Review: Season - A Letter to the Future is a beautiful video game that explores the theme of memory through photography. Finally, there is a game that 'gets' the motivations of a photographer right.
‘Season, A Letter to the Future’ Review: To Photograph is to RememberWhy do we raise a camera? Hit the shutter, look down at the image? What drives us to be recorders of memory? Do these memories matter? Who will see them? What will they think?The game explores the above questions, provides some answers, but leaves others open to interpretation.
You as Estelle, a cataloguer of the present, are deeply intertwined with what it means to record and experience memories, what they mean, and why they are important.is about exploring, photographing, recording, and questioning. It is a balance of each that forms a game that is trying to have a conversation about memory, its importance, and how it binds people together.
For every page, I always spent a few extra minutes organizing the photos and notes in a particular way that I felt was most compelling, because in my mind, someone was going to read this, see this, and it needed to feel like it was worth reading. The game gives players like me the tools needed to make a journal that is both informative and beautiful, and I used those tools to their fullest extent.is a game about photography insofar as it is about remembering.
The controls in this game are kind of clunky — “tanky” is the word I would use, as that is how I would describe early Resident Evil games and I feel like that comparison is valid here. Your character doesn’t have much nuance in their movement, the bike is not the easiest to control, and there is no middle ground when it comes to traversal speed: either you’re walking at a glacially slow pace or you’re zipping through the countryside on your bike.
Overall, though, I think developer Scavengers Studio did a good job with this, only the company’s second release, especially considering it actually uses the PlayStation 5’s unique controller in some way. Considering that this game is available across platforms, including on PC, it’s nice to see the developer clearly spent at least a little extra time thinking about how a person on PlayStation might enjoy this title.
It is very easy for a documentary photographer of any kind — street, event, photojournalist — to separate themselves from what they are capturing. The camera becomes a wall, a barrier between us and subjects.recreates that feeling beautifully through its world and then forces you to tear it down. While you must focus on your mission, you also must remember why it is you’re doing it.