Quarantine Circular - Review

Couldn't wait to reach the end...

Quarantine Circular confronts the player with a dire situation of a world that fell in great parts to a global pandamic, assisted through the overly excessive use of antibiotics which led to resistent germs. A scientist ship made contact with a single alien, which they now want to interrogate, unsure about his origin and intentions. This is a great background story and you're thrown right into it, jumping from one person to another at a time. The graphics look great while doing so, especially for this kind of narrative game. It runs flawless, also on Steam Deck. That is where I did my playthroughs so if you have one, go for it. The sound is okayish but overall neither impressive nor exactly important for the rest of the game. 

The gameplay is all about getting information by asking the right questions or the right person, sometimes also at the correct time. Unlike Subsurface Circular, which only gave you the choice of speaking as a Tek-detective, you're now part of everybodys decision making, which, in my eyes, is one point that makes Quarantine Circular as unfulfilling as it does turn out to be in the end. Dont' get me wrong - it is fun to be in the mind of the alien, whose agenda might still be unclear, trying to convince the others. Then you're one of the scientists who eagerly wants to know more, trying to find the correct questions and answers. 

However, not every person is fleshed out as I had expected. Also, I couldn't shake off the feeling that, while there are branches - you can reach multiple endings - there were ways, was one way, that seemed to be the correct one and should therefor be preferred to use. One particular character in the team was written so full of hate, although she was standing for things that would totally make sense. Fear, Caution, Protection. Sometimes I was surprised by how bad things turned out when I said something that would, in my book, trigger a very different reaction from a thinking person. 

Also, opposed to Subsurface Circular, where you're in the shoes of one Tek all the time and getting more and more comfortable with his reasoning and possible loss of it, you don't have that much time to muster up all the empathy needed to get all these different roles under one emotional umbrella. In the end you feel less for each of them. Speaking of ending.

...until I did

To me, the ending(s) felt unsatisfiying at best and illogical at worst, at least in parts. Sure, there were some twists and turns, which I can't say without spoilering too much, but it all came down to the behavior of every character and the choices I was left with. See, I read some different oppinions about this game after I finished it and I found one that perfectly mirrors my feelings when I'm comparing this to Subsurface Circular. In Subsurface you were ultimately given choices that felt tough because of their ambivalent nature. 

Here I was like - okay there are a couple of choices to make and different outcomes to head on to - but there is only one that really makes sense if you've just played this game with these characters in this world setting. It wasn't tough to decide by any means. Which is a bummer since the way to reach the end felt very rewarding sometimes. Overall, the writing was too inconsistent to make every person in this drama a credible actor. Sure, you could go for all endings, seeing what minor or major difference they might have to offer but I always got mixed feelings when characters forgot what they said or stand for 5 chapters ago.

What Remains

If you haven't played Subsurface Circular, you could play this first as no information from the prior game has impact on this. I honestly would recommend to do so since I find the first game to be superior in writing, story development and conclusion. After finishing Subsurface, my head was full of pictures, thoughts and lore constructions. Quarantine managed to make me think as well but I already lost the emotional connection to its base topic.