Every once in a while, a video game releases — usually an indie — that instantly becomes a “must-play.”
These are often the games that put forth a mechanic that ends up changing the way we play for years after, or a story that, likewise, won’t leave our minds for years to come.
The Caribou Trial very much falls into the latter category I mentioned above.
The Caribou Trail Educates
Told by the ironically-named purveyors of strongly-crafted Canadian tales, Montreal’s Unreliable Narrators, The Caribou Trail educates and entertains with a work of fiction set in the very real skirmish known as the Gallipoli Campaign, which, in 1915, saw the country of Newfoundland jump in with fellow British Commonwealth and allied French soldiers to control the strategic Dardanelles strait, capture or starve Constantinople, and push the powerful Ottoman Empire out of World War One.
By virtue of being from Unreliable Narrators being Quebec, and because Newfoundland is, of course, a Canadian Province now, this is surely a game that will be claimed patriotically by Canadian gamers. However, because Newfoundland was still almost 35 years away from joining Canada at the time of the mission, this one belongs solely to them. In fact, no Canadian soldiers ever set foot upon Gallipoli.
Unreliable Narrators feels qualified to tell their story within this historical context, as a co-founder of the company had a family member who served in the Royal Newfoundland Regiment.
And they tell the story so well, with keen focus on historical detail and on the strength of Newfoundland identity.
In total, 1,076 Newfoundlanders took part in the campaign, which is no small number when you consider that in 1915 the country had an estimated population of 240,000, based on census data from 1911 and 1921.
By January 9, 1916, at the end of a battle that would later be seen as a major failure for the Allied troops, illness and injuries had reduced the Newfoundland Regiment to a strength of only 470 men and 17 officers.
However, those men would prove to be exceptional heroes, as they were the last to leave the Allied-held Suvla Bay.
During the skirmish, the Newfoundland Regiment captured a strategic ridge that the Turkish had been using as a nest to rain sniper fire down on allied soldiers.
It’s for these two reasons that Turkey named the mound Caribou Hill, which now bears one of the six caribou statues made by British artist Captain Basil Gotto, placed to mark where Newfoundlanders experienced their most influential moments during World War One, both good and bad.
These statues now make up what is known as The Trail of the Caribou.
From one “Rock” to another
The Caribou Trial focuses its very narrative on a group of three unlikely and fictitious comrades from the Newfoundland Regiment, who’ve sailed from “The Rock” in Newfoundland to another rock in Turkey.
You control Fisher, or simply Fish, as most call him — an enigma of a character, almost certainly intended to have a vague backstory, so we can easily become him.
All we know of Fish is that he’s one of the lucky 487 who made it back from Gallipoli, as the game opens with him serving in France in 1916 at the even more disastrous Beaumont-Hamel, where over 700 of the remaining 800 members of the Newfoundland Regiment were wiped out in about 30 minutes during the Battle of the Somme. We also know that he was orphaned after his mother’s new boyfriend convinced her to relinquish custody to a group of nuns.
There’s St. John’s bad boy with an honourable code, Gordo, who has seemingly enlisted to avoid some criminal charges back home. The women of St. John’s reportedly loathe Gordo, but he’s quick to defend those who love.
Gordo cares especially for the meek and mild Lon, who rounds out the trio of main characters. Lon is living a rather big lie that has found him in Gallipoli, but he’s finding comfort in his new friends, as well as the thought that his beloved sister is nearby, serving as a nurse on a ship in the bay.
A story told over fish and brewis
Told over a roughly six-hour runtime, The Caribou Trial is more of an interactive storybook than a video game.
While the story on offer is one of gritty wartime days, Unreliable Narrators adopts a bright, stylized, Sea of Thieves-like visual presentation.
However, the extent of similarities extends to gameplay as well. While it is primarily an interactive storybook, The Caribou Trial’s gameplay loop [emphasis on loop] primarily has you using a map and compass to navigate the base and trenches of Suvla Bay to complete tasks and move the story along.
You’ll help a cast of named NPCs dig trenches, collect dog tags off of dead soldiers in No Man’s Land, mail a letter, or do a myriad of other simple tasks throughout each chapter.
At the end of each chapter, you’ll sit down over a kettle and cook the very best take on military rations’ legendary Newfoundland dish, fish and brewis.
Crushing the hard tack biscuits, salt cod, salt, and even a pinch of Turkish spices into boiling water one night becomes a constant minigame.
Over Fish’s cooking, the gang grows closer together.
As the chapters open and close, the monotonous tasks honestly become little more than ways to keep occupied while Fish tells his story to a group of boys in Newfoundland around a fire in Beaumont-Hamel.
It’ll be a major turn-off for some, but I strongly urge you to try it and stick with it. As the narrative expertly comes together, you’ll start to see the vision.
It especially becomes real in the last half-hour as the game hits you with its twist, which I won’t spoil; It’s a grand tying of story threads that deserves to be experienced on your own.
Fish tells the by’s around the fire that he may be remembering things differently from how they actually happened, and that seems to be code for the game’s choice system.
Throughout each chapter, you’ll be able to interact with other members of the regiment and choose your interaction to change small story beats.
There are also a handful of major story beats that will change depending on the choices you make, like whether to take one of only three chances you have to fire a gun, or if you choose to share a short minute of human civility with a Turk in No Man’s Land. Overall, you will always march to the same end, but it does a great job of feigning immersion.
Teaching the by’s
Despite being made by Montrealers, The Caribou Trail is unapologetically Nefoundlander!
The conversations adopt every slang and “where are you?” Imagine, while there are discussions of Newfoundland traditions, and even a brief moment where you can take a break to play the ugly stick!
While you navigate, you’ll come across various collectables that share stories uniquely Newfoundlander like how the Newfoundland Regiment had blue putties [socks] as opposed to the Commonwealth’s green, or how women and girls knitted socks so high in quality for their boys that they became a coveted item between the allies, you’ll learn how they carved art into their shells and bullets, and more real-life facts.
Verdict
The Caribou Trail is a game that should be taught in schools. It teaches the facts of a battle that is too often not well known to most of us Canadians, solely because a group of us took part in it before they were Canadian. And it manages to tell this story in a way that is both happy and optimistic as well as fearful and sad.
Overall, there’s a charm to these characters, this setting, and this story that’s hard not to love.
Trust me, you’ll be all the better for the six hours you invest.
[The publisher provided a copy of the game for review purposes.]
Reviewed on: PC
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Author: 360 Technology Group
