Stray Gods: The Roleplaying Musical

If you want a fun, novel, unique and mostly interesting take on a sort of "visual novel", Stray Gods comes highly recommended. If you want a murder mystery with good pacing, a satisfying payoff or consistent rules to its whodunit, look elsewhere. Stray Gods is about as messy as it gets, and never quite comes together in style and inspiration to be a true diamond in the rough, but with all its faults, it's still an unforgettable experience. I can't say I've played a multiple choice narrative game where the choices were this stressful because the time limits are strict, and made during loud, boisterous sequences of song, and the way they can mold and change the musical numbers feels truly transformative. It engages the player with these bold showtunes setpieces in a way that some of the best and most experimental theater is known to do. Just a shame that the actual music isn't super great. Austin Wintory has made some truly legendary soundtracks, but he was probably out of his depth writing songs with lyrics because Stray Gods suffers from a lot of pitfalls that musical soundtracks fall into. Compositions feel stifling and static, so the melodies the singers have to toss on top can feel warbling and waffly, almost ad-libbed. And some of the actors are not trained singers and you can tell. Perhaps with all the references to Greek mythology, they should have bitten the bullet and brought on Darren Korb, who is known to do great work with sung harmonies and leitmotifs.

But this story's application of Greek mythology is already pretty dicey as it is. Within Stray Gods is a moving, gripping story about the folly of immortals and, much like Hades, how their immortality actually works against granting them longstanding wisdom as they instead choose to get caught up in millenia old grudges, as well as salient points about shifting ideas of destiny and canon; what is the "real mythology" of old Greece, what has simply made for humankind's favorite stories, and which is more worthy of fealty if they're each as influential as they are real...or unreal? These are decent themes backed by a solid and colourful cast of characters with excellent voiceover work (this might be Laura Bailey's second best performance behind Cyberpunk), but they're totally undercut by a core murder mystery that has a solid first act but a flabby second act and a third act that undercuts all that came before with a reveal that draws on very little of what you knew about the in-game mythology, riding on a left-field angle that feels inconsistent with the universe's rules. The art style also really starts to drag things down by then. Musicals are known to be lively and animated, but the characters are just 2D cut-outs on very bland 3D backdrops, which doesn't leave much room at all for any cinematic quality. Even basic setpiece additions like timed musical stingers with dramatic moments feel more thin on the ground than they should, and the overall density of these musical numbers, still far and away the game's best moments, is very low in the game's second half. Not a surprise considering their mechanical scope and complexity, but all this combined really kills the game's pacing.

Still, I can easily see this being someone's new favorite game ever, and I would still absolutely recommend it on novelty, passion and liveliness alone. Stray Gods: A Roleplaying Musical is an experience unlike any other, but it deserves a sequel with more flair.

And maybe a plot that doesn't feature Ares selling out Aphrodite to the Nazis during WW2, and the only remedy being for Haephestus to team up with the Allied Powers and help develop the nuclear bomb.