Unknown 9: Awakening is not the prettiest game in the world. Its foliage is blocky, and its hair is stringy and unimpressive. But in its design and approach, it’s an entirely fascinating, enthralling game, and one that calls back to the best of the PS3 action-adventure genre in all the right ways. A wise person once said they wanted better, shorter games with worse graphics, and Unknown 9: Awakening could be exactly the answer to these prayers.
It feels strange to start a positive preview with what could be considered negativity – but the fact is the Unknown 9: Awakening team understands something most other studios haven’t seemed to grasp: “good” graphics mean nothing. It doesn’t matter if your characters are entirely photorealistic, with well-defined emotions, tiny little sweat beads, or folds of skin. What matters is a good and interesting game, with compelling ideas, strong and mechanically-sharp gameplay, and a world worth exploring.
Unknown 9: Awakening presented all these ideas within the space of a 1.5 hour preview, promising grand things to come from the full game. For the final time, I’ll mention it’s not the best-looking game, but given it managed to impress even with its wide-eyed character models and lack of awe-inspiring visuals, it could be something special.
Unknown 9: Awakening brims with clever ideas
In my gameplay preview, I played through one enormous quest that illuminated more about the game’s protagonist Haroona, played (in motion capture and voice acted) by Anya Chalotra (Netflix’s The Witcher). Haroona is a wanted woman, and over the course of the quest it became clear why: she has access to devastating “Quaestor” abilities that allow her to mind control folks, as well as turn invisible, put up a force field, and see through dimensions.
Read: Unknown 9: Awakening preview – Possessing potential
For unknown reasons, these abilities have put her in the crosshairs of a mysterious band of warriors, all of whom are attempting to capture her for their own means. As Haroona, you must escape their vision by wielding stealth-focussed combat abilities. Traversing a dock-bound city, you will encounter pockets of enemies you must defeat carefully.
Haroona isn’t superbly powerful at hand-to-hand encounters, so the best course of action is setting enemies against each other by “stepping” into their minds (you can make them fire on each other, swing their weapons, and ground pound) as well as sneaking behind them to snip their souls.
This particular ability was wonderful and horrifying. If you can get an enemy exposed, with their back facing away from you, you can literally rip the souls from their bodies – and they collapse in a way that suggests they’re quite dead. In combat, you get the sense that Haroona is quite vicious – and she pulls no punches.
Battle-hardened and stubborn, she makes for a strong and layered protagonist. While the preview did not dive into her back story, it’s clear she has secrets upon secrets, and that these will play a part in the wider tale of Unknown 9: Awakening.
After trampling through various enemy encounters, with a lovely balance of stealth and (literal) soul-crushing combat, Haroona eventually winds up on a boat with an equally-mysterious American gentlemen who fits neatly into the “Clint Eastward” bucket. He’s a gunslinger with a deadly quickdraw, and while Haroona is sceptical of his help, at first – she’s prickly and doesn’t trust quickly, thanks to her aforementioned past – he eventually becomes a handy ally.
An uncharted world
What follows this meeting is a platforming sequence that feels inspired by the best of Uncharted – hence those references to the action-adventure games of the PS3. You wander through a dense jungle, climbing along felled trees, and you emerge into camps of roving enemies. Again, you must dispatch them carefully, planning your moves, “stepping” into minds, and ensuring you use your abilities to their fullest potential. If you’re spotted, you’ll need to find cover quick, or risk being killed by a rogue gunshot or blast.
Certain enemy types in these camps also change up your strategy, with heavyset goons not being open to manipulation. These require you to think more about your environment, and spend time dodging and weaving, to have them run headfirst into explosions or tackle other enemies in their bluster.
Combat systems interlock well, based on these fights, with Haroona making for a dynamic and puppet master-like fighter. While her lack of health presents an issue, the combat in the game rewards cleverness and deeper thinking, as each battle feels like a puzzle to be solved.
In just over an hour, Unknown 9: Awakening showed off a lot of promise in its design and combat, and presented tantalising questions about its main protagonists. Its nature as a slice of a cross-media franchise may turn some away – the homework required for the Unknown 9 series includes novels, comics, and other tie-ins – but as a standalone chapter in this world, Awakening is shaping up to be a very fascinating adventure, indeed.
It’s currently flying under the radar, but it could be a major hit when it releases later this year.
As previously announced, Unknown 9: Awakening launches for PlayStation, Xbox and PC on 18 October 2024.
