Tails Noir Preludes

The prequel of Tails Noir. Just as the main game had the name Backbone originally, this was previously called Tails: The Backbone Noir. The game is split into 16 chapters, equally divided among 4 different characters. 1. Clarissa Bloodworth Decent. Her chapters explain how she came to power and make clear of her agenda early on, unlike in the main game where she reveals her intent at the very last moment with no previous clues dropped at all. Also her chapters show the most diverse locations, feeling less repetitive. They still don't completely explain her character, for example we still don't know whether she's a genuine savior type or the change of management type, but the amount of care her story got in this prequel is adequate. 2. Howard Lotor The OG protag guy... And the most irrelevant part of this game. His plot here is about his college life and how he and Lucky were BFFs and had fun together. No conspiracy, no artifact, completely detached from the main plot. Who invited this kid into this prequel? Dude wasn't even invited at the start of the main game, he wasn't in the loop. There's no story that needs to be told, all they needed to do was establish how Larry and Howard used to hang together. Place their sprites together on some street level as a cameo and boom. You just achieved the same narrative goal with ease. Pointless. 3. Renee Wilson Her first chapter is rather solid, it shows her delving deep into the ape conspiracy by comparing inconsistent police reports. But after that her plot quickly becomes boring, with it only showing her marriage falling apart(merging work and life always works so well). As I said above for Howard's story I question if her personal life story was really needed to be told in detail. Chapters are just almost as pointless as the ones of Howard, and the game also fails to tell how or why Renee came to be so fixated on Clarissa in the main game, which means even with the prequel, the missing link in plot still exists. Had they just put a few more lines in her ending screen it could've been a lot better, but the way they put it couldn't be more ambiguous and unsatisfactory. Why even make a prequel if you're this unwilling to fill the gap? 4. Eli Abbas This is supposed to be where the spicy stuff is. Eli is the scientist tasked with the study of the main plot device, the artifact. Again disappointingly, the game never goes beyond the extent of dropping tinest clues making no actual progress, we don't even get to witness its discovery, the unearthing, by the point we're in control, the thing is already in a containment safe and sound. What separates his chapters from the others is that the choices matter, because he's not a recurring character with a set demise. Will you self censor your diaries and kiss asses of your superiors politicking or be as truthful as possible and keep your integrity as a man of science? A common dilemma, but interesting regardless, at least compared to the above three linear stories. But still, there's no changing the fact that this chapter is too, a wasted opportunity, because as I already said, we still don't know ♥♥♥♥ all, about the artifact, or about the apes, nothing. If I were to ONLY talk about this prelude, then I wouldn't necessarily call this bad. Some segments of Clarissa and Eli's are good, even. I actually played this first ahead of playing the main game it left me with little negative impression. But now having played both games, and knowing this came out LATER, what the hell? They had some serious questions to answer and this installment does not help our understanding of the chaotic mess the main game left any better. If you have played it, then you'll know how abrupt and random the twist is, and if you haven't played it yet, then abandon all your expectations. Because let me tell you, it's ass. If you read the main game's reviews, you'll find many other souls who share the same opinion as I. What I noticed from them is that they're harsher in tone than the usual negative reviews. And of course they are. People felt betrayed after playing the solid first half. I will go as far as to say what they did is worse than making a consistently mediocre game start to finish. And 2 years later, they delivered this, looking pretty, but still providing little to none. This isn't a proper prequel, the way I see it this one's just a teaser. A teaser that was released after the full course. With the studio now gone after unleashing a last puff of fart, a spinoff racing asset slop featuring the drift anime tofu Toyota(we [i]certainly[/i] don't have enough of them!), the IP is officially kaput. And it's sad all three games fell short of expectation one way or another. Know you're not going to get anything near satisfactory by the end if this prelude is your first Tails Noir game, and if you're returning from the main game, then know the questions in your head will never get answered.