Dedication is often mentioned in the same breath as P.T., the playable teaser for Hideo Kojima’s Silent Hills, a game that was later canceled.
The comparisons are useful. Both are intimate, familiar horror games, most of which take place in a single domestic space. The horror of both games lies in the repetition of their actions and the scenery, in the accumulation of small, moving details that illustrate how little you can be safe in this world and not in a big, loud fear.
And then there is the comparison that needs to be done outside the theme and gameplay. You can not play a game at the time of publishing this story. Both have been retrieved from their respective online homes and are no longer available for download or purchase.
But P.T. was available for almost a year before it was taken out of the PlayStation Store after the termination of Silent Hills. Many people have P.T. during this year; even more people watched streamer play online. Polygon itself called it the 10th best game of the year 2014.
The disappearance of devotion is a bit more complex and much more tragic. Devotion was developed by the Taiwanese studio Red Candle Games and was only available on Steam for six days before it was taken offline, after an item that compared Chinese President Xi Jinping with Winnie the Pooh was hung on the walls of the game. Devotion still has not returned to the store and may never be officially available to play again.
Goty # 3: Devotion
For our Guide to 2019 the best games of the yearPolygon counted down our top 5 on each day of the week, ending with our top pick and full list of our top 50 favorites from 2019. Later in the month, we’ll be looking back at the year with special videos and essays, and surprises!
Devotion is not just one of the best horror games of the year. It is one of the best overall games of the year. Its quality makes it remarkable, but the fact that it can not be bought or played now, though it is so poignant, also makes it a tragedy.
Devotion’s story takes place in Taiwan in the 1980s and revolves around a family of three: a father, Du Feng Yu; a mother, Gong Li Fang; and a daughter, you Mei Shin. The horror of the game is not paranormal, not in the traditional sense. Instead, over the years, fear gathers in the family home, which settle like dust in quiet corners of domesticity, just from Mei Shin, who has contracted a mysterious illness, and Feng Yu’s growing paranoia, fueled by his blind belief in it a folk deity named Cigu Guanyin. He learns to both fear and worship God, encouraged by a cult leader disguised as a mentor.
The player experiences the world of Devotion – a home, although most of the game takes place in a single dwelling – in blocks of time that shift and move from year to year. Dedication, like P.T. before that is built on loops; Sometimes they go from one hallway to another to still be in the same place but at a different time. While the apartment has only five rooms, the game takes you to these rooms at different times in family history, creating a nonlinear vortex of decay.
The apartment lobby acts as a kind of hub world, but over time you can choose the year in which you visit the apartment. Devotions puzzles require you to move items from one time frame to the next, which sometimes means you take part in the banal act of unpacking boxes, but it can also mean that you are making a ceremonial bath for Feng Yu’s sad daughter – something that he believes is the only way to heal her.
Over the years, Devotion’s homes become more alien and beyond the world – a demonstration of Feng Yu’s blind faith that influences the world around him. Where once a pot of tofu stew stood on the stove, brew today a pot of ceremonial wine. The photos, which once hung undisturbed in the bedroom, have since been desecrated, with crosses over each family member’s eyes.
What could have been a slow descent into madness instead is contrasted starkly as you jump from year to year. This is how the fear spreads in the game: repetition puts our expectations into effect. You think you know what every room should look like, and then you notice a change as your guard lowers. And then another.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoEUtvHr9c0 [/ embed]
Feng Yu’s belief is his own kind of horror, one that resonates with me. He believes that his daughter will be saved if he can prove that he is sufficiently devoted to this new god. His doubt would condemn them to failure, or at least that’s what he believes throughout prayer and what makes the “reality” of the situation virtually meaningless.
I grew up Catholic and believing in God meant believing in hell. This created a fear that sometimes turned into superstition; Any missed detail in my praise of our God or a thoughtless sin committed as a child could mean that hell is waving and the doors of heaven are forever closed to me. Everything became important, either as a sign that I was thoughtful and pious enough or that I could never be saved.
Dedication means surrendering to devotion. It is an act that might cause some to feel powerful by giving up their own agency to live in the service of a being who listens to their requests for help or not. In Feng Yu’s submission to religious authority, he is driven to madness; The player controlling Feng Yu’s body now has ultimate control over his actions. This is a final proof of his commitment.
It’s an unpleasant act that I found very painful and triggered by a brutal series of keystrokes that gave me a serious break. Violence is nothing new in games, but such a visceral, terrible reflection of the themes of a game is strangely rare. And there remains to the player a question that may not be answered: what could drive you to this kind of dedication?
