One thing there is, however, is voice acting.

There are around five hours of gameplay on offer, and all of it is heavily reliant on capturing the player through its storytelling because, as we covered, it is a slow game with very little in the way of interaction. It takes some interesting sci-fi turns and ends in a satisfying, if a little predictable, manner. New factions have emerged over time in this dystopian society, and it’s fascinating to uncover the secret history of what happened and why your mother was there in the first place. It doesn’t get stuck and spend the whole game focusing on those dastardly Nazis, rather it moves on to what would happen if people were isolated in a bunker for decades in Bioshock’s Rapture-esque style. “Paradise Lost” is of course a direct reference to John Milton’s epic poem of the same name and deals with the Christian concepts of heaven and hell, and Adam and Eve and their fall, amongst other things, and is something which the game draws heavy inspiration from in its story structure.Īnd story is definitely Paradise Lost’s strongest area, and the great thing is that it subverts expectations. But these underlying contemplations expand further than the wartime remit. There’s a lot of subtext regarding eugenics, and what would have happened if the 20th century’s biggest villains were able to carry on their research for longer, as well as covering the often-overlooked Eastern European side of the war. There are references to Himmler, Göring and Speer (the “architect” of the Third Reich), and if you’re not familiar with what these historical figures were about, then a lot of Paradise Lost is going to go over your head. If the game wasn’t niche enough already, many objects are composed of correspondence between Nazi officials outlining what the bunkers are for, but there’s no overt exposition to inform players unfamiliar with the facets, tenets and individuals of Nazi Germany. This is something that must be embraced to find the game’s real enjoyment, however, which comes from the content of these letters and tapes. Gameplay consists of reading letters or listening to audiotapes to piece together the story, so there’s a lot of ambling to objects and standing around as you read/listen. But what happened here in the years since people went underground to live, and why was his mother photographed here? Replicating traditional German towns of the period, as well as many other amenities, it becomes clear this was a place for long-term living.

It’s dark and seemingly abandoned, but knocks and screeches keep you on edge - are you really alone? Paradise Lost isn’t a horror game, or scary at all in fact, but the creepy atmosphere will keep you on edge.Īs you make your way further into the bunker, you come to understand its scale. We’re first given control of Szymon as he enters the bunker from, we assume, the photograph. Heading out into the frozen wastes with an old photograph of his mother and a man inside of one of the Nazi bunkers, he seeks answers.Ĭleverly, Paradise Lost uses Szymon’s grief for his mother as a structural device, and so instead of traditional chapters the narrative is split into five parts, each representing the stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. It’s here that Paradise Lost starts in 1980, with you taking control of 12-year-old Polish boy Szymon following his mother’s death. Subsequently, all kinds of nuclear weapons were used, and Europe has fallen into a nuclear winter. The game charts a world where the Second World War happened slightly differently, allowing the Nazis to continue their struggle against the allies from cavernous underground bunkers for decades after their real defeat in 1945.

This bunker is more opulent than the average

Paradise lost game