The Beauty of Simplicity in Dread Delusion

Video games have become complicated - extremely complicated. Whether it is the incredible balancing act of Elden Ring's gameplay or the vast and vibrant world of Horizon Forbidden West, this generation of games seemed to focus on bigger and more complex experiences. There's nothing inherently wrong or right with that focus; some people prefer a more engrossing experience that feels reminiscent of the real world rather than something strictly fantastical for the sake of it, while others want something more simplistic or more pointed. These intricate experiences often do miss one important lesson in their execution, however. They tend to lose the beauty and freedom that can come from simplicity.

Released in May 2024, Dread Delusion is a horror-themed action RPG from developer Lovely Hellplace and publisher DreadXP. The game takes place on the Oneiric Isles – floating masses of land magically propelled into the air after a catastrophic calamity destroyed the Underlands (aka the Land Below). You are imprisoned by the Inquisition, a group of individuals who work as enforcers for the Apostatic Union, an organization established after humans won a brutal war against the literal magical Gods whom they served. Your captors give you a choice: if you find and capture one of the Apostatic Union's most dangerous criminals – an outlaw known as Vela Callose – you will be granted your freedom. Refuse, and you will remain in prison until your death. With that, you are charged with exploring the Oneiric Isles, forced to find and enlist Vella Callose's old mutinied crewmates to capture your quarry. If everything goes right, you will return alive to reap your rewards and leave the Apostatic Union behind.

Dread Delusion hearkens back to the Elder Scrolls games of old, stylistically speaking. Not only does it share the same gameplay DNA as something like Morrowind, but it also looks the part, with gorgeous PS1-inspired pixelated visuals and a dark and foreboding atmosphere. Everything in Dread Delusion is massive in scale, from the strange fungal growths that cover swaths of the Isles to the cathedrals and mausoleums seen throughout the Endless Kingdom. The gothic and steampunk-inspired fantasy architecture is enhanced by the living conditions seen throughout the Apostatic Union and beyond. Food shortages, memory-erasing plagues, and dismissive bureaucracy are only a taste of the growing desperation that permeates the land. This oppressive atmosphere is exemplified ten-fold by an aspect of the experience that could be perceived as negative – Dread Delusion's gameplay is unequivocally simple.

RPG, simplified

Because it's an RPG, the game allows you to pick some basic background information for your prisoner and one of a few classes to start the game off with, along with the "fatal mistake" that caught the attention of the Apostatic Union. Each of these choices has only four selections, which are well-written enough to create a fully-fledged backstory despite the limited options.

From there, you are given four weapon types: daggers, swords, greatswords, and bows. While these can be upgraded, and there are a few versions of each, those four are all you get. If you want to use magic, you can cast using your offhand at any time while using your martial weapon. There are nineteen spells, ranging from shield spells to those that advance time. Compare this to the 141 magical effects in Morrowind, along with the eight different types of martial weapons, or with Oblivion, which has hundreds of spells and tons of different weapon types, and you can see why the game might feel simple.

Combat itself is again reminiscent of Morrowind, with a light attack, heavy attack, block, and a parry as the only physical attacks on offer. There's also a stamina bar you must watch carefully, though you can use potions to reinvigorate it or take a break from battle to let it refill. Things are more intricate when mixing magic and physical attacks, but it's implemented seamlessly enough to feel natural and easy. Your right mouse button will swing your weapon or shoot your bow, and your left mouse button will activate your spell. Pretty much anyone can pick up Dread Delusion and dominate the combat encounters within a few hours.

In light of more complicated systems like those found in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt or any of the Soulslike series, it's easy to see how this simplicity could be perceived as a negative. My counterargument is this – all of these choices presented in bigger games can give players a serious case of analysis paralysis. Many of these titles get bogged down in the weeds of their variety and lose the initial draw of their narrative within a weave of statistics and percentages.

This is why so many people make the "sneaky archer" joke when playing Skyrim; having all those choices available at all times renders the vast majority of them moot. The path of least resistance will almost always be the one that's taken the most unless an exceptionally diligent player makes a deliberate choice to experiment on subsequent playthroughs and fight their natural inclination to take the easiest route. Not only does this give the player a distinct feeling of FOMO, causing worry over what interesting thing could be missed because of sheer volume, but it also creates another layer of anxiety between the player and the game itself.

Soak it all in

That's the genius of Dread Delusion. Trimming off all that excess fat, while seemingly reductive on the surface, allows the player to stop and smell the grotesque fungal roses all throughout the Oneiric Isles. Atmosphere seeps from every pore of the world. The lore is immensely deep, with a whole history to discover, if one so chooses, spanning hundreds of years and a multitude of cultures.

There's fantastic environmental storytelling, with tiny details that help hammer home the idea that these floating continents are in constant flux and this world is generally unpredictable. Maybe half of a wizard's tower stands on a lower portion of an island while the upper half floats haphazardly attached to a section higher in the sky, quietly demonstrating that the island moved. Maybe the homes in the sparsely populated fields are in different states of disrepair, establishing who fell victim to the elements and in what order. Or maybe a section of the world isn't what it seems, hinting at nefarious and illegal worship with obviously pious objects scattered around. Not worrying about min-maxing your build gives you the freedom to take an honest look at your surroundings and soak in all of the hard work Lovely Hellspace put into their environments.

These more obscure mysteries of the Oneiric Isles are all the more supported by the narrative storytelling that's presented to you throughout the accursed floating atolls. Ideas about the oppression of religion and how suppression of one group leaves a vacuum that another group must fill. There are questions about what we define as sentience and whether the sacrifices of the few outweigh the needs of the many, how much power and worship oligarchs deserve and how much of that is just a veil for something much darker. Ruminations on what it truly means to be immortal and how the sins of our past can haunt us and the ones around us eternally stand side by side with questions of whether or not our safety is worth giving up in exchange for our rights.

The game doesn't do a thing to try to sway you one way or another, either. Make your decisions, and live with the consequences. How much guilt or elation you feel is entirely up to how much you care about what you're doing and what you believe is the right path. Dread Delusion is at its best when it forces you to operate in the areas of grey.

These grey areas would be less defined if you were bogged down in class choices. That's not to say that Dread Delusion's gameplay has no depth; it's just not the main focal point. You're easily able to hop in, play for an hour, fight against some unique and fittingly disturbing beasties, have your understanding of reality questioned, and hop out. Dread Delusion is an RPG that excels in the big picture and refuses to become a product of min-maxing minutia. In an era of online forums researching gaming efficiency to the nth degree, this is a breath of fresh air and sets Dread Delusion apart from so many other games in the genre. Simplicity isn't always the answer, but for a game like Dread Delusion, it's the defining factor in its greatness.