Do you know what’s great? Choose your own adventure novels. Great adventure novels such as Death Trap Dungeon (also made into a PSone game) were immensely popular for many years, peaking in the 1980s and 1990s. But now there’s no love for them as media has evolved and gaming incorporates multiple choices in storylines with much more subtlety (for the most part). But developer Sever Studio has decided to bring back the classic formula of choosing your own adventures, but add tons of gravitas and dramatic tension, where every choice you make has weight and consequences.
Does The Life and Suffering of Sir Brante the ultimate choose your own adventure, delivering a heartfelt and immense narrative experience?
What is The Life and Suffering of Sir Brante
The Life and Suffering of Sir Brante is a highly dark, narrative-driven, text-based RPG that chronicles the life of the protagonist Sir Brante. Set within a cruel and ruthless world where class, religion, and creed have manifested the worst from humanity, Sir Brante is one man who aims to challenge the existing order. This lifelong tale covers from birth to death of the fabled induvial, who raises through life, conquering each challenge and obstacle to come his way and who will change the world forever, at any cost.
The Blessed Times of the Arknian Empire is unforgiving to those who are not of noble blood, with the poorer commoners often basking in pain and suffering at the expense of the noble blood. Sir Brante’s venture through life could end how society is and change it forever, through any means necessary and even at the highest cost.
The Life and Suffering puts the destiny of Sir Brante in the hands of the player, venturing through childhood, adulthood, and to the end. The most important events are presented to the player and it’s up to them to carry out how they feel the story should go.
Choose your fate, live with the consequences, reap the rewards, and tactically embark on the life of Sir Brante, making friends, enemies and deciding whether to save or destroy the empire.
Story 
Set within the Great Arknian Empire, Sir Brante is born to a family mixed with noble and common blood. The nobles, wage war, conquer, and reap the rewards which are often unjustified. The commoners work, suffer and endure the harshest of punishments. The empire is led by a fanatic and sadistic religion that washes the nobles in good graces and spits on the common people, giving them the harshest of lives. Sir Brante is a commoner, holding no rights and no title, meaning you’ll have to work hard to obtain a status worthy enough to exist. Thankfully, your father is of noble blood and has given you the chance to become one yourself.
To become the rightful heir to the legacy of the Brante family, you will have to come to grips with the prejudice that commoners face from the upper classes and endure the punishments set by religious traditions. Players will embark on a life-long journey, filled with pain, suffering, and many choices that will alter their very being. From the very moment of your birth until your true death, players will have to make difficult choices, endure immense disruptions in life and face great adversity. Every decision will have an effect not only on Sir Brante but everyone around him.
Like a game of chess, the board is set and there is an end goal to the game, but how you handle your path getting there, is up to you. Siding with family, friends, turning against them, sabotaging, or saving loved ones, accepting your fate as a commoner, or fighting the order for a greater cause will take you on many different routes of the story.
Remember that each choice will have repercussions, altering relationships, entire events whether good or bad will come to fruition and everything will unravel into an unforgettable epic, which will eventually end with or without bloodshed.
The many roads ahead
What makes the life of Sir Brante such an engaging one, was the level of emotional depth, and the highly reactive nature to the “cause and effect” dynamic to the storytelling. The world crafted is often bleak, merciless, and downright sadistic, but one that is quite sadly believable. The elements of class, creed, and region all having an impact not only on Sir Brante’s life but so many with such varying effects, was fascinating to observe.
Each stage, each life event, and dramatic turn is handled incredibly well, and most choices in the game, not only elevate the experience but give an entirely different one from player to player. Whether it’s deciding to tell on your siblings for an incident they caused, to challenge your ruthless and crude grandfather, defy a religious ceremony or save someone you dearly love, or watch them die for “the greater good”. There’s a lot of emotional substance here, and many of the choices have some impact on your life and those around you.
It was enthralling to see where my story would lead if I was a subservient, goodie who tried to please my noble blood father and grandfather when possible, or whether I decided to take on the establishment and soon have a greater impact on the upcoming revolt.
The story is altered by your choices, but many of those choices come at a cost and a price to pay. For the most part, there were so many interesting paths to carve, and I felt excited to see where many of my choices would take me. Sadly there are a few duff choices, which never amount to much more than a slight alteration in a conversation or event. But nevertheless, many choices have an impact, and the beginning, middle, and end of your tale will change drastically depending on them.
I felt the many characters all felt quite fleshed out and were interesting to engage with, no matter whether good or bad. But at times, it felt quite clear where the devs or writer wanted you to go with certain characters. For instance, I hated the grandfather, and it would take quite a cold soul to side with him, especially in the later parts of the game. The world was utterly captivating and rich in compelling lore that combined creed, class, and religious ideologies into a brutal, yet enjoyable narrative.
Gameplay
Sir Brante is heavily text-based, playing out like an actual novel in a dynamic way. But there are elements that make it more than picking and choosing your next steps in life.
While choosing your life events covers much of the gameplay loop, you will encounter other factors during your life as Sir Brante. You will be able to track your relationships with family, friends, and lovers, but also gain points in character aspects such as Will Power, Determinations, Prescription, and more. All these aspects/traits will play an important part on what life choices are available in each stage.
Special events will be triggered by the selection of choices previously made. Each choice will also have benefits rewards and even small punishments, either adding to your personal aspects or taking them away. Managing your relationships is also important, as the more you befriend or are despised by someone will open and close paths in the story too.
All these elements play a vital role in your development through the story, as high Will Power will unlock certain events, that Perception cannot. But having a grandfather, mother, or brother that either loves or loathes you, will also lock or unlock events too. So, playing strategically is important, but early in the game, you can reflect and even change your path somewhat, making enemies friends or friends enemies. But by the halfway point, you do need to decide in some regards, who is important, and what values you hold dear. But even in the later stages, there will be dire choices to make, and they will be reflected on by actions throughout your entire life.
So, not only do choices play an important part in how the story develops, but also is a key component to the cause-and-effect style gameplay mechanics. Meaning there is a management of personal aspects, which determine what options are open later in the game.
There are special events such as “Deaths” that will in themselves open a whole new story path, depending on how many times you die. But later in the game, more features will open, as the story evokes different events, such as “Peace Time” and “The Revolt”. These new features will influence your choices, as greater alliances and enemies come into the picture.
The Life and Suffering of Sir Brante may look like a typical text adventure, but it’s one that’s incredibly well written, offers a multitude of choices, a great understanding of cause and effect, yet goes beyond this line even further. With elements later in the game being opened that give you a better understanding of the changing landscape of the Great Arknian Empire.
What Sir Brante does well
As you can tell, the story is thoroughly well thought out, well written no matter the paths you take, and very engaging with its incredible themes and character developments. While the themes and general setup might be nothing new, I feel the writers have expanded on the core of the story in so many fascinating ways, and the evolving narrative based on your actions only makes it even sweeter.
The visual style and music are very good, with the inky, heavily detailed illustrations matching the tone and thematically, is a great choice. The HUD and overall UI design, with the game world and story taking place in a book, is again, also thematically pleasing.
While the story would have been more than enough for a solid interactive venture, the developers have been considerate and brilliant enough to work in simple yet engaging RPG mechanics. Working in different tactical elements, special events, and resource management, where they come together and help the game become even more interesting. Yet, they don’t interfere with the flow or core principles of a rich narrative experience.
The story alone, and the many choices you can make, shaping a great narrative experience into your own is worth checking out. But considering the choices, their impact on events and relations, plus the special events elevate this into one of the most compelling, and unique gaming experiences in the last few years.
What Sir Brante could do betterThe main thing to consider is with the inclusion of stats and the RPG mechanics, is that the story may not be given you all the options you want. With a low Will Power or any other stats, you won’t be able to access certain paths in the game. It can be rather annoying if you wanted a simple interactive narrative without the hassle of keeping stats in mind, and no, there is no option to turn this off. You can see what consequences will come of your actions, such as losing a certain stat or lowering a relationship. But those looking for a straightforward, well-written narrative adventure with absolute freedom of choice will be disappointed here.
I personally don’t mind, but there were moments when even I was like “Why can’t I choose that?”. It reminded me of Mass Effect where certain dialogue options would be locked off because you shy a few charisma points than required.
While 90% of the choices do matter, there were a couple that clearly lead nowhere. I had seen a couple that I thought would pay off handsomely and otherwise, the game would then pull a switcheroo, where I needed something else to complete the story threat, or it just ended anticlimactically. Not a major issue, as I know there will be subplots in any game, film, or TV series which might not end as you expect.
Lastly, I do wish there were better accessibility options, considering there is a lot of text to read and, generally the text size is quite small. I can use the Xbox’s magnifier feature to zoom in but having this in the game would have been great. Or even to have a voice-over, so that people with sight issues might also enjoy the amazing story/experience Sir Brante offers.
I think Sean Pertwee would have been an amazing choice here for a voice-over. Possible update for the future?
Overall?The Life and Suffering of Sir Brante is a must for any gamers who love a great story, but also love compelling narrative-driven experiences, with the benefit of giving you the freedom to shape them as you see fit. The shortcomings are minor, compared to the magnificent story, the freedom of choice to make the narrative your own, the awesome aesthetics and presentation along with the neat RPG mechanics to make the whole experience more engaging and thought-provoking. This is definitely a cult classic in the making and I hope more people check this out for its great story, dept of decision making, and generally just being an enriching and rewarding experience from start to finish.
++ Brilliantly written narrative, with many interesting paths
+ Great freedom of choice and depth to your decisions
+ Visually and aesthetically pleasing
+ Neat RPG mechanics to make progression more compelling
-- Could do with some accessibility options
- RPG mechanics could block the paths you want to go through in the story
An Xbox One review copy of The Life and Suffering of Sir Brante was provided by the publisher
