Devotion (2019 video game)

Among the many fits the worst of the gaming community pitched half a decade back was an aversion to environmental storytelling, as though the success of “Gone Home” was going to mean the end of “real” games like “Halo” and “Gears of War”. If that line of thinking wasn’t debunked by the beginning of this year, “Devotion” annihilates it, conveying its domestic horror about the manifestations of anxiety and a culture that enables it through discarded drawings and faded photographs. At its center is a tale worthy of Poe, beautifully barreling towards a climax at once harrowing and heartbreakingly relatable.

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