Played on: PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4
After taking the scenic route and enjoying a few detours, I finally circled back to PlayStation Plus Extra/Premium's 'Leaving Soon' section a while back, to finally finish Last Stop, as planned. Yes, this is the previously-mentioned third and final part of the unofficial Annapurna Interactive trilogy I made for myself, while trying to run through games that were about to be removed from PlayStation's subscription service.
Last Stop is developed by Variable State, who previously developed Virginia, my 23rd game played for this year's 100 Video Game Challenge. Unlike Virginia however, Last Stop is a fully-voiced game, albeit still an interactive drama. The addition of speech also means that the game offers branching dialogue choices, along with three (four-ish?) player characters; John Smith, a middle-aged single father who ends up getting body swapped with young, fit and attractive game producer, Jack Smith, no relation (hence, why I said 'four-ish' player characters, since you sort of control John and Jack together), Meena Hughes, a high-ranking intelligence agent whose mysterious work is causing rampant strain in her home life, and Donna Adeleke, a high school student who ends up sharing a dark secret with two of her best friends.
John/Jack, Meena and Donna make choices and influence events that end up affecting the lives of the other two characters as much as their own in some respects, with players also able to play out their storylines in any order across each of Last Stop's 'chapters', before a finale brings everything together. Clearly, Last Stop is a very ambitious production for an indie developer like Variable State, which is no doubt why Annapurna agreed to finance and publish the game.
Disappointingly though... I'm not sure if I understand the ultimate 'point' of Last Stop. The game is so steeped in cinematic styling, even more than Virginia, that it practically plays itself. I even made opposing dialogue choices during my second playthrough on the PS4 version (my first playthrough was the PS5 version, naturally), only to find that many of the game's branching dialogue options are virtually redundant. Not only do they fail to influence the story to any noticeable degree in too many cases, but they also sometimes repeat the exact same character lines to boot, even when you choose an entirely different option! Come on, that just feels lazy!
Ultimately, I think Last Stop might have bitten off more than it could chew. The game feels like it's trying to be a Telltale adventure game on steroids, and it's admittedly got style to spare as well. Even on the last-gen PS4, Last Stop looks great, presenting a highly detailed rendition of London, England that nonetheless enjoys the benefit of exaggerated, CG-flavoured character models. The PS5 version of Last Stop does animate more smoothly, loads faster, and it includes a few small touches with the DualSense controller's haptic feedback capabilities, but outside of flawless 60fps performance, it barely feels like an upgrade over the PS4 version. Even Last Stop's vibration features on the PS4's DualShock 4 controller are barely compromised compared to the far superior (and largely untapped in this case) innate capabilities of the DualSense controller on PS5.
This feels like a waste, because the graphics, and particularly the voice acting throughout Last Stop, are uniformly fantastic. This is a HUGE technical improvement over Virginia, which is why it's a shame that the actual mechanics and depth of Last Stop are practically non-existent. Even after seeing this storyline through to a genuinely unexpected conclusion (one that fits with the equally crazy ending of Virginia, especially when Last Stop and Virginia are strongly implied to take place in the same universe), I felt disappointingly cold. It didn't feel like the journey throughout Last Stop truly amounted to anything satisfying or truly impactful, and that sucks.
The fact that Variable State is making a strange pivot to publishing, and throwing their lot in with a co-operative online shooter next, also feels disappointing. I feel like this developer is just THAT close to making a genuinely fantastic interactive drama. They just need to balance the ambitious production values of Last Stop with the more engaging gameplay of Virginia.
I hope we see that game someday. I know that Variable State is capable of it. For now though, Last Stop is a pretty, but ultimately hollow sophomore effort from this developer. That's really a shame, because Annapurna is normally pretty good at identifying superb indie games, and their publishing catalogue is filled with fantastic indie offerings to prove it. Even Annapurna sometimes delivers a dud though, and while it deserved better, I do unfortunately feel that Last Stop is a weak link in Annapurna's otherwise strong chain of indie darlings.
IF I HAD TO SCORE IT: 5/10
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