Heaven's Vault
Jun. 20th, 2025 08:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alobearDave and I have been playing Heaven's Vault for a few weeks and just finished it.
You play an archaeologist and ancient linguist, travelling rivers between different moons in a wooden airship, with a robot sidekick who is amusingly snarky.
There's a lot of flying around that's a bit tedious, but there's also a lot of interesting exploration and discussion of various things with a range of different characters. The game kept trying to get us to go back to the university planet to report to our academic superior, but we didn't like her so we kept refusing!
Things got pretty complicated with the robot and all the mysteries and we definitely missed a fair amount of stuff we could have found along the way.
But I really enjoyed the translation aspect, wherein we kept finding inscriptions all over the place and had to try and work out what they meant based on our growing knowledge of the ancient language.
I did find it a bit baffling that we would be trying to narrow down a new location on the map, and we'd keep finding wrecks and ruins with ancient artifacts in them. Upon these discoveries, our character kept saying, "This must have been made in the place we're trying to find - it will help us figure out where it is." Um, how, exactly?
But there was a lot of intrigue and our discoveries led us to some interesting places and some fascinating theories. The ending felt a bit abrupt and had a very challenging decision to be made, but it was certainly portentous!
Overall, some slow and some frustrating aspects, but a very interesting game that we rather enjoyed.
You play an archaeologist and ancient linguist, travelling rivers between different moons in a wooden airship, with a robot sidekick who is amusingly snarky.
There's a lot of flying around that's a bit tedious, but there's also a lot of interesting exploration and discussion of various things with a range of different characters. The game kept trying to get us to go back to the university planet to report to our academic superior, but we didn't like her so we kept refusing!
Things got pretty complicated with the robot and all the mysteries and we definitely missed a fair amount of stuff we could have found along the way.
But I really enjoyed the translation aspect, wherein we kept finding inscriptions all over the place and had to try and work out what they meant based on our growing knowledge of the ancient language.
I did find it a bit baffling that we would be trying to narrow down a new location on the map, and we'd keep finding wrecks and ruins with ancient artifacts in them. Upon these discoveries, our character kept saying, "This must have been made in the place we're trying to find - it will help us figure out where it is." Um, how, exactly?
But there was a lot of intrigue and our discoveries led us to some interesting places and some fascinating theories. The ending felt a bit abrupt and had a very challenging decision to be made, but it was certainly portentous!
Overall, some slow and some frustrating aspects, but a very interesting game that we rather enjoyed.
