Republique
Developed by: Camouflaj / Logan Games
Published by: GungHo Online Entertainment
Available for: PS4 (reviewed), IOs, Android, PC, Mac
The first few minutes of Republique are disorienting and feel out of place. And that’s by design. Dropped into this somewhat-interesting world, it’s up to you to discover all the fantastic plot details and story points scattered throughout, all while given no information about what’s going on. Who are you? Where are you? Why are you here?
Hope, AKA 390-H, is disenchanted with the world around her; she’s sequestered in her room most days and dreams of the outside world along with her friend, WEEP or 933-W who seems to want some revolution against the strange organization they were born into. It’s tough describing Terminus and the Headmaster, mainly because there is so much going on, and it all depends on what you find throughout the world.
Republique is pretty straight forward. You are trying to help Hope escape this strange, cultish organization and see the open world for the first time in her life. To do that you need to hack your way through this massive bunker of a facility and sneak around patrolling guards. You have to jump from camera to camera to scout areas, finding emails and propaganda posters riddled throughout. Deep down, Republique is a stealth/puzzle game built on an unwinding, five-episode story, one that you can play at your leisure yet one where each episode devotes a nice chunk of time to each area of your map. Each chapter is structured around a certain area, and all of them are different in either a gameplay or structural sense.
You don’t necessarily play as Hope, at least, I never felt like I was hope. I was someone on the other end of this device trying to help this girl escape from a monotonous hell. You do control Hope a majority of the time, but your primary objective is to get her from place to place without being caught and using every ability you have to make sure sure she is safe. The story lends itself well to speculation and your reasoning. Situations play out involving a rich cast of characters either trying to bring you down or helping you along the way, and some of them are left in a gray area until further down the line.
Using cameras to navigate corridors and locking doors behind you are the ways in which you traverse the cold facility, and sometimes jumping from camera to camera brings up Republique’s biggest gameplay flaw. The hitch and delay between cameras can be extensive. Everything stops, the music, the dialog, the movement of every character. Everything. And by the time it gets going again, you’re motionless in a doorway. A game that relies on you not being seen and being quick about it can’t have long pauses where you lose track of your surroundings.
The ending of Republique left me feeling hopeful and then the ending after that left me feeling a little empty. While the story wraps up conclusively for most of the main characters, I’m still left wondering some questions about the world and dying to know more about this strange cult facility run by human hard drives. Maybe those answers are in the new game plus I’ve yet to crack open, or maybe I just missed some good audio logs. There is plenty to go back and do actually. Finding ‘Classic’ video games, banned books, (which seems to be every book), opening doors only accessible after finishing the game, it’s open season. The only problem is that this game relies heavily on the suspense and tension of a great story, and once that is gone you might wonder if there’s any reason to sit through it all again.
Unlike most stealth games, Republique does not rely on its gameplay. That’s not to say it’s bad; it just isn’t anything to write home about on a technical level. It’s everything else around it that keeps you playing. The characters, like the power-hungry cult leader, his lap dog, and a martyr, and Hope is caught in the middle of it all. It’s a terrifying look into a bleak repressive world restrictive of almost any freedom so deep only a book or movie could compare.
