Checkpoint’s Queer Game of the Month: September 2024 – Dustborn

In the melting pot of games discussion in the year 2024, sometimes games don’t even exist before they’re written off, irrationally slandered, and put down. Including diverse or queer characters is often enough for outrage content mills to take hold of that and run with it, then latch on to bad faith dissecting of a game. This happened not all that long ago with Concord and it’s happening again with Dustborn. No game is perfect and believe me, Dustborn is far from it. But such games still deserve a look, especially if they’re doing something interesting in the space. They deserve a chance.

This is us giving a chance to Dustborn, the game the internet can’t seem to stop getting mad about (from both angles). Here’s Checkpoint’s Queer Game of the Month for September 2024.

Dustborn is developed by Red Thread Games, the team behind games like Dreamfall Chapters and Draugen. It’s published by Detroit: Become Human studio Quantic Dream, which is truly surprising given the studio’s long-documented (but alleged) history of homophobia from its founder, toxic work conditions, and so on. How Red Thread Games convinced Quantic Dream to publish a game full of queer characters and deep political messaging I’ll never know, but hey, making a game is hard. Get that money.

I digress. Dustborn follows a band of misfits going on a cross-trip journey across an alternate (though not too far a stretch of reality from today’s world) future America. They’re on the run from authorities following a botched heist, and a majority of the crew are superpowered individuals (called anomals), an outlawed race of humans that are criminalised and discriminated against. Like a lot of superhero media, it can easily be seen as a c commentary on race. Players do after all have scenes where they’re trepidatiously crossing state borders, paranoid of authority. However, the metaphor is just as fitting for those with queer identities.

This isn’t exactly an original exploration in media. People need to look no further than graphic novels like Kick-Ass or Invincible. However, it’s fairly new to games. and Dustborn does more with the idea. It explores the powers of words, misinformation, outrage farming content (from both left and right-leaning sides of politics) and more. I will be upfront with you now: it doesn’t do this perfectly, but damn it, at least they tried.

Many of the cast’s abilities are all about speech. With a demanding and cold yell, protagonist Pax can ‘block’ other characters and make them stop their train of thought, which can be used to abruptly resolve some arguments. Noam, Pax’s non-binary on-again-off-again partner, has the ability to influence and change people’s way of thinking to get what they want out of them. In short, it’s persuasion, but Dustborn crudely misattributes this and calls it ‘gaslighting.’ This is but a symptom of some of the quirky Gen Z “how do you do, fellow kids?” lingo the game employs. The game is desperately eager to relate to you with its lexicon. 

My favourite of these is in a character that joins the crew a few chapters in named Eli. He’s a storyteller who uses his lived experiences and parables he was taught in his youth as his strength. This is represented in monsters that they summon into combat. All of these abilities are palpable means of depicting political influence and difference in storytelling. 

Dustborn also presents a bit of a pipe dream power fantasy of actually being able to convince those around you that you have the right to exist. As Pax, you can find negative ‘echoes,’ around the world that are affecting the thoughts of others, corrupting, misinforming and convincing them to fight against the rights of anomals and other minorities. You can essentially exorcise these thoughts out of people; then they shake their heads, dazed and confused but snapping out of it. Now they see you for you. As a trans woman in 2024, I wish it were this easy and I could be this optimistic about it all. There’s no convincing a fascist of your right to live. However, if you can suspend disbelief at least that power fantasy is there.

Where Dustborn stumbles is an imperfect implementation of all these ideas. We understand and believe gaslighting is bad, so why is is the way the game describes Noam’s strength? Surely that does not depict the protagonists in a good light? Having it in the game’s terminology is not congruent with the message Dustborn seems to be going for.

Despite no matter how many YouTube videos or rage content farming you consume, Dustborn is not a terrible game. It’s especially not one for using diverse, albeit flawed characters in its cast with varying pronouns and identities. It’s just a bit of an average game. Titles far better and far worse have come before and will come after it. Mid games deserve the right to exist just as much as the ones that excel and soar. To those on hate campaigns and trawling comments cheering the fact that a single-player game is low on player count… It’s just not that deep.

There’s value in Dustborn simply because it’s trying something different in the queer space even if it’s imperfect. The characters that I didn’t care much for initially did genuinely grow on me. In between the noise of fighting the fascists and trying to stay alive, it does the simple trope of found and chosen family so well. You believe that these characters care about each other.

Dustborn is available now on PC, PlayStation 4 and 5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S. While I can’t give it my wholehearted endorsement, there’s value in there for some of the ideas it’s exploring if you find yourself in need of an adventure game.

If you’re after more queer content from us here at Checkpoint, why not check out one of our previous queer games of the month?