The very nice and cool thing about being a millennial is watching an endless parade of news headlines revealing that the dystopian novels I read in high school are now virtually everyday reality So it’s understandable that our own generation of artists have pivoted and raised the bar for dystopian fiction with satirical. These fears that exist now To spread awareness or just out of rational anger, to a new level. I think that’s what made me play and love The Last Worker, a narrative game that elevates capitalism to its worst, most terrifying extremes while sneering at the consequences.
I played two segments wearing the hat of the main character, Kurt, from Amazon’s parody company Jüngle’s classic The Last Worker. Jüngle is the world’s most profitable company and runs primarily on automation. But Kurt, for some reason, manages to hold back the job of delivering packages from one side of the factory to the other on a company-assigned hover cart, which at her level is appropriately tedious. Promised. A cart on a cart can move in all three dimensions of her. It took me a while to get used to it, but I promise you’ll find her VR version of this game very interesting. You can also pick up and throw boxes using the small grabber-her device on hand. A robot companion like Wheatley, who may be new to Kurt’s work, walks you through the basics, highlighting the very Bezosian nature of the Jüngle founder.
That’s the opening.And the last worker incites capitalist fear some more notch.
As you can see, in Jüngle’s infernal landscape, everything goes awry worse than expected. A beautifully animated introduction shows that Kurt once had many fellow human co-workers, including a woman he was romantically interested in, but it seems that unpleasant things have happened to most of them. Kurt is then left with a brutal, unwashed shell of himself, but is unable to escape the factory, leaving the box at the end Surrounded by robots moving from edge to edge doing precise work without a clear purpose, humans are left with nothing.
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Later in the game, Kurt explores the factory after hours on a stealth mission. There, if the robot he gets caught by one of the workers, his one remaining human will come to a tragic end. As he makes his way through the factory, he’s hiding behind a huge box containing a withered, defeated cow that appears to be heading for an incinerator or something similar. There must be invisible people somewhere far away in the metal prison where the carts are locked up, box after box delivering useless plastic goods to the invisible people increase. To stop what is worse at the heart of everything.
The Last Worker offers very little of its plot secrets in its demo, but that’s okay. The Last Worker is deep, dark and funny, despite clearly laying a track from the current capitalist chaos of same-day delivery to a fictional future. , laughingly admits the depressing premise that somehow works. As we spend our days fulfilling the ironic “dreams” of those who give orders to the outside, it’s easy to feel Kurt trapped in a job where death is the only imaginable escape.
His only companion is an obnoxious company robot who treats him like an optimistic newcomer, presenting a stark contrast between the company’s promises and the reality of Kurt’s situation. Their banter, which takes a big turn between the two segments of , is underscored by the voices of Jüngle’s tech buddies’ heads echoing through every corner of the factory, and their thinly veiled attempts to spout glowing spit. to move employees forward. Ambitions of a billionaire. There’s nothing subtle or soft about The Last Worker, but the aggressive and purposeful portrayal of these horrors ended up fitting into the section I saw.
It’s no problem that The Last Worker also looks very good. There’s the cel shading style that games like Borderlands and Telltale have made known, but perhaps thanks to time and technology, it’s a bit more sophisticated. That’s especially evident in Kurt’s face, which can be seen weathered and defeated in Kurt’s rear-view mirror, but there are plenty of well-made little details throughout the factory as well. It shows that you might be able to see what’s inside all these boxes that are out there.
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Based on a short preview I played, what I’m most unsure about is that The Last Worker keeps the gameplay interesting enough and closely enough with the story it’s trying to tell to keep players engrossed. But I’ve seen very little, so it’s hard to suggest otherwise. Most of my sessions were tutorials on basic movement and box movement. , followed by a stealth sequence, but all the trailers I’ve seen show there’s more going on here, and the VR version only complicates that further.
Either way, Last Worker is one of the most amazing breakout games I’ve played at Gamescom.I went in expecting to be depressed based on that premise alone, but couldn’t explain why, but instead was overjoyed. At one point all I could do was laugh. Hmm. Whatever it is, all I know is that I simply Must Find out what’s happening at the heart of The Last Worker’s Jüngle. Even though a reluctant Kurt and his hover must drag his cart all the way down with me.
Rebekah Valentine is a news reporter for IGN. you can find her on her twitter @duck valentine.
