Dustborn is a game with a message — many messages even — and it's all impossible to miss. Take, for example, its screed about the power of choice. The events in your life aren't the result of just one momentous choice, but the culmination of many smaller ones. I know this because the main character Pax, when looking over the progression of her life throughout the 15-hour game, says "It was never a single choice. It was every choice, adding up, every step of the way." As if I couldn't figure it out.
Dustborn comes from Red Thread Games and is published by Spotlight by Quantic Dream, both studios fascinated with choice-driven narratives where you have control over the events of the story and the development of characters. Your influence isn't just through branching dialogue either; there are also solid combat and rhythm sections, along with quicktime events, which all work together to make Dustborn a relatively unique entry in the visual novel genre, allowing for greater control and interaction. Combined with its oddly sustained length, the sheer amount of topics and issues it wants to address, and its growing cast of colorful LGBTQ+ characters, it almost lives up to its promise as an epic, political road trip saga about people with superpowers.
