Celebrating its tenth anniversary, Quantic Dream’s Indigo Prophecy has been remastered and rereleased for Windows, OS X, and iOS. Known locally as “Indigo Prophecy” and “Fahrenheit” overseas, the newly released title is officially “Fahrenheit: Indigo Prophecy Remastered”, to remove any possibility for confusion between versions.

Gameplay –

Fahrenheit’s gameplay revolves around choosing your character’s conversation paths, think “The Walking Dead Game”, only seven years before. Throughout conversation you are occasionally able choose from two to five options of dialogue. The decisions you make determine how your game will play out. Ultimately, because of the limits of branching storylines in games, the choices you make (more than determining one of three endings), determine what part of the story you get. One example being which questions you ask when interrogating other characters. You can only choose to ask so many, so the answers that you (the player) want are the questions you should ask.

Another gameplay element involves a mental health meter. Throughout the game, events that occur will either decrease or increase your health (mostly decrease). The meter ranges from neutral being the best, and wrecked being the worst. If your health among any of the three playable characters reaches wrecked, it’s game over explained by your character having a mental breakdown or committing suicide.

The last major gameplay mechanic is a Simon Says style mini game that overlays the screen during action sequences. Using the WASD and arrow keys, the player must then copy the onscreen actions. If the player misses too many keys, then a “FAILED” message appears. You then either replay the sequence or continue on with lower mental health.

Story –

The game’s opening hooked me immediately. The main character, under some kind of cult spell, murders a stranger in the restroom of a small diner. Then snapping out of it, the player must hide the body, the evidence and flee the scene. It was dark, atmospheric, and mysterious, and I wanted to help the accused murderer figure out why this happened. Then you start playing as the detectives investigating the murder that you just committed, uncovering the evidence you just hid. Now I’m confused, am I supposed to be solving the murder? Throughout the game I debated whether or not as the detectives, I should actually be trying to catch the killer. Then the game gets really weird. Bizarre action scenes include fighting giant bugs, ghost angels, and… wind. Awkward deviations from the main story, most notably for me was the basketball game between one of the detectives and his co-worker, drag on for far too long and serve no meaningful story advancement. As the game progresses, it backs itself into a corner that it can’t get out of. Instead of explaining what’s going on the game just creates more unnecessary plot devices. The game, which started out as an intriguing murder mystery, becomes too crazy for it’s own good.

Remastered?

Yes the game is updated to a higher resolution, and yes, this is the uncut/uncensored version, but honestly thats it. Unless you’re playing the iOS version, or some other previously unavailable control scheme, the game is almost untouched. This is still the same game from 2005, only made “passable” for todays standards.

Ending Remarks –

In the end, as insane as this game is, I DID enjoy it. Despite not understanding exactly what happened in the last half of the game, it satisfied my love for the “interactive story” type games that Telltale is so known for. Also taking a break from the all too common First Person Shooter genre is a nice change of pace. The games Simon Says element takes more away from the game than it puts in, and unnecessary detours in the story left me confused and bored. For being made 10 years ago, practically before the genre existed, the game is by no means bad, but surely not without its fair share of flaws.