Forever Ago Review – Beautiful Art, Heavy Themes, Limited Interactivity

Forever Ago Review

Budget and market constraints aside, video games have few creative, narrative, or technical restrictions. They can be about anything, from saving the world from aliens to living in a medieval fantasy world. That’s the most exciting aspect of the medium by far. Forever Ago is somewhere in the grey area between a pixel-hunting adventure game and walking simulator. It doesn’t make any mechanical demands of the player, but it does require a lot of patience and the bravery to explore a range of emotional landscapes.

Van Life

At the center of Forever Ago is a road trip. An elderly man named Alfred is returning to a number of locations that he visited with his late wife Audrey when they were young. At each stop, Alfred has several tasks to complete, like taking a picture of his wife’s favorite flowers or sitting in their favorite restaurant booth. In almost every case, decades have gone by, and things are not like they were. That the world changes is a recurring theme in Forever Ago.

Early on, Alfred unwillingly takes on a stray canine companion. The dog takes on a narrative role, so Alfred can explain to the dog (and the player) the significance of each stop. As in countless movies and TV shows, the dog inspires Alfred to keep going. The dog even saves Alfred’s life on a couple of occasions.

Structurally, Forever Ago is split between flashbacks of the couple as their relationship and marriage developed, events in the present day, and dream-like sequences. These are dark memories of Audrey’s growing cancer. Alfred is wracked with guilt and anger. Part of the road trip is a search for redemption, or at least acceptance.

Dark and Deep

Being an escapist form of entertainment, there are few video games that deal with death and its emotional consequences realistically. And there are fewer games that place an elderly man at the center of the narrative. So, kudos to developer Third Shift for taking those subjects on.

Certainly, Alfred’s range of emotions feels authentic, if by necessity compacted into a four-hour game. The early scenes of Alfred and Audrey’s courtship feel the most grounded and effective. Unfortunately, Forever Ago often seems too willing to dip into well-worn clichés and scenes borrowed from other media. A man in his 70s just now realizing that people and things are impermanent is a man who hasn’t done much reflection. Too often, Forever Ago overexplains itself.

Forever Ago can’t entirely avoid some ageist cliches, either. Sure, grumpy old men befuddled by change and technology widely exist, but I don’t think the shorthand does the story any favors or makes Alfred feel more real. Age and personal tragedy tend to amplify one’s personality. Alfred’s change from decades of being kindly to being an unpleasant curmudgeon is also suspect.

Art and Artifice

Where Forever Ago stumbles the most is in its mechanical implementation as a video game. By and large, player input is limited to button prompts, and rarely even choices. There are a few — almost always tedious — sequences where Alfred has to do something like row a boat or water flowers. These exist as ways to introduce narrative and dialogue. In addition to being slow and clunky, there were also quite a few bugs that resulted in replaying long sequences since there’s no save anywhere system. Forever Ago is not a game with much momentum, and there are places where it just crawls.

Those negatives aside, the game’s art is entirely successful. It’s stylized, painterly, and uniformly beautiful. The lighting is emotional and evocative. In fact, the art is so expressive — especially the landscapes — that I wish it could have carried more emotional weight, versus Alfred explicitly telling us how he felt. Character designs remind us that you don’t need photorealism to sell expression and emotion. The game’s sound design is subtle but perfect and the music fits the shifts from melancholy to upbeat hopefulness. Now and then the dialogue was poorly mixed with the music.

Games that treat death, illness, and aging realistically are pretty rare, and Forever Ago is notable for taking on difficult subjects with emotional truth. The story is believable if a little emotionally compressed and burdened by clichés that would be shunned in movies or TV. It’s an effective and moving narrative, and well acted. But as a game, I was frustrated by slow-moving busywork, lack of meaningful choices, and inelegant controls. Thinking of it as a slightly more interactive visual novel might be closer to what Forever Ago wants to be.

***PC code provided by the publisher for review***