Review for El Hijo. Game for Mac, PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, the video game was released on 31/12/2019
El Hijo, if you were looking for a definition in the metaphorical dictionary of the videogame, it would certainly be one of the references to the entry "Indie", and not for its productive position, clearly such, but for how much, like it or not, it ends up respecting the ( and fall within the) stylistic features of the category in almost all its aspects: it does not have an absurd and unique mechanic to scream, a role that for now remains, as perhaps it owes much more noble AAA, but it wants to share an artistic identity and a creative simplicity that are able to make it truly unique, although, as mentioned above, fully in the territorial boundaries of the "Indie-land".
Given the indie nature of El Hijo, we are pleased to contextualize its genesis, a starting point that we can certainly find in Maria Grau Stenzel, creative head of the stealth game of Honig Studios, the Berlin studio for which he has been working since 2013; Honig is a studio that works on many fronts and El Hijo is only the latest effort, the first in a videogame context (leaving out “Invisible Bottles”).
Already 2 years ago, in our rehearsal in Cologne (which you can read here), Maria had told us how the story was born as a tribute to "El Topo", a 1970 film directed and scripted by Alejandro Jodorowsky, who also edited the costumes and the soundtrack: “El Topo” has inspired many artists over time, from John Lennon, to David Lynch, Marilyn Manson, the Kasabians; in the videogame context, the creative opportunities of the feature film are no less, an example is that of Goichi Suda who confirmed him as the main source of inspiration for his “No More Heroes”.
Stenzel had a precise idea of how El Hijo should have been, especially on an aesthetic level, and we must confess that it is precisely this aspect that represents the first big surprise, both in the test 2 years ago and in the review phase. Each glimpse of the title is a respectful homage to the western imagery that the cinematographic tradition of the 60s and 70s created and gradually exalted, until it became irreproducible sediment in the genome itself: every Sienna-colored pixel, every bell toll, every gunshot refer to that narrative context, to the stories of good people who still did not carry the weight of the salvation of the world and of bad guys who did not necessarily aim at its total destruction , and who rather fought for the salvation of a person, a family, a small town, far removed from the superheroes that populate modern films.
It was a world in which the roles of good and bad were so thinly defined that they were close to crumbling, under the scorching desert sun.
In El Hijo the hero's path is narrowed and cleaned of its complexity, thanks to its protagonist: a 6-year-old boy, abandoned by his mother in a monastery after the arson of their house. Here we are clearly good and it is the search for the mother that pushes us to escape, an escape in which we will have to delight ourselves among stones thrown to make noise and noisy wind-up toys. The stealth nature of El Hijo becomes clear right away and he will never be denied during the whole adventure: initially equipped with only a few stones, we should make the most of every dark corner and hidden ravine to escape from the monastery and then through the 30 levels that make up the adventure.
Obviously if for 30 levels we could only use stones, everything would become very monotonous and very quickly, icebergs that El Hijo avoids with class, gradually introducing 4 other subterfuge tools. It is at the insertion of the second of these 5 different gadgets that we notice the first twist of the nose, because, if on the one hand most of the scenarios that the game makes us face can be solved in more than one way, a feature that does not push too much on replayability but rather on the ability of the title to know how to broad lines to adapt to the playstyle of each of us, on the other hand the gadget in question never behaves as it should or as expected, failing for example to distract that gunfighter, or to remove that suspicious monk. In the following levels we have even come to ignore the existence of this gadget, rather trying to use the others available.
Speaking of the structure of the levels, we have to congratulate the team for the frequency and positioning of the check-points, visible on the map as floating blue particles; also considering the loading speed when we are identified and captured, El Hijo never manages to be tedious and does not make us weigh our mistakes, even in the most chaotic or full of enemies with their eyes constantly aimed at a few centimeters from our young alter-ego.
Of course, the enemies do not have real artificial intelligence, most of the time resorting to a static but strategically perfect position (for them, not for us) or to simple repeated routines that we can look carefully and therefore predict.
A more concrete problem is instead that relating to the excessive complexity of the levels, in particular and almost exclusively in the first sections; almost immediately a secondary objective related to El Hijo's interaction with other children, which stimulates exploration but often has us literally lost in the map, leading to several empty laps full of frustration.
Faithful companion of the protagonist is a small bird which, at the press of a button, will allow us a view of the area with a little more elevation, an element that makes the enemy vision cones evident and that has certainly been integrated to facilitate the reading of the map, but which fails to be of help in the unpleasant situations of loss described above.
If on a visual level the identity of El Hijo cannot be misunderstood, the sound sector is nothing excessively exciting; the most interesting flicker, even if it was perhaps motivated by budget restrictions rather than by a creative stake firmly fixed on the ground, is the total absence of dubbing or dialogue. The entire narrative development of the title is in fact entrusted to rather simple cutscenes, both in terms of content and as animation, apparently perfect vehicles for telling universal stories but which here succeed more in the intent to convey the unfolding of events before our eyes than the reasons that push our character, or the emotions felt in the succession of events or the "why" of everything.
It is always welcome when a story places the dots and does not pretentiously connect them for us, but El Hijo works narratively on many more unknowns than he could afford, in our opinion.
El Hijo is a product made with the heart and this is something that shines through in many of its aspects. It is a stealth game deeply inspired and respectful of the western imagery that so many films have contributed to create, including that "El Topo" from which it is so strongly inspired, a small tribute to a narrative tradition from which it should perhaps take greater clarity and a more dosed length. The pure game sections are enjoyable and, if you let the feeling of bewilderment here and there, it is pleasant to perceive the feeling of being able to solve the riddle in front of you in at least a couple of ways. Unfortunately, the story is lost a bit between the selective mutism of its characters and the events that do not seem to be linked by chance, but the title of Honig Studios remains pleasant and we are convinced it will remain pleasantly in our memory as a game that fully embraces nature. of all that is indie and that never forgets or makes us forget it.
► El Hijo is an Adventure-Indie-Strategy game developed and published by THQ Nordic for Mac, PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, the video game was released on 31/12/2019
