The latest chapter in the Syberia narrative-driven series is finally here! Microids has published Syberia: The World Before, which was developed by KoaLabs, and we are presented with a new story that follows the role of two women from two different time periods that hold a connection together. The fun is finding out just what this connection is and getting to the truth is the ongoing goal through the game.

Story

Continuing the tale of Kate Walker’s journey, this time the story mixes with that of a Dana Roze from the 1930s. After a saddening fate met her partner that was imprisoned with her at the salt mines, Kate vows to hold her promise to pursuit the woman of a painting they found together that looked a lot like her. It turns out, the woman from the painting is Dana.

This journey will take Kate through various parts of the town of Vagner and will coincide with the events that Dana took in her lifetime. While the goal isn’t entirely clear, Kate continues to search for everything she can learn about Dana while she continues this journey. What she wasn’t expecting is just how personally invested she would become with the story, let alone how personal the result of the search would end up becoming.

If you are jumping into Syberia: The World Before as the first game of the series, there is a “Previously” tab on the main menu right when you first load up which will give you a preview of the last three games. It is a great way to get you caught up to where the story is now, even if it doesn’t provide the finer details such as the connection Kate has with a few characters and New York.

Gameplay

With the gameplay built around a point-and-click game, the controls throughout the game are pretty straightforward. You move around the world by clicking on the direction that you want to go, double click if you want to run, and interact with various objects and people in the game in the same manner. There are icons to show where key interactions are, as well as a few rather useless ones are.

Through the game, you can expect to come across various puzzles to solve. It will sometimes require looking around your environment for the answer while other times it could be having the right item or tool in order to get the job done. The most interesting puzzles are when it requires actions from both characters, the one from the past and the one from the present, in order to solve.

Other than interacting and moving around the world, you have some icons on your HUD to work with. If you click on the journal icon, you will open up your notebook that holds your notes and other key updates that you can look into as needed. By clicking on the exclamation point icon, you will be able to check on your current quest and any optional secondary quests that may be available to accomplish as well. The last icon is the question mark, which will provide a clue to help you figure out what to do and can be used once the meter on it fills up. You can have up to three hints per section of the game.

Something to keep in mind is that secondary quests take place in between your ongoing and constantly updating main questline. If you proceed through the main quest before doing a secondary quest, it will simply be crossed off and no longer available for you to accomplish.

Audio and Visual

The voice acting in the game is well done, but it does seem like the editing or placement of the voice work is sometimes off. Most noticeably, when a character is meant to interrupt another character in the dialogue, there is a pause between the two lines so the abrupt stop mid-line from one character is met with a short pause before the next line is spoken, which wouldn’t be the case if they were being interrupted. It doesn’t happen often, but it is noticeable when it does. Otherwise, the voice work is really well done for all characters and the music is notably fantastic.

Visually, this game is pretty stunning despite hosting a graphical quality that would be on par with early PlayStation 4 days. While this sounds like a negative aspect, it is rather fitting for the games style and still gives off a great aesthetic to the game that is enjoyable to witness. The mixture of nature scenery and steampunk living is also very well done.

Replayability

Given this is a narrative-driven game, the story itself would be the same overall in a second playthrough. While there are some choices that can be made differently when playing through a second time, I am not sure it would really make a difference in how the scenes play out. It seems like the story is pretty set in its direction and the choices made are more for how you would find the dialogue to be more fitting. Of course, if you wanted to try and complete all of the secondary missions along the way and missed a few in your initial playthrough, that could be a reason to play the game more than once.

What It Could Have Done Better

There were the occasional movement control issues that most point-and-click games tend to have. Honestly, regardless of where my character is if I am able to click on something that I want them to interact with they should be able to find the path to get there. It is frustrating that I have to move my character to a more open area or closer to the object before the interaction can be done despite the icon and option being presented to me.

The most annoying thing that occurred throughout the whole game was the fact that when I double click to run and then click on what they are running to interact with, they stop running. This shouldn’t stop them from running if they already were running and I should have to double click on the interaction icon to get them to run to it. The window to click on the interaction is small and they were already running, so the speed shouldn’t change just because they now have the goal to interact with what they are running towards in mind.

Verdict

Syberia: The World Before is a pretty entertaining game with a compelling story that can really hold a mystery fan’s attention! I truly was invested in this story and enjoyed the ups and downs that coming to the conclusion brought. While I typically don’t like the point-and-click setup, it works well for this game and it presented puzzles that were fitting to the tale and scenarios as well. Definitely, a narrative title I would suggest to players looking for good story - especially if you are picking back up from a previous Syberia game.

Syberia: The World Before is available starting March 18th on PC via Steam, GOG, and Epic Games Store. Console release is planned for later in 2022.