The Story:
Congratulations.
The October labor lottery is complete. Your name was pulled.
For immediate placement, report to The Ministry of Admission at Grestin Border Checkpoint.
An apartment will be provided for you and your family in East Grestin. Expect a Class-8 dwelling.
Glory to Arstotzka
Gameplay:
In Papers Please, you play as the border control officer of the fictional communist country of Arstotzka, and it is your task to view the passports of the people who wish to enter the country and decide whether or not to let them enter. Gameplay consists of you dragging paper, and passports around your small desk, checking for any discrepancies in the information given to you, and then using the appropriate stamp to either let the person into the country or not. It's weird because somehow the developer has managed to make a quite addicting "game system" out of one of the most mundane jobs known to humankind. I mean it's really fun, but man does it get hard later on!
People start giving you extra pieces of paper, they forge IDs, try to smuggle contraband through, not even to mention the fact that your government changes its rules concerning immigration every single day. Luckily you have a handy-dandy notebook to help you remember all the rules, a discrepancy detector for the IDs, and a full body scanner for the really androgynous people to if they are the gender they say they are. (BTW if you plan on playing this game, turn nudity off. That way you won't get any unwanted questions.)
The problem is Papers Please lasts about five hours, and halfway through that fun Gameplay I mentioned before starts to feel like actual work. And if you are playing the game in one sitting, (like you should,) you start making the stupidest mistakes due to how hard the game gets. This is where you will want to throw your mouse across the room, punch your computer screen in a fit of rage, and wish to the heavens that you had never bought this forsaken game!
But then something beautiful happens, you start to see the real point of Papers Please. The thing that saves this game is the element of meaningful choice.
I can see you all looking at this post and saying, "But Vollmain, there are tons of games that do that.
This isn't that unique of a thing!" And my reply is "Yes, yes." There are lots of games that give the player the ability to make choices that change the narrative as a whole: Mass Effect, The Walking Dead the game, etc.
And while I do love Mass Effect for obvious reasons;
(Liara T'soni: strong, smart, attractive, and an Archaeologist. She's that cool!)
I feel that Papers Please takes the cake on this one. Thing is in other games, the decisions you have to make tend to make huge changes to the story, and they also make a big deal out of them by pausing the game and making you choose between two options.
Papers Please doesn't really do that. The choices you make are part of the actual Gameplay, and they aren't going to be made into a big spectacle, or one of the selling points of the game. Let me try to explain this as best I can:
Your job in the the game is to ONLY let in the people have the proper paperwork, and not those who don't. And you are penalized for messing up. If you let in someone you are not supposed to, the all-seeing-eye of your superior will tell you how you messed up, and then will give you a warning not to do it again. If you slip up three times they will begin to dock your for every mistake you make for the rest of the round, and you NEED that money. In between rounds of the game, you will go home and will have to pay the bills in order to make sure that your family of four stays healthy, warm, and well fed. You will also have to pay rent for the house you are living in.
So there comes these times in the game where a family of two will be trying to enter the country, but only one of them has a passport. Do you split up the family in effect saving your own, or do you let them in knowing that you might be sending your family to their deaths? Some characters are trying to escape the violence and poverty of their own country, and if you send them back they'll die. You sometimes get the option to detain people. If you do detain them, you send them to a building that people enter, but never seem to leave, and there is an incentive to doing this. Suddenly the faceless paper pusher that you are playing will begin to become human, as you realize that the characters you meet in the game aren't really characters at all, they represent real people who you may well be sending to their deaths.
Music and Presentation:
The pixel art style of Papers Please and the seemingly limited color pallet make the world of Papers Please seem dark and hopeless. While there are some other colors in the game, the majority of the world is very, very grey.
But the game isn't without it's funny and lighthearted moments. About twenty minutes into the game you meet Jorji Costava, who will show up through out the rest of the game.
I won't spoil anything, but just know that Jorji is the kind of person I would want to hug.
In between each level of the game, The Anthem of Arstotzka plays. It isn't the only song in the game, but it is the only one you will hear until the end of the game. It also conveys a sense of hopelessness, but it also marches along like an anthem should. I like it a lot.
The Verdict and Final thoughts:
It starts off as a game that's fun to play, but after awhile Papers Please shows its true mission: To show a satirical allegory about a post WWII era by putting you, the player, in the middle of it. It baffles me that the type of things in this game actually happened, and continue to happen in the real world. Papers Please is a game that deserves to be played, not only because it is a fantastic game, but because of its insight into our world.
I'm giving Papers Please Nine out of Ten stars. Papers Please is a "Must Play" game.
"The Order Knows."
