Hindsight Review: An intense and melancholy journey from Annapurna

Among the novelties proposed by the multifaceted Annapurna Interactive Showcase last July, there was also the announcement of the release date of Hindsight, a promising narrative adventure. With a new trailer, Joel McDonald and his team have made an appointment to the public for the day of August 4, 2022. Now available, Hindsight awaits the most curious players on PC, iOS devices and Nintendo Switch, where we had the opportunity to try our hand at the title. Reach the end credits of the experience in a few hours, we were pleasantly struck by the intensity of the proposed journey, which, although short and with reduced interactivity, manages to effectively convey emotions and feelings.

A window into the past

After more than four years of development, Joel McDonald – former author of Prune – accompanies the public to discover a deeply intimate and personal story, to be experienced through continuous changes of perspective. In Hindsightthe players from the very first seconds immerse themselves in the shoes of Mary, an adult woman who suddenly finds herself having to turn her gaze to her entire past. A journey through memories triggered by the sudden death of the elderly motherwith whom he had had a conflictual relationship all his life.

The need to cope emotionally and materially with the loss lead Mary to return to the family home, where the mother lived until her last day. Remained away from the villa for many years, our protagonist will soon be overwhelmed by the memories and echoes of the past that resonate between the old childhood games and the most precious possessions of her mother.

The flowers sprouting on the driveway, the piano lying silently in the entrance of the house, the dishes neatly placed in the cupboard: each object turns into a window on a more or less distant paston a journey that moves from the first days of Mary’s life to the present.

And we speak of “window” not only in a metaphorical sense. In manipulating the individual objects that still populate the home, we end up opening as many paths to other times and other places. A mechanic that represents on balance the only purely playful dynamic from Hindsight, which entrusts the intensity of the story with the task of driving the whole experience. By changing the perspective from which we observe a book, a lamp or a teapot, we open up portals aimed at making us relive a particularly significant moment in Mary’s life. Fragment after fragmentthe mosaic of an entire existence is thus composed in front of the eyes of the gamer, thanks to a melancholy stream of consciousness of the protagonist.

As simple as it is, the gameplay behind Hindsight it is effective, above all thanks to the support offered by the artistic direction, which it manages to devise suggestive and often unexpected transitions. The mysterious beam of light that illuminates a cliff changes in the neon light of a hospital room, a horse running free loses consistency until it reveals a child in love with music. There reduced duration of experience – which lasts between about three and four hours – helps to avoid the possible onset of monotony, for an Indie that looks above all to an audience looking for a journey with staid rhythms and nostalgic tones.

Memory or reality?

Overall, Hindsight it is therefore placed in the same videogame universe of titles such as I Am Dead (for more details find here the review of I Am Dead) or The Artful Escape of Francis Vendetti (and here the review of The Artful Escape of Francis Vendetti) – to mention other productions published by Annapurna Interactive -, in which an extremely basic gameplay is accompanied by a predominant role of narration. But what does the obsessive reconstruction of the past that takes shape in Mary’s mind try to tell us?

As we have already mentioned, the girl’s relationship with her mother was not idyllic. To distance the two figures was a growing communication difficulty, which for a long time prevented the two women from seeing the human being behind the role of daughter or parent.

Moved to the USA from Japan, the mother found her life partner in an American man, but she never agreed to be able to lose her cultural identity as a result. The need to remember the language and customs of the Rising Sun has strongly shaped the fluctuating relationship between the woman and Mary, in a continuous comparison between different ways of dealing with emotionality and existence. A loving and silent mother or a detached and ambitious woman? Until the very end, Mary will continue to wonder what the real nature of the person who brought her into the world was. On these premises, Hindsight builds a delicate story, well written and excellently articulated in timing and themes. In the adventure there is no space for simplistic or trivial considerations, but an accurate and intimate reconstruction of a relationship weakened not by the absence of love, but by difficulty in observing things from multiple points of view. A truth that Mary only understands when – maybe – she is too late to deal with the past and with her own mistakes. Between idyllic memories and dark moments, the life told by Hindsight manages to turn out touching without forcing or exaggeration, in a pleasant inner journey to be lived alone and – preferably – all in one breath. To accompany it, a soundtrack of simple workmanship, which, while pleasant, could have benefited from greater variety.