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Celestial Return Review
- Taylor Rioux
- 38 minutes ago
- 9 min read
Making Art in a Broken World
Authoritarian systems work hard to break us down, and every screw put to the people takes constant effort by the state. Yet people persist, making art and finding joy in even the darkest of moments. And so, these authoritarians take on the work of erasure, eliminating or subjugating dissidents, while squashing undesirable art and ideas in an effort to sustain the bloated husk of a fascist regime. Celestial Return, a three-part, story-driven RPG heavily inspired by text-heavy classics like Planescape: Torment, Citizen Sleeper, and Disco Elysium, examines this erasure.
Publisher: Shoreline Games Developer: Metaphor Games Platform: Played on PC (Steam) Availability: Released on July 14, 2026 on PC |
In Celestial Return, every persuasion attempt or desperate acrobatic maneuver relies entirely on a limited pool of physical dice. As more of a visual novel than a standard RPG, you never take full control of the protagonist, Detective Howard, or his companions during a fight or within a scene; you simply select an action, roll, and watch it all play out.
These rolls are supposed to matter. As part of the game’s prologue, the writer addresses the player directly to set expectations, promising that your choices will shape Howard’s character and alter the narrative. To an extent, they do. But Celestial Return also has a habit of railroading you into specific outcomes, forcing the plot down a predetermined path even if you pass your skill checks. The writer openly admits this in the introduction, as well, warning the player that the world will grind forward regardless of their choices.
This funneling stings because dice in this world function as a diegetic currency that characters use in furtherance of their goals, while also serving as the means by which players interact with the world. When an outcome is static, spending those limited resources may feel completely pointless, as if the choices do not matter beyond the roleplaying aspect.
Of course, role-playing is the point of such a game, isn’t it? It’s not really about finding the optimal outcome in every given scenario. When you inhabit a character in an RPG like this, I’ve always found more joy in crafting a character and sticking to that persona consistently to shape a story. How does this person interact with this world, and how does the world mold around them?
When you inhabit a character in an RPG like this, I’ve always found more joy in crafting a character and sticking to that persona consistently to shape a story.
That said, it is a bit of a let-down when your choices lead you to dead ends, or when success is meaningless despite the high opportunity cost of using dice on a roll. Too often failure is not used as a jumping-off point to tell further interesting stories; instead, it simply bars the player from receiving anything of interest. The highest cost is not in dice, but in narrative advancement.
By missing a roll, the player is locked out of any kind of story from forming — the interactions are cut short, rather than replaced. We can derive meaning from failures. Whether we learn something new, or our characters are altered in some way, failure in one action does not have to be an end-state for the events of our lives.
For Celestial Return, it too often is. There is nothing to be gained by this loss.
The game is also plagued by myriad technical problems in at least two key areas — text progression and saving. For the text, I have encountered several moments where the advancement of the story was meant to present me with a choice, but the options did not appear on the screen. In other moments, the choice options did appear, but clicking on them did not have an effect, forcing a reload in both types of scenarios.
Unfortunately, the save system is just as broken as the people of Netherveil. Loading a save will sometimes cause dialogue options to disappear upon reload, and it has a habit of not placing players in the scene or environment that they are trying to load into, instead having the text scrawl over the environs and imagery that was being loaded from. In both scenarios, the only consistent way forward is to load another file and hope it works, so maintaining as many save slots as possible is paramount.
These mechanical frustrations might be easier to endure if the world they broke into felt seamless. Unfortunately, the game's technical instability mirrors the inconsistency in its writing and artwork.
There is something a bit “off” about Celestial Return. The language is mostly stiff and sometimes stilted, but it ventures into moments of lucidity. There are times when the wording feels poetic and fluid, where the text on the screen feels evocative and purposeful in describing a scene, only for it to collapse into terse, repetitive, or mechanical wording.
There are whole conversations filled with short, fragmented sentences, littered with cliché, contrasted framing such as “it's not just X, it's Y”. In one conversation with a character, the text made note of her “almond-shaped eyes” five times within the span of a few minutes, as if the writers could not stand the possibility that players might miss the fact that this character looks Asian. So, to solidify their intent, they have leaned upon racialized shorthand to “other” her. This is all coupled with infrequent but noticeable spelling and grammar mistakes.
The artwork is similarly inconsistent. Characters may look different from piece to piece, with someone like the protagonist, Howard, looking different across the menus, the main screen, and his UI portrait. While the American comic book-style artwork can explain or mask some of these inconsistencies, I feel a bit uncomfortable when I look too closely. When I see things like a misshapen flowerpot, an oddly warped book, or features and shadows on a character that don’t quite make sense, I am given pause.
Why are certain elements of this scene in a different perspective than others? How much can be attributed to artist errors, and what is intended? The inconsistency muddies my appreciation. The artist behind the game's imagery once defended these anomalies on Reddit, stating “I’ve been in the industry for years, but I still make mistakes” as part of an explanation for why a character had six fingers in a demo build. Perhaps these other pieces can similarly be waved away, but more time to iron out these details would have served the game much better than shipping as-is, both in terms of quality and perception.
Yet, despite the distracting irregularities, Celestial Return finds its footing when it shifts its focus to the political architecture of Netherveil. The narrative leans heavily into the weight of fascism, citizens' complicity in building it, and how the gears of those systems crush individual lives and the aspirations of its people. While all of this is relevant to the world of today, the game has little to say about these systems that remains intriguing aside from one throughline — the place and purpose of art within these societies.
Art plays a large role in the events of the game, with major questlines focused on art showings, and minor explorable events giving the characters moments to inspect or appreciate the artworks of those living within the city. All of these moments have something to say on the point and purpose of that art, and perhaps most surprisingly, players are given opportunities to bounce off those works themselves.
Much like many CRPGs of late, this game showcases the protagonist’s personality as different distinct aspects, with Howard’s Virtue manifesting as a righteous do-gooder, intelligence playing the part of the pragmatist, and so on. In these moments where Howard is reflecting on the artworks he encounters, each of these personality traits has something different to say on the subject. In the art showing during the main quest, Howard’s thoughts on the work itself range from viewing it as pretentious or useless to holding it as important work. Ultimately, the player can at least partly decide how the character feels about the pieces and the people who made them.
At another point, Howard sits down and admires a piece of graffiti on a nearby wall while speaking to Rose, the Abstract abomination of a talking rose donning a human-esque face. Rose wonders what the artwork showing two robots getting married is meant to symbolize, and from there a conversation unfolds where Rose wonders, “I don't get it. Why would someone paint that?” As the player, you decide whether Howard focuses on the artist's intent (they were bored, took the blank wall personally), the purpose of the work (doesn't need our permission to exist, artist is trying to figure something out), or its legality (it’s just vandalism), and choosing one will help inform Rose’s perception of the piece. More importantly, it shapes our shared understanding of the world.
By taking the position of a supporter of the arts, Howard is able to contextualize how the piece fits into the broader picture. As it currently stands, the ruling government of Netherveil is fascistic and overbearing, tightly controlling what people can say and do, making no space for true self-expression without the support of the state. Immediately after the explanation, a cleaning drone washes away the artwork, as if it never existed.
Ultimately, the player can at least partly decide how the character feels about the pieces and the people who made them.
This is heavily contrasted by the propaganda pieces littering the city as you play, which are akin to wartime propaganda posters advocating for the support of government programs. There is a clear line from the first posters, which showcase communal efforts to do something ostensibly positive, to the outright demands by the government for compliance on the later posters. These prepared messages are allowed to linger thanks to their service toward the ongoing fascist project enacted by the government. Comply, and you will live. Resist, and you will be erased, just like that mural on the wall.
But I wonder if any answer we give to Rose’s question would ever be sufficient. Why would someone paint that? The direction the game takes us through its writing speaks to art as a broad concept, but what about here, in this moment? Why would someone paint this picture under these conditions? What is the point, and why does it matter?
These are all questions artists are asked today — questions artists ask of themselves. So many who see the works will remain unaffected, unmoved, and uninspired. What good does a single piece of art do in a sea of sorrow? Can this singular work change the world? Probably not, but it can change you, if you let it. And you — the reader, the viewer, the physical being engaged in the world today — can change what you think, what you feel, and how you act. You can guide those around you, and make the world a better place. You can change your world, and that is enough.
These conversations about the work of artists make interpreting Celestial Return difficult in its own right, but the fault doesn't lie entirely with the game, either. Living in the United States of America for my entire life, I have seen the noose of fascism slowly tighten around the necks of its people. Surveillance programs like the PATRIOT Act have been used to spy on Americans, government-sponsored pogroms in the form of ICE raids terrorize communities across the nation, and even the suffocation and removal of art that depicts anything the state deems untoward have all been enacted in the name of safety. All of it has, to some degree, been further facilitated by the burgeoning use of AI in everyday life.
Kinda wish the game's most meaningful conversations didn't happen with...this thing.
It is here that the explicit erasure of art by a machine cuts entirely too close to home. Propaganda produced by the state carries the stink of an inhuman nature, with computer-generated nonsense spewed out in furtherance of their goals. AI tools are used to identify and accuse people of crimes, regardless of the accuracy of the tool or veracity of the claims.
So, when I see the wobbly lines and six-fingered portraits, or read the tired, repetitive language of the text within Celestial Return, my stomach drops. And maybe that is not fair.
Despite my unease, the development team behind the game, Metaphor Games, has stated on multiple occasions that they have not used AI in the production of this title. They’ve gone on record to say that all of the writing and artwork is handmade by humans, and the PR team behind the game has assured me of the same. By all accounts, I should believe them. I should take their word for it. More disturbingly, I should not even have to question it. So why is there a nagging at the back of my mind?
It is a terrifying time to look too closely at a video game. When a warped perspective or artistic variance no longer registers as a human mistake, the simple act of my interpretation becomes infected by paranoia. Just as the protagonist struggles with making sense of the world around him, I wrestled with an uneasy distrust of the material I was meant to open myself up to.
The heightened presence of AI has done something insidious to the space. It has cast doubt on the humanity and purpose of the art form. AI has not only changed the works that use it, but it has also changed me. It has changed the way I examine art, changed the way I interpret and interact with it. It has ruined my sense of reality — or rather my belief in a shared reality with other humans — in more ways than I care to admit. I just wish it hadn’t.