Noblesse Oblige
By Harris Powell-Smith
☆☆☆☆ (6/10)
Hmm. Huh. Interesting. Was my reaction to finishing Noblesse Oblige in about an hour and a half. I’ve a huge fan of Harris Powell-Smith’s work, and I find Crème de la Crème to be one of the top five series/titles in the Choice of Games catalog. So, I had high hopes coming in to [i]Noblesse Oblige[i], though I did my best to temper any expectations I had, considering the game is “only” 137,000 words. For the most part, I am mixed to ambivalent about this title. Noblesse Oblige is clearly thoughtful, atmospheric, and intentional, but it never quite coalesced into a fully realized game for me. Instead, it reads more like a focused writerly experiment: an exploration of mood, character dynamics, and Gothic romance, rather than a complete interactive narrative with with the depth and breadth I was hoping for.
Pros:
Atmosphere. I was intrigued by the description of “Gothic romance” because that could mean anything from an obsessive love with someone twenty years older than you to outright cannibalism. Or both! I went in expecting something closer to Rebecca: a lighter gothic touch, an emphasis on mood and longing, and a sense of emotional tension rather than outright horror—and I was sorta on the money. I was first surprised by this mood. Blood Money, Powell-Smith’s first work, was not Gothic, per se, but dark. Melancholy. Full of betrayal and death and what have you. CdlC was the opposite of Blood Money: virtually all lightness, companionship, and wit. It has the strongest “voice” out of most interactive fiction I’ve read and is—what I’ve thought—Powell-Smith’s key style. Noblesse Oblige is a subversion of all of that. It is indeed, Gothic with a capital G. From the beginning, the text starts, as many Gothic novels do, with a deserted island. And bad weather. I literally laughed out loud when I read the opening scene. I’m glad Powell-Smith seems to have done some literary reading! Because the gloomy atmosphere is oozing. It has: spooky noises at night, characters with a strange look in their eyes, lots of secrets, longing, the intrusion of the past upon the present, a wicked ending, and a freaking lighthouse. Classic, just classic. These characteristics are played straight in an attempt to examine THE Gothic romance experience: atmosphere, plus the feelings trapped inside it.
So, we’ve talked about the Gothic part of the description. Well, what about the romance part? A Gothic romance, in my humble opinion, has to be steeped in longing, obsession, secrecy, and unease—or, at least two of the four. Love isn’t clean or reassuring—it’s intense, often unbalanced, sometimes dangerous, and usually fucked up. Gothic romance leans toward yearning rather than fulfillment. The relationship is charged with power imbalances, moral ambiguity, or emotional dependency. Desire and dread coexist. The question isn’t “will they end up together?” but “should they?”or “what will it cost?” Powell-Smith captures this dynamic extremely well. The romances and the ROs themselves are sweet, but there’s a lingering sense of foreboding. Each RO is hiding a ~dark secret~, and you are allowed to push back against their wishes, refuse to help them, even at a great cost.
Side characters. One thing Powell-Smith will do is write fleshed out side characters (your sisters in [i]Blood Money[/i] and the teachers in CdlC). Here, the supporting servants provide a nice bit of levity. While they seem to know more than they’re saying, moments with them are sweet and light.
Slice-of-life experience. And yet, for all my talk about doom and gloom, the narrative still is akin to a slice-of-life! Just a really sucky one at that. (H.P.S. really likes slice-of-life, huh? Me too.) Much of the game is spent in small, mundane moments: conversations, observations, routines, quiet realizations. They clearly enjoys this mode of storytelling, and it works surprisingly well in a Gothic context. Instead of constant shocks, the tension comes from living inside the unease. I much prefer this type of story; I find bombastic set pieces to be exhausting, honestly. I loved getting to live as a tutor, though I wish the tutoring part was more built on.
More worldbuilding! I loved learning about the Church of Jezhan and especially the Jezhani royal family. You learn a bit more about the gods and class of the world and can even participate in some rituals.
Mixed:
Ending. I have mixed feelings about the ending, clearly. In classic Gothic faction, something terrible and shocking happens at the end. First, the branching was quite impressive. Not only can you react in many ways to the ending, but you can also affect it with your reactions to the characters. You can also betray them! This part was well done. I didn’t think the ending itself was rushed, merely shocking, as you have to romance a character to know their past. But after the ending, there’s a brief epilogue. I found myself having many questions—you (perhaps) do a Big, Bad Thing™️, yet there’s little explicit consequences. I wished to know my family’s reactions, the Countess’ reactions, etc. How did I end up safe? What the heck happened to the other characters? Perhaps this was a stylistic choice, but open-ended endings were never my favorite.
Cons:
Length/little substance. This is the big one, I’m afraid. I finished Noblesse Oblige in an hour and a half (though I am a fast reader). As a whole, I am not opposed to short works. And Noblesse Oblige doesn’t have a pacing issue so much as a scope issue: the story feels intentionally small, but the ideas it’s playing with (power, moral compromise, and the costs of desire) beg for more room. I feel like just when the narrative is starting to come together, it’s over. Characters aren’t as fleshed out as they could be. In the end, I’m not sure if Noblesse Oblige is strong enough to be a full, longer work, but a short length definitely hinders it.
Two out of three ROs. I loved all of the ROs in CdlC—hell, the whole cast. I liked Pascha or Danelak, but they weren’t standouts to me. Danelak had a similar role to Karson, and Pascha seemed a bit too immature (understandably so, given their age and circumstances!). Perhaps this is an effect of the short length, but they were rather bland. Gothic romance thrives on slow-burning tension, layered secrets, and gradual emotional escalation, and it’s difficult to give multiple ROs satisfying arcs within such a constrained word count. As a result, these characters occasionally felt more like sketches.
Robotic main character. This was a surprise to me. Main characters are the hardest to write, it seems, but CdlC had such a varied, alive protagonist depending on your choices. In Noblesse Oblige, they seem much more distant from the narrative. Quite a lot of choices have little variety. For example, when breaking important news to someone, your choices are along the lines of “I tell them the news calmly” / “I tell them the news carefully” / “I tell them the news bluntly.” I am not a fan of this style—which is present in quite a few works! It feels lazy and vague. In CdlC, the choices would usually be “I tell them the news tenderly because I care about them” / “I tell them the news harshly because I want to see their reaction” / “I don’t tell them anything because I don’t trust them” / “I lie.” But this is just me being an armchair writer.