In this context, a lot of what happens in this game strikes far too close to a part of Australian culture that I'm truly ashamed of at the moment, and Such is the power of Papers, Please, that I wonder if I'm ever going to be able to fully complete the game. This game is especially relevant to Australia at the moment, where we are laboured with a nationalist Government that is doing its absolute best to dehumanise and villainise desperate people seeking to immigrate into Australia under international asylum laws. You'll never be sure if you're being told the truth, of course, but the plight of a desperate person forging papers to escape persecution has emotional weight to it, and the conflict between the job and the aesthetic of the world of Papers, Please, and the stories within it creates a sense of escalation as the game progresses from one "day" to the next. The cold, Soviet-industrial aesthetic creates a clinical environment, which is contrasted through the snippets of each individual story that you'll experience. What Papers, Please does so incredibly well is show how dehumanising the whole process of immigration is, and how easy the system is to manipulate by policy makers to deny people entry to a country that rational logic would suggest there would be no harm in letting them in. But, more than being a difficult game on your gaming skills, it's a difficult game to process on a moral and intellectual level. Papers, Please becomes a very difficult game by the end to determine whether a person should be allowed into the country, because the sheer number of bits of information you'll need to check (finger prints, body scans) becomes truly onerous. Still others are criminals, and you'll need to decide whether to call the authorities on them, or listen (and believe) their version of stories. You'll be tempted to overlook protocol every time you encounter an individual with a deeply human story to share - people will beg you to let them through under fear of death if they're returned to their homelands. Your pay packet increases with processing more individuals correctly, and if you're too slow or not good enough at your job, your family literally starts to die from the harsh conditions of life in this supposed utopia. Do you let her through? The temptation is there for sure, but if you let through too many people who are not meant to be allowed through then your superiors punish you by taking money from your pay, and you need that money to feed your family and heat your home. Sure enough, a woman steps up next, but there is a discrepancy in her papers that invalidate her for entry. For example, you'll let a man through who has all his papers in order, and as he leaves he mentions his wife is next in line. As that happens, your decisions start to become far more difficult as a moral component starts to come into play.
You need to deny people access who don't have the right documentation, while allowing those that do through the gates.Īt first this is straightforward enough, but then some terrorist event start up, and the requirements for entry become increasingly more stringent. Your task is simple make sure the only people that can enter the country are those with their correct documents in place - their passports must be valid, their visa information must match the passport, and of course they must look like their passport photo. At least, it's a utopia according to the propaganda that you're exposed to - you never actually see your homeland beyond your customs booth. You play as an unnamed customs officer, warding the militarised gates standing between the rabble of the outside world and your fictitious utopia homeland. If ever there was proof that "fun" is no longer a criteria in producing an interactive work of art that we like to call "games," then this one is it. It is a brutal, depressing, and frank deconstruction of so many of the social structures that we try and tell ourselves don't exist in the world.īut it's a game that you absolutely should play, because it's brilliant.
It's most certainly not the kind of game that you should be playing to set yourself in the mood for the season. Papers, Please is not the kind of game that would ever feature in a Christmas countdown.