WILL: Follow The Light 리뷰 (PC)

WILL: Follow The Light illuminates the darkness in an effort to capture the insatiable feeling of finding a silver lining in a ravenous storm—a fleeting moment of hope in a desperate quest to wax fatherhood with paternal relief. In the wake of a catastrophic event—a disappearance of a son—hope and a desire for peace of mind exceeds doubt and despair. But from behind the mast of a ship at high tide, miles away from home, a relentless feeling of loneliness and regret take hold and buckle the sail. Here, you find yourself with one of the greatest anchors of all: a storm that sheathes a silver lining, yet presents a fear that you cannot control. A missing son; a thousand mysteries; and a vast ocean that keeps you from discovering the truth.

WILL doesn’t spend its time filling you in with details; it plummets you into the ocean, and it forces you to spectate a series of flashback events that culminated in one desperate father’s decision to pursue their missing son. A ruthless storm shackles you to the tide, and what soon begins to feel like a wedge between you and your destination soon begins to emerge. You take control of the vessel, and you begin to carve through the storm. You don’t quite know where you’re going, only that the goal is as clear as the horizon. An epic adventure unravels, and you, as the homebound lighthouse keeper, begin to fill your role as a father whose paternal instincts have left him with a deep sense of endless responsibility.

In the first several minutes of wading through the tide, WILL quickly establishes itself as a graphically good-looking experience. A storm; a flutter of waves crashing against the vessel; a bolt of lightening hitting the horizon. In a heartbeat, the world entices you to take hold of the mast and veer into the desolate waters — but then quickly drags you back. The clock rewinds, and suddenly you find yourself bolted to a lighthouse. A transmission tells you of an unusual event that has taken your hometown by the scruff of the neck, and that your family has disappeared into nothingness. A slither of questionably poor dialogue later, and you find yourself at the helm, preparing to tackle a slew of logical puzzles and venture back to your home.

Aside from the rather dull voice acting and the sleepy line delivery, WILL does get off to a great start, with a captivating plot hook, a striking visual palette, and a thread of questions that make you ponder the story, the consequences, and the destination. What follows is a lot of volleying back and forth between puzzles and traversal activities, like sailing through storms, navigating snow-drizzled ravines, and scrubbing high and low for answers to a list of seemingly endless questions. Again, it all looks brilliant, and aside from the odd monologue that’s about as believable as a rainbow in a thunderstorm, everything keeps you on a tether. You want to continue your journey, and you want to see where the next chapter will take you.

The initial thirty minutes focuses on exploring an old lighthouse and completing routine maintenance jobs—an act that requires you to complete relatively simple fetch tasks and logic puzzles around the area. Behind the scenes, however, a catastrophic event begins to fabricate the narrative, after which it pulls you into a perilous quest that sees you abandoning your post in search of your missing family. From here, what you essentially have is a series of stepping stones that feel awfully familiar to the likes of Firewatch. In one moment, you’re transmitting messages, whereas in another you’re scouting locations in search of items that can help you progress even deeper into the world. The journey continues, and little by little you realize that there is more to the catastrophe that has ravaged the region.

To give credit where it’s due, WILL features a solid variety of puzzles and original ideas. Despite the fact that it forces you to sail a boat without a tutorial to guide you through the motions, the game itself does cater to some creative opportunities. And to be honest, there is a lot for you to discover here, with a distinct set of objectives that range from basic puzzle solving to environmental analysis, dog sledding to sailing. Granted, the game rarely holds your hand or tells you what to do, but it does make it so that you always have a fresh obstacle to tackle. It might feel a little too linear at times, but with enough variety in its gameplay, it also makes for a rather unpredictable experience that can leave you second guessing every turn, too.

Thankfully, WILL plays as well as any Unreal Engine 5 game should, with apt cinematic elements, intuitive gameplay mechanics, and a clutter-free UI. Moreover, it seems well optimized, with a steady frame rate and an all-round technical flair that makes bolting around the blue feel smooth and comfortable. It might not be a triple-A video game, but it is a game that hits the nail on the head and gets a lot of things right. The voice acting might be a bit of a loose canon I’ll admit. But other than that, WILL strikes out like a polished piece of art that has its priorities in the right place, and that’s what I’m willing to take away from it.

With a solid foundation and a captivating plot line to unearth, I’d say that WILL: Follow The Light makes for an easy recommendation, especially if you’re an avid fan of Firewatch or, failing that, The Long Dark. It might not be a perfect storm, but it certainly flaunts a silver lining — and that alone, really, is what you should be willing to take away from it.

Verdict

WILL: Follow The Light flaunts its beacon of hope in a visually stunning world of paternal woes and logical puzzles where clean optimization and creative ideas far outweigh mediocre dialogue and a lack of context. With a solid narrative, brilliant vistas, and a great deal of technical polish, to boot, it clearly makes for a great introductory passage to the nautical void that is story-driven video games. Again, it might not boast the perfect storm, but one thing’s for sure: it will be an experience that you’ll remember long after the thunder strikes.