Choose My Adventure: Guided adventure, multiplayer hijinks, and pantslessness in Once Human

I’m going to be honest, I’m a bit surprised at just how on-rails Once Human is so far. Chalk that up to another assumption by me that this game was just another survival sandbox with some light shooting elements; so far, it’s felt like the opposite.

I will point out that’s not a complaint. I’m actually beginning to see the game kind of grow on me a little bit. I’m not anywhere close to thinking that I understand most people’s delight in the game, and I’m also kind of waiting for the other shoe to drop, but so far this has been a good time.

I remarked last week that things felt pretty humdrum, but that was also because I sort of saw all of the survival elements around Once Human and basically was not impressed. After some more time this week, I’m still not impressed, but I am beginning to get what makes this fun, and a lot of that is the shooting.

I’m not going to suggest that Once Human is on par with some of the finer third-person shooters out there, but I am going to say that after the amount of time I’ve had with some higher-quality ballistic weapons, Once Human’s gun fighting is far tighter than I ever expected. The amount of impact feels appropriate, there’s enough character in weapon recoil and power to make things feel weighty, and the sound design is pretty damn good.

This was definitely helped by the fact that I crafted myself a pretty damned good pistol. This thing has some significant stopping power right now, and its accuracy feels great, but there’s also what I suspect to be some damage falloff if I’m out of its optimal range; there’s no ballistic drop-off, but I did notice lower numbers when I was further away, even if I nailed some headshots.

Of course that wasn’t always the case with certain bosses that I faced as I roamed around following the main story objectives. For example, there was this huge, hulking beast with a giant tentacle-covered hand who was pretty robust even while I was nailing headshots on it. But then there were other bosses where I took out weak spots with precision, then opened up into their open neck hole for a face with a full clip of LMG fire.

Talking about quest objectives, I’m starting to also kind of dig in to the quests a bit more – not because the storytelling is suddenly improving but because the atmosphere is so deliciously dense. As I pointed out last week, the game really does a great job with its setting, and that has gotten even better as I’ve moved along. The enemy variety might not be what I would like, but the combination of activities and tasks I’ve taken on gets me fully embroiled in the atmosphere.

And that’s really for the best considering the polls told me to follow those steps. I imagine I might have explored my area and found those same places, but having the story steps put me where I needed to be while still letting me exercise a little bit of freedom was nice. Most of that freedom was found in clearing every possible objective when I’m in a larger outpost or dungeon area (for lack of better terms). I had a small checklist of things to do, so getting all of those goodies was welcome, but it also let me absolutely swim in Once Human’s atmosphere.

I also have to point out how the latent interaction with other players enhanced my experience. Scattered around the map are little messages players post on the ground – think of the messages that are left in any Soulsborne title – which sort gave me pause simply because I wasn’t sure what horrid little memos I was going to come across. Instead what I found were pleasant messages on pretty much every single place, with players wishing readers well, thanking Starry Studio for a fun game, or giving instructions on where to find chests with rare goodies. There were even a few messages that spoke to my personal experience; one post (pictured below) bemoaned how their character hasn’t found a set of pants through their adventures.

Incidentally, that’s why my own character is also pantsless: Not out of choice or desire to look at her nice butt (even if it is very nice); I just haven’t found any pants in gear chests, and finding the rawhide I need to craft my own is like pulling teeth. Seriously, I could swing a dead cat over my head and it would hit five copper nodes, but finding animals to hunt is a rare occurrence for me.

My ultimate time with other players, however, came when I delved into a Rosetta stronghold in order to enter a rift and capture a Deviation. This was for all intents and purposes something like a higher-level dungeon, with enemies that I worried outleveled most of my gear. Luckily, moving through the compound didn’t prove to be impossible, and fights gave me a good level of challenge, all while rewards and materials were scattered everywhere so I never felt like I was getting low on healing items or ammo. After all of this solo running, I found a rift that I was being told to enter. I decided to matchmake for a party and waited.

After about 14 minutes or so, another person joined me on my quest. The way matchmaking was a little bit weird because I thought that once we were paired it would toss us into the rift, but instead I had to disengage matchmaking, head to the rift, and then actually start the fight, all of which wasn’t immediately clear. After a bit of figuring it out, my newfound partner and I eventually got into the boss fight, which was… not a letdown but also not quite as complex as I had hoped. Even so, it was fun to do something with another person, even if I was pretty much undergeared. At least I didn’t feel like a load, anyway.

So yeah, so far, so good, so fun! I’m genuinely beginning to enjoy myself. Even if Once Human isn’t astonishing me with its gameplay, it’s showing itself to be far better at it than I had assumed, which is a pleasant surprise. So let’s keep this gravy train rolling, shall we? What do we get in to next?

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As four the second poll for this week, I admit that it’s a little silly, but it’s something I wanted to ask anyway. I’m pretty sure I’m going to get out there and find some rawhide some way or another, which means my character’s nearly bare butt will finally have covering. Or will it? As it turns out, the Fifth Element-style bottoms she’s wearing now can be used as a cosmetic, so technically I could wear better pants stats-wise while still making her a pantsless adventurer. Assuming that’s something anyone reading cares to see, anyway.

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Polling ends on Friday, September 20th, at 1:00 p.m. EDT like usual. I’m likely going to hit pause on playing this one until the polls shake down, but then again I really would like to try and find some rawhide. Seriously, I must be inattentive to the animals that drop it. Who knew this would be the rarest material ever?

Welcome to Choose My Adventure, the column in which you join Chris each week as he journeys through mystical lands on fantastic adventures – and you get to decide his fate. Which is good because he can often be a pretty indecisive person unless he’s ordering a burger.