Sons of The Forest
Sons of The Forest is the next game in The Forest series, by Endnight game studio. It has been in development for at least ~3 years. The game was originally meant for release in October of 2022 but release was delayed to the 24th of February 2023. Sons of The Forest has a lot to live up to as the successor to The Forest. I've been reading a lot of the discussion's on the Steam forums and I'm somehow surprised by how many people don't understand Early Access or the point of it.
The Forest was initially created by 2 people who came from the film industry, experts in visual effects. The Forest was born out of frustration for games that hold the players hand and make games feel like a chore. There was also a deep desire to create a truly unique horror game, something that no one had done before. Eventually the team expanded and through Unity created their own way of rendering visuals.
The team apparently took inspiration from Disney films to create the outside world, creating a contrast between the beautiful upside, and the claustrophobic and dark underground caves. The team were initially reluctant to make the game multiplayer and had trouble keeping the horror experience in a multiplayer setting. However, eventually it was added as they believed it could add replayability to a game that was already used.
The Early Access aspect of this game has stirred up quite a bit of drama! However, I would definitely argue in favour for it. We have no reason to believe Endnight won't deliver a fantastic game in due time, we have The Forest to show that. I have seen players reference the game 7 Days to Die when talking about their hatred for Early Access, and if that is your only experience with an early access title, then I understand. 7 Days to Die and their journey in Early Access is vastly different and does not apply to Endnight at all.
What you need to know is that Endnight is nothing like The Fun Pimps dev team. And I don't mean to shade TFP, I enjoyed my time with 7dtd with 900+ hours. If you were like me and bought The Forest when it was first available for Early Access, it was a lot like how SoTF is right now. But, I actually think SoTF early access release is leaps and bounds better than The Forest was when it was first available for purchase.
THE MAP
The focus of the game's development so far appears to be fixated on graphics and making the over world. The map being lauded as 4x the size of the original game is impressive, but feels like more of a con than a pro right now. While the game provides a handy modern GPS system, it unfortunately proves to be nothing more than confusing, and often frustratingly misleading.
The GPS markers can sometimes mean multiple things which is annoying. You might think green markers are just important areas, but they can also be game progressing caves too. Why not just use the cave marker for ALL caves?
When I initially wrote this review, I didn't realise you can make your own custom GPS markers, so that is a plus. But, when you use a GPS marker and change the icon, the one I set doesn't show up on the map, it's just the default green one. I look forward to this getting fixed as it's still hard to remember which ones mean what without custom icons.
My other small grievance with the GPS is whenever I put it away and pull it back out, it resets the zoom. I prefer it zoomed out all the way, and I like to put it away often as I can as it clogs up the bloody screen. If I want to change the zoom I'll do it myself, thanks.
Although I understand not wanting to tell the player exactly where to go or what to do first, the game currently feels extremely linear despite being in such a huge open world. Other players shared stories of quickly finding guns and exactly what they needed because they spawned close to it, whereas my spawn-point appeared to provide nothing of use except a frustrating, and long walk.
Cave after cave of just nothing made the journey and exploration feel like an aggravating chore. I know this is just because things are being worked on, but walking for hours from cave to cave and just getting rope made my first impression of this game so horrible.
Climbing mountains as you may have seen in various clips and videos, is a little funky and reminds me of Oblivion, but it's not something that needs complaining about. It's quite fun to stand on top of a mountain, and then pull out your building book in the right hand so you can slide down with 0 consequences. It's a fun little glitch, and I'm sure it'll be resolved pretty quickly. Just note, the turtle shell can't be used to toboggin and you must make a sled with the 3D printer. The sled for me doesn't feel all that great to use yet to be honest, but maybe I need more time with it.
SURVIVAL
Argument's have been made in favour of the massive SoTF map, such as widespread hunting ability and berry picking. While it does have a huge lot of potential, hunting & berry picking is such a tiny and inconsequential part of the game at this point in time.
Berries are extremely useless, and provide nothing of significance. In my opinion, berries will always be useless if you can only eat them one at a time. I want the option to just eat a bunch, otherwise it's not worth the carpal tunnel.
The various flowers you can find and their crafting opportunities do prove to be quite useful, but doesn't feel much different from the first game.
Hunting squirrels or rabbits is actually quite easy, and can be done without needing anything short of a spear, which you can make as soon as you start the game. There is zero incentive to go to any specific part of the map solely for hunting purposes. Maybe the beach for turtle shell's to hold water? But when you can 3D print a flask very early on, you do fine without it.
Animal pelts are mostly a forgettable part of the game, and armour in general is pretty weak. Creepy armour is relatively easy to come by, so why would you bother hunting animals that can just run through terrain completely unbothered? I don't have an issue with armour being weak, it keeps things dangerous and challenging.
Animal spawns are frequent and abundant (when it isn't snowing), food in general is very easy to come by.
You can also just drink water from ANY part of the map, even in a pool of water with a dead body lying stagnant in it, and you won't get sick!
At first I was certain water is just a work in progress, as I thought the means to make a water catchment system are just not in place yet. This would make sense as to why water is such an easy part of a survival game. However as I have progressed, I did find the turtle shell, and it does hold water, but you can't craft with it. I am really quite baffled by this, all the items needed to model that water catchment object are there, and there is a drinking mechanic/animations. So, have the developers chosen to make survival this easy? Or is it really a work in progress still? I would love some answers on this because I feel like it's a big change to make compared to The Forest.
BASE BUILDING
At first I believed base building to be pointless. In the first game you had to build a base because otherwise you would be hunted and overrun by enemies and lose progress. This was a core part of the game from the beginning, you had incentive to spend some time at home refining your base, and then going out exploring. In SoTF you can easily just run and continue to run around with no threat, or so I thought. Eventually, the entire map cycles season and becomes snowy, thus the need for shelter becomes more dire. You find yourself unable to leave a campfire without immediately getting hit with the "You're cold and wet!" status. So far, this status seems harmless apart from impairing stamina.
I've read other people having regular large base raids and really struggling against them. Personally I haven't really experienced much of any, and I'm on day 60. But I do get a tapeworm every now and then. Is that what they're called? Raid parties for me are generally like 4-5 cannibals, and sometimes they just sit down outside my base and do nothing. My base is on a cliff so maybe that's a problem?
Maybe I'm alone on this one, but I think Repairing is one mechanic that needs to be a bit more clear in my opinion. Sometimes objects will be ever so slightly out of place, and the only indicator that pops up is when you try building on top of broken logs. To me this wasn't clear enough as logs can tend to look out of place anyway. There perhaps needs to be more visual indicators than things just being slightly ajar. The broken log indicator should perhaps appear regardless, instead of just when attempting to build on broken areas.
Stick defences are great and making them feels very nice and effective. However, be careful when around the pointy end. If you are close to the sharp end and open your inventory, your character gets hurt, and boy do they hurt.
The standing fire was hard to figure out. I know, it sounds ridiculous, but I assembled the object easily. When it came to lighting it though? For some reason you need to be holding a stick in order to light it. That makes no sense when the animation for lighting it is you taking leaves and lighting it like a campfire. I kept walking up to it wondering why I couldn't just hold the lighter and light it. Even the pictures explaining what to do don't show in any way needing to hold a stick to light it, it shows a lighter!!!
In any case, base building is actually very delightful and has been massively improved on! It is very easy to get the hang of, and you can quite easily make a beautiful rustic cabin. I enjoy spending time base building and making a safe little fort. I think the only real issue is just how little there is to build! Which is probably a good issue to have as I'm sure loads more will be added.
GRAPHICS
Graphics have always been very important to the Endnight team. With their team of VFX experts they managed to create a really beautiful game that runs mostly really smoothly. I have an i7 & GTX 1080 and usually my game only lags briefly when loading specific interior caves, such as the facility areas. Many have complained about the game running not so well, and my advice would be to turn off crap like bloom and motion blur. Often these harmless looking post-processing are actually quite costly to use, and I don't play with them turned on. However, it will most likely improve with optimisation. With The Forest, Endnight focused on optimisation near the end of development. So, given they are planning to continue development for the next 7-8 or so months, this might be awhile away.
FLARES
SOUNDS
Deafening typhoon winds that constantly glitch with static make some area's impossible to enjoy, and make you want to leave as soon as possible. I often find this occurs while running in forest areas with the orange leaves. Perhaps there is an issue with running in this area and sound effects switching due to player pace? It seems to always be ultra windy in this area, and it's the one area I have the most audio problems with.
Waterfall's/Running rivers have sounds sound to me like they are quite low quality, that it feels very much like last minute additions. It just hinders the experience a little.
Generally, mixing of sounds is a little odd at times. Sometimes cannibals can be right next to but sound distant. Or you might be far from a stream but it sounds as though you're in the stream, bent down with your ear as close as you can get.
THE INVENTORY & CRAFTING
The crafting system has definitely had a lot of changes to it, and appears to be one of the key parts of the game with lots of work done to it. However, currently the crafting system is horribly designed for what this game demands: quickly crafting/changing weapons in high intensity scenarios. When I initially wrote this section we didn't have hotkey binding, but we do now. This has significantly improved this area of the game, however it should have been present in the game when it was released.
Not only is the inventory slow to open, but once you have gathered a bunch of weapons and items it quickly becomes very laggy to render everything you own. Again, not lending itself to those quick and intense battles where you need to quickly make something. On top of being slow to load, the crafting menu is slow in a different area: looking around. It is VERY slow browsing through your inventory. I almost feel like I am on the moon while desperately trying to look to my right for armour, then having to slowly move to the left side to find stuff like the bow. For the most part though, I feel like the inventory is organised in a good and intelligent way. It would be interesting if the player had the ability to organise where things go themselves, but I don't think it's an essential idea.
I appreciate the uniqueness in design choices between inventory's in The Forest & SoTF. The Forest's inventory reflected that you were a character thrown into a survival situation unprepared. It made sense that you had a small jury-rigged inventory. SoTF gives you a more expansive and bougie inventory fitted with pretty and customisable LED lights, and convenient fancy cases for all your specific belongings that you'll eventually get. This feels like a nicely thought out design based on your character and their role in the story.
The Forest didn't really have any animations for crafting, you just slapped everything together and it was made. I like the added crafting animations in SoTF, but it does mean you do have to adapt a bit. There is a bit more risk to having a Macgyver moment during battle, so be prepared before going into fights and exploring! Or else, you'll get hurt while you DIY.
Honestly, all of my issue's with SoTF's inventory would be fixed if they just made navigation turning 20x faster, and worked on how laggy it can get. Your character crafts things with super human speed but looks around the inventory like he's recently had a spine surgery.
Introducing Kelvin: Your creepy NPC friend who walks and acts like a TerminatorALLIES
One of my favourite new mechanics in SoTF is the allied companions! Both Virginia & Kelvin are quite likeable characters and have different uses. At first I thought Virginia was just the woman who gives you berries every so often, but being able to give her a gun is awesome. Both NPC's uses feel well thought out and have differing benefits. I'm actually surprised Endnight have given us two friends in this horror game, as I feel like they alleviate quite a lot of stress from playing in singleplayer. Maybe they replace it with a new kind of stress: keeping them alive!
There was an instance where Virginia got stuck staying in an area and didn't return home like normal. All it took to fix this was going back home and just spending a few days at home minding my business. Then I went back to her location and it seems she was stuck trying to give me a squirrel when I wasn't around to receive it.
One issue I have now that Virginia is back at home with me, is she won't get out of my face. While I'm trying to throw logs around or make stick defences, Virginia gets caught in the crossfire. I really hate accidentally hitting my allies, but it happens frequently as they run into you and all around your vicinity unpredictably.
On another note, it's a bit weird that Virginia's default outfit is a skimpy white bathing suit that reveals her nipples in the rain. I get it, you're rolling your eyes saying "Here we go!", if you're triggered and don't want to hear a discussion about this topic then scroll past the Virginia daisy picture :)
I could care less about it if there was a valid argument for why she wears it, or if I could give Kelvin the same treatment, but it just feels very fan-servicey. I have no issue with the cannibals being nude, because it makes sense, there is a clear reason for it. Most of them actually have a lot of clothes too. For Virginia's case, there isn't, and it's as simple as that. The cannibal nudity isn't done in an objectifying manner, and male cannibals are often just as nude. Putting a random woman in a tight, white, latex(?) swimsuit, for no clear reason is obviously objectification. And as Adin Ross says, "that's just a fact in my opinion".
And don't even try to make an argument that Kelvin is also as objectified and sexualised to the same degree as Virginia, because that's simply not true... Then again, now that I think about it, he does do everything you ask of him, he can actually perform the tasks without needing you to hold his hand, he doesn't ever complain, and he doesn't yap on for hours about his camera roll. Maybe he does appeal to the female fantasy(!)
And the last thing I will say about this is that it's not an argument over morals, because lord knows SoTF has darker things to worry about than some nipple nudity, and no one is saying nudity is inherently bad! But, questioning why women are always automatically defaulted as sexual objects is a valid thing to ask; And you don't need to get defensive when women, or anyone, questions it. There is a time and a place for horny content, and this doesn't feel like the right setting. At the very least, the Swimsuit should have been a special outfit to find in a secret place, coupled with a very neon green mankini! Is that really such an awful and horrendous idea?
But anyways, it's their game, not mine. And I do like that the dev's allow you to change both NPC's clothes and I hope there end up being a lot more to choose from. The current outfits that can be found add some nice variety, and not ALL of Virginia's clothes are sexy either, so who can really stay mad when you got Virginia looking all adorable. And who knows, maybe in the future we will learn more about Virginia and potentially why she's in the infamous swimsuit :)
STORY-WISE
In regards to story, there are tidbits here and there that provide clues about what is going on. This is fine for the stage the game is currently in, and there should be zero expectation's of the story at this point in time. Many have complained that the ending to the game is pathetic, and there is no end boss fight. Personally I think it's silly to have any complaint's about this, as story should be on the back burner while the dev's focus on more pressing matters. I have no doubt story will be developed later on.
From what information I managed to gather during my playtime, I was definitely intrigued by what I saw. I have no doubt that there is plenty more story to come, and we have only seen the surface of what is in store. I really don't understand what people WERE expecting though?
CAVES
For me, in singleplayer, this is the least enjoyable part of the game. My issue with cave's ties in with the GPS system. The first issue is how caves are (and aren't) marked on the map. As I mentioned earlier, the GPS has some cave icons, and half of them appear to be dud's for now. Empty, and probably still a work in progress. Some cave's that are crucial to progressing the game are marked with an extremely vague green circle. The game almost feels intentionally misleading by using map markers in this way, and so the game becomes frustrating to play. Like I said earlier, I spent over an hour on one side of the map travelling from cave to cave, each one being more useless than the last. 5+ caves in a row were meaningless, and being given 10 rope as compensation was a slap in the face. Then I had to travel all the way to the other side to finally get somewhere meaningful.
My friends quit the game too after having this same experience. In my opinion, the very best cause of action would have been to not mention these caves on the map at all. Block them off until they're complete. This is how it was done with The Forest, you weren't even able to get to the snow area for a period of time because it was being worked on, and I'm pretty sure caves that were a work in progress you couldn't even get into.
However, if these caves are as intended, then I highly recommend changing how the GPS system marks useless caves and game progressing caves. Or, since some people might argue this makes the game TOO easy, spread out these two variations of cave evenly across the map. Otherwise, you get a player who has spent hours experiencing disappointment after disappointment, and one player that finishes the game quickly simply because they got lucky. Personally though, I wouldn't add too many areas that give free resources without risk, as this makes the game easier.
During my singleplayer experience with cave's, my first proper cave run was luckily the re-breather. I found this cave to be the easiest one despite just using a spear and a few arrows. The next cave I explored was the grappling hook cave. This one was by far way more difficult and long-winded compared to the re-breather cave. It took me well over an hour to finish, and I'm pretty sure I missed an area too. Granted, I was using just a spear and a few Molotov's (this was before the hotkey fix). It was a really, really, long cave. At one point I was fighting the finger monster 5 times in a row all in one area. By the end I was just annoyed. That is my personal experience though and maybe it would have been better if I had a decent weapon. I've heard some players managed to build traps in the caves and just ran around them.
The shovel cave was an alright experience but felt similar to the hook cave. Caves feel like they need more balancing as they are quite easy in multiplayer, but are harder and longer in singleplayer. Of course there is the option to just run past everything as many have mentioned doing. Might there be an ability to have Virginia come into the caves with us in the future? Or maybe just for the singleplayer experience?
SNOW SEASON
Snow season is actually an interesting element of SoTF. It was roughly day 11 when it first occurred for me. This season obviously causes all sources of water that aren't running streams to freeze over. This should perhaps influence where you choose to base! If you have the 3D printed flask or turtle shell, it might make things a little more bearable.
BUILDING IN THE SNOW
A quality of life change that would be great, is changing the visual building indicators and how they look in the snow...
As you can see in the image below, it is virtually impossible to see without shade, or uncovered ground. Granted, I am playing on 100% brightness, but you will never take that away from me while a lighter gives me better light than a freaking torch.
The game in it's current state naturally feels very hollow and empty. The fundamental structure of the game feels like it's mostly there, which is a good thing. I think now it's just going to take time to add some meat to the bones. Honestly, I thought I had experienced everything this game has to offer at 6 hours. Now, after putting in 50+ hours to the game now, I have discovered heaps and grown to love it a lot. The game shows a lot of promise, and based on how The Forest went, we have no reason to doubt Endnight's ability to deliver.
I am really looking forward to seeing how the game develops over the next 7-8 months. I'm curious what kind of update we will be getting soon, and how big they will generally be. I want to congratulate the team on what they've made so far, and wish them luck on how the game progresses.
