Review - Everything
Everything is a philosophy expressed through play. Perhaps more strictly, it is an interactive tool to better understand the philosophy. The player can move from the farthest reaches of space to the deepest depths of the ocean and the tiniest grain of dust, experiencing the world from the perspective of, well, everything.
The gameplay is simple. The player exists as an incorporeal consciousness that passes from object to object taking control of each of them. In doing so, the player either ascends or descends through the universe depending on the relative sizes of the entities. That is the majority of what the player will do as they traverse through the world. In addition to body-hopping, different entities can talk to you by presenting thought bubbles (quite literally) to the player. Some of these are more important and present the player with both objectives and sound-bites from a philosopher named Alan Watts. Beyond walking… well… tumbling around that is the jist of it.
Now, the real meat of the game is not the gameplay itself. The gameplay is a means by which the player is led into contemplation pertaining to the philosophy. In essence, Alan Watts breaks down the idea of difference by presenting that nothing is separate. Every separation in the world around a consciousness is an essential part of that being. Delineation is created by the consciousness so as to allow one to talk about the subject. Watts pulls from relativism to assert that all entities have their own perspectives that are, to them, equally meaningful and universal as any other entities perspective is to itself. That last point is the crux of this game. By moving between different entities and eventually into completely alien environments, the player is shown the different perspectives of the entities and thereby also how relative every entities perspective is.
As a tool to teach a philosophical system, Everything succeeds with its combination of hands on exploration and lecture style dialogue. If nothing else, I certainly came away understanding Alan Watts’ position. Of course, the entire system was not flawless in its explanations. Due, no doubt, to limits in the games capabilities, there was no significant interaction between entities. The player could sing to “herd” animals and even create new animals, but no meaningful interaction occurred beyond player intervention. Expressing the difference of the perspective of say, a fox or a rabbit in a hunt, would have presented a new level of understanding separate perspectives. Whether it was technological limitation or perhaps to prevent play from being pulled away from philosophical points and into the realm of standard action, there is limited interaction in the world.
In terms of actual gameplay time, the campaign (which is referred to as the tutorial for thematic reasons) lasts around four to five hours. Beyond that is free play where the player can explore and finish off finding every object. I do not see much enjoyment coming out of free play. There is very little to actually do in the game other than to try to find all of the objects. The main impetus to play, at least for myself, was to find the next dialogue bits and really understand what the game was trying to express. With the campaign (and with it the dialogues) complete, I do not see much reason to continue playing. Note that that is a highly subjective view, so take those considerations with a grain of salt.
There are aspects of the game that are… well lets just say weird. For instance, instead of walking animals roll around. I can only guess that animals roll because the developers did not have the resources to create a procedural walk generator. Actively animating every animals walk would have taken a significant amount of time. However, rolling was probably not the greatest solution to the problem. It definitely gives the game an almost Goat Simulator vibe that distracts from the main point.
Despite its misgivings, Everything is a very interesting intellectual exercise. Its presentation of a world of perspectives was genuinely intriguing and effective at expressing Watts’ views. If you are looking to pick up a wild and wacky sandbox game, this probably is not what you are looking for. However, if you want to see a philosophy expressed through play, Everything is prime example of just such a work.
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