We. The Revolution is an unusual attempt to look at the events of the Great French Revolution through the eyes of one of its most unlikely participants, the judge of the revolutionary tribunal, whose power is to send dozens of opponents of the revolution and his personal enemies to the guillotine or to pardon the blatantly guilty in order to win the favor of the crowd and certain factions in the Convent.
You start from the position of an ordinary judge, but thanks to the revolutionary chaos and your own ambitions very quickly become one of the most influential figures in France, intriguing against other revolutionaries, siding with rivals, igniting the crowd with fiery speeches and yes, passing favorable to you personally sentences. Here it is not so important whether a particular suspect is guilty or not, as it is important how different layers of society will treat it. If you lose the favor of the masses, you may go to the guillotine. Or maybe the common people, who are quick to kill, will simply lynch you, or the gangsters sent by someone will cut you down in the nearest alley.
The common people, as always, are looking for simple solutions and cheap entertainment, they don’t care who goes to the guillotine, the richer the “criminal” or, better, the “criminals”, the better (nothing has changed at all over the past 230 years). And the common people don’t care that the next in line to the scaffold will be themselves. Why us? Aristocrats prefer to cover their own, keeping caste loyalty. The revolutionaries don’t care how many people lose their heads, because there are spies and enemies around, millions of them. And the fact that in the bloody chaos will die thousands of innocent and hundreds of outstanding people of our time, the real pride of France, for example, the creator of modern chemistry Antoine Laurent de Lavoisier, they do not care at all.
The judge of the tribunal will have to maneuver between the contradictory demands of different groups, trying to give more or less fair verdicts (it is not necessary at all), taking into account the opinion of the jury, the mood of the crowd in the hall and behind the walls of the court, the opinion of his own family, etc. That is, you can even try to save the king from the guillotine, it is possible, only, most likely, on tomorrow your disfigured corpse will be found in a roadside ditch. Saving the queen is easier, but her death will allow you to strengthen your position and give you a margin of credibility that will help keep alive, for example, the same Lavoisier. And that’s the way it’s always been here. Think. Choose.
Not all of the cases that come before the court concern enemies of the revolution, there are some simple criminal offenses and murders committed by negligence, but the decisions on all of them affect your position. A little later you will be ordered to try some cases altogether, without a formal hearing, simply on the basis of the charges. The revolution will begin to devour its children.
Actually, the process of legal proceedings is quite transparent and somewhat resembles the Ace Attorney series of games. We familiarize ourselves with the case materials, build cause-and-effect relationships, choose questions to ask the defendant and witnesses. Naturally, the judge can ignore some of the questions so as not to overreact to one side or another. Pretty soon the verdict of “imprisonment” will disappear from common usage, and you can either acquit the defendant or send him to the guillotine. The opinion of the jury and the mood of the crowd can be ignored at times, but it’s worth making sure you have enough influence with one faction or another to survive the next night.
There are quite a few gameplay mechanics in We. The Revolution has quite a few gameplay mechanics, and throughout the first act the authors add new ones. Working with documents in court; interrogating the accused; playing dice with important people; turn-based strategy on the map of Paris, in which you must move your agents and earn influence; building your own operational base; backstabbing intrigues against competitors; even simple turn-based battles of crowds of your supporters and opponents on the streets of Paris (basically, rock-paper-scissors with beautiful graphics). Of particular interest are the intrigues, which are chains of text-based quests that allow you to choose multiple solutions to a single problem. At times there are some very dirty tricks used here that will affect you and your family in the future, so think and think again how far you are willing to go and whether you are ready to accept the consequences of your decisions.
Interestingly in We. The Revolution is made public speaking and trying to influence opponents and supporters. Here you can choose the type of behavior in this or that part of your speech, depending on your opponent’s attitude to the topic. Sometimes you should portray indifference, sometimes you should put revolutionary rage into your speech, sometimes you should try to manipulate the crowd or your interlocutor.
Naturally, most of the events in We. The Revolution correspond to the real course of the Great Revolution. There is the execution of the king (or not, if you manage to save citizen Capet), the beginning of the Terror, the Vendée rebellion, the famine in Paris, and the arrival of Reaction. Among the characters your hero will have to interact with are Jean-Nicolas Pasch, Jacques-René Hébert, Jean-Paul Marat, Jean-Marie Roland along with Madame Roland, and, of course, the furious Maximilien Robespierre. In general, if you played, say, Assassin’s Creed Unity, then many characters will be familiar to you, but still before you start We. The Revolution, you should refresh your knowledge of the events of the Great Revolution.
Like many similar games, We. The Revolution consists of static flat screens, but here the authors use a very unusual graphical style – low-poly 2D. Low-poly characters look surprisingly stylish and solid, and the graphics, which allows using contrasting colors, suits this project very well.
As for the mood, We. The Revolution, in my opinion, is very close to Papers, Please. Here, too, you feel yourself a victim of circumstances and literally physically feel the impending and, it seems, not the most favorable ending. Also We. The Revolution gives a great understanding of how revolution devours its creators, how every little deal with your conscience destroys you, how it becomes easier and easier for you to sign death sentences. Despite the fact that the authors tried to make each execution as dramatic as possible, because you have to personally pull the rope, the feeling of getting used to the violence is frightening.
We. The Revolution consists of three acts, ironically named Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité, with about 20 game days each. There is a lot of text in the game, and quite specific, filled with legal terms, so the lack of localization (there are only English, French and Polish languages) is perceived as a definite minus. Besides, the game’s disadvantages include its general slowness. It is clear that for turn-based strategies/quests such a pace is generally natural, but some animations in the game are so slow that you want to push them.