Mythic Ocean Review — Russell Troxel

Jan 18

Jan 18 Mythic Ocean Review

In terms of how to live life, I’m pretty sure I don’t know that much. I’m not sure many other people do either, but that’s beside the point. To me, it seems like the world is too big and too chaotic for any foolproof solutions or set of rules, so I tend to just deal with problems as they come. I figure this makes me a bad candidate for parenthood and also someone you probably shouldn’t ask for life advice. But fortunately, actions taken in video games very rarely have a notable effect on the real world, so I decided I would advise some gods in Mythic Ocean, a new game from Texas game developers Paralune Games.

Mythic Ocean caught my eye with its unique premise: act as advisers to the gods. This is something I’ve never seen before and it intrigued me. In Mythic Ocean, players are a being that hangs out with gods, not a god themselves but a kind of counselor of the divine beings that create and oversee the worlds of mortals. At the beginning of the game, the gods are preparing to restart the cycle of creating a new world but none of them realize it. Thanks to the magical machinations of an ancient accord struck between all the gods, neither the player nor the gods remember anything about the creation of new worlds. The only being who remembers is a confidant of the player, Elil. So, the player must speak with the gods, molding them through advice as the creator of the next world is chosen behind the scenes. In the meantime, everyone is hanging out in an ocean that serves as a temporary home for the gods while the world is created.

Astute readers may have deduced by now that the main game mechanic of Mythic Ocean is conversations with the different gods, making choices within those talks to motivate or discourage different behaviors of the gods. These decisions and the gods’ reactions to them will shape their outlook and affect their motivation, which is the deciding factor in who will be given the right to create the new world. These conversations are fantastically written. The dialogue between the player and each of the gods does a great job of illustrating their outlooks on life. Conversations with the twin gods Kestri and Esti, a pair of young siblings who are still quite immature, sound a lot like talking with real kids. They are earnest and straightforward in both happiness and anger. Players have the option of chastising them for their immature actions throughout the game and, being children, they are upset by this and aren’t shy about telling the player. Alternately, conversations with the telepathic god of hunger and curiosity, Lutra, a newly hatched larva, are very simplistic because of Lutra’s limited understanding of the world and rhythmically stilted because of the direct mind-to-mind nature of the conversation. On top of the excellent characterization, the game does a wonderful job of presenting the player choices in the dialogue. Each of the gods is flawed in their own way and the player can just as easily encourage those shortcomings as suggest reformation. This impressed me because in a game with adorable otters and well-meaning children, I could easily see there not being an option to be indulgent or negligent, but Mythic Ocean gives players all the tools to shape the gods, and thus the world, as they see fit.

Though the writing is the stand-out feature of Mythic Ocean, the art is a very close second place. The ocean is a place of colorful and varied life and Mythic Ocean does a fantastic job of replicating this. The flora and fauna of the ocean are all rendered in brilliant color with a huge variety of life on display. But what really impressed me were the animations of the gods. Save for one, every god had excellent animations that mirrored their dialogue. I think the greatest example of this is the animations of the god of parties and friendship, the four-armed otter Amar. Otters are already phenomenally cute and Amar takes it to the next level. He wears his emotion on his sleeve, it’s delightful to see him rub his belly in memory of a delicious meal and genuinely upsetting when he shivers in fear at danger. The animations do a fantastic job when combined with the dialogue to really instill a sense of personality into the gods and it made the conversations with them that much more enjoyable.

The excellent writing and animation go a long way to make Mythic Ocean a great game, but it is hindered by some flaws. The thing that frustrated me most about Mythic Ocean is that it really fails to capitalize on its premise of cycles. The game is set during one of the countless cycles of creation, with Elil talking about how this has all happened before and will happen again. The game even encourages players to play through the game multiple times, saving each ending the player unlocks to be viewed later, emphasizing that each session is a new cycle. However, nothing a player does in one cycle has any affect on the next and it always feels like the player is playing the same moment in the cycle instead of subsequent cycles. There are always five gods, the previous world was always an Orwellian surveillance state established by the same callous god, and all of the gods always had the exact same attitudes. My second playthrough, I got an ending in which a god was killed, something the lore says is irreversible, but then when I loaded into a third game, they were right where they’d always been. I’m not saying the developers should go full Undertale, but some hints a previous cycles would’ve been nice.

The other failing of Mythic Ocean is its handling of the cephalopodic god of knowledge, Gnosis. Gnosis frustrated me because there was only one way to interact with them, a Faustian bargain for forgotten truths. I get that this makes sense for Gnosis as the god of knowledge, but I’m pretty sure even smart people need to have errands run or have someone to chat with, so I would’ve liked some more laid-back options of interacting with Gnosis. Also, Gnosis has no real animation to speak of, save for the constant motion of its many tentacles. I know octopuses aren’t known for their expressive facial features but Lutra is a grub and the animators still managed to do a great job showing how they felt through expressive animation. Lastly, I get that Cthulhu is really popular, but that doesn’t mean all deep sea beings have to be jerks. Frankly, this game shows it can do better at what the character of Gnosis seemed to be going for. I think Alethea, the god of learning new things, did a better job of being an intellectual dealing with the less educated and Lutra was a better depiction of an alien creature struggling to interact with normalcy.

For a first game, Paralune did an amazing job with Mythic Ocean. Not only did they come up with a concept I’d never seen before, they executed on it nearly perfectly. Between the excellent writing and great animations, it’s easy to recommend Mythic Ocean in spite of its flaws. And if we’re being honest, the modest price of $15 isn’t a bad selling point either.