Cions of Vega

If you’ve seen the Oscar-winning movie Everything Everywhere All at Once, then you already know that you can effectively tell a deep and complicated story that shows you everything and takes you everywhere all in just a couple of hours. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said about Cions of Vega, a painfully slow-paced adventure game that spends two hours saying nothing and going nowhere, both at the same time. And if this guy will let me get by him, I’ll explain why this all-too-brief journey squanders what could have been an interesting story. No, seriously, let me get by. What’s wrong with you?

This is the story of Kenny, a desperate father who will stop at nothing to track down the whereabouts of his missing daughter, Leila. He is joined by his brother, Logan, who agrees to help look for clues in and around the forest, which includes a whole bunch of creepy houses that seem to be abandoned for no reason. Over the course of a couple hours, the two men reconnect and learn some terrifying news about the children of this out-of-the-way village that forces our hero to make a choice he’ll never forget.

Cions of Vega is a first-person story-driven adventure game, or, as some disparagingly call it, a “walking simulator.” It’s a game designed to recreate that frantic feeling of losing a child and slowly walking through the forest to find them. It’s the kind of game that is deliberately paced, hooking you with the setup and then slowly revealing new information as you journey down the linear path.

In the case of this game, the path takes you to a bunch of houses with a series of extremely easy puzzles to solve. The goal is to find the key that opens the gate and the letter that will reveal a piece of the story. In order to do that, you’ll have to go on a fetch quest or use your brain to open up a lock. For example, the electricity is off in one house, so you’ll need to find a shovel in order to dig up a fuse to turn the power back on. Obviously.

That’s the kind of bone-headed puzzle you can expect while playing Cions of Vega. You’re never more than a few feet away from the solution, and the game will hold your hand until it’s absolutely clear that you know how to solve the puzzle. Yes, that’s annoying, but I appreciate the effort to include puzzles in the first place, since so many of these types of games think they can coast on a compelling storyline.

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I also appreciate that Logan is along for the ride. There’s some animosity between the siblings and their brief interactions help to fill in a lot of the backstory. I like that we aren’t just reading about Kenny’s journey to find his daughter, but rather we have somebody to keep us company and point us in the right direction. Honestly, I wish there was more dialog between these two. This is the kind of game that would have benefited from having a LOT more dialog. As annoying as it sounds, I would have preferred hearing these two bicker and fight the whole way there. As it is, Logan will leave a comment here and there, but most of the time the brothers are walking through the forest in complete silence.

As a setup, Cions of Vega is certainly compelling. I was ready and excited to find Kenny’s missing daughter. However, the more that got revealed, the less interesting I found the adventure. I’m not going to spoil the big plot twist here, but it’s dumb. It’s also blatantly obvious after you run into the first couple children, all of which seem to be missing parents. And just to hammer home the stupid reveal, you’ll have to experience it three times in order to see all of the terrible endings. Or don’t, because you’re just going to be disappointed, no matter what ending you choose.

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Beyond the storytelling issues, Cions of Vega also comes up short from a technical perspective. I played through the game on PlayStation 5, a system with more than enough power to handle a game like this, yet objects in the rooms would pop in and out of existence when I was standing mere feet from them. There were also times when I couldn’t advance the story because Logan would stand in the way and not let me pass. It’s important to note that you can’t command the computer-controlled characters to move, so if he stands in your way, the only solution is to restart from the last checkpoint.

It's probably worth mentioning that Cions of Vega was made by the same developer who gave us The Redress of Mira, a similar first-person narrative that I reviewed last month. While far from perfect, this game addresses a number of the problems I had with their last outing, which gives me a glimmer of hope. I mean, I can’t recommend Cions of Vega now, but I am holding out hope that it’s only a matter of time before this developer figures out how to make a great game. Or, at the very least, one that doesn’t leave me rolling my eyes.