for long).
There’s a sneaky one.
. and now he’s gone
In general, despite the significantly increased timing, the plot of the game can be described literally in one phrase: “your whole life flashed before your eyes”.
And, although I gave a spoiler warning, in fact, there is only one spoiler here – Price is not dead. For a game whose duration is about three hours (with a leisurely passage), this is somehow not enough, don’t you think?? Moreover, this ending is read literally in the very first minutes, and then you just have to look at this despondency and catch yourself thinking that painfully familiar voices periodically begin to sound in your head from the local dialogues..
Sorry, I couldn’t resist
Gameplay
Gameplay improved! Now the hero can not only walk, but also run. And ordinary enemies also appeared. More precisely, an ordinary enemy. And cabinets. Well, you understand, yes? There is no combat system, so when a dark demon comes around the corner, you need to urgently come-in. Although at some point the game brought back long-forgotten memories and made me believe that it would still be possible to fight back the enemy.