Played on: PC, PlayStation 4
Yeah, I'm starting 2024 off with a weird one. My justification? I was just in the mood for a Quantic Dream game. I really can't explain it better than that.
For whatever reason, I've always had a strange fascination with Quantic Dream, the French 'auteur'-style 'interactive drama' developer, which is to say, a purveyor of adventure/mystery games with a heightened emphasis on emotional character arcs, quick-time events and decision-making, along with a diminished emphasis on real-time combat, and other recognizably 'video game' tropes. Quantic Dream is best known for games like Heavy Rain and Detroit: Become Human (the latter of which is their only game that I've never played at this point), and while they've since inked a console exclusivity partnership with PlayStation, one that's lasted over a decade at this point, the company's origins did see them making multiplatform titles, or at least aspiring to.
The only truly multiplatform game that Quantic Dream managed to release before their PlayStation deal was minted however was Indigo Prophecy, or, Fahrenheit, as it's known outside of North America. This game first released for PS2, Xbox and PC in 2005 (it's also the only Quantic Dream game available on an Xbox platform at this point), serving as a sophomore effort that aimed to bring 'interactive drama' to the masses. Did Indigo Prophecy successfully do that? Ummm... Well, it opened the door for the more-celebrated Heavy Rain, I guess.
Indigo Prophecy has since seen a remastered edition for PC and mobile devices, which was outsourced to Aspyr, one that touches up the graphics a bit, and restores some risque content that was originally cut from the North American release. I decided to revisit this updated PC version of Indigo Prophecy, specifically during 2024's first weekend, after playing it on my old, beat up laptop during the game's initial 2015 release. It helps that Aspyr has since added Steam Achievements to Indigo Prophecy Remastered as well, which I was all too happy to scoop up for the first time!
Like a lot of Quantic Dream games however, I still struggle to articulate exactly whether I like Indigo Prophecy or not. I've been trying to figure this out since I initially played through its basic build on my Xbox in 2008 (yep, I played the one and only Xbox game that Quantic Dream has ever released!), and replaying its enhanced PC version for the second time in 2024, I still found myself mixed on the experience overall. I suppose it would be fair to say that I find Indigo Prophecy to be more 'interesting' than conventionally 'good', as a video game.
I will say however that the game's initial premise is instantly gripping; As protagonist, Lucas Kane, who serves as one of four player characters (this multi-character gameplay device ended up returning in Heavy Rain), you wake from a trance to see that you've stabbed a stranger to death in a diner's bathroom, with no conceivable motive. The game then starts there, with players being able to determine if they make an effort to hide the body and cover up evidence, whether they try to get help or act like anything is wrong, or whether they simply flee as quickly as possible, all of which can lead to altered story paths, which push a 6-8-hour storyline forward.
Adding weight to your decisions as Lucas is the fact that two of Indigo Prophecy's other playable characters are NYPD detectives, specifically the driven and ambitious Carla Valenti, and the disillusioned, more laid-back Tyler Miles. These two are assigned to the mysterious diner murder that Lucas somehow commits without his knowledge at the time. This puts players in control of a sort of accidental cat-and-mouse thriller where they play both sides to some degree, a gameplay hook that could have been genuinely amazing. Hell, for the first several 'chapters' of Indigo Prophecy's storyline, it kind of is, especially for detective game enthusiasts like myself.
Seeing as this is a game from 2005 however, you can imagine that Indigo Prophecy's ambitions quickly exceed its promising initial hook. In the later stretches especially, the game's storyline goes absolutely bonkers, with supernatural and sci-fi elements that feel like a bizarre attempt to marry a Christopher Nolan movie with The Matrix. Yeah, this game gets WEIRD, and that's before considering its heavy dose of quick-time events, most of which have you flicking control sticks or waving a computer mouse around, in a Simon-style minigame that poorly substitutes for actual action gameplay. At least the stick/mouse-dominated passive actions are a little more interesting, and that's good, since these are completely prioritized over conventional face button inputs that pretty much any other video game would employ. Again though, these 'immersive' inputs were refined and improved significantly in Quantic Dream's subsequent games made for PlayStation.
Charging through the PC remaster again, which took me about 7 hours of playtime (including earning all of the new Steam Achievements on offer), I found myself curious as to whether Aspyr's remaster really elevated the experience at all (spoiler: Not really). Fortunately, the 'vanilla' build of Indigo Prophecy is also readily available on PS4, and I happened to own that to boot. The PS4 build functions as an emulated rendition of Indigo Prophecy's PS2 version, with a faux-HD makeover, and most importantly, a completely different and more expansive list of trophies in contrast to Aspyr's retroactive Steam Achievement additions in the remaster!
The PS4 edition's trophy list gave me an even more challenging and in-depth series of ordeals to strive for while trying to earn Indigo Prophecy's platinum trophy. Compounding that motivation is the fact that I'd already platinumed Heavy Rain and its follow-up, Beyond: Two Souls on both PS3 and PS4 several years ago, so I've made it a bit of a point to collect Quantic Dream's platinum trophies, with Detroit: Become Human now the only one left for me to obtain at this point.
Unfortunately, playing the PS2 build of Indigo Prophecy on PS4 didn't improve my opinion of the experience, since this version seemed to be particularly buggy and sluggish. Even the trophies didn't work in several instances, forcing me to coerce win conditions and do other things that had me fighting Indigo Prophecy's patchy 2005-era code far too much. I did manage to score Indigo Prophecy's platinum trophy in the end (my first platinum for a PS2 game, in fact!), something that would have been more fun if the game was less glitchy. Even so, not this basic build, nor Aspyr's efforts to touch it up in a remaster, could ultimately salvage a dated series of otherwise ambitious gameplay ideas that are ultimately ruined by an enormously overdone storyline, and increasingly repetitive action minigames.
Thus, I remain frustratingly mixed on Indigo Prophecy in my mid-30's, in its remastered and original builds. There are some parts of this game that I really enjoy, such as its foundational mystery, its investigation/obstruction elements, and the idea of multiple player characters that inadvertently work against each other through the player's actions. Even so, Indigo Prophecy reeks of lost potential and pretentious direction, ultimately making it a faulty Quantic Dream game that's indicative of a time before PlayStation presumably helped to rein the studio in a bit.
This is a fascinating game for sure, but too often for the wrong reasons. Oh well. Maybe Heavy Rain has held up better?
IF I HAD TO SCORE IT: 5/10
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