This War of Mine: Stories

True to its name, Stories is a three-episode expansion for This War of Mine that attempts to provide a linear narrative that’s largely absent from the base game. It was a bit of a red flag that it was trying to do this despite TWoM having mostly stilted, poorly-translated dialogue, but that was counteracted by my appreciation for the game’s existing open-ended, mechanics-driven story. What actually should have turned me off is the same reason that I don’t usually bother with scenarios in Civilization: open-ended game mechanics don’t usually work very well when constrained to a story they weren’t built for. This is particularly true of the first episode here, Father’s Promise, which feels like the strategy game equivalent of a title whose unnecessarily detailed background scenery gives away a mid-development switch from sandbox to linear level design.

The three episodes share the oddly specific element of one capable character assisting another who is in some way incapacitated. It’s an ill-advised throughline, because TWoM’s gameplay becomes noticeably less engaging with only one active character. The Last Broadcast is a better execution of the concept than Father’s Promise at least, since its disabled character can at least do some things, and Fading Embers evolves beyond it entirely after an hour or two. These latter episodes add their own unique mechanics as well, but Fading Embers is the only one that feels like an actual expansion to the base game rather than an elaborate bonus feature. It also has the best actual story of the three Stories, featuring some genuinely thought-provoking moral choices centered on an oft-forgotten aspect of warfare: cultural preservation. In contrast, the way The Last Broadcast progresses is quite obvious. Father’s Promise at first seems very straightforward, but the way it pays off what seems like a lack of gameplay urgency is actually rather clever.