Dustborn review – supernatural road trip across an alternative America

The story begins on the road, miles out from a state border in an alternative US. The stakes are clear, even when nothing else is: Pax, the player character, is a Black woman in her 30s, who has just completed a heist with her friends. The border means freedom. The police car telling you to pull over means trouble.

Pax and co are Anomals, people who wield manipulative vocal abilities called vox. Pax can bend people to her will by making them feel bad, using abilities named “trigger” or “cancel”. Her ex-partner, Noam, can soothe people with an ability known as “gaslighting”. Dustborn certainly isn’t subtle in what it’s trying to say. Soon you encounter people who get infected by weaponised disinformation.

Vox can be utilised in certain situations like dialogue options, often when an issue is time-sensitive. Tapping a dialogue choice will offer Pax’s thoughts on what could happen before you commit to it – does Pax think it better to stop someone from asking by using block, or would starting a fight using a trigger be the better option?

This is an immensely useful feature, especially if it isn’t clear what a one-word dialogue option is supposed to represent. In my case, this first run-in with the police ends with an agitated policeman stepping on to the highway, where a truck does the rest. This is only one of many tense encounters that stand between the group and the successful delivery of a stolen data drive in Nova Scotia, Canada.

It’s astounding how many of your choices Dustborn remembers. Whenever a character references a previous event influenced by your choices, a small comic book icon appears on screen. This often happens several times in one conversation and makes Dustborn feel like a narrative experience you’re actively shaping.

Dustborn also features hack and slash combat, but it’s very easy and turns fairly monotonous – if you don’t enjoy it, you can decrease the frequency of encounters. Since the group travels under cover as a touring punk-rock band, there’s also a small rhythm game section – a fun little diversion, but the songs are rather bad. Perhaps this is because the band is a cover story, but it’s still difficult to put up with tracks that rhyme the word “born” with “born”. Three times.

The game will surely irritate some, by loudly and clearly stating its characters’ politics: namely, Nazis are bad. It also doesn’t really say anything more noteworthy. The setting, for example, doesn’t withstand even cursory examination – a paranoid JFK, upon surviving his assassination attempt, is said to have “basically resurrected Nazi Germany”. To be clear, Dustborn’s setting in no way reflects the horrors of Nazi Germany. The problem is that it might think it does. There are references to book-burning, people talking about “the fight”, but it never really culminates in anything substantial. A lot of ideas are fighting for real estate – robots, a near-apocalyptic event, the dangers of totalitarianism – with nothing getting the space it deserves.

Meanwhile, real-world problems are turned into something of supernatural origin – later on in the game, you acquire a method to heal people infected with disinformation. You point a device at a person, who will then come to with exclamations like: “Wait, the woke mind virus doesn’t exist! What was I saying?” Turning the real struggle against disinformation into a supernatural element does it a real disservice. More jarringly, issues like racism don’t seem play a role – every member of your team comes from a minority background and no character feels the need to remark on it, which is nice, but, from my experience as a minority, just as jarring as if you had no diverse characters at all. The game didn’t need all of this set dressing – it didn’t even need supernatural powers, and a lot of it ends up cheapening a well-meant message.

The character writing, on the other hand, is great throughout. Dustborn is a game where characters talk about their feelings, candidly and in depth, which is engrossing , complimented by regular check-ins with your friends around the campfire after each mission.

The underlying issue with Dustborn is the balancing act between serious topics and the supernatural, as well as its clear desire to alternate between fun moments, activism and drama – a balance it ultimately can’t hit. For example, a tragedy for an entire community is followed by a birthday party for a raccoon. I had a better time once I stopped taking it seriously, because the standout moments happen when Dustborn leans into the silliness of its supernatural storyline. With Dustborn, you may expect a tense trek across the US, but what you really end up with is the equivalent of an interactive Marvel movie, and that is OK.

• Dustborn is released on 20 August, £34.99.