Last Stop

Last Stop is a narrative adventure game that mixes family drama with the fantastical with mixed results. It presents three different stories set in the same city, which are mostly well-told, presenting endearing characters and some neat ideas. These stories, however, take too long to converge into a climax, which feels rushed and underdeveloped.

There are three main characters in Last Stop. We have John Smith, a middle-aged white man that is stuck with a terrible desk job, but finds solace in caring for his daughter, Molly. One day, his neighbor, Jack, bumps into a strange man in the subway and is cursed alongside John, who was there just trying to defuse the situation: when they both wake up the next day, they have switched bodies. Then, there’s the laconic Meena Hughes, who works for a private military agency: she’s a cold, pragmatic agent who seems to care much more about her job than her family. Finally, we have the young Donna Adeleka, who has a crush on her best friend, Vivek, who happens to be a paranoid teen that is spying on their mysterious neighbor: Vivek claims that the strange man brings people into his house, but they never come out.

The stories vary a bit in tone. John Smith’s veers more into comedy, playing with its “body-swap” premise, while Meena’s chapters are more suspenseful and tense, reflecting her personality, and Donna is basically caught in an adventure. We can choose which character to play first (controlling their movement, selecting some answers, and playing one or two shallow minigames) but after their chapter ends, we have to choose one of the other two, which means we can’t stick with one character for the whole duration of their story: Last Stop wants us to keep switching between them.

Their first chapters are all about presenting their routines and establishing their personality. When John Smith goes to work, we get a “Press A to hit the keyboard” prompt, but when we do it, John really hits the keyboard, one key at a time, slowly, exuding frustration. The printer, of course, doesn’t work, and when he calls the help center, he’s put on hold – indefinitely. His boss is a selfish bastard, that kind of man that likes to harass his coworkers to show his power, but with a “playful” attitude, as if it can somehow make his comments less offensive. The game doesn’t delve too much into this theme, however. Actually, quick cuts from one problem to the next build a comedic tone, as we never see John solving any of them, but just moving from one problem to the next as they pile up. The point of his first chapter is to show that nothing seems to work for poor John, as even his mail is delivered to another guy, his neighbor Jack – this means someone was already mixing up their identities, which is a nice touch.

Moving to Meena Hughes provides a stark contrast. Her story begins with two agents asking her questions like, “Would you kill a loved one if your job mandated it?” and the fact that she doesn’t answer with “no” or “never” is already a great look at what drives her. But just like with John’s time at the office, there’s a bit of playfulness at how the game presents Meena to us: to show that she’s a cold and calculating woman, but also a smart and perceptive one, the screen suddenly freezes when she meets a new female recruit and we have to move the cursor – the command is “Scan for weaknesses” – to see how Meena evaluates the recruit based on her outfit, her facial expression, on how she crosses her hands, and details like that. It’s a funny scene because it’s all about Meena’s personality, but the focus is not on her intelligence but her paranoia: she has just met the recruit, but that command reveals how she’s already on an alert state, believing the recruit to be dangerous.

Meena is also full of herself, so we are meant to take her conclusion as the truth even though we can see she’s choosing to ignore some of the warning signs: she may think, “Surprised at her clearance level,” when looking at the recruit’s badge, but still dismiss the girl as nothing to be worried about, “Full Name: Amy Ng. Not a name I plan to remember.”

Later, when she’s texting her father, we can see from where she took her commanding personality, which she uses during the following sex scene. But then she gets home, drinks something – we can choose the drink, but like most choices in the game, it hardly matters – and the camera suddenly moves to reveal someone else in the room and we have the “twist” of her plotline.

While John Smith and Donna have the “fantastic” as the propelling element of their story – the body swap and the mysterious stranger – Meena’s core concern is just family drama. For example, she cares for her father but needs to maintain a cold, almost detached interaction with him because he’s often harsh to her, almost hostile at times, constantly passing judgment on her actions and decisions. The thing about these troubled family relationships is how people are always ready to lash at each other: each comment made is rife with a passive-aggressive attitude that was built by years of problematic interactions with each other. Each piece of advice is actually a reprimand in disguise because family members are tired of having to say the same things over and over again to one another. Consequently, each minute of spending time together feels more like an annoying obligation than a want. Meena’s life seems to be collapsing under the weight of this problem: she’s becoming detached and bitter and is hardly living anymore – the sex is more for escapism and chemical relief than anything else.

Donna’s first scene also shows how she feels controlled by her family, especially her sister, who chastises her for not doing her homework, goes looking for her when she’s with her friends, and who’s literally a cop. When the girl leaves her house and a song starts to play while she goes hang out with her friends, you can feel the freedom: she’s running, the music is energetic and fun, and she’s smiling.

One of her friends is Vivek, who’s a bit paranoid and a big believer in conspiracy theories (they even joke about the time he was a flat-earther, which he’s ashamed of). He believes the government has a secret database of their prints and files, and that the handsome black man across the street is a communist building a guerrilla in secret, since he’s always bringing girls to his house but they never leave. Donna and their other friend, Becky, joke about Vivek missing the obvious – but still tense – explanation, which points at Vivek’s naivety.

Bored, they decide to follow the man, who goes for a swim and suddenly glows green. They panic and Becky hits him on the head: the following chapters are about their attempts to interrogate this man, who they tie up to a chair and keep locked up in an abandoned building for days.

Donna’s story suffers from some major issues. First, these three kids basically kidnap this man because of things they can’t prove, and they’re keeping him locked up for days, without trying too hard to interrogate him or realizing the gravity of the situation they’re in. They treat this thing like missing a day of school – something that should stay a secret because it will have consequences if grown-ups ever find out – and not as a serious crime that is endangering their lives and even that man’s life, since they never seem to bother to give him food and water.

Donna also doesn’t find it too odd that the man only speaks to her, remaining completely silent when others are around, and she even goes along with some of his most outlandish suggestions, in the vein of “Could I, the man who glows green and probably kill women, stretch my legs for a moment and go for a walk alongside you, my kidnapper, in this abandoned building, with the friendliest of intentions?” This creates a disconnection between us and the character, with Donna acting like those teenagers in horror movies who seem to lack good sense. It’s also clear that the man is playing with the boring love triangle between Donna, Becky, and Vivek, trying to get to Donna, but this doesn’t get too much development.

The other problem of her story is the lack of resolution regarding the strange man himself. He seems to think Donna’s special in some way, but the reason for that is never explained or hinted at. His motivation remains unclear, his powers seem arbitrary, changing or evolving over time, and the more he acts, the more incomprehensible he gets.

Since they all live in the same city, it’s only natural that these characters pass by each other eventually – the game even suggests this connection by putting them sitting next to each other on the subway on the character selection screen. However, their stories only converge in the last chapter, which is an odd decision, as it’s precisely in this chapter where the supernatural finally become the focus. This means that the narrative doesn’t leave the fantastic much room to breathe: despite all the build-up to it, there’s little to no worldbuilding regarding the fantastical world the game suddenly presents, leaving its reveal anticlimactic and the magical elements that surround it as just that: random magic.

This is a pity, because the narrative was working until this point. Much of John’s chapters are your usual body-swap story, with comedy arising from the characters having to pretend to be someone else, but his story still has some interesting moments on its sleeve: it’s fascinating, for example, to see how both Jack and John feel free to contest injustice in their workplace now that they’re not accustomed to it. John gets mad at the suggestion of crunch (Jack is a game developer), while Jack confronts his new boss’ inappropriate behavior. There’s also a tension regarding John’s health and how Jack’s actions in his body may revoke John’s guardianship over Molly, which raises the stakes, since it’s John’s family that is at stake.

Meanwhile, Meena’s story gets progressively intense, as she starts to suspect everyone around her, while her sense of superiority is put into question. And Donna’s relationship with her sister constantly shifts, as it often happens with family: at one moment, her sister may be an antagonist, a threat to her freedom, but at the next, she’s the person Donna wants to go for help.

But it’s all moving towards the final chapter, where all the strange things become the focus. Here, however, things fall apart, as the events don’t add much to the characters and fail to bring resolution to some arcs. John’s story, for example, doesn’t need this fantastical setting, as it adds nothing to his plight: he just gets a magical object, which he could have acquired without going there if the writers wished so. Meena just becomes an action hero, with the events developing more the character of her boss than Meena herself. And everything with Donna feels arbitrary, as the rules regarding the strange man’s magic seem to change over time with no explanation.

At the end of this final chapter, we have a big choice to make with each character, which changes the final cutscene. However, no matter what we choose, the tone of the ending remains the same: these final scenes, despite our choices (and one of them can be ridiculously selfish and borderline evil) are all bittersweet.

Despite its weak conclusion, Last Stop still entertains. Its stories are playfully told, exploring the characters’ troubled relationships with their respective families. However, its fantastical elements are not fully developed, which makes everything regarding them lose its power.

August 20, 2021.