Quick Review: 11-11 Memories Retold

We know Aardman Studios mainly for their stop-motion animation. It is great to see them dip out of their field of expertise to offer another unique product. Today's game was inspired by, and is a longer version of, a short film of theirs displayed at the Imperial War Museum.

Click this pic, take a moment to look at it at full size.
The impressionist effect is really something to behold.

Developed by Aardman Animations and Digixart, published by BANDAI NAMCO and released on November 8th, 2018, this story follows two men on opposite sides of the First World War. Harry Lambert, a Canadian photographer (voiced by Elijah Wood), is encouraged to join the army in a non-combatant role as war photographer, to win the heart of the woman he’s in love with, his boss’s daughter at the studio. Meanwhile, German engineer Kurt Waldner (voiced by Sebastian Koch) learns that his son’s unit has gone missing, and he drops his work building airplanes for his country’s army to enlist, hoping to find him. Both will find themselves in the fire of action. During the battle of Vimy Ridge in 1917, both become trapped underground together and, in survival, develop an unlikely friendship. Even as they leave that predicament, they must make sure the war does not take away their humanity.

Another early scene, showing Kurt working on planes.
The scope of it, the vertigo of climbing.
The game pulls you in with these sights.

Take pictures of your new friends! Who might
not survive this damn war.

Gameplay here is fairly simple; moving around, exploring and interacting with the surroundings, to solve puzzles. There is a different focus between characters: Harry can take pictures, and the story may change depending on the subjects he features in photos. I do love me a good photography game, so I’m all for it. At times, Harry can send pictures back home to Julia, changing her opinion of him. Meanwhile, Kurt’s expertise allows him to tinker with machines to progress; on top of that, he will often write letters to his wife and daughter. You choose what to write, and you’re encouraged to interact with characters to add things to write down. Later into the story, we also take control of a cat and a pigeon.

Better tell the truth. ...right?

The style and the size of the setpieces does mean
there's a lot of stuff the game has to show; as a
result, it's very resource-intensive.

As emphasized, focus is less on inventive gameplay and more on telling an interesting story through it. What is inventive, however, is the look borrowing from impressionist paintings. Oh, you can tell it’s still CGI under all that, from the way the characters walk to how the world functions around them, but the effect astounds nonetheless. I don’t know if they manage this effect through filters or some other way, but it actually looks quite interesting! …Though it does take a moment to get used to, seeing as it often makes the game feel blurry and, thus, some things hard to make out. Thankfully, indicators of people and items you can interact with are not subject to it. I’m also not sure why, but both player characters would often swing wildly left and right as they moved forwards, with the issue being worse when they ran.

Looks like I'm headed for the wall, but I swear I was trying
to run forward here.

I mean, what are the odds of that bird becoming their friend
and comingh to their help in times of need?

In my personal opinion, the story gets far more interesting at Act 2 onwards, when our two protagonists meet and wind up having to help each other, with a language barrier to overcome on top of everything else. It gets great, seeing Harry and Kurt become like brothers, even at the darkest of the war. Beyond the story, you can look for collectibles in the form of pieces of papers scattered around the chapters. The issue with that is that due to the more cinematic way in which the game is designed, it’s often unclear where/when a scene ends, so you can easily miss out on those items. Depending on what’s going on, you can cut some dialogue short, but no cutscene is outright skippable – making potential replay a slog, and getting all seven possible endings a bit of a chore. I know, I did it.

A cat chasing after ghosts on a field red with the blood of war.
Anytime someone says games aren't art, show 'em this one.

I'm pressing! I swear I'm mashing S like my life depends on
it! Why the Hell won't it work?

The story is excellent, no doubt there. The game relies a fair bit on QTEs for some scripted sequences, though your choices rarely make a significant difference (outside of the final stretch, anyway). One issue I ran into was that the game would fail to register my key presses during QTE moments, either until it was too late or at all. One scene, in particular, wouldn’t work whatsoever until I lowered the quality and resolution in thge options enough to make it function – and I don’t know whether to blame my hardware or the game for it. Of the seven endings, most are sad, and even the best one may not be perfectly satisfying depending on how you look at it. But hey, that’s the nature of war. This game carries an important message and does so in its mix of complex characters and gorgeous aesthetics, and is definitely worth checking out.

11-11 Memories Retold is available on Steam for 29.99$.