Although Syberia 3 does ooze certain shades of the likes of a Telltale IP, this entire process was less stuttered and much more detailed, with only a couple of lip-syncing issues ever pulling me out of the engrossing nature of Kate’s simple escape objective. The rest of the asylum portion plays out as expected, with me directing Kate to explore every nook, cranny and corner of its inner yard with the hope of finding the correct tools that allow her to make her escape. It was a minor yet welcome extra layer of decision-making not always seen in other games of Syberia 3’s ilk. Outside of the conventional adventure game formula of simply selecting from a choice of four arbitrary responses, as Kate I had to think a little more about whether to tell the truth in order to win my freedom, or lie knowing that I would fail the test but perhaps lessen the risk of revealing Kate’s mission. It’s when playing through dialogue sections of Syberia 3 such as this when the concepts of influence and persuasion really come to light. Remember that death chair contraption I mentioned earlier? Yes, it’s this in which Kate finds herself in now. “We got the idea of having this one character call her ‘Kate-Kate Walker’ after she introduces herself as such, from the way the trolls act with Bilbo in The Hobbit, a somewhat subtle dialogue choice that just helps the word feel more real for the player.”īack to the asylum, and after having Kate best a simple rewiring puzzle in order to escape her room and investigate further, it isn’t too long before she’s forced to ‘earn’ her freedom by way of satisfying a certain menacing character’s lie detector test. Having seen just a mere sneak preview though, Lagravette assures me of the kinds of folks and tribes Kate will meet throughout her ambitious adventure. But despite this unsettling initial locale, the game’s welcome sense of intrigue and mystery never failed to shine through.Ī lot of this comes from the cast of characters sporadically dotted about the asylum.

The initial hands-on portion of the game I was lucky enough to try out begins by placing me within the confines of a decrepit asylum set early on within Syberia 3’s core narrative, unabashedly being a location that’s more One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest than the comforting cloud-filled vistas of say, Broken Age’s Meriloft. Sitting down with the game’s co-writer and lead game designer Lucas Lagravette, it’s immediately obvious that Syberia 3 places emphasis on providing a totally immersive and otherworldly interactive narrative adventure. The latest venture into Benoit Sokal’s long-running adventure game franchise, which after a 13 year hiatus, is set to grace multiple platforms this April, rendered fully in 3D for the first time. This is the scenario I recently found myself in when playing through an early preview section of Microids’ Syberia 3. Confined to the straps of an unsanitary death chair contraption, glancing up and down the walls of a run-down institute while trying to pass the pop quiz of a quite clearly maniacal inquisitor – it’s fair to say that for former American lawyer Kate Walker, things haven’t quite gone as planned.

Syberia 3 gameplay