And we try, try, try, to keep a little beauty in the world
Seven: The Days Long Gone is an open world isometric stealth WRPG, released on Steam on December 1st, 2017. It was developed by IMGN.PRO and Fool’s Theory, with the team composed of many former members of CD Projekt RED. The game is a surreal blend of fantasy, post apocalyptic, science fiction, and cyberpunk that mixes extremely well.In a far future Earth, humanity can only dream of the so called Days Long Gone, a semi-mythical era before the great war, when man was master of nature, machine, and his own destiny. Even after the catastrophic war with the Daemons, trace elements of the ancient world remained; artifacts of magic and technology and their containing ruins were bitterly fought over by what passed for civilization. Until one day a God-Emporer, Drugun, rose and united most of mankind under his banner. Order came at the cost of personal freedom, and mankind is beginning to chafe under the iron fist of the man who once saved them from certain starvation.
The story puts you in the shoes of a master thief named Teriel. When he is caught in the vault of the previously impenetrable Grukbara manor, he is forcibly possessed by a demon and sent on a mission to the Penal Colony of Peh by Drugun himself. A civil war is brewing, and the artifacts found on Peh will be the decisive factor in whether Druguns empire survives, or something even worse comes along.
Unrelated to another late 2010s game, Long Gone Days.
This game provides examples of:
- Advanced Ancient Humans: Humankind at its peak, called The Ancients, were capable of incredible feats of Sufficiently Advanced Technology, but are gone (or at least gone from Earth) by the time the story starts. It’s interesting to note that while no one disputes that the Ancients were just (enhanced) humans, their mindset, daily worries, and abilities are so foreign to a person of Teriel’s time that they are spoken about like a completely separate species.
- Advert-Overloaded Future: Advertisements adorn any piece of technology advanced enough to play videos.
- After the End: The Great War destroyed the golden society the Ancients had, the Vetrall Empire lives in the shadow of that corpse.
- A Nazi by Any Other Name: The Technomagi on Peh gave gone full fascist on the island due to lack of any serious oversight and have created an underclass of the less fortunate through the generic visa system.
- Anti-Magic: Despite the name, Technomagi are specialists in killing users of artifacts, demon, and nectar (the three main sources of magic) alike. Their bases are often coated in an “magic disruption device” field that prevents your mana from recharging except through medicine.
- The Beforetimes: The titular Days Long Gone.
- Black-and-Grey Morality: While good people exist in the setting, the main plot and many of the side-quests are definitely this. Teriel is an enthusiastic thief who has few-to-none reservations about killing if it means getting a heist done. The people he’s up against are definitely worse.
- Boxed Crook: Teriel is one. The Grukbara mansion job served two purposes: to test thieves, and if they “passed” ensure they complied in order to get out of their sentence.
- Collector of the Strange: The Grukbarra family has a vault of heretical artifacts and various oddities.
- Corrupt Cop: Most police Technomagi only join to be able to lord over others.
- Critical Encumbrance Failure: Averted. Teriel's movement speed gradually begins slowing down when he carries more than his weight limit, and completely stops at 150%.
- Crystal Spires and Togas: Biomancers live in beautiful monasteries and dress in elegant robes. Just another way they contrast with Technomagi.
- Cyberpunk: An odd example, but it is there.
- Cyberpunk with a Chance of Rain: Wardens Hold has appropriately rainy weather most of the time. The opening level in the capital also has appropriate weather.
- Cyborg: Teriel, and many others. Cybernetics are commonplace and cheap, even among the criminal underclass.
- Decadent Court: While there is no unanimously approved leading body of Peh outside of Drugun (who is who-knows-how-many continents away) the aristocracy of Wardens Hold come pretty close and are pretty vicious to eachother about getting even closer.
- Earth That Used to Be Better: People remember The Days Long Gone with nostalgia, despite never living in them, for a reason.
- Electronic Eyes: Teriel's right eye is a glowing red one. It is even noted in-universe as a distinguishing mark when someone is given a verbal description of him.
- Elite Mooks: Technomagi Pioneers, usually assigned to lead squads and armed with sniper rifles. Skirmishers, the main melee unit of the Technomagi, count too.
- The Empire: Druguns Vetrall empire.
- Expy: Peh is one to all of Australia, and the interior farming tribes are based similarly on the Aborigines.
- Fantastic Racism: Mortbane is split between the baseline humans brought in to work and the native “Frogs” who are green skinned mutant humans who can survive in the towns toxic atmosphere unaided. Both sides give as good as they get.
- Fantastic Slurs: "Tinnies" for Technomagi, "leeches" for Biomancers.
- Foil: The Biomancers and Technomagi are opposites in every way that counts. Biomancers favor genetic engineering, reject the Days Long Gone as a hedonistic era that caused all present problems and as something that must be buried for man to move on, and build from scratch beautiful cathedrals and help the populace while hiding a dark secret. Technomagi wish to move past humanity with technology, obsess over the Days Long Gone, are openly contemptuous of the common folk and base themselves out of reclaimed Ancient forts they slightly modify. Technomagi favor sheer numbers and tons of firearms, whereas Biomancers fight in small elite squads of swordsmen/rogues. One has a white and green aesthetic, the other black and blue.
- Game Play And Story Segregation: As noted below, all item descriptions are in-character observations from the demon inside Teriel. The descriptions do not change in any way for times when the demon is not present.
- God-Emperor: Drugun is not just the leader of his empire, he is also worshipped in its churches and prayed to by its commoners. He promises eventual salvation to his faithful followers in the form of an escape from Earth.
- Hive City: Wardens Hold. Good luck telling where one building ends and another starts in any district lower than the manors.
- Insufferable Genius: Teriel has a reputation for being one, though the player can chose to play it up or downplay it based on dialogue choices. And he truly has the skills to back it up, as the only way to surprise mission control during the tutorial is to botch the mission; the assumption was that Teriel was going to pull off the heist flawlessly as usual.
- Grimy Water: Water tainted with techrot instantly kills at the slightest contact. Teriel can even get killed by splashes from it.
- Jurisdiction Friction: Biomancers actually do have their own detective forces, since they are infinitely better than Technomagi when it comes to autopsy and forensics. When they take over investigations, the Technomagi get a little upset, to put it lightly.
- Layered Metropolis: Wardens Hold, the capital of Peh, has four main layers. The Paladial manors (top), Paladial (middle), the Shallows (lower) and the crucible (lowest).
- Lemony Narrator: Item descriptions are coming from the demon inside Teriel, and frequently include snarky observations.
- Lost Technology: In a manner similar to Roadside Picnic most artifacts were garbage to the Ancients, but are borderline (or outright) magical to the current world. That means when you find something the Ancients actually valued, it often has world changing potential.
- Magitech: Since demons are dangerous and artifacts are expensive and dangerous, cybernetic “skill chips” are what allow the average person to use magic. People swap them in and out based on their occupation and current needs.
- Man of Wealth and Taste: Du Mortier tries to be this, but the man exudes such and aura of sleeze he could make drinking water seem obscene.
- Miss Kitty: Lady Firefly is an odd case, being (or at least looking) younger than the usual examples.
- Multiple Endings: At the end of the game you reach the Ark and Teriel's demon companion reveals his intent: launch the Ark and have it collide directly onto Drugun's palace, killing him and an estimated half a million deaths as collateral damage. From here you have the following options:
- Go along with the plan.
- Convince the demon to instead work subtly by undermining Drugun's rule to eventually bring him down. The success of this depends on having completed sidequests that provide enough examples from Peh that this might work.
- Refuse to follow the demon's plan but fail to convince him. This leads to a Battle in the Center of the Mind, where either:
- The demon defeats Teriel and thus takes full direct control of his body. He then proceeds to follow his original plan.
- Teriel fights and overcomes the demon, destroying him instead.
- Mythology Gag: At the end of the game in the Ark there is an arcade machine for Kholat, another game from the same developer.
- Neglectful Precursors: The Ancients accidentally created some really dangerous garbage. Technorot was accidentally released simply because someone poked the wrong artifacts.
- No OSHA Compliance: Even the wealthiest area of the main city has all over the place spots with rickety metal grating floor next to multi-storey drop with no railings.
- No Prison Segregation: On Peh, unless you do something bad enough to warrant being enslaved, as an inmate you will be rubbing shoulders with gangsters, petty criminals, and political prisoners alike.
- Our Demons Are Different: They are part technology and part magic, have unique personalities just like humans, live inside people’s heads, and are not all evil (though are all wilfull and stubborn to the extreme).
- Penal Colony: Peh. Incarcerated people arriving are judged based on crime, either exiting the processing center as “prisoners” (free to do anything a Vetrall citizen can... except leave the island) or slaves (exactly what it sounds like)
- Pet the Dog: Teriel shows his soft side sometimes, like convincing two wannabe thieves they are in over their heads, or saving a woman from her abusive husband without even thinking of asking for any kind of reward. He may have no problems shanking guards and looting coffers but he isn’t heartless.
- The Plague: Techrot, a strange disease originating from the giants graveyard. Most, but not everyone, is susceptible and among those who are it has a 99.9% fatality rate.
- Police State: The Vetrall empire at large is one, but Peh is even more repressive.
- Powered Armor: Utilized by every Technomagi soldier except the Skirmishers. It doesn’t make you a whole lot stronger but it definitely makes you a whole lot more durable.
- Precursors: The Ancients, sort of transhuman techno demigods who were the new normal for humanity until the great war. The non ascended they left behind are the ancestors of everyone in the game.
- Quarantine with Extreme Prejudice: Standard procedure for dealing with Techrot victims is to shoot them then burn the bodies as far from civilization as possible. This isn’t even treated as an atrocity; the disease really is that bad.
- Red Shirt: The basic Technomagi footsoldiers.
- Right Hand Versus Left Hand: There are two bodies with legal and policing authority in the empire. The Technomagi are in charge of the vast majority of police work, transportation infrastructure, tech oriented scientific research, and artifacts. Their desire is to overcome the inherent weaknesses of humanity through rejecting it in favor of steel. Meanwhile the biomancers are in charge of the state faith, all medical matters including treatment and research, and the running of the state. They believe in overcoming the limitations of man through accelerating evolution. While both sides loyally serve Drugun, they absolutely hate eachother.
- Scavenger World: Granted one that has been going on so long society has rebuilt
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: The Ancients' reaction to the war going badly was to simply leave Earth. The daemons have long since calmed down enough that they can be reasoned with again, but the Ancients have never come back. Druguns “seventh step” seems a lot like this too, though he plans on taking all of mankind along for the ride.
- Serial Killer: The Cinder Man. His unusual M.O. leaves his victims burned to a crisp, earning him his name.
- Shout-Out:
- In the "Drowned Past" DLC you can find pieces of "Mysterious Hazard Armor" which both in appearance and description refer to Half-Life. The same DLC also adds crowbars as a melee weapon, which also reference Half-Life in the item description.
- The description for a lead pipe mentions that they were "used as a weapon in an ancient board game".
- Sigil Spam: Technomagi will plaster their logo over everything and anything in their territory, and the biomancers show only slightly more restraint.
- Space Marine: All Technomagi Pioneers are being groomed to be this in preparation for the “Seventh Step of Drugun”
- Synthetic Plague: Most aspects of the techrot baffle researchers, but what is known for sure is that it itself is an artifact of some kind, likely one gone haywire.
- Transhuman Treachery: The Technomagi are mostly cyborgs and are decidedly nastier than the (still nasty) Biomancers
- Urban Segregation: Wardens Hold is divided between the socialites, the commoners, the slaves, and the techrot victims. Each lives progressively worse than the last.
- Used Future: Society is built upon collecting and using the garbage of the Days Long Gone.
- Villain with Good Publicity: Biomancer grunts can be decent people, but the leadership is pretty messed up. Despite this, the group enjoys an immense amount of support compared to the Technomancers thanks to their charity and healing work.
- Wham Line: "There's no Seventh Step!" Players may have worked it out at this point, but for those who haven't, Teriel puts together some inconsistencies and realizes that the Ancients never made it off of Earth and Drugun's "Seven Steps" are a huge lie to keep people in line, that anything can be justified as working toward reaching the stars. The arks never worked even for the people who knew how to build them, and Earth is all we really have.
- Wide-Open Sandbox: The entire island is yours to explore from the start if you have the smarts, stealth, and cunning to evade the visa checkpoints.
- Wrong Side of the Tracks: The slum of Lewmer is where people who couldn’t earn (or buy) a level 1 visa get trapped upon arrival at Peh. Your choices of livelihood are to work yourself to the bone in the techrot infested mines, participate in the (legal) slave trade, or become a criminal. They can’t even scavenge in Lewmer, because everything worth scavenging is just on the other side of that Visa 1 gate. The second act of the game is largely spent trying to earn or find a way out.
