A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead

Paramount Pictures has been eager to create a new franchise from the original A Quiet Place, starring Emily Blunt. Along with the original film, there have been a further two films and now a video game set in the same world but following a different set of characters. If you are unfamiliar with the basic premise of the films, then let me fill you in. These films (and now game) are set in a world where blind alien creatures have come to Earth and now roam the land as wild creatures. Although they are blind, they have super sensitive hearing and can hear the smallest pin drop. This means that to survive, you have to do everything quietly, including talking. I don’t envy parents with small kids in this situation! But if you are heard, then it’s pretty much game over, as these creatures do enjoy snacking on humans. 

This leads into the plot of A Quiet Place: The Road Ahead, where we meet up with Alex. An asthmatic sufferer, Alex is holed up in a hospital with other survivors, trying to make something out of all this through her skills in artistry and building tech. We get to learn some backstory on Alex through detailed flashbacks, mostly from the before times and leading up to the day the creatures land. I felt this was an important step in the game’s narrative, as this gave me a connection to Alex by seeing what she had lost and helped me to understand her more through the rough times you will both go through. 

These sections, just like the whole game, were well written and voice-acted, to the standard of a TV show. The writers managed to flesh out the characters in an interesting way and gave them all intriguing and emotional situations for them to solve and survive. I appreciated that they were not scared to go into darker areas either, giving me a true flavour of what this new world can dish out. I felt sympathy towards the people, and it made me appreciate what it would be like to live in this apocalyptic, alien-infested world. They also managed to expand on the lore through scattered photos and documents that I found throughout my playthrough. These will give you an idea of what people have gone through and what they’ve had to leave behind. The documents are quite an essential part of the game, often giving clues on what to do, but in a way that’s not throwing the answer right in your face, as well as feeding you more information on what may have happened to the people and how they lived their lives in this new world. 

Exploring this world is also very tense. It’s a testament to Stormind Games that as I was walking around, I often caught myself holding my breath as I didn’t want to make a sound. This, of course, didn’t make any difference in the game unless you turned on the mic feature, which will bring real-life noises into the game and attract the creatures. I tested this for a while, and while it worked and gave the game another level of tenseness, I did have to turn it off as I rarely played in an environment that would of been workable. It’s still a cool optional feature if a little gimmicky. Although the areas looked quite large, it always turned out to be quite a linear path to where your next destination is. I personally didn’t mind that, and I felt that it was the better option instead of a vast, open-world land. Doing this kept things claustrophobic, making it feel like things were on top of you and feeding my apprehension. The environments were cleverly chosen to assist in these feelings, from the dark corridors of the hospital to the overgrown bushes of a forest. These environments also hold different dangers from the different noises that can be made.

As I played, this factor became one of the most important parts of the gameplay, having to stop and properly consider what was around me and if there was anything that might pose a danger. Inconveniently placed tins, bottles, and cans that littered the floor were major obstacles and were difficult to see in the really dark places where all you have is torchlight. There were a few times I hit these, and each time I stopped with gritted teeth, waiting to see if I’d survive. 

Other dangers that you would normally not even consider were branches and leaves in the forestry areas, and you even had to stop and examine puddles and whether you’d get away with walking through them or just to go around them to be on the safe side. Luckily for me, I am a patient person, and I was fine with the slow pace of the game. I did forget what I was playing sometimes and just went for it, but I soon realised my mistake when I was very quickly taken down by a creature. I did use the game’s phonometer a few times, which is designed to measure the environment’s noise against yours, with the idea that it can be used to measure when your being to loud. By a certain point, I knew the ranges of when I was being quiet and too noisy; I didn’t feel it was an essential piece of equipment, so it wasn’t used very much. Nice idea though. 

One aspect of the game I was really impressed with was the way in which it kept throwing new mechanics at you. Even near the end of the game, it was still introducing new elements to keep the gameplay fresh and exciting. There is always a risk of complacency, especially in a game like this, where the game relies to heavily on the main mechanic, and when that happens, the game suffers from becoming stale, so I was so glad that Stormind Games realised this and threw in as many new ideas as they could. Some didn’t work out as well as others, but they worked well enough to not be frustrating or annoying. 

Along my journey, I had many encounters with the creatures, which led into my least favourite sections of the game. These seem inspired by Alien Isolation, where you are stuck in an area with a creature roaming and you have to try and complete tasks to escape. For example, making your way to a cabin, grabbing a plank of wood, and manoeuvring to the gap to cross to get half a ladder, which you can use somewhere else to get away. These sections occurred much more than I would of liked, because, as with Alien Isolation, it quickly became frustrating, as all I wanted to do was explore this world and continue my journey, and now I was stuck, being made to do this. I wouldn’t have minded a couple of these sections, but they do overrely on them, when instead I wish they had relied more on the exploration side. 

On top of everything else, I also had to manage Alex’s asthma. Strenuous activity like climbing, dusty environments, or just stress can elevate her condition to a point where she will have a full-on attack and not be able to breathe. There are conveniently placed inhalers throughout the game, which will give complete relief from her systems, or Alex can find tablets that only offer a slight relief. I really liked this asthma system for a couple of reasons. The first is that it was a novel idea that worked well in this type of game; I’ve not seen this before on a video game, and I liked that it gave a glimpse into the issues an asthmatic has to deal with. The second is that it gave me something else to concentrate on other than being quiet. It was another ingredient that fed my anxiety, especially in the one-on-one encounters with the creatures, as those really elevated her symptoms. A couple of times it was close, as I had run out of inhalers and managed to get out just in the nick of time. 

During my playthrough, I did have times where I wasn’t sure what to do or where to go, and thankfully the game comes with a hint system for these instances. One press on the down crosspad, and it will produce a temporary yellow dot for me to follow. It was yet another wise move to include this feature, as I could see many get impatient with trying to figure it out on their own. Other additions I found helpful were labelling everything I could interact with with a clear circle. This gave me just enough of a hint to keep me going and not spend too much of my time being clueless. The yellow paint makes a return here too, to point out the way to go by showing what you can climb on or walk over. The game has been created to include as many quality of life ingredients as possible, and I welcomed them all. It gave the game this ease of playing it, even though I still died multiple times. This fed into the accessibility options of the game, in which I was, yet again, impressed with what had been included, and I think it’s the most comprehensive accessibility choices I’ve seen in a game. Subtitles (of which you can change the size/colour), a colourblind setting, gameplay assistance in the way of a steady aim option, a creature outline setting, the ability to customise the Ul/HUD, focus, and the sensitivity of the in-game photometer. You can also change the creature’s reaction so it’s a visual cue rather than the audio one, and toggle the hint system and the “yellow paint” on/off. 

It’s not all good though, and one little irk I had was with the sound cues the game produces. Designed to signify when a creature has heard you, they happened far too much and at times when a creature was nowhere near you. It threw me out of what I was doing so many times as I thought I had been heard, only for the creature to have no reaction and have carried on with its patrol. It became hard to know when you had actually been heard and when you hadn’t, and you became accustomed to ignoring it, which led to deaths that could have been avoided. Otherwise, the sound design and soundtrack created a suitable tension-filled atmosphere.