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The Wreck is a messy, emotional cannonball straight to the guts

2K View2023-09-30

The Wreck

7.8

AdventureSingleplayerMysteryEditors' Choice

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SHOULD I PLAY THE WRECK?

You should definitely play The Wreck if you’re ready for an emotionally complicated story about grief, generational trauma, and figuring out why we are the way we are. This French visual novel is light on actual choices and messy in places, but it’s a very grown-up take on serious subject matter—and if you’ve ever experienced the loss of a family member or a failed relationship, it’ll cut close to the bone. Obviously, this is heavy stuff, so you’ll want to skip this one if frank discussions of topics like familial abuse, the death of a child, toxic relationships, self-harm, or sexual assault are likely to be triggering.

TIME PLAYED

I played about five and a half hours of The Wreck, with about forty minutes of that spent with the new Android version. That was enough time for me to complete the story and choose an ending. The Wreck is split between present day scenes at a hospital, where the central character, a woman named Junon, is preparing to make a crucial decision for her mother Marie, who is in intensive care after a brain hemorrhage; and dreamlike memories that Junon turns over in her head, searching for answers to difficult questions about her family, and the accident that claimed her daughter Astrid’s life five years earlier.

WHAT’S AWESOME ABOUT THE WRECK

• A grown-up story that respects its characters. The Wreck’s cast is a group of deeply damaged people for whom there are no easy storybook solutions. Junon’s life has collapsed since the death of her daughter, for which she blames herself. Her marriage has ended, her writing career has fizzled out, and she’s been smoking too much. She can be overdramatic, annoying, and self-absorbed. Her mother, who I encountered through Junon’s fragmented memories, is a celebrated artist and an overbearing presence in her daughter’s life—jealous of Junon’s first brush with creative success, and of her other daughter Diane’s first girlfriend. She can be dishonest, petty, and distrustful.

At the same time, The Wreck presented these women sympathetically, without ever being patronizing. Their flaws stem from wounds they haven’t been able to get over, and I was moved by the way the game allowed me to search Junon’s memories and understand the people in her life more fully.

• A clever framing device. The Wreck unfolds at the hospital where Marie has been admitted, and each time Junon gets into her car to leave out of fear, anxiety, anger, or frustration, she relives her shattered memory of the car accident that killed her daughter. I watched as this played out repeatedly during my playthrough, and each time, the camera slowed down to stretch time out in the few seconds before impact, with Junon’s car flipping over and all the objects inside suddenly flying around the cab in front of my eyes. Then I’d click on a particular item, and it would trigger one of Junon’s memories, like a freelance gig writing about the lobster industry, a disastrous birthday dinner, the time Junon and Diane found an injured baby bird in their yard, or Junon’s self-harm in the blur of days following the accident.

Once I had scoured each memory for key recollections and insights, the scene would rewind back to the hospital, and I’d proceed on a new path. It’s a bit like the movie Groundhog Day, in which Bill Murray’s character repeats one specific day until he “gets it right” by processing his own hang-ups and resentments and, at long last, freeing himself of them.

• Raw emotional honesty. Dealing with loss, end-of-life decisions, and moving on from failed relationships isn’t easy, and The Wreck never acts like there’s a magic solution to any of it. I was impressed that it handled all this subject matter with frank honesty. Each of its characters is stuck in a rut they’ve created in response to trauma, and The Wreck’s writers understand that even though these behaviors can protect us for a time, they can be toxic if allowed to persist too long. I’m being deliberately vague to avoid spoilers, so I’ll simply say that I found this game to be a sometimes painful but valuable reminder that life is meant to be lived.

WHAT SUCKS ABOUT THE WRECK?

• Low production values. The Wreck has some well-composed scenes and a few shots that are quite beautiful, but overall, the presentation is more student film than blockbuster. Character details like hands and eyes look extremely rough, which becomes an issue in close-up shots. There’s very little actual animation, and what’s there is done in only a handful of frames—many parts of The Wreck look like an animatic storyboard or mock-up rather than a finished game.

• Voice acting is uneven. I was occasionally thrown off by some poor line delivery as I played through The Wreck: In an early scene in the hospital, I wondered if Junon’s French-accented actor had been temporarily swapped out with an American. Several lines from Marie and Diane were flat and unconvincing. Ultimately this didn’t bother me a great deal, and it certainly didn’t detract from The Wreck’s emotional impact, but it was a bit disappointing to have strong writing delivered inexpertly in certain key scenes.

💬 Are you ready to take on this tragic but hopeful character study, or is The Wreck’s emotional rollercoaster not what you look for in games? Let me know in the comments!