Syberia 3 - An Automaton with a Plan

Patience is the entry fee here, and I paid it well before this game gave me anything back. Before it hands over a single satisfying moment it asks you to accept a walk cycle that drifts past wherever you aimed it, a camera that reframes itself every time you cross a room boundary, and an interaction system that will occasionally hide the object you need in a patch of shadow. My first hour was pure irritation. Somewhere in the second hour I stopped fighting the movement, started actually looking at the rooms, and that is roughly where Syberia turns from a chore into the thing its defenders keep showing up to defend. Underneath, this is a classic adventure game that got dragged into third person and never fully adjusted to the move. You steer Kate Walker through hand-built locations, collect objects that look like junk, and eventually find the crank, valve or gear socket those objects were always meant for. The puzzle logic is mechanical rather than moon logic, which matters more than it sounds. The best sequences are about reading a machine: seeing how the linkages connect, feeding it parts in the right order, then watching the whole clattering thing wheeze back into motion. Clockwork automatons have been the series signature since the first game and they still do the heavy lifting. When a puzzle is a visible contraption you can reason about by looking at it, rather than by rubbing every inventory item on every hotspot, it is genuinely satisfying. Difficulty sits in a comfortable middle band, too. You will get stuck, but rarely in a way that feels unfair once you have found the right screen. The other thing it does exceptionally well is place. The environments are illustrated rather than generated, full of odd architecture, worn industrial detail and a general sense that someone drew each screen by hand and cared about the result. Interiors in particular reward slowing down, because there is usually a small piece of world-building sitting on a desk or bolted to a wall that nobody makes you look at. The narrative is deliberately slow, more travelogue than thriller, and it trusts you to sit with quiet stretches where nothing dramatic is happening. If you liked that about the earlier games, it is intact. Kate's road trip picks up where it left off, the tone stays melancholy and slightly fairytale, and the music does a lot of work carrying scenes the animation cannot. Now the part that Mixed rating is about. The controls are not a small complaint you get over. They are a constant tax, worst in tight interiors and during the handful of moments the game decides you need to move with urgency. Hotspot hunting returns in force, so expect stretches where you already know the solution and are simply failing to stand in the right spot to execute it. Character animation and line delivery are stiff enough to undercut scenes that are otherwise decently written. There is a pacing sag in the middle where the story stops advancing and the puzzles are not strong enough to cover for it. And this is very much a sequel. Dropping in cold, with no attachment to Kate or to the automatons she has been travelling alongside since the first two games, means most of the emotional payoff will land on somebody else. So who is this for. Adventure players who prize atmosphere and craft over responsiveness, and who have already met Kate Walker, will get a strange, pretty, unhurried journey out of it and will forgive a lot along the way. Anyone arriving fresh, or anyone who expects a modern-looking game to control like one, is going to bounce hard inside the first hour and will not be wrong to. I finished it, I am glad I did, and I would not have blamed myself for quitting at the two-hour mark either. Go in knowing which of those two players you are, and the rest sorts itself out.

Alex · Scout Team

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