Who’s A Good Boy?
HIGH The city sequence.
LOW Having no idea how to get the last song segment.
WTF People seriously live out here?
Farewell North has a single goal in mind, and it’s one that it pursues with an impressive zeal.
From the moment the player arrives in a canoe to a dock in the Orkney Islands of Scotland, right up until the final moments before credits roll, focus is never for even a moment. Farewell North is here to make the player cry, no matter what tricks it has to pull to get that reaction.
A mood piece as much as it as 3D adventure/puzzler, Farewell North puts the player in charge of a border collie looking to cheer up a woman during a visit to her family’s ancestral home in the aforementioned Orkneys, the northernmost point in the British Isles. The woman’s mood is represented by the greyed-out visuals of the world and it’s the dog’s job to lead her from place to place, barking to restore little bits of color at first, then gradually helping her reconnect with good memories. When achieved, the past will be realized in a lush and vivid form, giving the player a chance to relieve them as an entire lifetime is squeezed into a five-hour journey.
The tone is careful and meditative, with most of the gameplay designed to simulate the experience of being a fairly chill dog. Not a lot of jumping or zoomies for this pooch — he’s lived long enough that he prioritizes stretching out on a nice flat rock whenever he can find one.
As the player trots around the island with their human in tow, the woman will reminisce about growing up at the end of the world, where it’s just a few people, their dogs, and the huge amount of wild sheep they manage and care for. This leads, naturally, to a couple of sheep-herding sequences, which provide a nice concrete goal that’s often lacking from the experience overall.
From time to time the player will encounter puzzles, which are largely simple perspective shift affairs. The woman will come to a gap in the path or a broken bridge, and it’s up to the dog to search around the area until he finds an angle that makes the it look like the path is complete. Then, with the press of a button, it suddenly is. There’s no real narrative justification for these puzzles, and at times it feels like they’re included simply to keep Farewell North from being slotted into the frequently-dismissed walking simulator category.
Only one puzzle sequence is genuinely effective — and unsurprisingly, it’s the one that’s completely organic to the story.
Born to the sharp cliffs and deep green fields of the islands, the dog served for years as a loyal companion and sheepherder for the woman’s mother, but eventually he had to move to the city along with the woman, and the game does a masterful job of simulating what a horrifying and alienating experience it was for him. To go from the largely-empty islands to being absolutely surrounded by new sights, sounds, and smells is overwhelming, and it’s impossible not to feel for the dog’s plight as he struggles to find his way home. That struggle largely involves light platforming and some stealth sequences, but they seem less contrived when the action is heightened by the dog’s mood. It really is an exceptional setpiece.
Also memorable are the canoeing sequences, where the woman takes the lead and paddles from one island to the next. The waters never get particularly choppy, so it’s just a matter of carefully alternating strokes and vibing as the woman tries to remember the words that her mother used to sing to her as a child.
At moments like these it seems like the player is going to slip right into the past, since the largely uninhabited islands seem almost timeless in their utter lack of civilization. One can easily imagine these remote locations staying unchanged for hundreds of years. Then the player paddles around a corner and sees a row of wind turbines jutting out of the sea, and they suddenly remember that time marches on, irrespective of our feelings on the matter.
Farewell North is built around the idea that the journey is the point, rather than the destination.
It’s about listening to the wind and watching the waves roll in, looking at the remains of a shattered lighthouse and remembering it so vividly that it’s almost as if it’s still standing there, signaling the ships at sea.
…Sadly, it’s also incredibly dishonest and manipulative in ways that I wouldn’t feel comfortable spoiling here in this review.
That doesn’t matter, though, because the goal isn’t to offer the player an airtight story or any justification for a second playthrough. No, the goal is to wrap the player so completely up in this dog’s journey to the place of its youth that by the end of the tale they’ll be feeling exactly what the characters are.
As far as I’m concerned, that aim was a complete success.
Rating: 7.5 out of 10
Buy Farewell North – PC – PS – XB – SW
Disclosures: This game is developed by Kyle Banks and published by Mooneye Studios It is currently available on PC, XBS/X, PS5 and SW. Copies of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PC. Approximately 5 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode. The game was completed. The game contains no multiplayer modes.
Parents: This game was rated E by the ESRB and contains Fantasy Violence. Honestly, the fact that they had to put the warning on there is kind of silly. There’s nothing really violent or shocking about the game. It’s safe for all ages. Just have the handkerchiefs ready.
Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes.
Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: I played almost the entire game without sound and encountered zero difficulties. All information is provided via text, which cannot be resized. The game is fully accessible.
Remappable Controls: No, the game’s controls are not remappable.
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