Probably everyone thought at least once in his life about what he will leave behind and whether he will leave at all. Someone is engaged in creativity. Someone is raising children. Someone is in awe of the environment, not littering anywhere and handing over used batteries for disposal. Season: A Letter to the Future dedicated to the theme of heritage and reveals it very beautifully.
On the road
The main character Estelle leaves her native village and becomes her first resident who decided to go on a long trip. Her best friend saw a prophetic dream, which the local Elder explained as a harbinger of a change of season. They say the world will enter a new era and big changes await it. But what does that mean? Will everything Estelle sees around her disappear? Residents are frightened by such a prediction, and for the main character it is a reason to see the world – and not just look at it for the last time, but capture its best moments.
We take an album with us, camera and cassette player with sound recording function. The first pages of the album are already full – Estelle briefly described there who she was and why she decided to keep this peculiar diary, which she would leave to her descendants. Although the upcoming change of season may also destroy items, there is a place on the edge of the Earth that the changes do not concern – a museum repository. There is some person from the future and finds this album, judging by the opening video.
First we collect information about our own village. This can be considered a kind of training, but already in it you begin to fall in love with the mechanics of filling out the album. We saw something beautiful – you can take a picture and glue it to the page. Here they allow you to change the size of photos, tilt them in different directions, and in some cases the heroine has something to say about a specific object – then in addition to pictures, signatures will be available that,in the same way, you can arrange on the pages as you like. The same with sounds – although it seems strange that paper sheets transmit recordings on audio cassettes, such a convention for playing is forgiven.
Especially since the world in Season: A Letter to the Future quickly begins to seem not entirely ordinary. Before leaving, Estelle not only collects things, but also receives a pendant from her mother with “magical” contents. It mixes essences of objects with which both mother and daughter have memories associated – as soon as the heroines add something there, they immediately forget about it. In the starting village, we learn about a doctor who was approached with a variety of problems – someone, for example, could not forget anything, and there was no room for new discoveries in his memory. And some people suffer from the wrong perception of time and do not even understand how many years they live.
Therefore, the world is interesting to study – the player has so many questions that you want to find answers to them, exploring every corner. When the heroine,leaves the village, a large valley opens in front of it with a bunch of interesting places, a kind of small open world. There, too, people will meet with their opinions about the upcoming “apocalypse,” and they will be able to learn something about past seasons – about the recently ended ten-year war and the so-called Golden Season. You can visit the sanctuaries, where parishioners appealed to different gods, leaving notes with wishes. And some plants that emit a special aura store the stories of people – just try to record a sound next to them.
With some people we meet in person. Those who had not yet had time to evacuate lingered in the valley for various reasons. Someone in a hurry collects things and does not know what to take with him. Someone, on the contrary, ignores warnings and lives on the principle of “Come what may.” Their stories are not the most positive, and this also applies to the main character – her father, who dreamed of going on a trip the same way, went missing in the mountains. All these people, of course, will also become a decoration,album, and meeting Estelle will be an important moment in the life of each of them.
Sometimes Season: A Letter to the Future offers to deal with a kind of mini-investigation – hints appear on the pages of the album that hint what objects to find and what pictures to attach. Sometimes objects are located in the same location, sometimes for the sake of them you need to visit several places – in the second case, this is optional entertainment. In general, there are enough tiny details about the world that are easy to miss, and they do not affect the plot in any way. But hunting for them is exciting, and if you actively take pictures of interesting objects, then one of the characters will be able to tell a little more about them.
Going and going in Season: A Letter to the Future
Traveling here is a pleasure. When you get into the valley, you immediately get a map that is very easy to navigate. Over time, a map becomes unnecessary – you quickly remember how and where to go, and in extreme cases you turn to the signs at the intersections. Ride on,it is convenient for a bicycle – if you run away from it, you can pause and “teleport” it to yourself. And when you play the PS5, adaptive triggers resist when driving uphill. It is a pity that it is quite easy to get stuck on stones and bumps here if you run over them at high speed, but this is solved by preserving and going to the menu – when loading, the character is returned to the road.
The world in Season: A Letter to the Future is very beautiful, and therefore it is interesting to fill out the album. I don’t know if everyone will, but I quickly got used to the role of Estelle and was decorating every page. When you interact with objects, the heroine often draws wonderful illustrations with a pencil, which the player is free to arrange as he pleases. By posting five photos, pictures or audio recordings on the page, you will unlock additional options like images, text comments and any curls and dividers – they are basically unique to each location. You start rearranging everything that you managed to attach, you do,pages as beautiful as possible and you go further.
Most likely, the desire to do this is associated with the atmosphere of Season: A Letter to the Future – it is difficult to find a calmer and more peaceful game, from which at the same time does not fall into sleep. There is no reason to be nervous here at all, so you enjoy nature and look for interesting features in each region. Somewhere the frog croaks – either you photograph it, or you record the sound. Somewhere letters from the time of the war are lost, somewhere a tree is broken, somewhere a strange statue stands – everything you want to document and save as a keepsake, because all this may soon disappear along with our memories.
Of course, you can not hit the aesthetics, arrange photos somehow and try to get to the end as soon as possible. But the meaning of Season: A Letter to the Future is lost in this case. It was created in order to immerse yourself in it, and in the end it allows you to once again look at the work done. Not sure if there are different endings here, but in my,the case the finale turned out to be perfect for this kind of story – so much so that I then revised it again. And in general, the impression remained so bright that I want to return to this world someday – to meet the beloved characters again and ride a bicycle against the background of picturesque landscapes.
Conclusion
In the case of Season: A Letter to the Future everything is quite predictable: if you liked the trailers, then the game itself will give pleasure – what we were shown, then it turned out. This is a pacifying adventure to melancholy music, which does not cause longing because of the change of season, but gives hope for the future. After all, as Maxim Gorky wrote, “without knowing the past, it is impossible to understand the true meaning of the present and the purpose of the future.“
Pros: charming visual style: both the environment and the drawings in the album look luxurious; it is exciting to fill the album with pictures and other materials; a calm and melancholy atmosphere; an unusual fictional world about which it is interesting to look for details; convenient control; beautiful ending.
Cons: minor technical flaws.