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Review: Fatale – Exploring Salome

Review: Fatale – Exploring Salome

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Edge Staff at 10:33am November 3 2009

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Format: PC
Release: Out now
Publisher: Tale Of Tales
Developer: Tale Of Tales

Of all the ways you could stage the Dance Of The Seven Veils using gaming technology, Tale Of Tales chose the most traditional: the developer found a dancer and asked her to dance, translating the entire thing to an animation. In the epilogue of Fatale: Exploring Salome, players watch an avatar that follows the movements of Eléonore Valere Lachky, improvising to music by Gerry Del Mol. It’s a striking bit of art for a title made by a tiny team of eight – a team that’s dominated by artists and artisans, rather than programmers.

Like Tale of Tales’ past titles, The Graveyard and The Path, Fatale is an art game in the purest sense of the term. The atmosphere is rich, with exquisite music and sound design courtesy of Jarboe (of the band Swans) and Kris Force (of Amber Asylum). The cold, wet cistern breeds dread, while the terrace above basks in the night air, its details brought to life with bright blue tiles and purple and tan stones – not to mention the golds and blood reds that surround the heroine. The characters, designed by Silent Hill artist Takayoshi Sato, hold up to close study; crucially, Salome’s expression comes off as inscrutable, rather than blank.

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Fatale is based on Oscar Wilde’s Salome, which tells the New Testament story of Salome and John the Baptist. It ends tragically for both of them, but the only death we see is John’s. In the first act, the player takes the perspective of John The Baptist as he’s trapped in a cistern, waiting for his executioner. The anxiety mounts as the Dance Of The Seven Veils finishes overhead; scramble for an exit or wait for your death and the ending’s still the same. Even that tiny bit of player agency is gone by act two, when John The Baptist’s head is on the plate, and Salome stands beside it, gazing over the terrace. Time seems frozen as the player moves, literally ghost-like, around the scene, zooming in to study each corner. Only the slightest breeze gives the player a chance to touch the scene – for example, to push aside the veils that litter the ground.

Players who read the play will recognize certain details, such as the moon, which looms as large here as it did in Wilde’s text. But Tale Of Tales tosses in some modern surprises. Take the band: they left their gear on the terrace, and it includes an acoustic guitar and an amp. And you probably didn’t expect to find a bar matchbook with “SALOME – CALL ME” scrawled inside the cover. Those modern details give Fatale a relevance that might have drowned in the story’s exotic New Testament setting. They also remind the players of their role: to explore and interpret the scene, even if they can’t change it.

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What does it all mean? Co-designers Auriea Harvey and Michaël Samyn refuse to give any clues; clearly, they’re more interested in sparking your reactions to the text. Last spring’s The Path was also wide open to interpretation, which served that title well. Players lead the young girls to difficult and disastrous decisions. Yet the characters choose the trouble they get into, and there’s a healthy debate about whether their decisions ended their lives or changed them. Different players, and different genders, bring their own experiences to The Path.

The same happens on a much smaller scale with Fatale; it’s up to the player to imagine what’s racing in the young femme fatale’s mind, as her victim bleeds by her elbow. Next to The Path, Fatale stands as a minor effort for this team – but it’s an engrossing one, and the best part is the titular star. In Wilde’s play, characters constantly warn each other not to look at Salome; here, we can study her for as long as we like. In fact, it almost plays as a joke on the “male gaze” in video games. Usually the games that encourage us to stare at a woman live in the same gutter as Onechanbara: Bikini Samurai Squad. But Salome possesses a classical beauty, full of hints about her state of mind. Her face is imperious but youthful; she’s aware of her sexuality – but does she understand yet what it means?

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Video games rarely offer the chance to look so deeply at a single character, or to spend so much time lingering over an environment and enjoying it for its own sake. Tale Of Tales is a small team, but they went across disciplines to find experts in every field, from the art to the music to that wonderous dance sequence. Plenty of indies wear primitive graphics as a badge of honor; Tale Of Tales pulled off Fatale with a team of less than a dozen.

Of course, Fatale isn’t really a game – hence the lack of a score at the bottom of this review. It’s closer to installation art, and players have to accept that they’re here to look but not touch. But there are moments where the player can affect the scene. Near the end, as you hover by Salome, you can summon the slightest gust of wind – just enough to blow her veil from her head, exposing her profile and making her seem younger, and less guarded. The moment is subtle, and it’s sexy – and the iPod on her hip just adds to the mystery.

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