Tell Me Why review: Mysteries explored in the Last Frontier

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Were it not built around a legitimately tantalizing mystery filled with compelling and dynamic characters, I might be tempted to think Tell Me Why was designed as gleeful troll bait for that small but vocal minority of intolerant players who see any game that doesn’t star a straight white cisgender dude shooting guns and visiting strip clubs as a personal attack.

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French studio Dontnod Entertainment’s (Life is Strange, Vampyr) latest work of interactive fiction is a lovingly and at times heartbreakingly told tale of a pair of twins in Alaska. Its opening scene shows one of them — Tyler, a tween — in a police station, clearly in shock as he confesses to killing his mom. It then zooms ahead 10 years, where we see Tyler getting ready to leave the juvenile residential home in which he’s spent the last decade while his sister Alyson excitedly prepares to come pick him up.

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The story, told in three chapters being released weekly starting on Aug. 28, is focused on uncovering what happened the night of the twins’ mother’s death. As with any good murder mystery, not all is what it initially seems. Tyler and Alyson have slightly different memories of what occurred, apparent not only in their discussions about their childhood, but also a strange sibling bond that allows them to sense each other’s feelings, summon up memories they can both see, and even communicate with each other without spoken language. These abilities are put to clever narrative use throughout the game, letting them do such things as secretly talk to one another while in the presence of others.

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The main problem Tyler and Alyson are facing, however, is that they were just kids when everything went down. They couldn’t fully understand what was happening to themselves or their mother in the moments and days leading up to the tragedy. So if they want to know what really took place, they’ll need to ask the adults who were involved in their lives as kids, from the chief of police, who took Alyson in when Tyler was taken away, to the busybody wife of the owner of the town’s only store, who may have known their mom better than anyone else. It’s up to players to decide how the twins react to what they learn.

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That’s about as far along as it’s safe to go without revealing any spoilers in this intricately crafted mystery, which is full of the sort of believable yet still shocking and satisfying twists and turns worthy of a prestige TV show. But the plot is only part of what makes Tell Me Why so compelling.

It is, as I alluded at the start, one of the most socially progressive games I’ve yet encountered. It is certainly and successfully designed to entertain, but it also has a brave and brazen plan to amplify minority voices and liberal causes. And it does so in a genuine way that feels completely organic.

A big part of this has to do with the setting. We’re provided a deftly realized sense of time and place in the town of Delos Crossing and surrounding area. Anyone who has spent any time in a small northern community is bound to appreciate the attention to detail paid to everything from a long and scenic ferry ride to bulletin boards that have home-made posters advertising local events and speaking out against things like mining projects that will impact salmon populations. The town isn’t real, but during my time spent playing I was convinced it was.

Even more important are the characters we encounter. Delos Crossing is realistically populated with a healthy mix of ethnicities, including many people of First Nations descent who have held on to traditional tribal beliefs and incorporated them into their modern lives. Players will learn how the Tlingit honour their dead and put faith in spiritual connections. Rarely have Indigenous folk been treated with such dignity in the medium of games.

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But perhaps the most socially aware — or woke, to use the parlance of our times — part of the experience is Tyler. He’s a transgender man (played thoughtfully by transgender actor August Black) who believed for all of his young adulthood that his mom tried to kill him because she couldn’t deal with him expressing who he was. His character isn’t defined by him being trans — we see plenty of other aspects of his personality, from his conservation activism to a romantic interest — but it does play a key part in launching the story.

More than that, his frank discussions about who he is with his sister and his occasionally prickly confrontations with other members of the community who are having trouble adjusting to his transformation provide an authentic and empathetic glance into an increasingly common life experience that much of the population still knows little about. As the brother of a trans woman, I found Tyler’s depiction both compassionate and educational.

Tyler is bound, however, to stir up some vitriol on shadier parts of the interweb. His sympathetic portrayal, combined with other timely and socially progressive themes ranging from the lack of sufficient mental health care resources for youth in northern communities to illegal trophy hunting — along with the fact that Tell Me Why is more of an interactive CGI movie than a traditional game with guns and gore — are bound to feel threatening to some people.

Which is my way of suggesting that any excessively harsh criticisms of the game stumbled across in coming weeks be taken with a grain of salt. Some decriers may have another agenda.

None of this takes away from the simple fact that this is exactly the sort of game we, as a society, need right now: authentic, inclusive, edifying, engaging, and, in the end, hopeful. Tell Me Why is one of the best and most memorable games of the year, and it helps lay a foundation for the growth of minority presence in games with wider audiences.