It's not made clear how Houssine knows to go to these places or why many of these contacts are able to help him. But these scenes don't feel as fleshed out as the cab ride conversations. He knows someone who works somewhere who might have some information, that sort of thing. In between these fares, Houssine can visit various locations to further his investigation. These tales are often funny, moving, and sweet-but moreover, they're always fascinating and exceptionally well-written. There's the lesbian couple who are loudly debating the merits of the prospective sperm donor with whom they have just concluded a "date." There's the former porn actress who is eager to talk all about her new pro-union production company making gender-positive porn movies. There's the politician who is at the end of his tether over endemic corruption and pleads with Houssine to help him leak confidential documents. Regardless of their disposition, however, they're all willing to reveal the most intimate details of their inner lives with often only the slightest bit of delicate prodding.
However, some passengers are immediately warm towards Houssine, while others, if distant or cautious to begin with, soon find themselves disarmed. Houssine is both othered and unseen, tagged as different and yet simultaneously erased. "According to the people of this country, you don't count," one character tells him, with weary resignation. Another passenger assumes Houssine has certain political sympathies because he's a brown, working-class man.
#Night call passidex driver#
When they do notice him, one passenger scoffs at the idea that a lowly cab driver could have any useful advice. Lone passengers mutter to themselves, seemingly unaware of the possibility there's a real human being sharing the vehicle with them. Couples discuss private matters as if he is not there. Many of the people he picks up are oblivious to him, at least at first. That's because while he's an outsider, as a cab driver, Houssine's difference is camouflaged. They each have their own stories to tell, and Houssine seems to be the man chosen to hear them all. In total there are 75 passengers to meet over the course of the game, drawn from a broad range of ages, social classes, ethnicities, sexualities and, in one or possibly two cases, dimensions. It's a wonderfully diverse cast of characters, too.
Despite being minimally animated, with a handful of poses and expressions each, each character conveys a remarkable range of emotion and succeeds in bringing to vivid life each new person you encounter. Conversations are entirely text-based, with you selecting dialogue options on Houssine's behalf interspersed with his internal observations. From a map of the city, you select a fare to take and watch a yellow arrow navigate to its destination, the scene then overlaying an interior shot of the cab with Houssine front right and his passenger(s) in the back seat behind.Īt this point, the only thing to do is talk. and Arabs.”Įach night, Houssine hits the streets to track down clues and follow up leads, all while performing his regular job. “I’d say the police have a problem with black people,” Houssine says, then grins, “. At one point a young black man from Chicago (he’s in Paris studying to become a mime, hilariously) gets into Houssine’s cab after a humiliating run-in with the police, and they bond over their shared experiences.
These themes-of feeling like you don’t belong, of a rotten system operating to exclude all but the privileged few-infuse not just Houssine’s personal experience but of many of the people he encounters, and work well in linking together an otherwise disparate collection of stories. And it feels authentic that someone would pressure him to essentially become an informant, the kind of blackmail that insinuates that inside the moral grey area of society lies a corrupt, black core. It feels right that Houssine would be of interest to the police given the political climate (both current and echoed in-game) and the hints at his troubled past. One detective, however, disagrees and offers Houssine a deal: Help her investigation into the murders and he'll walk free.
#Night call passidex series#
His assault also resulted in the death of another person, the latest in a series of deaths that the police are keen to pin on him. There's been a terrorist attack recently, the details of which remain unspecified, but Arab men like Houssine are singled out for suspicion, their mere presence a cause for concern. Houssine understands what it means to feel like an outsider.
0 kommentar(er)
