Not wanting to tar this game, or saddle it with perhaps unfair, great expectations, but South of Midnight could be that dose of “story-driven, third-person over-the-shoulder” action that the Xbox first-party portfolio has long been without. Even more wonderful about the project is how, in a world where we’ve covered Egyptian, Nordic, Celtic, and Greek mythologies at length, it’s tackling an oft-ignored, and rarely catalogued, slice of America’s folklore.
The Deep South offers such a unique viewpoint for a video game, and it’s to the world’s detriment that so much of their history and tall tales are verbal as so much will gradually be eroded by time. But to get an interactive, illustrative interpretation of some of these stories in South of Midnight, rich with spirituality, enormous talking catfish, and familial strain, is certainly better than nothing at all.
Our hands-on time with South of Midnight took place during the game’s third chapter, Big Fish.
Coming from the team who, to this point, have launched Contrast and We Happy Few, I have to say South of Midnight is a pleasant surprise. Chalk it up to either learning brought forward after two so-so projects or to now having Microsoft money to play with, but South of Midnight has confidence that suggests the team knows what it’s got is special. Of course, being a couple of months short of launch, there are some superficial niggles to iron out, but the heart of this Southern Gothic tale beats true.
Although recent trailers and deep dives have told us that Hazel’s career pivot to Weaver, a “magical mender” of broken things within the world’s grand tapestry, comes after disaster devastates her hometown of Prospero and sees her family home, mother included, washed down-river by raging floods. Like Dorothy waking in the magical land of Oz, Hazel finds herself in the middle of a dark, macabre folktale where she’ll be forced to reconcile the tangled webs of her family’s past. For the preview, however, we’re plunged into a bayou and quickly meet a big, talking catfish who serves as Hazel’s guide in what feels like her first steps on her pilgrimage.
South of Midnight’s combat, which showcases the offensive power of the weave, is perhaps the only part of the game experience that gives me any pause. Granted, I feel as though we’re dropped into this hands-on right after Hazel learns how to fight and so, out of context, it felt kind of off. Brandishing mysticism against faceless, ghostly spectres doesn’t deliver as much fun as one might hope at first, and I got the sense that the player’s firepower in the game might end up being bare bones. As I got toward the end of the chapter, and I’d spent my “floofs” on a few upgrades, combat began to feel more fleshed out and well-rounded. These smaller, iterative bumps in power will well serve an eight-to-ten-hour video game, but if South of Midnight is any longer than that, I do worry whether it’ll have the juice.
It’s worth noting that less than half of the game’s available skills were available, so I’m expecting the combat experience to be day and night when compared at the game’s beginning and end. By enclosing every enemy encounter within a veiled arena of sorts, South of Midnight very much segregates combat from exploration, giving both of the game’s core tenets plenty of room to breathe. I was reminded of several games while traversing the abandoned Cajun township. There are moments of Jedi Survivor in the air-dashing, hints of Assassin’s Creed in the world-scaling parkour, and shades of Sands of Time in the wall-running—exploration is fun here.
During the chapter I played, I found I’d been quietly training myself to scour the map for floofs, other secrets, and hard-to-reach places, so much so that I felt prepared for the level-closing chase that felt like a gauntlet for the things I’d learned about the Grand Tapestry, and Hazel’s control over it, over the previous hour and a bit.
South of Midnight’s biggest selling point is, undoubtedly, its gorgeous stop-motion presentation. Of course, it can be toggled off for those who find the lack of smoothness jarring but it certainly is a great mask for having a few dropped frames here and there because if there’s an area in which the game requires some polish still it’s when Hazel enters an echo to play voyeur to past events. As it happens, tearing open the universe’s fabric to enter a separate instance of a certain time and place that looks like Black Panther’s Ancestral Plain is a little bit taxing on the system’s memory, and the loss of frames was noticeable even amidst the game’s Into the Spider-Verse-esque stop-motion flair.
There’s certainly a lot of magic to be found embedded within South of Midnight’s world, as well as in those who inhabit it. It has a unique style that’ll likely steal focus throughout and open the door to “style over substance” sledges, however, that should be seen more as a commendation for the artists at Compulsion rather than condemnation of the gameplay at large, as their staunch research has led to some truly stunning and imaginative interpretations of creatures and myths from the American South.
From the moment we saw Shakin’ Bones in the game’s original reveal it was clear that music, and the culture, would be pivotal to the game’s soul. It’s as rich a landscape as the bayou itself, with enough blues, twang, and jazz to fill the quiet. There was even a rad original composition during the final run towards painting the full picture of what happened between brothers Benjy and Rhubarb which serves to exposit much of their story.
Although it was just one chapter, I feel like I began to see the pattern of what South of Midnight could be. It delivers on irresistible style, microcosmic tales of trauma that weave throughout Hazel’s larger narrative, and a fun enough set of combat systems that, I expect, will broaden as the game goes on. It’s a wonderful glimpse behind the strands at a lesser-known folklore, made in earnest by a team who’re due a hit.
