The world is dying. It has died before, and it will die again — such is the nature of the cycles. Long ago, the Unknown 9 — the best and brightest of an ancient race — sought to break this cycle and preserve what they had, but to no avail. Now, there is hardly a speck of dust on Eath that does not lie on the bones of that which came before.
This is the premise of Unknown 9: Awakening. If it sounds familiar, that’s because it is. We’ve all been here and seen this before.
As the game starts, your protagonist, Haroona, wakes from a dream where she walked the spirit realm, known as The Fold. She is with her wise and mystical mentor, Reika, who takes her on a trek through the desert, discussing the war between the ancient sect known as the Leap Year Society and its splinter cell, the Ascendants.
The Ascendants seek the Unknown 9’s knowledge and power, hoping to alter the course of destiny with this knowledge. The LYS, as they abbreviate themselves, know that the Ascendants will only herald death and destruction for humanity.
As a Questor, Reika teaches you to interact with the environment and fight using Am — the spirit energy that connect all things — trading sassy remarks along the way. Eventually, Reika finds the leader of the Ascendants, Vincent. She gives you an artifact that will make you more powerful than you can possibly imagine, before being struck down by the big bad.
To put it another way: Indian Nathan Drake learns to use the Force before Obi Wan gets killed by Darth Vadar in the desert. The cycle of imagination begins anew…
Granted there are very few modern creations that are truly original, but rarely do you see such obvious tropes being so brazenly stacked upon one another. The question that really matters is whether this delicate balancing act holds everything in perfect harmony, like a balanced rock in a zen garden, or if it’s just a pile of loosely connected ideas that will ultimately collapse under its own weight.
If you had high hopes for the delicate tower, you will be sorely disappointed.
Unknown 9 Awakening is the first game in the Unknown 9 Universe, a series of interconnected media offerings. There’s a podcast, novel trilogy and comic series that all tie in to Haroona’s story.
Haroona herself is easily the most interesting part of the game. Played by Anya Chalotra (Yennifer of Vengerburg, Netflix’s The Witcher), it’s great to see a famous face portray a strong, female, non-white main character in a genre mostly known for its Nathan Drakes and Joel Millers. The really disappointing thing is that Haroona is drowning in a sea of mediocrity, with the rest of the ensemble being passable at best. You rapidly find yourself on a ship of allies who are introduced in quick succession. You could go and talk to them and find out what’s up, but nothing compels you to do so — especially after sampling the quality of conversation on offer.
So, we strike out on missions instead. First, you travel the world, hunting Vincent out of revenge. As you learn more about Am, the Fold and the Unknown 9 you evolve to follow a more noble calling.
You jump from set piece to set piece, Uncharted style, punching people’s souls out of their bodies and solving environmental puzzles using the Force, sorry, the Fold. As you do, you scour every nook and cranny for collectables — from Anomalies to upgrade your abilities to LYS Coins and enemy devices to destroy — while making wise-ass remarks to your American side kick.
If it sounds, again, like an Indian Uncharted or Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, it’s because there is just a paper-thin veneer separating them. Yet, somehow, Unknown 9’s combat is much worse than its inspirations — leaning on melee, the lock-on mechanic being poor at best, bosses being inexplicably tanky and button inputs being sticky, combat is far from satisfying.
This carries over to the overworld exploration, too. Too many times did I count Haroona trying to Force Crush the air like some kind of bored Sith, simply because the Crush and Interact button are the same, and Haroona couldn’t figure out that she should be trying to pick up the glowing orb of energy floating in front of her face.
Woe betide you pick up an Anomaly (also inexplicably called a Gnosis point) and miss the button prompt to upgrade your abilities, as there’s no menu option to cycle back and sort your upgrades out.
Haroona’s abilities are split into Umbric, Stealth and Combat, to try to add an RPG element to the game. Unfortunately, the lack of menu option means that if you want to check how much a certain upgrade costs, you have to wait until you find a new Anomaly.
In case it wasn’t crystal clear by now, Unknown 9 is pretty rough around the edges.
Outside of combat, there are plenty of other issues that pop up repeatedly. The most obvious is when talking to your allies, who looking the wrong way when talking to you. Sometimes dialogue will either cut out entirely if you step too far away from them or continue at full volume as you walk 100m from them. There is no rhyme nor reason, let alone consistency.
And that’s not all, as your allies have issues in combat too. The aforementioned American has a habit of walking in front of the enemy you’re stealthily trying to takedown. The first time this happened, I panicked, thinking he would be seen and set off an alarm, but he was thankfully completely ignored by the AI – a silver lining to his behaviour. He then proceeded to leg it across the map to a security console, that I hoped he would deactivate, but simply sprinted back to me as if nothing had happened. None of the guards noticed a thing.
The enemies aren’t just blind, they’re ridiculous. They come out with ludicrous dialogue lines about how violence solves everything — don’t worry, there’s no nuance to be found here — slump against the air in unnatural ways when they die, and in some cases, their heads just roll clean off, like a mannequin.
Other issues persist, like the big showy Step ability (where you can jump into an enemy’s body) occasionally bugs, so while you have control over all of their higher functions, like deciding whether to shoot their friend in the head, you can’t make them turn…
The jump animation is also bloody awful, looking almost as if an invisible hand carries you in an arc, and the list goes on.
And with each new flaw we uncovered, it feels like we unlock another cycle. Unfortunately, when you take a step back, you realise that you’re simply circling the drain, again and again.