VN Talk: Steam Prison - Part 1: Overview

In which I talk (write) about visual novels from a storytelling perspective...

Platform: Switch (also on Windows)
Release: 2021 (2019 on Windows)

Steam Prison is an otome visual novel I've had on my radar for a couple of years, but I knew it would be a long and involved game and my preferred platform for visual novels is a handheld; something I can curl up with in bed, much like a good book. So I dithered until I heard it was coming out for Switch, at which point I picked it up.

And the farther I get from the game, the more I think that it's greater than the sum of its parts. I get the feeling that the writer really wanted to do something grand with Steam Prison. There's tons of worldbuilding, over and above what I expected, with little nuggets slipped in purely for flavor. The character dialogue is great, particularly the moments of levity, and romances largely work.

But the plot doesn't always hold together with characters sometimes doing nonsensical things, continuity issues, and ignoring its own worldbuilding.

Steam Prison follows Cyrus Tistella, an idealistic eighteen-year-old from the Heights, an isolated city-state perched on an artificial island in the sky. It's connected to the ground below by an elevator shaft to the Depths, where the Heights sends its criminals. Life in the Heights is fairly regimented. The government arranges marriages, couples are expected to have a certain number of children as part of the population plan, and falling in love with anyone other than your spouse is a crime.

Cyrus herself is not keen on getting married, but it's not because of any anti-government sentiment. Ever since a police officer helped her find her lost pendant as a child, she's internalized the idea that the police are there to help the people and became a police officer herself. She knows that she has to get married, and once she does she will have to quit her job to raise her children, but she would like to put that off as long as possible.

Before her impending marriage can go through though, her parents are murdered and she's framed as the murderer. Proper due process is denied and she's rushed off to exile in the Depths, where the majority of routes take place.

Adjusting is difficult for her. The sanctuary district, the penal colony portion of the Depths, is run by the HOUNDS. Though they work for the government like the police, they're ruthless in their administration of the district since from their viewpoint, everyone there is a criminal (even the children born there due to having exiled parents). They have no problem taking advantage of their power and no one can easily fight back since prisoners are not allowed anything bigger than a knife.

The only law is whatever Sachsen Brandenberg, the leader of the HOUNDS, wants it to be, and since that conflicts with Cyrus's sense of justice, she can't help getting herself into trouble. In fact, a fair bit of the Depths portion of the common route has Ines, the vice-commander of the HOUNDS (and probably the only decent man in the organization), warning Cyrus that she needs to learn when to let things go if she's going to survive.

Steam Prison branches in an unusual manner. The four routes available at the start of the game fan out from Cyrus's situation in the Depths. She needs to get a job if she wants to live without relying on handouts for food, and whether she stays in the sanctuary district or escapes to the world outside (where people whose ancestors never went to the Heights live) determines whether her romance options are Adage and Ines, or Eltcreed and Ulrik respectively. The remaining two romances, Yune and Fin, involve Cyrus not going down the Depths in the first place or going down belatedly, so they're unsurprisingly locked at the start.

There is a substational amount of worldbuilding in Steam Prison, explaining how the Heights came to be and the animousity between the native people of the Depths and those originating from the Heights; details like how the people of the Heights consider everything below them the Depths, while those in the sanctuary district push the definition further to restrict the Depths to everything outside their district so as to keep their feeling of superiority. "We might be criminals, but we're still better than those people."

And there are nice surprises like how the Depths still worship Saint Yune even though he now lives the in the Heights, and that the Depths are actually more technologically advanced than the Heights. (Though no airships yet, or the Heights would be in for a surprise.)

But the elaborate worldbuilding sometimes trips over itself. For instance, after four hundred years of separation the spoken language between the Heights and the Depths is virtually the same, but the written languages are different enough that Cyrus can't read the books of the Depths. Eltcreed tells her on his route that it's a natural evolution because the two societies have been separated so long, which makes no sense because that's not how language works. We might not understand every word, but Shakespeare remains readable to modern English speakers, and we wouldn't say the problem is with the written language but that people don't talk like that anymore.

On Adage's route his explanation is different and it actually works better. He says it was the introduction of the printing press that caused the Depths to simplify the written language to make it easier to print, making it an artifically induced transition akin to the creation of Simplified Chinese from Traditional Chinese (where people who grew up only knowing the latter cannot read a good chunk of the former).

Also, the existence of the HOUNDS is completely unknown to rank and file police officers in the Heights, even though HOUNDS is made up of former police officers. I can buy that the Heights transfers the partners of lawbreaking officers to the HOUNDS through guilt by association, but what I can't buy is that the government is able to keep a lid on the fact that partners of convicted officers disappear and almost never come back. Even if the HOUNDS themselves remain secret, there ought to be a healthy rumor mill about the mysterious fate of partners of convicted felons. Cyrus was an officer for two years and never saw anyone disappear?

This has to happen reasonably often to keep HOUNDS staffed (in Fin's route it's not even a month between new "recruits") and joining HOUNDS is almost as much an exile as being sentenced as a criminal. Saying that the now partnerless officer was "transferred" isn't going to work if an friend decides to visit and discovers the officer's wife hasn't seen her husband since his "transfer," to say nothing about what the wife suspects happened! They live on an island in the sky. Where can anyone even transfer to?

This roughness in the worldbuilding also extends to Cyrus and her knowledge of love and sex. I'm not surprised that she hasn't paid much attention to either given that she would never be able to choose her own partner in the Heights and her assigned fiance is barely more than a stranger she's seen at a few social events, but the game is uneven at presenting the limits of her knowledge, which is important so we know when those limits have been crossed.

For instance, early on in the Depths she's taken in by a woman named Rielith. There aren't a lot of proper jobs in the santuary district so Rielith feeds herself and her son by selling herself (with her best client being an aggressive lout who works for HOUNDS). Cyrus needs a job, but immediately decides that she does not want to sell herself.

This is the first time the topic of sex comes up in the game, so you would think this means she knows exactly what Rielith is doing. Most of the players would. This is an M-rated game in the US.

But then a short while later she is hauled away by a group of HOUNDS who attempt to rape her and it's clear she has no idea what they're about to do other than it's bad. It just had all kinds of WTF bells ringing in my head. If she hadn't known, the writing could have illustrated that by having her ask Rielith what selling herself involves, and if the writer needed Cyrus to stay ignorant Rielith could demur. That way the player would have the appropriate expectation.

That Cyrus doesn't know where babies come from is a little weird (more specifically she thinks they come from the Temple, which is the seat of the government), but less of a stretch after dealing with the not knowing about sex part. I can understand that a bit better since she lives in a heavily regulated society, has no siblings and does not have any extended family that she could have seen during pregnancy, and all her coworkers are male (she's only female police officer), so I find her ignorance plausible if unlikely. It helps that a couple of her love interests call her out on this.

This jumbled approach also extends to the plot. When it's at its best, it's mostly good. When it's not, it mostly skates by on the strength of its characters. Cyrus's overarching mission is to find her parents' murderer and clear her name, but it's telling that she only accomplishes that in one of the six good endings (which I'm defining as the one where the ending credits song is performed by the current love interest's voice actor). The game is more interested in having Cyrus discover love and romance with some guys under difficult circumstances than following up on what created those circumstances in the first place.

Though Cyrus might learn a few things about her parents' murder en route to other endings with other love interests, there are also routes where her personal quest drops off entirely. The worldbuilding involving the Depths (the part beyond the sanctuary district) is interesting, but the two routes based there have nothing to do with her personal story and take her so far from the Heights that they feel out of place. There's no prison, no pursuit of her parent's murderers.

I get the feeling the writer really loved this part of the world since Eltcreed is from it and he's the poster boy and he's the character most prone to hogging the spotlight.

Steam Prison also does something with its ending branching that annoys me. If the player chooses to physically go to one location to see someone versus calling a different person over, it's obvious that the story should play out differently. However, sometimes the player has a decision like: "Do you trust him?" And that will determine whether Cyrus gets a bad ending, even though the characters involved have no idea whether she does. In fact, in this particular case, Cyrus is waiting for him to show up. If she trusts him, he'll be on time, but if she doesn't it turns out he won't make it because he was thrown in jail, meaning that the result of her decision goes back in time and changes whether or not he's able to meet her.

On a branch of Eltcreed's route the affection meter determines whether a deus ex machina saves the day or our couple is hung out to dry even though there's no earthly reason why the deus ex machina would even care how much Eltcreed and Cyrus do or do not care for each other.

But if there's anything Steam Prison likes, it's lots of endings. Every love interest has a minimum of five, and even the bad endings are generally more involved than a blood splatter and a game over. Every love interest has one good ending (with individualized credits and a song performed by their VA), a few of them have "normal" endings where things don't turn out as well but usually are positive in some fashion (which I'm defining by they have the non-character specific credit song with vocals), and the bulk are bad endings (dour credits song with no vocals).

One thing I found highly unusual in Steam Prison is getting endings for other characters when it's not their route. If the affection between Cyrus and her love interest is too low during any of the routes unlocked at the start, something will happen to separate Cyrus from the love interest and she will get an ending with the alternate choice for the warder/bodyguard branch (for example: Adage will replace Ines).

These endings are generally sad (usually, but not always, involving death), but at least in the warder routes they come with a promise of a brighter future.

I'm not normally a route order person, but I would suggest playing Adage's route first. Though Eltcreed is the closest to being the poster boy and he's the free demo on Switch, I found his route to be the least satisfactory and not the one I'd want to judge the game by. His route doesn't have anything to do with Cyrus's personal story and doesn't answer many questions, even low level worldbuilding ones (like why Cyrus desn't get sick even though she stops taking pills when she leaves the sanctuary district), or gives the less satisfactory presentation. (It's absurd that on his route, Eltcreed, a dude who was born and lives in the Depths, is the one to explain to Cyrus where the HOUNDS get their members.)

Sure, you get the least amount of spoilers doing Eltcreed, but at the cost of the game putting its worst foot forward. (On the other hand, Eltcreed's route probably won't be as disappointing if that's your starting point to begin with.)

Adage's route handles the worldbuilding better, it's on theme for what the game sets up for (Cyrus spending time in prison), and it also concludes the plotline for her parents' murder. After that, route order doesn't matter so much. Ines should be after Adage though, just because the end of his route will change how a certain character is viewed in Adage's.

Though it seems like I've slammed Steam Prison a lot, it did keep me reading, largely because of the strength of its early worldbuilding and because I quite frankly love Cyrus. Despite being a complete dunderhead towards romance, I adore how proactive she is and her stubborn belief in the strength of her sword. She kicks serious ass and often wins fights that in another otome the heroine would lose so her love interest can save her. In a genre where heroines are often praised for traditionally female traits, it's nice to have a protagonist who's not very girly, making Cyrus the most relatable otome protagonist I've played yet.

Next week we'll take a look at Eltcreed's route, because I did my first playthrough blind and locked myself into the bodyguard routes.