FATED: The Silent Oath | Playstation VR Review

FATED: The Silent Oath is a game designed for Virtual Reality headsets including the Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, OSVR and more recently Playstation VR. FATED is set in the age of Vikings and tells a tale of courage and sacrifice where you must do everything you can to save your family from the horrors of the world that you live in.

You're thrown into the body of a father that has been maimed during an attack on your village, however you are brought back to health by an unknown entity which could be described as an angel from Valhalla, a kind of afterlife in Norse Mythology. You awake anew, however you quickly find out that you have lost your ability to speak. In that you will struggle to communicate throughout the adventure with only the use of nodding or shaking your head to reply to questions.

Your home village has been obliterated by something unknown to yourself in the beginning so you set out on a quest to find safe harbour and to attempt vengeance. Your quest company sees you set off with your beloved wife, daughter, nephew and friend.
The pacing to FATED starts off very slow with a tutorial section that teaches you the use of a bow and arrow which you wouldn't be blamed for expecting some interesting bow combat down the line. You'd be wrong though because that tutorial of using the bow is absolutely the only time you will see this mechanic during the game. The rest of the game consists of walking at a slow pace while dialogue is unravelled between your family members.


There are a couple of puzzle elements with the journey which won't challenge the vast pool of people playing the game. They consist of easy symbol memory puzzles which will be over almost before you think you've started. FATED is described within official "ABOUT THIS GAME" blurbs to be a game that focus' more on narrative to evoke emotions, rather than actual game play. Further to this, the game is pitched as a movie length story driven game which is absolutely accurate.

FATED will be finished to completion by most in one sitting, with a game time which took me just over one full hour. Most of this time is definitely padded out with the slow pace of walking. While the game time is short by most video games' measure, the story eventually sets a tone which for me was quite the thought provoker and offers themes of great emotion and sadness. FATED strikes me as a video game experience that is full of potential to go up against the great story telling games that are created by Telltale Games Studios. However this potential is never really met due to the sudden ending to the game.

FATED begins to take you on a journey and gives you a taste of something that is never there. I would have to say that FATED did not have a conclusion. There is no satisfying ending. I didn't complete the game thinking that it ended too early, rather it didn't actually have enough time to achieve anything other than set itself up for something that never eventuated. Once the end credits began to roll, I sat through them thinking the credits may be there to fool me into thinking it was over, to only surprize me with something more. Unfortunately I was wrong. Still confused, I checked my Trophy list to see if there were more things to uncover and sadly again, the percentage of completion was at 100%.
While I can't fault FATED on its appearance and quality of polish, there just wasn't enough of it there to even finish off the story it began telling. Sadly I was left wanting more, expecting more. I have looked around to see if this is an episodic game which would indicate there is still more of the story to come, however I haven't been able to find anything to confirm.

Finally, I must say I thoroughly enjoyed the action sequences in FATED and the characters really grew on me in such a short time which made the experience enjoyable. Should the story go on, I will definitely be super interested to pick up the story where it left off and continue the journey.

Lucas Aurelius
Aussie Gamers Express
29th March 2017