Farewell North PS5 Review. Games where we get to play from the perspective of our fluffy companions are always experiences to be relished. Dogs in video games are an institution upon themselves at this point and Farewell North offers a more reflective and introspective angle to this important sub-genre.
Across a short playtime, Farewell North explores the relationship between a dog, their owner and the world around them as they say goodbye to the things that they know and move on to new things. With a solid handle on its minimalist style, Farewell North was a cosy game that felt perfect at this time of year.
Farewell North Review (PS5) – A Dog’s World
Looking Inwards
Farewell North is a game that demands you to play in the quiet and with some good headphones – it’s a deeply atmospheric experience that had me enraptured from the minute I took control and began exploring the highlands.
As you explore the untamed wilderness, the cold palette of the world gradually expands into an environment bursting with colour and life. This reflects the journey of the characters throughout, with the lack of colour being a metaphorical way of showing strife and loss of place. The process of steadily bringing colour back is one that is rewarding in both senses, as a gameplay reward and as a natural way of continuing the story.
The archipelago of islands that you explore is directly inspired by places like Orkney and the characters that you meet throughout all feel like a part of a brilliant cultural tapestry that taps into the heritage of Scotland.
And despite these immersive moments of herding sheep and helping your owner, I feel like this game could have gone that extra step further in pushing its Scottish heritage. I opened the game to an option for Scottish Gaelic subtitles to be displayed below the standard English ones. As someone who can’t understand Gaelic, these subtitles were functionally irrelevant but did add that sense of authenticity to the experience.
However, the lack of Scottish voice acting seems like a confusing choice in that same line of thought. I can’t ultimately hold this against the game too much seeing as how the voicework is solid across the board, but I would have loved to have seen the option for a Scottish voice track accompanied with English subtitles.
This is ultimately a very small nitpick that I felt like is important to raise with how much this game positions itself as a demonstration of Scottish heritage – it isn’t a dealbreaker.
Visual Mastery
The core premise of Farewell North lies in restoring the colour back to the world as a metaphor for memory and reminiscing about time and people from the past. As you enter the world, everything is colourless and block coloured in white. As you work your way through areas, you get brief snaps of colour; you pick up flowers that light the area up around you in brilliant colours and let you get through thorny barriers.
The reward of seeing the environment explode to life before your eyes is a genuine treat and speaks to how much the colour truly adds to the world. And it brings a real sense of relief as you hear Keely describe her memories and what she thinks of where you are.
Accompanied by an incredibly atmospheric score, Farewell North is a treat for the senses and reminded me of games like Ōkami in how you bring the world back to life steadily. Here, it’s a bit more personal than there. But still – if I had a nickel for every game about dogs in which you restore colour to the world, I’d have two of them!
It’s A Dog’s Life
Where a game like Stray took the concept of a playable cat and went to the sci-fi extremes, Farewell North sticks to what it knows best and delivers arguably a far more concentrated and focused experience that left me feeling satisfied. While there aren’t any real “stakes” throughout the game, I found the journey of a border collie and its owner to be a compelling enough premise that spoke to me far more than others in the genre.
I was also surprised with how compelling the game was to play in the moment when I was expecting a bit more of a reserved experience overall. Navigation can be simplified down in the settings menu if you like. But I enjoyed slowly adjusting to the boat controls and exploring my way around the archipelago. That process of slowly exploring and soaking in the atmosphere is paramount here.
The quintessential experience of herding sheep as a dog was one that I was hoping to see and I was grinning from ear to ear as I did so. Your interactions with the world are going to be coming from a unique angle thanks to your canine perspective and I never felt like it was being used as a gimmick. Playing as a dog was never a statement piece to stand out for the sake of standing out, it’s integral to the experience.
Even in something as standard as a game of fetch, you see the world literally light up around you. These small moments feel so much more impactful with this visual feedback.
Generally navigating the world was also a relatively easy time, with the focus being on the moment rather than platforming challenges and navigational thinking. It’s about the journey, and the game wants you to be able to finish that journey at your own pace.
My one quibble with this dedication to story is how the game generally forgoes giving you the option to refresh yourself on what you’ll be doing throughout. A minimalist UI is a necessity for immersion with these types of games, but I would have loved an option to highlight mission objectives or what exactly to do in some scenarios. While I was normally able to intuit things, I had a couple of moments where I was left frustratingly running around without much direction.
Then again, these moments of freedom are where the game shines its brightest. Farewell North isn’t a list of objectives or quest markers to fill. You aren’t looking at a laundry list, each moment is a part of the story between dog and master. You can’t put an objective marker on that one (but a nudge every now and then would be nice too!).
Understanding Perspective
Most impressively, Farewell North manages to masterfully capture the unspoken relationship between pet and owner better than most other games that I can think of.
If you’ve had a dog at any point in your life, you’ll know about that closeness you develop over time. In spite of an impossible language barrier, you learn to understand each other and you grow closer together until the very end. It’s something that’s almost impossible to put into words and yet I feel that Farewell North has managed to land on its four feet with a story that threw me straight back into the mindset I had when I had my own dogs.
In playing this game and playing the role of a dog helping their owner overcome their own struggles and challenges, I was reminded of all the times that my old dogs came up to me and offered some small semblance of relief and happiness.
The story here will be exceptionally touching if you have that well of real-world experiences to draw upon and I feel blessed to have that as I journeyed through this world.
Just like the very best of the narrative adventure genre, Farewell North asks you to draw upon some of these universal experiences in order to understand the characters that you spend your time learning about here, and that is something truly special.
For the type of player who loves losing themselves in an introspective experience that will have you reflecting on your own experiences and life, I can safely say that the journey of Chesley the Collie is one not to be missed.
Farewell North is now available for PS5.
Review code kindly provided by publisher.