A Long Rant
I loved Blue Prince and explored just about every rook in a nook and cranny in a pantry it had to share. I loved the art, the gameplay, the lore, the early to mid game puzzles, it felt like I was reading a book but experiencing it in a brilliant format, but felt like it gave up on itself in the very last stretch?
The end-game puzzles after castling and ascending the throne are miserable dupes and make no sense for a game with such depth to its world it has you learn its geography, arithmetic, language, angels, and secrets to literally take an exam on it.
Lady Auravei’s character is a disappointment, with her statement she’s given no one else her “esteem” in life? And she essentially does not care who will find her will, be they a descendent of her family or a Redguard? This makes no sense at all for the implication of her character within the house itself. She is tied to the Moon Pendant, one of the most prevalent pieces of Blue Prince imagery, and its gift is holding onto two assets the following day. She had two sons and this feels no coincidence and implies she is someone who deeply cares about and thinks of her sons and would want a descendant to inherit. Her will paints her frigidly, stating her husband is fine on his own, that Simon is better suited to the task of solving her puzzle (looking down on Herbert?), and she honestly doesn’t care who finds this because they’ll get her respect regardless.
It feels very inconsistent. She herself would have been an inheritor of the suffering of Orindians? She was alive for the dismantling of the railroads, the erasure of their culture? Just four years after finalizing the purchase of Mount Holly Estate they find the buried ruins of Castle Orindia? And she is fine with just anyone owning the estate? Even if that means that castle is destroyed in the attempt to continue the erasure of any Orindian traces?
The rest of the tone and themes of Blue Prince leads us to sympathize with Orinda Aries and to condemn the fascism under Fenn Aries. We are unmistakably led to feel protective of both the history of our continent but also of our heritage, our own mother risking her life to take a stand against the misinformation and deception of Fenn, and all the clues laid out by our Grand Uncle, by our Mother, by the rooms of Mount Holly, bring us to a place of solidarity with Orindians.
We are explicitly asked by our Grand Uncle after our “first” “inheritance” if we will continue to try to solve the mysteries of this house and our family and our world? But by the end, we are smacked in the face with a room of three boxes, essentially mocking us for wanting to solve what we were told we would and could solve. The meta-book “The Blue Prince” is patronizing, treating us as if we’re continuing to solve puzzles because we’re just obsessed with obvious dead ends within the house? No, we want to leave.
Alzara shows us going to Fenn, to Corarica, to the train station waiting for our mother, and it implies heavily we will go there. They would have had to design these places to even show them in these visions and it honestly just feels like there was more planned and they just weren’t able to execute that plan. And it isn’t that oh, Alzara is just unreliable, we do go where he shows us in his visions. We find the white sands, the castle implicated, we find the multiple chests in the reservoir, etc. But nothing ever comes to fruition on everything else? Not even official post-game implication?
“If we count small gates, eight dates crack eight safes” was intentional and led us to puzzle solve each safe we find with the dates hidden within the room. It was clever and thoughtful. Castling brought us further into the heart of our Orindian heritage, which makes sense after all we see in the underground. Symbolically, it’s fitting too, we’re a “rook” (a baron), switching with the “king”. It implies overthrowing the current fascist government, it suits all the previous storyline elements we’ve become familiar with. Figuring out the cipher with the clues left behind was fun even if a little more arbitrary with the placements of all the cipher’s pieces, and retrieving the Key of Aries by way of turning the hands on a clock after all the time themes (“It’s About Time”) felt right.
The rest of the puzzles?
Our mother’s train stop hints pointing to the sundial? She has been gone for years? How did she know that the communications would be down just for our mission? And it doesn’t even matter, ultimately? Communications just become a way for Staff to provide hints? Why would that be the message she leaves behind as she flees somewhere?
The maze after the Atalier is ridiculous, the rooms feel randomly generated, hence the use of the outer hallways because they didn’t even use the hallways as hallways? The rooms make no sense for some sort of intentional blueprint of the house? And Her Ladyship’s Chamber and the Master Bedroom and the Bunk Room aren’t even present for some reason? The Bunk Room was her sons’ in their childhood and a meaningful part of the past we have been coming to learn and it’s just not there in her final design of the house? What? It feels like they just generated the boxes and the rooms and dumped them in a random maze and didn’t care how it would end up.
The underneath tunnel, again, just a massive disappointment. And the “This journey will never end” box hinting towards the Spiral of Stars just for the Spiral of Stars to tell you to get off the game essentially (day automatically ending if you try to get another word) is just rude. I wanted the game to end, I wanted the journey to finalize in a way that’s meaningful.
The rest of the story was well-written, the books we read within the game were compelling, the history and lore felt expansive. It felt intentional and engaging, and the end-game felt strange and ended awkwardly, as if someone else wrote it, as if someone just gave up on the story. There is no indication that builds us up for the disappointment of the true endings. In fact, from the first major task completion, we are trained to believe if we just look a little longer, puzzle a little better, we can get Simon a little closer to the truth of his life and the wellbeing of his mother.
- I wanted to engage with the railways, the heart of Orindian transportation and culture, the soul of the country that seemingly connected the rest of the continent if not the world through that mode
- I wanted to either find or definitively not find our mother, whether it’s coming up with nothing (“searching for a shadow that will never be cast”) or reuniting with her
- I wanted to go to Fenn, the gardens as the visions show, I wanted to revisit the museum, the place of our mother’s crime and greatest act of rebellion
- I wanted to bring the Staff back, or at least have some indication they get to return at the end?
- I wanted to retrace the berry picker’s steps, and for where those events occurred to be relevant, I was disappointed that the idol was even in the chest since it supposedly was his headstone, I was so close to collapsing the gem mine because I thought maybe that would open up the way past because The Curse of Black Bridge ends in a mine collapse, I searched all over the grounds for a treasure trove of berries or the orchard to significantly imply it was the place of events, or for one of the large trees along the west road to be the tree you see in the story after Jesper has stolen the idol and is considering whether he is truly cursed or not and for there to be some secret buried beneath it?
AND why does the curse mean so little? “Deadly is the stone” but we are just reduced to 13 steps and the same curse you get when you take money back from the Shrine (did that one by accident but I learned something)? Is this because we are worthy of just a slap on the wrist as descendent of Orindian royalty and not the actual death and curse that The Unholy Hounds and Jesper undergo? And it really warns you not to get the idol either, and I assumed it would be the same as destroying the gem mine or the Chapel piggy bank, resulting in something permanent and pretty bad? But then it’s just really no big deal?
- I wanted the sigils to matter more than just, “good job you figured them out”?
- If Simon is the inheritor of the Family Core and we have learned about the sigils, and what they mean, and the trajectory of our family’s destiny, it would have meant so much more if the end could have been something as simple as building our own sigil for us using the new core? With a cut scene indicating what we’ve built and what that means for the rest of the world? Or if we don’t get to choose, at least let us discover what the sigil will become? Will we bring back the railroads, will we be poetic or industrial or martial? I wanted to know what happens to the world I have learned so much about
And, simply, the amount of what feels like unfinished puzzles is bizarre to me. Why is there a T in the Solarium and an N in the Mechanarium? And why does Randolph’s last letter have an “F E” hint? And why does the COFFE only have one E and the Pantry’s blue memo says “There’s a letter missing” and YEAH it’s the E in COFFE. What is the deal with the Den, or the Ballroom, and why is there SO VERY LITTLE actually in Room 46 besides the Will and the Crown. These and more, unsolved. I don’t get it? Even if these remained unsolved, just things to return to in the manor, to wonder about as loose ends, the main story should have actually wrapped up. The train stops should have been relevant to where Mary went, and how we might meet her or not meet her there.
It just feels like the developers weren’t allowed to finish the game, or they lost steam, and just needed to publish already. I still loved so much of the game, but its endings, how it tied things together, was so disorganized and uncharacteristic per the rest of the game. I hope Dirigiblocks is more than just Dirigiblocks, the fact it has taken so long to update with Dirigiblocks is somewhat hopeful, but, I don’t know.
The trajectory of the game definitely reminded me of my experience with Outer Wilds, I went in not expecting much and came out with a beautifully told life lesson. I went in not expecting much of Blue Prince either, just a fun and interesting puzzle game, but it began to feel like I was going to uncover something profound just to earn one (1) esteem…
I know the game has been data-mined, but with how well-written the beginning to middle is, it really feels like something is missing here and it simply can’t be what was planned for the end. And not because I don’t want it to end, not because I need or want more puzzles to solve, but because I wanted the game to end with dignity, and instead it’s ended for me like a power hammer to the back of the head.
I truly hope there will be more, so many games today simply won’t finish their stories wholly. What I loved about the beginning of Blue Prince was that it felt like an intentional story. I want something to follow, to learn, to end gracefully. This really felt like it would, I hope maybe it still may with a future update…
TL;DR — I loved the worldbuilding, lore, and carefully constructed early-to-mid game puzzles, but its endgame feels shockingly unfinished and convoluted compared to everything leading up to it. So many major story threads and mysteries end up going nowhere that it feels less intentionally ambiguous and more like the game ends before its actual final act.