 Pyre is gorgeous and I don't know why it's taken me so damn long to sit down and finish it. I started playing it in July 2017 back when it was released 11 months ago now and I only finished it a week or maybe two depending on when this video comes out ago at the end of May 2018. The first thing that comes to mind when I think of Pyre is God damn it this game has the most beautiful vibrant living colors I have ever seen. Every single scene in this game could be a wallpaper. Every single scene in this game is something I would much prefer to have surrounding instead of the white walls of my apartment. There's something to be said about a game developer who can put out such a remarkable amount of stunning video games just on a purely graphical standpoint. But there is so much more going in Pyre than just the beautiful outer layer than the graphical presentation. I'm talking about deep characters, the mixing of possibly three video game genres and somehow making this product work. A deep world, I don't know how to count my fingers, a very deep world, fantastic characters again and very fun to listen to, blabber a language that the characters speaking whenever you read their messages, pardon whenever you read the text their dialogue. It's something very strange and unlike anything I have ever played before there's a lot to say about Pyre so I'm just going to put a few things out here. I'm going to run through my favorite features of the game and it's going to be fun hopefully. The graphics are well and fine but we all know it takes a lot more to make a game worthwhile or at least we all should know maybe the voice that dies don't. I'm looking at you but from too I'm looking at you. What does this game have going for it? Detail by detail. First of all Darren Corb once again returns in the world of gaming with a fantastic acoustic and vocal presentation that simply makes this world much more believable much more exotic and nothing short of sublime to listen to. I have spent hours since I finished the game just listening again and again to my favorite tracks and even those that I don't like as much as my favorite ones they are worth listening to many times over. Take listen to this for example. The home is known as the common world and it is not a nice place not at all. For one reading is outlawed so if you've got books and if you can read you will be sent into exile into this horrible wasteland where the game takes place. With a player's say the role of the reader who obviously reads and takes control guides his fellow exiles into three-on-three matches of very strange sports. Yes it's it's like basketball. If you consider individuals throwing themselves into the enemy's pyre in order to diminish it. A regular thing that happens in basketball and yes they are holding a ball and yes they can throw the ball in the pyre if they want. A lot of the time you spend while playing the visual novel you will be making choices and these choices have a lot of outcomes. Outcomes upon outcomes upon outcomes which depend both on the choices you make inside the visual novel and on the ones you make while you are you guessed it playing insane fire basketball. It's a lot of fun first of all. Second of all there's no lose state no defeat state. What I mean to say is that no matter how many times you lose at dangerous fiery basketball you will keep moving forward. Sure you can go back and restart while you're still in the match. You can restart the match and try your hand at winning but if you lose and you shouldn't be afraid to lose if and when you lose more like losing is a part of the story. When you lose things happen. Things that wouldn't happen otherwise and things which are quite interesting. If I had anything to say about it I would say try not to lose but when you do don't restart the match you're playing. It might seem like it's worth it if you're going after some lofty goal to win but I think it takes away from the experience of the game. This game has been crafted with the idea that you cannot lose not in the game over end state. No your losses just add to your own continued story and I think that's very unique that's very interesting it's not the first game to have done it certainly but I think it adds something unique to the story something that I personally really enjoyed and something that took me in a direction I did not expect. How about the characters themselves? In a game which is three-fifths text based the writing of characters can make or break the game. In here as before supergiant games do not disappoint. I have enormous respect and admiration for the guys who are writing these games none of the adventures we've seen so far neither bastion nor transistor nor pioneer now have anything resembling weak writing even though some people I seem to recall did not like transistor as much as they like bastion I still thought it was a very powerful game with a very very interesting story and my favorite game of 2014 probably probably the thing is past characters are all memorable they're all interesting the way you play the game and communicate with your fellow exiles will very much add to their personalities you can change them you can learn lessons from them and teach them lessons of your own and those will often stick so the thing is what you're trying to do is you try to liberate your fellow nightwings through a liberation right which is just one more of those basketball games fire basketball games but with a lot more stakes on the side if your team wins one of your exiles will go on to be liberated if your team loses the leader of the enemy team will then of course go on to be you know liberated on his or her own and sometimes that can have some pretty horrifying effects I think I think the thing is who do you decide to liberate first because if it's your favorite character or your most useful character or your most powerful character you go on for the rest of the game without ever playing with that character so it was that I the first liberation right I chose Hedwin who was my primary player and I really loved interacting with him I absolutely enjoyed spending time conversing with Hedwin in between matches and while traveling inside this wasteland whose name I completely forgot it just absolutely slipped away the thing is once I sent him to be liberate liberated he was gone and this relationship was gone and so it was very bittersweet and every liberation right I won was very bittersweet because I saw friends rather the reader saw friends he loved friends he he cared about those friends they were no longer there and that that is a very interesting thing they did at Supergiant Games they managed to make you care about people so you want them to get out of their exile to go back home to help build up on this plan that spoilers all about taking the Commonwealth down and changing things around true peaceful means not true weapons of war so it is that you lose people you lose your best players because also you can't you can't send whoever you can't send your weakest characters your characters they have ranks from one to five and you need to be at least ranked three I think in order to have your characters sent on their way now that makes for a moral choice of sorts do you send the ones you least liked because well you know once they're outside you can keep spending time with your favorites but then how is that fair to your favorites right because they deserve maybe they deserve freedom more than those guys you just send because you don't like them because they're pricks although I have to say no one in the team is actually a prick I don't think there's some because some are more likable than others that's I think completely normal but none of them are pricks none of them are unlikeable all of them have a story to tell they have their personal stories they have their personal lives they are living breeding characters all of whom I think were written really really really well and all whom you want to see freed and when you mess up and you don't win a liberation rights you feel bad because at some point you realize the liberation rights are finite so no matter what you do you will never release everyone so that just adds yet another yet another issue to what you have to consider as you pick your choice in the next one and the one after that huh it's a really good game obviously you can tell my favorite character I I'm wondering between Faye the crazy girl who hears the voices of the prophets no not the prophets the scribes you see the scribes are the ones who came up with the liberation rights you learn this very early on Faye is a crazed 19 16 year old with gray hair she looks amazing she's got these red eyes and she is probably kind of possibly schizophrenic but 100% awesome and very friendly and outgoing and other than hearing the voices of the scribes which she might be she is fantastic the second character I completely adored was captain who is this powerful demonic woman with big horns and an imposing figure presence which just completely blows you away even through the text and through her or through her voice work she sounds absolutely badass and she is the most physically powerful character in the group without a doubt other characters with fantastic headwind I already mentioned there was this sea knight who was all about glory and honor and he was adorable I enjoyed Tiso the wise an imp a demonic little imp who is nothing short of the most adorable thing you've ever seen he's fluff with tails with a tail and two horns one of which is I think kind of broken and put back together with something that looks a lot like tape which is weird but he is completely adorable we've got the Bogdweller betrude who is intimidating and scary but also interesting we've got mr. Sandalwood whose name whose first name eludes me right now I don't have it in my notes I have actually have just a tiny bit of notes which I prepared whenever I lost my train of thoughts which happens a lot but not too much never too much what else who else rather we've got we've got this puppy this adorable puppy who is rogue he's a fun rogue he is in love with the lady pups and he is nothing short of well he is the sexual revolution in puppies there are more characters I think yeah definitely a few more there's a harpy there's a harpy the harpy is really interesting and her art is kind of sinister in purely in its aura it's very very interesting her personal story it's about two sisters two harpy sisters she's on our team and her sister is on the other team and her sister actually won one of the two liberation rights I lost and she went free and part of that was because the sister she asked me to let her go you know I couldn't I couldn't deny her in a way but also I I had just returned from playing the game from not playing the game for six seven months and I had totally forgotten how to play the game how to do the actual basketball part of the game so I sucked completely on that and I lost no excuses absolutely no excuses on that front that's that's about all I have to say right now amazing characters a world which is both deep and very very interesting and oh of course we've got low in Cunningham returning to his role of narrator and this time I literally thought he was another guy when I first listened to his performance here because he sounds a lot more like me and a lot less like that gruff really low really really epic voice which narrated both bastion and transistor he sounds completely different he sounds more like greetings reader what have we here today they still honor the traditions of the scribes and surely have been longing for this chance but first you have a choice to make and here's this deeply sarcastic sarcastic caustic announcer who basically narrates what happens during their in combat during the basketball matches during the pyre matches let's call them that that's much better writing and what else am I to say about this this game was truly truly a celebration of everything that made the previous games great in terms of art direction and writing just general quality of writing as well as a fantastic new venture into genres you would not have expected supergiant games to touch upon and when I was thinking of hmm what will be the third game that comes out of supergiant I never thought it's gonna be a sports simulator with you guessed it visual novel with a bunch of characters thank you for watching this it was an extremely amusing video to make and I can't wait to do a lot more of its like I've decided to break away from the format I've been using for the last few year for the last few months to try and do something different something with cameras something with my face on it for at least a portion of the time and I think it's it works I hope it works you're gonna tell me if you enjoyed this video please like it share it subscribe and leave a comment let me know what you enjoyed let me know what I could do better let me know if you enjoyed that handsome mug of mine and I cannot wait to see you next time bye