I am freshly after finishing the game Pyre, from the studio Supergiant, that is also behind such a well known and well recieved title as Hades, and I need to say that it proved to be quite a different game then I thought it would be.
Pyre is a single-player game that focuses on Rite, which are just a fantasy version of a 3 on 3 basketball with some twists and magic involved. But in-between matches you get to talk to the characters you stand side by side in those trials and get to know them and the relations between them.
The game is smaller that one would hope when seeing its price on Steam. It does not allow you to make meanigful choices. It is a simple, sports-like game that adds on top of it amazing characters with depth that you can choose to explore.
The constant creation of background information in the game is breathtaking. You get to read the history of the world that you play in, your every move exploring more of it and giving you access to new pages of lore. Many character in the game talk to you about this lore, even if you failed to get to know it. This layer of added information, that the player does not need to have, is useless but makes you care about the story. When you know certain elements, you will start choosing to have matches only in certain places just because you prefer the stories associated with them. The game allows you to be superstitious in your actions!
It creates mythos, tedious game rules and compelling interpersonal dynamics with one liners and bullet points. It relates the game rules – the rules for matches/magic basketball – in a form of an ancient tome. It makes you, the player, a Reader. You are one of the fw who can read it this universe and therefore must relay the informtion to your fellows. It promts you to read the lore, hidden or given to you plain. The game makes sure you know that reading is the key to engaging in it.
It has visual novel elemnts. You witness your fellow characters talking, yet you do not interact with them in a meanigful, open way. You cannot steer the plot, you can just slightly influence their stats for the next match with correct choices in sporadical dialogues. The good thing is, the characters feel like people you have met because they interact with each other. They showcase their multifacet peronalities that sprout from their simple and recycled archetypes. And yet they feel authentic. Because they are simple, in a simple game, it doesn’t feel rushed, it feels exact. They do not give you their whole personalities on a plate, they hint at what they are and let you build on that on your own. They have simple relationships with people you face in the matches, giving you a glimpes at what are their adversaries or what are their friends.
I guess what I want to say, is that this game shows how you don’t need to have a complete, twenty page long backstory detailing every trauma and victory that the character has suffered and won to acually flesh them out. It is easy to do when you just make sure they are vibrantly distinct in their one liners. It might be a connection between art, voicover and the short backstory connected to them. Pyre characters show me that there is a very important part of bringing the characters to life and this part is the eye of the beholder. If you suggest to the player that the characters have life outside the game, that they live and breathe as all humans do, then the player will make that happen, in their brain, thus making the characters alive.