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3. Werewolf: The Apocalypse — Heart Of The Forest Summary

Werewolf: The Apocalypse – Heart of the Forest is a short experience backed by high replayability and stellar audio-visual design. Don’t go in expecting a werewolf power fantasy and you’ll be pleasantly surprised. The game instead tackles environmentalist themes by using Werewolf lore in an effective and thoughtful manner. Rage Gets Things Done. Werewolf: The Apocalypse — Heart of the Forest throws you deep into a primeval wilderness in the center of modern Europe.It’s where the protectors of nature wage their ancient, neverending war against the forces of destruction. This collection of extras contains tons of artwork and behind-the-scenes materials for Werewolf: The Apocalypse — Heart of the Forest, including: Premium wallpapers using the iconic collage style of the game. Player's Guide, which dives into the lore and mechanics of Heart of the Forest as well as its real-life inspirations. Heart of the Forest is a narrative adventure game, and the first video game adaptation of the legendary tabletop role-playing game Werewolf: The Apocalypse! You play as Maia, a young Polish-American who’s returned to her roots – she’s searching for answers about her family, and her strange dreams of Puszcza: the last primeval forest in. Our Werewolf: The Apocalypse – Heart of the Forest Preview looks at the upcoming horror graphic novel game, set for launch in Q4 2020. It will release for PC on Steam, but you can grab a demo right now! Our Werewolf: The Apocalypse – Heart of the Forest Preview has tons of content. We’ll be looking at the game from our experience with the.

Werewolf: The Apocalypse – Heart of the Forest is a visual novel that is by developed by Different Tales and published by Walkabout Games. It is set in the World of Darkness tabletop roleplaying game universe originally created by White Wolf and currently owned by Paradox Games.

Werewolf: The Apocalypse is a game where you are a werewolf given his or her powers by Gaia the Spirit of the Earth to protect her from environmental damage. It has sometimes been called an R-rated Captain Planet but actually got fairly deep into spiritual, indigenous rights, and corporate satire. It wasn’t my favorite game of the World of Darkness and often handled things in a ham-fisted way, but I still spent many hours playing it.

The premise of this game is that a young Polish American girl named Maia is journeying to Białowieża in Poland, along the border of Belarus. Białowieża Forest is one of the few remaining primeval forests left in the world and current endangered by semi-legal logging. Maia is researching her family history and suffers from elaborate gory dreams that are full of symbolism even she doesn’t understand. Maia is, to no one’s surprise, a werewolf about to go through her first change and has no idea of what awaits her when this happens.

Werewolf The Apocalypse Heart Of The Forest Twitter

Werewolf: The Apocalypse – Heart of the Forest is a solid and well-written game that provides an excellent introduction into the setting. Even better, it chooses to go the less obvious route with the game than they might have. Rather than a game based around bloodshed and berserk war like many W:TA games, it actually puts a large focus on controlling your animalistic rage. Rage is an actual attribute in the game and if you have too much of it then it will terrify regular humans as well as force you to do actions that you may not want to do.

One of the things that surprised me in the game is the fact that it is entirely possible to do a pacifist run. You can rely almost exclusively on your wits and cunning to resolve issues rather than claws or teeth. Indeed, using violence may result in things getting much worse. This doesn’t mean violence is not a way to resolve things, just that it can have consequences that can result in things escalating rather than decreasing.

An interesting twist is the fact that there are very few Wyrm creatures in the game. The biggest enemy to the forest is a bunch of loggers, cops, and an apathetic populace. You can slaughter all of these people but the consequences are likely to be the same as a bunch of eco-terrorists murdering “regular” people. Tricking them or destroying them nonviolently may work but that may not be a straight or obvious path.

This is not a typical video game but closer to a choose your own adventure novel like those that I used to enjoy in the Nineties. The writing style is delightful, and I enjoyed it from beginning to end. It manages to capture the surreal and terrifying nature of the Spirit World as well as the moral ambiguity of its entities.

There’s also a lot of local history and geography incorporated into the narrative that makes the story seem more real. The art is stylized and well done, giving a vibrant impressionist style that suits the game better than recent Vampire: The Masquerade game’s more realistic as well as subdued art. If there’s a problem with the game, I’d say that it’s too short and I managed to finish it at barely over two and a half hours. There’s replay value but having chosen a pacifist and intellect-based route, I’m really not interested in a more violent brutal one.

One small detail for longtime fans of W:TA, the game seems to come down rather heavy on the Get of Fenris. Its members are characterized as fascists and brutes. There is more to their portrayal, Maia’s ancestor being a member of the Polish resistance, but you have to really work to find it. Given the Get are one of the most popular clans, I found this a strange choice. Nevertheless, I highly recommend the game.

I can hear a faint, repetitive thud as the ambient sounds of the forest at night surround me. Specks of light that look like stars dance across the crimson red sky, framed by silhouetted trees spiking up from the earth. Words appear and the story begins, and within moments the first prompt is before me. I'm told that this is a game about rage, and how it can both help us do the things we need to do, as well as things we'll come to later regret. So, how do I feel about that? After giving my answer to this question, a big, bright, full moon comes into view, and from that moment on, every decision I make starts to shape the narrative of Werewolf: The Apocalypse - Heart of the Forest, a darkly atmospheric interactive visual novel coming to PC from developer Different Tales.

Based on the classic systems of the '90s RPG Werewolf: The Apocalypse, Heart of the Forest is set in the World of Darkness universe, which is enjoying a bit of a revival of late with the likes of other upcoming releases like Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 and Werewolf: The Apocalypse - Earthblood. Heart of the Forest though puts you in the shoes of Maia, a 24-year-old American woman who sets out to Bialowieza in Poland to uncover the secrets of her mysterious Polish ancestry and learn the truth about her own origin. Plagued by strange dreams that always seem to take place in the same forest, Maia has some kind of innate connection to the setting that pulls her to investigate.

'No right path'

I get the chance to try out the prologue and first chapter of Heart of the Forest, and right from the get-go, it's clear that I'm about to set out on a journey that's molded by every choice I make. All of the decisions I make are reflected in Maia's personality, which also changes the direction of the story, and affects the reactions and approaches I can take to different events and situations.

Rage and Willpower are resources in the game that enable you to perform certain actions as the story unfolds. Having high Rage, for example, means you can be brazen, direct, and more willing to take action. But it also means you might be less open or empathetic. Some choices can be hard to make, and therefore drain your willpower if you select them, so you have to be mindful of how much willpower you have to ensure you use it when you truly need to. Helpfully, in the top right corner of the screen, I'm able to access my character sheet to keep track of Maia's stats, from her personality assessment to the condition of her mind and body.

With every choice, different facets of Maia's personality start to come together and also determine her overall goal. Sometimes my responses might increase my spiritual side, while others might make me more cunning. My reactions can also change the way a character I encounter feels about me. So someone might be friendly, while another becomes hostile. As the game informs me, 'There's no right path here, just your decisions and their consequences.' I play through the first chapter twice to see just how much my decisions alter the outcome and Maia's perception, and it really did turn out to be entirely different the second time around.

Family history

As it is an interactive visual novel, you'll be reading a lot of text, but the writing paints a very visceral picture of the events that unfold, so it never feels overly dense. The sound design really adds to the immersive experience and does well to really put you in the moment. While the story is in part left up to your imagination, each section is also accompanied by illustrations with a unique, stylised aesthetic, made up of bold colours and a mixture of drawing and photography that really pops.

Through the writing, ambient sounds, and illustrations, the story that begins to unfold before me is as atmospheric as it is intriguing. After arriving in Bialowieza, Maia meets Daniel, a man well acquainted with the forest who acts as my guide. I'm presented with a map, and have to set out to three different locations in a bid to uncover more about Maia's connection to this place, and hopefully get one step closer to finding out the reason she's been having these strange dreams.

From a wolf den to the barrows, and later to a place of power, each location you visit in the game is based on real-world areas and legends. Bialowieza Forest itself sets the scene for Maia's adventure because it's said to be one of the few remaining primeval forests in Europe, with many myths and stories bred from the area. Maia feels some mysterious pull that draws her to find the hidden secrets of these locations, and I try to gear my responses to advance Maia's goal, which in this instance is to learn about her family history.

Like Maia, it seems that many feel deeply connected to this setting, which poses plenty of intrigue about where the story will go. Interestingly, as well as its ties to the supernatural, Heart of the Forest also manages to touch on environmental issues too, including deforestation.

At the end of the chapter, I discover that my choices have led Maia to fall under one of the five auspices available in the game - New Moon, Crescent Moon, Half Moon, Gibbous Moon, and Full Moon - which shape the kind of person she is under the werewolf society known as Garou. Someone born under the New Moon is said to be destined to be masters of stealth, trickery, and guile, while those born under the Crescent Moon are more spiritualistic.

A werewolf born under the Half Moon are known as judges and balancers who can make wise decisions, while the Gibbous Moon auspice is for someone who's destined to be a storyteller and lore keeper. Finally, Garou born under a Full Moon are spirit warriors and the most vicious of their kind. The first time around, the Maia I play turns out to be a Seer born under the Crescent Moon based on my low rage and high spiritual personality. The second time, I end up taking a more rage-fueled, brash approach, leading me to be a warrior born under the Full Moon.

Werewolf The Game

As someone who's a big fan of the visual novel genre, the systems and amount of weight your choices have left me eager to play more. With its immersive storytelling, eye-grabbing art style, and mysterious narrative, I can't help but wonder where Maia's story will go next.

Werewolf: The Apocalypse — Heart Of The Forest Summary

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