In my preview of the closed beta of Insomnia: The Ark, I expressed my concerns that the game could get bogged down by its ambition while neglecting its strengths. Insomnia can indeed be very messy and frustrating as a whole, but it’s also one of the most compelling gaming experiences I’ve had in a while. The build I got to play so far was actually v0.9, but the release build will likely be v1.0. So, for the record: my impressions are based only on my experience with the v0.9 build.
I’ve clocked 50 hours so far, and I have yet to finish. My character is level 12, and I assume the level cap is at least 20. I’ve completed a good number of side quests, and I’ve made substantial progress with the main quest. I’m still struggling to understand what’s going on in the grand scheme of things. There is almost no handholding or introduction, and no tutorial at all. Everything you learn about the game and its world comes from the UI and the characters you meet.
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Insomnia excels at its worldbuilding, as already mentioned in the preview. This, of course, requires that you have some interest in the world and the building behind it. And it’s not so much a plethora of lore dumps so much as the patience to put together all the bits and pieces that you gather from documents, books, and dialogues. I know that the vast majority of gamers won’t care for it, but I find it fascinating myself. It’s a rewarding and very obsessively designed fictional universe.
The localization from Russian improved somewhat when compared to the closed beta preview, but it’s still far from optimal. There’s still some text in Russian, and there’s still some poor translations and awkward sentences. There was also a residue from gender scripting for the player character in some dialogues. Some of the NPCs will say things like “you gender(dumbass, whore).” Apparently, it was possible to play as either male or female at first, in the early stages of development. Then they changed it to an exclusively male player character. This might be a really bad look if it makes into the final release.
