Year in Review 2018 Letter Series: Florence-What’s Love Got to Do With It?
Hey Jess,
As of writing this, I’ve now played through Florence twice. I went in a second time because I wanted a refresher before starting this letter, and to see if maybe I’d pick up on something I missed the first time. It’s not exactly a secret that I wasn’t as in love with this game as everyone else seemed to be. It’s a sweet game with a nice message, and I’m glad it was able to give a video game relationship more depth than they’re generally afforded, but it just didn’t grab my heart or attention the way it seemed to with the general gaming public.
What did capture my attention was how the game’s mechanics were used to communicate different aspects of relationships. The way conversations change, how fights work, how we distribute space, and even how we see people through different phases of attraction and relationships, were all depicted really creatively and in ways I’ve never experienced before or would have even expected. Even their approximations of social media (especially using it on the bus/train) I found to be authentic in a way that I hadn’t thought a game like this could be. But when coupled with the plot of the game, the sum total fell a bit flat for me.
While Florence’s story genuinely does feel new for video game spaces, when I think about it in the bigger picture, it doesn’t seem any better than some of the rom-coms that have come out more recently. Watching a relationship start, lose its luster, and end is nothing new, and while I enjoyed the moral of Florence becoming comfortable with focusing on herself and chasing her own dreams, it honestly felt like a more modern, and a bit softer version of The Devil Wears Prada. That movie came out in 2006, and since then, rom-coms have made pretty significant and obvious strides in their plotlines and protagonists, but it seems like mainstream games are just now barely starting to consider how to catch up.
Like I said in my God of War piece, I think it’s good when games can spark new conversations within gaming communities, but at the same time, I’m getting so tired of constantly having to add “for a video game” to any conversation about one being good, especially when there’s a huge landscape of really well done, interesting games in the indie-space. (I know Florence is technically an “indie game” but being published by Annapurna definitely gave it a leg up that other, in my opinion better, games will never have.) It feels like the mainstream is always decades behind, and it’s so incredibly frustrating.
All that being said, I don’t want to be the cynical asshole in the room (honestly, I do enough of that as is). I know you enjoyed this game a lot and found real value in it. So tell me, what about Florence grabbed your attention, and made it special in your eyes? And how do we expand that attention to other games that are just as, if not more, worthy, but more under the radar?
