Veronica: Drink of choice?
Kareem: Depression.
Veronica: ...
Kareem: Whiskey.
Veronica: Depression’s inappropriately close first cousin.
What We Left Behind is one of the more interesting VNs I played in a while.
You play as Kareem Marshall - a charismatic corporate drone with a permanent mask, deep in denial about his severe depression and immaturity. Notably, he is a black man without a single porn-trope stereotype.
Kareem has a good circle of friends:
- Valerie, the childhood friend who didn't quite get away
- Jessica, the roommate and manic chef
- Emile, smooth talker ladies man with poor boundaries
- Van, the eccentric rich guy suddenly dating a supermodel
- A dozen other people on Kareem's phone, with message histories, giving us background info
The game starts some time after Kareem's break-up with Cecelia, his lawyer ex. Instead of an exposition dump, we slowly learn throughout the prologue that Kareem was badly shaken by the break-up and Cecelia left him for a good reason. Your choices, then, are about deciding whether Kareem keeps donning the mask he has always worn, or whether he should try to be more open and vulnerable.
There are a number of dateable women (even Cecelia) but every route has a friendship option that feels true to life. It's less like an LI points collector and more like real relationships branching off in understandable directions.
This game has really impressed me. It managed to pull me into its world, and that's largely due to how well written it is. If inner monologues and exposition dumps are signs of a green writer, this VN shows that it can be done skilfully, even poking fun at the usual audience:
Kareem's thoughts: Life is something else, isn’t it?
Kareem's thoughts: Anti-depressants turn me into a low-functioning Asperger zombie, so my bottle’s been sitting three-quarters full for the last three months.
Kareem's thoughts: Whether pills or no pills,
Kareem's thoughts: Mood stabilizers,
Kareem's thoughts: Or my happy-go-lucky ‘wants to jump off a cliff’ self-
Kareem's thoughts: It’s hard to miss the comedy that is Kareem's thoughts: the novelization.
Kareem's thoughts: I mean, just look at this shit -
Morgan Freeman: And here we find Kareem Marshall: marred the spirit, yet unbowed-
Morgan Freeman: Still, at heart, the master of his soul,
Morgan Freeman: Many tales, yet untold, like the one where he fucks this blonde.
Kareem's thoughts: Sorry, that part was for the mindless segment of the audience.
Kareem's thoughts: But this is what I mean by ‘comedy’. I’m standing here with a hole the size of Cecelia, and in walks two rent-a-blondes.
Kareem's thoughts: If fucking the pain away is a therapeutic treatment, we should probably have my therapist prescribe me medication right abooooooout now.
Kareem's thoughts: I worry often about myself and these tendencies I have.
And it's not just the internal monologues. The dialogue shines too. My favourite scene so far is Kareem's conversation with Nami, a stranger he meets at a party:
Nami: What do you see -
Nami: Up there in those stars?
Kareem: Hmm.
Kareem: Memories.
Kareem: My dad and I were laying out on a hill in the backyard and staring up as we are now.
Kareem: I remember him telling me that those beams were mostly, but a memory.
Kareem: In the time it takes those lights to reach us, those stars have already changed.
Kareem: He said there was irony in starlight making us so nostalgic, because in the reality we were staring into the past.
Kareem: Ever since, I always see moments in time up there on the darker days. I’ve never been able to separate the night sky from past experiences of disappointment. It makes me feel -
Kareem: Melancholy. It makes me want to run away somewhere.
Nami: We can’t run away forever. You’ll carry those memories and experiences with you wherever you go.
Nami: They’ll be waiting there after the sunsets. I’m still learning that, too. How to deal with what and who I am.
Nami: When I was a girl, I use to look up and wonder. Halfway there, across the world, who was looking up at the same star I was.
Nami: I had this romanticized idea of my future husband waiting on the other side of that star.
Nami: Waiting to save me, and to love me.
Kareem: Who doesn’t love a good fairytale ending.
Nami: No.
Nami: No one can save me, but myself.
Nami: You said you saw loneliness. That should be proof enough that life never works out like the storybooks.
Nami: For someone who seems to hate vulnerability, you’re a pretty open book.
Kareem: The downside of being tragically self-aware. I can pretend to escape myself, but never entirely. Valerie wouldn’t let me anyway.
Nami: You’ve mentioned her twice. She must have quite some impact on you.
Kareem: If I’ve given you the perception I’m unguarded, then yeah. That’s all her.
Kareem: You’re far different from what the tabloids show.
Nami: Looks can be deceiving. But then again, how would you really know? I fake it so well you can’t be certain of anything.
Kareem: The eyes never lie.
Nami: Or this is the mask best suited for our conversation. Maybe I picked out your persona the moment you walked up. Maybe every word I’ve said has been fabricated.
Kareem: That’d be a lot of effort for a rooftop cigarette. Why even join me at all if that was the case.
Nami: You have a name?
Kareem: Kareem. Kareem Marshall.
It's just a prologue for now, but there is already a substantial amount to play, and I'm so thoroughly impressed.
