GreedFall Review: The Colonizer Simulator

It's been years since Bioware produced an industry-defining roleplaying game. I am one of the few who really enjoyed Mass Effect: Andromeda and Dragon Age: The Veilguard, but even I can admit that those two games paled in comparison to the trilogies that came before. It's a shame, because Bioware defined so many of our childhoods with games like Knights of the Old Republic, Jade Empire, Dragon Age: Origins, and Mass effect. 

Through the years we have seen a number of studios attempt to take up the "Bioware mantle," which I would define as being "the best studio at creating high production value choice-based western role playing games." 

Among the more famous contenders for that mantle are Larian, Owlcat Games, CD Projekt, and Obsidian. There's also the lesser known Spiders though, and it's their game, GreedFall, that is the subject of this review. 

The old Bioware's strengths lied in its ability to craft engaging dialogue, complex companions, memorable relationships, moral choices, and focused stories with well-crafted (but not open) worlds. That exact formula, I would argue, has never been replicated by any of the more famous contenders listed above. Not even games like Baldur's Gate III or Cyberpunk 2077 matched the experience of the old Bioware classics, for me at least. 

Spiders, while lacking the funding and polish of say Larian or CD Projekt, built an experience with GreedFall that is probably closer to the Bioware formula than any of its competitors. It still falls short in a number of ways that I'll outline below, but if there's one major positive here it's that GreedFall captures some of the magic of the golden age Bioware games. 

On its surface GreedFall looks like the Bioware RPG this generation deserved, but never received. It has everything you would expect: interesting companions, a customizable main character, the ability to be good or evil based on your actions and dialogue choices, a fascinating story and setting, and action combat. Best of all, GreedFall isn't open world. It's more like the RPGs of yesteryear, with open spaces connected to hubs inhabited by interesting NPCs. This helps to cut down on the bloat and keep the game to a respectable and reasonable 35-40 hours long.

In terms of story, GreedFall places the player in the shoes of a diplomat, De Sardet, tasked with exploring new lands in search of a solution to a problem plaguing their home nation. The time period is supposed to be a rough approximation of 17th century Earth, though with the addition of fantastic beasts and magic. 

At its core GreedFall is a story about colonization and its impact on the environment. The extent to which you are good or evil in the game depends on how willing you are to exploit the Native population to further your goals. As such it leaves a lot of avenues open to the player in terms of how they want to approach things.

Spiders is rather infamous for creating flawed RPGs, and I can attest to that, having played two of their previous offerings in Bound By Flame and The Technomancer, both of which are plagued by various issues that hold back their many strengths.

Thankfully GreedFall is different, at least initially. From the very first city, the game demonstrates its strengths. The first few main quests you complete branch off into several side quests, each of which can be completed in a variety of manners and offers as much moral complexity as the best side quests in The Witcher 3.

In particular, the dialogue system in those early hours works fantastically. Although you don't really have the ability to shape your character's personality to the same extent as a game like Dragon Age II, you do have the ability to threaten, coerce, bribe, or use other skills at your disposal to try and bend people to your will, each of which has different consequences and leads to different kinds of dialogue between your character, De Sardet, and whoever they are speaking to.

This is an upgrade over Bioware's dialogue system, at least the version they've been using since Dragon Age II. While recent Bioware games allow you to choose the flavor of your response, i.e. whether you act angrily or nicely, you can't really change the outcome of a given situation. Spiders games are the opposite. You don't really have control over the flavor of your character's dialogue to the same extent as you do in Bioware games. However, in place of that, you are presented with far more meaningful options during conversations.

In effect, what this means is that you actually have more control over De Sardet's personality than you might think. Within the first three hours of the game you can use your dialogue several times to radically change the outcomes of certain quests. Further, the game does an excellent job of making De Sardet feel like a highly charismatic and intelligent character if you choose that skill and are successful in using it during conversations.

In short, I think most people's initial impressions of GreedFall will be quite good, especially if you are in the mood for an old-school Bioware RPG experience. Building from the core of this experience, it's possible that Spiders could be in the running to equal the likes of Larian or CD Projekt in the future (thought it appears like Owlcat Games may have cut Spiders in line as far as Bioware successors go).

All that being said, I do have a number of constructive critiques. As I said, the game's strengths are most obvious early in the experience, and indeed the more you play, the worse things get. The opening sequence in GreedFall provides its strongest gameplay and some of its more interesting choices, with the quality of both declining the longer you stay on Teer Fradee (an anagram for "Free Trade").

GreedFall's core gameplay loop once you're several hours in consists mostly of lengthy backtracking, few and inconsequential choices, stilted dialogue, and passable combat. The overarching story is confusing at best, to the extent that I wasn't sure why something was happening when it happened. It's nice when a player's actions have consequences, but I'd like to know what actions caused said consequences. 

The central premise of the game's story becomes increasingly problematic the more you play. The main character, De Sardet, is a colonizer imposing his nation's will upon the Native people of Teer Fradee. I grew increasingly annoyed at the game's choice to frame Native resistance as malevolent, unnecessarily violent, and stereotypically mystical. 

It doesn't help that the game is set a few years after Teer Fradee is initially colonized, during a period of relative peace. This means that Spiders is able to sidestep having to grapple narratively with the violence and exploitation that usually defines the first few years of colonization.

GreedFall is essentially a colonization simulator, with you playing the roles of missionary, conqueror, and cultural broker. The problem is that you are forced into these roles, with no choice but to assist and remain sympathetic to the colonizers. It is true that Spiders showcased some of the horrors of colonialism, but even in those instances you're seeing and hearing the story from what is essentially a Eurocentric perspective. 

Further, the only reason your character is ever interested in helping the Native population is because they want to stabilize Teer Fradee on behalf of their nation, the Congregation of Merchants, who seek power through trade and economic growth above all else.

Spiders has lot of work to do if it wants to rise to the level of what Bioware used to be, but GreedFall is a decent start, despite being rough around the edges and problematic in how it frames colonization and Native resistance. That said, the opening few hours of GreedFall shows that Spiders has the ability to make a great RPG if they can apply that quality across an entire game. I hope that their next release reaches that standard (though initial impressions of the early access version of GreedFall II are discouraging, to say the least). We shall see in the next few years to come...