Eastshade Review - A Brush With Nature
Test: Eastshade, an adventure that lives up to its ambitions?Eastshade is from the eponymous studio founded in December 2013 by Danny Weinbaum, artist living in the United States specializing in 3D environments. This regular in triple AAA productions has left the comfort of his professional situation with an ambitious project: set up his own studio and make a game focused on the exploration of a world inspired by existing places, offering non-punitive mechanics imbued with lightness. This is how the island of Eastshade was born, a place whose universe was developed by Danny and his collaborators scattered all over the world. This vast territory, endowed with sublime decorations and populated by imaginary creatures, is presented as a contemplative experience focused on exploration and discovery, while teeming with possible interactions with the characters. We will see if the result is up to the promises of the studio and the expectations of players followers of productions offering an aesthetic and atypical experience.
LAST WILL
A somewhat enigmatic sequence will open the ball and place a first element of the context: your late mother has formulated a last wish before giving up the ghost. She asks you to go to the island of Eastshade, a place dear to her heart, in order to make use of your talents as an artist painter, by making different canvases of the magnificent landscapes which abound in the place. You accede to this request and this is how you disembark - let's say fail, a shipwreck later - on an island of which you know nothing, without equipment or resources and whose striking beauty is essential from the first moment.AN ISLAND WITH A FOREIGN POPULATION
In this open world exploration game, you play this artist with an unknown physiognomy, since Eastshade is made in subjective view. The meeting with the locals will raise a question: what may the appearance of our protagonist be? Indeed, the population is made up of beings lying between humans and animals. The simian facies are widespread, but you will also meet bears, owls and other deer. This surprising choice of chara-design seems to demonstrate the will of the studio to stand out from the flagship titles of the Open World genre and the feeling of strangeness felt at first will remain present from start to finish. That said, the behavior of the inhabitants of the island, faithful to that encountered in our societies, will still mitigate this feeling over the meetings.The natives will give you missions to help them get an object or interact with characters from other cities and places on the island. You get striking and stumbling rewards, new manufacturing formulas or objects. Some residents will ask you to paint canvases, an activity presented as one of the foundations of the title by the Eastshade studio.
A GOOD DOSE OF CRAFT
In order to carry out your works, you must collect the necessary materials and craft: fabric and wood, which are scattered in inhabited areas. You just have to pick them up, like all collectable objects which can be identified by their highlight. The interface and the menus are ergonomic, it is easy to understand how to maneuver. Producing the canvases therefore turns out to be childishly simple: go to the menu, choose the canvass you want to use, frame and click. It is possible to reuse an already painted canvas, in this case the content of the previous table is lost. Sometimes it’s going to be necessary to erase your works. Indeed, even if the materials can be stolen in different places and without risk - on the principle of “what is yours is mine” - they are not always easy to find, you can then be short of tables and find yourself faced with a dilemma: give up meeting the demand of an inhabitant of the island in order to be able to capture one of the splendid landscapes that you have unearthed? Or do you focus on the various quests entrusted to you and create the portrait ordered? Anyway, the opportunities to paint are ultimately more rare than imagined when approaching the title.ANTHROPOMORPHIC BEINGS THROUGH WELL HUMAN
Most of the mechanics will focus more on crafting and progressing on the island. The materials recovered make it possible to manufacture new objects which will encourage exploration and interactions with the characters also bring their share of items, in addition to making it possible to discover the different personalities that make up the population, as well as pieces of their history personal. When you enter into dialogue with one of the NPCs, a list of questions and answers is displayed, you are free to broaden the entire content or to be content with the questions that interest you. However, you must be careful not to offend your feelings by choosing the answers carefully, at the risk of putting you against some residents, with sometimes consequences on the course of the game. It is however possible to regret the lack of charisma of some quests, which will sometimes even become commonplace. Reading the writings in various places will also give you information to understand the way of life of the inhabitants and to obtain information on local history.EXPLORATION WANT YOU IN VOILA, YES BUT ...
Eastshade, an adventure that lives up to its ambitions?The game is organized like a Metroid-like, certain zones will only be accessible afterwards, by fulfilling a mission, by yielding a few coins somewhere, or even by making a boat in order to cross an aquatic zone, all implying many back and forth. When your character is present in an inn or a previously crafted tent, he can manipulate time and choose a specific time, which allows him to avoid being trapped in one of the freezing nights of the island.
Indeed, a survival mechanism is integrated into the gameplay. The day is organized over 24 hours and after dark, the ambient cold requires sheltering in the expectation of finding the sweetness of the days spent on the island. Eastshade is a title that bathes in a calm atmosphere, the addition of this survivalist dimension aims to give a little punch, but the marriage of these two characteristics is not in favor of the discovery aspect of the game. as long as you haven't been able to make a tent, or have the opportunity to acquire a drink or clothes that protect you from the cold, you are cut in your tracks when night falls. As long as you have moved away from the nearest shelter, the time allowed to avoid freezing is too short, even when using the possibility of running which increases the speed of movement. This mechanism no longer has a place in a survival such as Kôna, the Cold of the Far North, where the room for maneuver is more acceptable. It is all the more frustrating that the game resumes in the last hostel visited, which may involve traveling a large distance again to find the desired sector, or making you lose the thread of discovering one of the forgotten areas difficult to access. If the idea is not bad, it brings an imbalance in the fluidity of the gaming experience and seems to be there as an unpleasant hair on the soup.
REVEAL THE ARTIST WHO SLEEP IN US?
Certain meetings or places will trigger a light and sound effect indicating that an inspiration is nearby. This alert allows you to identify landscapes whose painting will be useful for progression. However, it is regrettable that the practice of this art is ultimately less present than what was hoped for. The panoramas are magnificent and varied, they invite contemplation and make you want to immortalize them, we would like to be able to keep them at will. However, the limit imposed by the quantity of paintings available does not allow it, it will not be possible to capture all the desired landscapes. In addition, the mechanics of painting are (too) simple, it is similar to an ordinary photographic shooting, with an in-game result that does not pay tribute to the level of graphic quality of the landscapes. If you want to continue enjoying these magnificent panoramas afterwards, you will need to use a capture function available on your PC.THE STRENGTH OF EASTSHADE: ITS ARTISTIC DIRECTION
An album of the works produced is not planned, there is also the possibility of landing there, enjoying the view and taking away the memory. The opportunities are numerous, whatever the environment, the textures are beautiful, the richness of the details consequent, just like the palette of colors which offers many shades and gradations.Eastshade, an adventure up to its ambitions? Eastshade, an adventure up to its ambitions?
The soundtrack is like the sets, it is very rich. Everything has been carefully designed, from the lapping of the rain to the sound of the cicadas, through the hubbub of discussions or the rolling of the sea, not to mention the background music that allows an immersive experience. One downside, however: the dialogs benefit from French subtitles which will prove to be punctually incomplete. If this does not hinder the understanding of the elements useful for progression, non-English speakers will at least feel embarrassed to grasp the details of the exchanges between the characters.
A technique that lacks chest
Eastshade, an adventure that lives up to its ambitions?
If the developers have put the package on the quality of the backgrounds, the appearance, the modeling and the movement of the characters are however a few notches below. On the other hand, the title presents certain points in its optimization which deserve to be reviewed. Anecdotally, elements of the decor can impede progress without this being unforeseeable. We can still emphasize the possibility of moving almost everywhere, within the limits of fairly realistic topographic constraints. More embarrassing, moving and changing areas too often lead to unpleasant jerks that break the immersion. Finally, bugs can come suddenly out of the atmosphere of the island, the most notable was the one that caused a crash of the game, when I chose to take advantage of a stay in an inn to go directly to the early morning.Eastshade is not a greedy title in terms of specifications and disk space, an operating system and a 64-bit processor are necessary, for the rest, a standard desktop PC still allows you to enjoy a good rendering of graphics. The 3GB of disk space required could potentially be increased: the possibility of reporting bugs or making comments suggests the implementation of fixes. Besides, some have already been made and we can only encourage it, the whole proposal of the American studio deserves its chance to offer a more fluid experience.
The notes
+ Positive points
Graphic richness
Quality soundtrack
An original experience
The immersion...
-Negative points
… Too often broken
Optimization to review
Poorly calibrated proposals
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