GOL Cast: Solving A Great Mystery In Fahrenheit: Indigo Prophecy Remastered

I apologize for my absence and for how late this article is. It seems the cold winter has some negative effects on my health. But anyway, today I'm here to bring you my thoughts on Fahrenheit: Indigo Prophecy Remastered!

Fahrenheit: Indigo Prophecy Remastered is, as you can tell by the title, a remaster of a game that was originally released over 10 years ago. The original game, sold as Indigo Prophecy in the US and as Fahrenheit elsewhere, was developed by Quantic Dreams. In the game you play as three characters: Lucas Kane, Carla Valenti and Tyler Miles. Lucas mysteriously commits a murder in a diner without really knowing why he did it and then tries to find a reason for his mysterious behavior. Carla and Tyler are sent to investigate the said murder and then attempt to find and catch the murderer. However, soon it becomes clear that this is no typical murder case and the case is connected to a dozen other similar cases. Your job is to figure out what is happening behind the scenes and who or what is truly behind the murders.

This is a full review of the game from someone who never played the original.

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This port was truly unexpected. I don't think anybody could have thought that a game from a decade ago would get remastered and ported onto Linux by Aspyr Media. But don't let the age of the game fool you for there's a reason why many people consider this game a classic.

The developers of the game like to call this game an interactive movie instead of calling it an adventure game or any genre like that. And that's a fairly accurate description of this game, both in the good and the bad. And no, I'm not talking about framerates this time. The game focuses heavily on the story and thus the gameplay side is lower on the list of priorities. But the story is where the game also shines the brightest. It's very detailed and the game constantly presents you with choices that will affect the story even in the long run. Sometimes these choices can be tiny and seem almost unnoticeable but later in the game something might have changed quite drastically because of that choice. Of course the story will still mostly stay the same but it's interesting to see that what you do truly matters.

At first the story seems quite realistic and it starts of slow but around the halfway mark I think the writer went a bit bonkers and after a serious plot twist the theme changes a lot. Around the end I was a bit confused by the sudden turn of events. I think the game designers wanted the game to be something a bit bigger than they originally thought and thus they made some quite odd decisions regarding the story. But overall the story was still very enjoyable with interesting characters.

I mentioned that the gameplay wasn't really the focus and I mean it. Most the gameplay is you conversing with various people, doing some puzzles that involve you interacting with various objects in a room or doing quick time events. And believe me, there are lots of QTEs in this game. A big part of the game is mainly just watching the action happen and mashing buttons to make your character evade blows etc.

That doesn't mean the game is extremely easy though. The QTEs can sometimes get quite crazy and failing them enough can get you killed. You also need to take care of the mental health of your characters. Witnessing or doing bad things is going to decrease the mental health while doing/witnessing good things will increase it. And if your characters get too depressed they will break down and even commit suicide. I didn't have too many problems with the mental health when I played the game through and surprisingly Lucas' mental condition was often the best out of the bunch even though he has murdered someone and often sees quite scary hallucinations. A couple of times the game also threw sneaking levels at me where getting caught would result in you having to restart the level from the latest autosave. In my opinion those levels were the worst because the game doesn't really have an awesome sneaking system and sometimes it was a bit unclear as to where you should go.

The game also occasionally changes the gameplay a bit by dropping you into various kinds of “mini-games” and sometimes even first-person sections. In one of them you have to shoot at targets in the shooting range of the police station and in another you need to find a certain file in the dark archives of the same building. These give the game some variety but they also break the consistency a bit, especially those first-person sections. They were a neat addition nonetheless and they aren't too numerous.

Finally, let's talk a bit about the port and naturally the remaster. The remaster was done by Aspyr Media and that alone probably gives you a rough idea of the quality of the port. The remaster itself adds HD textures to the original game along with better controller support and 16:9 resolutions. The gameplay and the models are untouched however. And it's these areas where the game shows it's age. Even with new HD textures it's quite obvious that the models don't have quite as many polygons as those in many modern games. However, the new textures make the game a lot more smoother and you can switch between the old and the new textures using the F9 key to properly see the difference.

The characters are controlled with so called “tank controls” meaning that you walk forward with W, turn to left and right with A and D and you can do a U-turn with S, unless you play the game with a controller, in which case you use your sticks. Those are not quite the controls many of us are used to and it took some time to adjust. The remaster also features the old system to interact with objects, which requires you to face the object you want to interact with and you select the interaction by pressing the mouse button (on mouse and keyboard setup) and then move the cursor in one of the 4 general directions to make your selection. It's not inherently a bad system but it too takes some time to get used to and the system might work a bit better if you play it on a controller.

It's also worth noting that the remaster comes with all of the content of the original game, including at least one sex scene. Not sure if that's a selling point but I figured I would mention it anyway.

Performance-wise I don't really have anything major to complain about. There are occasional framedrops that are quite visible but they tend to happen during cutscenes and thus they won't directly affect your gameplay. So that's just a minor annoyance. I haven't encountered any crashes or any bugs either so the port is of solid quality like you would expect from Aspyr.

I imagine this game will split the crowd into those who love it and those who hate it. The QTE-heavy nature of the game and unconventional gameplay might definitely be a turn-off for those who value interesting gameplay over story but those who play games specifically for the stories might want to take a look at it. It's around 8 hours of detailed and interesting story telling and even as someone who never even saw the original game I am happy to have experienced it. Just be prepared for that major plot twist halfway through the game if you are going to buy it.

Buy the game from GameAgent

You can also get the game directly from Steam.