I love film noire, great detective stories, hardboiled dialogue, and true crime. As genres go, they’re a bit underrepresented in video games, though not entirely absent. Add to the roster Nobody Wants to Die.
In addition to being a genuinely impressive retro-future noire narrative, it’s a troubling meditation on several hot topic issues. You know, little things, like the downside of immortality and massive economic inequality. Nobody Wants to Die came totally out of the blue for me, a happy surprise.
It’s set several centuries in the future. For many players, its art direction and aesthetic will bring to mind classic games and movies. Hints of Blade Runner, BioShock, The Fifth Element, and Chinatown blend into a strong vision.
Flying cars crowd the urban sky, and the decor is Art Deco meets industrial grit. The blend of styles is a visual metaphor for society and its stratification. In the world of Nobody Wants to Die you forfeit your body to the government at age 21 unless you can pay rent for it.
People can endlessly switch between bodies bought at auctions, cheating death. If, that is, they have the wealth to do so. This conceit generates many of the game’s more philosophical questions and most compelling metaphors.
For example, the very wealthy can jump into the bodies of the poor for what is, essentially, a riff on auto-erotic asphyxiation. One class seeing the other as inferior and exploitable is hardly an unfamiliar problem. One of Nobody Wants to Die’s stren.