Farewell North review

• Reviews by Johnny Nys
• Published:

Color us thoroughly impressed with this beautiful, heart-tugging journey through the Scottish Highlands

I spent my childhood growing up with a Collie. My mom still tells the story of how the dog guarded my cradle, and how I sometimes peered over the edge to check if it was still there. I’ll always love dogs. So when I got the chance to play as a Border Collie in a new adventure game by first-time developer Kyle Banks, of course I jumped at the opportunity like it was flyball. In Farewell North, you accompany a young woman during her travels through Scotland and bring back vibrancy to a bleak world as you trigger memories while helping her to overcome depression and learn to say goodbye. It’s an emotionally powerful journey to puzzle your way through using color and perspective, making it a visually stunning experience as you slowly unravel the protagonist’s heart-tugging story.

The Orkney Islands in Scotland are a real place, but here they represent a magical realm. As Chesley the dog, you accompany Cailey, your human, on a voyage through the Highlands and islands called skerries. Cailey has something important to do here, a personal mission she’s dreading, and the entire game revolves around preparing her mentally for this task. It’s a stylistic world devoid of color, with completely white characters moving through a gray-blue environment. When you are depressed, the world is indeed a bleak place, a life frozen in time in which you can’t seem to make any progress, where dark and towering shapes seem to surround you, or you feel adrift amid endless waters. Farewell North’s graphics perfectly capture this heavy, distorted view of reality. A tap of a button, however, sparks a circle of color surrounding Chesley. It quickly disappears when there’s nothing interactive to latch onto, but when it does take hold, that’s when the magic happens.

You control Chesley from a third-canine point of view with either a controller or the mouse/directional keys combo. You can toggle between a leisurely walk and a slightly faster trot with the tap of a button, or you can sprint full-out by holding that button down. A stamina gauge is displayed at top speed, draining rather quickly, but it fills up twice as fast again once you let go. You can also raise your total stamina by catching will o’ the wisps – folkloristic little blue trailing lights that hover above the ground and speed away when you approach, leading to a chase through the landscape.

Chesley can jump onto rocks to reach elevated locations, though his position often looks like he’s defying gravity in a glitchy way, like standing on a cliffside at an acute angle. You can also jump back down, but there’s a limit to the drop; jump from too high and the screen turns black when you hit the ground or water, only to find yourself back at the edge of the cliff to find a safer route down. Similarly, Chesley can swim but only so far. Your field of vision will narrow the longer you swim, until at the last moment it tints slightly red before turning completely black as well, respawning Chesley back on shore.

When you find something your human companion might be interested in, like a canoe you can use to travel from island to island, her outline flashes next to it and you can call her closer by hitting the bark button. When you head out on the water, you’re unleashed from Chesley, so to speak, to control Cailey instead. The oars are handled by alternately tapping left and right and rowing the canoe from jetty to jetty. Should you have trouble maneuvering this vessel, there’s an option to simplify its controls by only having to steer, but personally I enjoyed swinging the paddles around as a nice change of gameplay.

Each island holds its own obstacles, puzzles and memories to unlock. You can freely choose which place you want to visit next. All possible locations are indicated by either small, bluish-green columns of light emanating straight up into the clouds, or broader golden ones. The latter promise more elaborate narratives and thus gameplay, while the former involve only short visits and easier quests, like freeing a whale caught in a net, reuniting a mother duck with her ducklings, or finding an alternate route after a cave-in. There are also several brief interludes when woman and dog play a game of catch with a stray stick.

On the first island, if you find your path blocked by giant thorns shooting out of the ground, chances are there’s a white silhouette of a plant nearby. This plant will grow flowers when you hit the color button near it, and you can hold one in your jaws with the bark button. You can only carry it a short time, however, so you need to be sure you can reach the intended destination before it disappears. Make it to the thorns in time, and they will magically melt away, allowing you passage through.

If rock paths or rope bridges suddenly break up and float in pieces mid-air, you may be able to temporarily create a crossing, but not always. It depends on the location of a natural archway made by either rocks or trees. Sometimes it’s on your side, sometimes it’s across the chasm. Permanently restoring the path requires looking at it through that archway. On later islands, such archways also have the power to change reality, returning the landscape to how it was in the past so you can get into regions blocked off by a fence or fallen boulders in the present, for instance.

Farewell North

Genre:	Adventure, Drama
Presentation:	Realtime 3D
Theme:	Magical, Psychological
Perspective:	Third-Person
Graphic Style:	Stylized
Gameplay:	Environmental puzzler, Quest
Control:	Direct Control
Game Length:	Medium (5-10 hours)
Action:	Platforming
Difficulty:	Low

I have no idea how this all works, why rocks or bridges shatter as soon as you approach them, or how they are magically stuck together again. It doesn’t make any rational sense, and Cailey is oblivious to it all, never commenting on these fantastical events. On the surface, it seems like nothing more than a puzzle gimmick. However, I imagine them to be symbolic challenges representing the mental blockages Cailey creates in her own mind to shut herself off from the world out of fear and sorrow. After all, she’s on a personal journey she’d rather not undertake but which has to be done, and imagining these obstacles is the equivalent of prolonging the inevitable.

These are the most common “puzzles” encountered in Farewell North, and finding the solution is usually a case of looking around carefully for those plants and archways and figuring out how to reach them. During your travels, you’ll also engage in other kinds of gameplay, like herding flocks of sheep, guiding them to their pen by running left and right around to keep them together. I did notice a small continuity error due to the game’s nonlinearity. I happened upon a new location where I needed to herd some sheep, and Cailey commented on how it’s been a long time since she gave sheep dog commands and isn’t sure she’s up to the task… except I’d done exactly that already on two previous islands.

When you succeed in overcoming these obstacles, the game’s true beauty is unleashed. Even when you’re only running around with a flower, or are guiding some sheep to their pen, the circle of color follows you and brightens the world in your immediate vicinity. It’s not a static circle, as its edge constantly flows around you like watery waves, turning the grass green again and making the birds previously frozen in the sky fly again, before losing its lustre again when you leave that area behind. Every hair in Chesley’s black and white fur becomes visible, and Cailey finally gets a face and a detailed hiking outfit. When you complete all the objectives at a certain location, the entire landscape will revive with living color. When you move onto the next island, however, all color drains again, and both Chesley and Cailey return to their white silhouettes to start over.

The journey is not all cozy wanderings through beautiful nature, guided by an orchestral soundtrack filled with string instruments, bagpipes, and the occasional choir voices. One particular island will completely transform into a shadowy form of the city of Edinburgh as you play through the memory of the time Cailey moved into a small apartment there and Chesley ran away, scared of all the busy traffic and other ruckus. You’ll have to stealthily evade a search party of strangers as you try to return to Cailey through quite an unnerving nighttime sequence with a thrilling musical score sure to get your heart beating faster. How the game switches from paradisiacal to nightmarish scenes is masterfully done and fully delves into the joys and sorrows that have made up Cailey’s life.

Every time you discover something important, Cailey comments on it and usually tells a story from her past. Some of these moments are cutscenes of the camera panning to reveal color being restored to an island, but usually it’s possible to move Chesley around while Cailey is still talking. The dialogue is fully voiced and subtitled. A nice touch is that underneath the regular subtitling, you can choose to add a translation in Scottish dialect. Cailey has a nice voice to listen to, superbly conveying either joy, despair or melancholy. When remembering, ghosts from the past appear as well, in the form of farmers asking for help, sounding appropriately local. Chesley’s barks and whimpers steal the show, however, especially when chasing away seals twice his size.

Next to exploring the basic storyline, Farewell North offers several sets of collectibles. The moment you set foot on an island, you’ll see a quick display of which collectibles can be found there, and how many you have already uncovered in total. (These numbers will also appear when you call up the game’s menu.) Finding all will o’ the wisps is one of those achievements. Often you’ll pass through tunnels or small waterways, where you can catch a musical note hanging in mid-air. Collecting these will make Cailey recall a highland song her mother used to sing to her when she was a child, and she’ll write down the lyrics in a notebook you can open at will. You can also find lighthouses providing panoramic views of the region, inspiring Cailey to make a small drawing in her notebook. There are stone benches to rest on; there’s even one bench where Cailey whips out a handheld gaming device so you can actually play a platformer titled “Comfy Boy” (you play as a lapdog jumping between all kinds of furniture to first find its blanket and then a couch to rest on). Once unlocked, this minigame is also available through the menu.

At first I didn’t actively hunt these collectibles, picking them up only when I happened to notice them nearby. But as I witnessed the number of unexplored locations diminish, and felt the game nearing its end, I went back to all the islands to scavenge for the collectibles I missed. I’m usually not a completionist but I didn’t want the game to end, and I realized I was missing out on some parts of Cailey’s backstory. There’s just something inspiring about roaming these gorgeous lands, even if I found myself lost several times due to the lack of an in-game map. When I reached the last island, though, I noticed I couldn’t get back in my canoe to roam the surrounding waters, so I had to work my way through to the end from that point on. Thankfully, after you’ve finished Chesley and Cailey’s journey and the credits have rolled (it took me eight hours, taking my time), the game allows you to continue exploring to pick up the collectibles you might have missed.

At least, you can once your eyes are dry again, as the finale made me completely drench the handkerchief I luckily always keep in my pocket. It ruffled the hairs on my neck and gave me goosebumps when I witnessed Cailey finally finding the strength to complete her mission. Everybody who has ever lost someone will relate to those tears of grief, but also of acceptance in letting go. The powerful finale is complemented by the combination of camera angles, gorgeous graphics, and the orchestra going full fortissimo... I don’t think I’ve cried at a game’s ending like this since To the Moon. 

Final Verdict

As I started playing Farewell North, I didn’t find it very adventurey. Sure, it was cool running around as a dog chasing a little blue light around, but the otherwise colorless setting didn’t warm my heart. Then I faced the first obstacles and things got more interesting, and even a little tricky here and there. And when I succeeded in returning color to the first island I visited, it was as if the entire game came to life for me, and the shared magical journey of Chesley and Cailey touched a chord inside me. It’s a very serious game, uncovering deep emotions, but it includes just enough comic relief, like Chesley’s interactions with the wildlife. What at first seemed little more than a cozy exploration game became something resembling a real-life adventure through a jaw-droppingly beautiful land I’d love to visit personally. The narrative builds up to a bittersweet finale through a variety of fun gameplay styles as you feel ever more invested in the deep love between woman and dog, making it ideal for animal lovers, nature fans, or anyone who could use a little more color in their own lives. 

Johnny played Farewell North on PC using a review code provided by the game’s publisher.