Steambot Chronicles (2006, PS2)

I have a hard time getting into sandbox games. They’re structurally overwhelming and often gruesome. I recently tried Sleeping Dogs on a recommendation (and because it was a recent Games With Gold giveaway) only to shut it off after a character had his ear cut off within the game’s first two minutes. What kind of a welcome is this? I have no idea who the ear-cutters or ear-cuttee are and no investment in the conflict.

 

A woman finds a young man injured and hungry. She takes him in and feeds him. The young man traverses territory occupied by power-hungry revolutionaries  to get medicine for the sick woman's mother. This is one of three opening Steambot Chronicles potentialities depending on the dialogue choices you make in the first minute or so. One of the sandbox genre's great advantages is its capacity for letting the player go through the story at his or her own pace. So why rush into ear-chopping?

 I’ve spent much of the past week as a professional gladiator, a musician, an archaeologist, and a pool shark. I’ve spent none of the last week severing ears. That's because Steambot Chronicles is the warmest, most welcoming sandbox game ever made. It’s one of the warmest, most welcoming games period.

Steambot succeeds in spite of not only its genre, but its aesthetic. It may look like a Tales of… game, but screaming, starry-eyed anime clichés are nowhere to be found. And this is the thing I love most about the game: its characters and world are delightfully boring. NPCs are bakers, farmers, and artists trying to get by. Vanilla, the main character, is just a polite guy finding his bearings in an unfamiliar town (unless you take him down the path of supreme assholery). The game’s central mechanic, the piloting and fighting of mechs called Trots, is elegantly woven into the world’s fabric—Trots are a part of everyday life. You’ll see them with plows attached plodding through fields and supporting cranes on shipping docks and waiting at stop signs. Steambot’s story isn’t one of Vanilla and his mech versus the world; it’s a story of Vanilla and his mech in the world. “If Hayao Miyazaki made a sandbox-style game, it would probably look a lot like this,” says Hardcore Gamer via the back of the box. “If Yasujiro Ozu made a Virtual On game” is more fitting.