One big, nagging problem that haunted me through a lot of the game was that the writer didn't seem fully aware of the setting – mostly in terms of the monsters the Kid fights. There are three main enemies inside of Caelondia, and they are all supposedly different stages of life of the same species - Windbags. First of all, this is silly, because one is a slug, one is a humanoid, and one appears to be a stitched up bag of garbage. But more than that, the humanoids, the Gasfellas, are very sentient. They have foreman. They have friends. They get angry or become indebted to the Kid.
Gasfellas are the same creatures as the Squirts. There is a mini-game involving killing Squirts for sport with a machete. Squirts are distilled into drinks. Gasfellas are also the same creatures as the Scumbags, who are cast as the garbage men of Caelondia.
So basically, Windbags are an enslaved and brutally mistreated class of sentient creatures. Now, don't get me wrong. Caelondia is not supposed to be a good place. It is slowly revealed to be a pretty shitty place. But there never seems to be a hint of awareness towards the treatment of the Windbags. Instead, the Kid beats hundreds of them to death in order to steal power sources that they're using to keep their own territories afloat.
Bludgeon those babies to death in front of their mother, Kid.
I'm all for moral shades of gray. If the Kid was doing desperate things in desperate times, I could get behind that. The problem is that the game never seems aware that there is a problem with gunning down slaves to take their stuff.
Okay, now for a taste of the good: The Stranger and the Kid...
The Stranger and the Kid
The Stranger serves as the narrator for almost the entire story. Through quips and meandering stories, he fills in just about everything you could want to know about Caelondia, the Calamity, and the Ura. You go from knowing absolutely nothing to having a pretty well-formed view of the history and current state of the land. It's quite well done.
Also, his voice acting is perfect. The writing is good – sometimes great, sometimes a little clumsy. But the Stranger's voice actor makes it all outstanding. The guy couldn't be any more perfect in his role.
The Stranger sounds like he should look like Caleb from Blood 2.
As a nice little surprise, the Stranger gets a surprising amount of development. He goes from being a background character and solely a narrator to being fleshed out and relateable. Like the development of the world itself, this is well-paced and quite natural.
The Kid is a well-presented hero, too. I'm not the type to go on and on about the personality of silent heroes. In fact, I'm normally quite averse to silent heroes. However, the game never tries to do too much with the Kid, which his where most silent heroes fail. For example, it's really hard for me to take McDohl seriously when he responds with a blank stare to having to beat his own father to death.
But the Kid is given just enough back story and just enough presence to make him believable as the ultimate badass without ever toeing into territory that would require him to speak.
On the flip side of these good characters, let's talk about Zia.
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