u/claymixer

Decided to play whole Syberia series, all 4 games. It's series about woman called Kate Walker who used to be an attorney but then heard call for adventure and couldn't resist it. Story takes place in alternative version of Earth, where everything is 95% the same, but they have super advanced clockwork automatons and some other minor differencies like new countries and animals. I only played second game at the time of release and don't remember anything about it so you can say played everything for the first time. I actually finished last game half a year ago and still think about it sometimes so wanted to share my thoughts on it.

Can't really say much about previous games, first two are fine classic adventure games, puzzles mostly made sense, not much moon logic there. Though in second game I started using guide often because sometimes there are just giant locations with like 5 active important points and I was afraid to spend hours searching for them. Third game had godawful controls on mouse and keyboard, like almost unplayable at some points, and weak story about... colonialism I guess. Russian military really doesn't like this small tribe because they migrate every 30 years or something. Whole thing felt like giant overreaction for a very minor issue. Third game ended with Kate being captured by military and at the start of fourth game we learn that she was enslaved and spent year in salt mines.

My opinion about the game is very nitpicky but thing is, this game is closer to telltale's interactive movies type, so story is supposed to be main attraction here. And story is built on mystery and mystery is extremely boring and obvious, so nitpicking the story was the only way for me to have fun with game. We find ~70 years old portrait of a woman who looks exactly the same as Kate. Who is this mysterious woman? She is Kate's grandmother named Dana, that's the mystery. It might be interesting fact about real life person, but I think it's harder to turn it into captivating fictional detective story. In game we jump between "modern" days and ~70 years back, playing from Kate and Dana's perspectives. At some point we learn that Dana gave birth to Kate's mother but then WW2 happened and because of that they got separated. They tried to add more mystery to this story and instead made it just more baffling. Dana's lover, father of the child, reportedly died in expedition (he didn't actually, as we learn later) and childbirth went badly, so Dana was left infertile. And then Dana parents decided that this is not traumatizing enough so they also took away the child, gave away to the friends of the family and told Dana that her daughter died during birth. Why they did this? Well meta-reason is that story is very boring like I said, so they needed to add mystery, but in-world reason? I don't know, my headcanon is that her parents are just sadistic assholes and did it for the lolz to see their daughter suffer. They even made fake grave in city graveyard for "dead child" and convinced doctors to change records. This thing is probably intentional reference to the first game where father faked his child death, but in that case father was super influential rich dude who basically owned town, so he easily could have done something like this, but here it's just two small shop owners, how they organized all this?

Going back to the beginning, right from the start it's hard to take story seriously. Kate is enslaved and works in salt mines. She is in a prison cell together with another slave, and as far as I can tell, they are the only two workers in the whole mine. It's probably much more expensive to actually feed them and pay guards, than they earn from two women manually mining salt with rusty pickaxes. Also this world has super advanced mining automatons who can just mine for hours with no fuel, you just need to wind-up them sometimes. Anyway, Kate receives letter from guard and learns that her mother died in US while she was out adventuring in Syberia and so now she really needs to get out. While mining they accidentally find cave with hidden old Nazi train from WW2. Oh, sorry, I said Nazi? I mean of course BROWN SHADOW. Another difference in this world is that WW2 happened exactly the same way but it wasn't Nazi Germany, it was Brown Shadow Germany. And also it wasn't Jews who are victims of holocaust, it was Vagarians. Every time characters in game were talking about Brown Shadow it felt like youtubers who say "unalive" instead of "kill", so infantile. My favorite moment is when at the end of the game Dana says something like "We can't forgive Brown Shadow for all the atrocities they commited...". What atrocities? I don't know any atrocities that BROWN SHADOW commited, game never told me.

So back to the BROWN SHADOW train we found in cave. Near the train there is also 70 year old motorcycle which thankfully still has 70 years old fuel in the tank, so we can just use it if we find the key, this BROWN SHADOW was really good at motorcycle manufacturing and fuel distillation. While we search for the key in the train we find this portrait with Dana, Kate's grandmother and that's the moment game completely lost me. I said that woman in portrait looks exactly the same as Kate, but thing is, we have two characters, Kate and her slavemate, they are both women with same short dark hair, faces are not detailed enough to immediately tell the difference, so everytime during cutscene only one woman appeared on the screen I thought "Wait, is that Kate or other character?". And now one clone shouts to other "KATE, LOOK AT THIS PAINTING! THIS WOMAN LOOKS EXACTLY LIKE YOU!", bitch, she looks exactly like you too! Also like probably millions of other dark haired women, because the whole painting size of A4 paper and woman only takes fraction of this space, so it's just impossible to make detailed enough portrait. There is also hilarious moment later in the game where we see flashback to Dana's lover drawing this portrait and developers didn't actually have different model for painting, so his fresh drawing is the same 70 years old torn painting we find in the present. And guy also doesn't know how to use easel, he just attached piece of paper directly to it without canvas so most of the paper just hanging in air and he somehow draws on it.

We finally found key for 70 years old motorcycle who still has full tank of 70 years old fuel, but then guard suddenly finds us when we are ready to escape. Fight breaks out, our friend gets shot, guard gets knocked out. Friend while dying says "Kate... promise you will find who is this woman who kinda sorta looks like you". Okay, character who was introduced 20 minutes ago for the sole reason of dying and giving me motivation, not sure why it's so important to you, but I guess I will do that instead going back to America to like mourn my mother and deal with inheritance and stuff. Obviously finding origin of this painting that was lying in cave for 70 years is much more urgent and important.

And then we spend whole game to learn that this woman who is probably Kate's grandmother is Kate's grandmother. And also there is race of sentient monkey people who live in hiding in the mountains and one monkey person joined resistance against Brown Shadow, the end.

I kinda played the whole game out of obligation, I already finished first three games so have to finish final, can't just drop it. Can't say game worth it, there were some funny bad moments in game, but mostly it's just dull. Probably first two games are only ones that still worth any attention. There were sequel bait in the end... or pentequel bait I guess, where we suppose to learn about the mystery of monkey people, but I doubt I gonna play it if it's ever gonna get released.