Werewolf: The Apocalypse: Heart of the Forest review

    WEREWOLF: THE APOCALYPSE: HEART OF THE FOREST is the latest visual novel from the Paradox Interactive produced World of Darkness. It is based on the old White Wolf World of Darkness where vampires, werewolves, demons, and hunters all fight a covert war behind the scenes of our modern Earth. I was never a huge Werewolf: The Apocalypse fan like I was Vampire: The Masquerade or Changeling: The Dreaming but I did run a few campaigns of it. Honestly, I was always more of a Fera fan than the Garou Nation. You can guess this by the fact that I wrote I was a Teenage Weredeer.

    For those unfamiliar with W:TA, basically it has the idea that werewolves are the warriors of Gaia. The spirit of the Earth has granted them the power to shapeshift in order to stop those destroying the world. Garou history is a never-ending war against monsters created by the spirit of entropy, the Wyrm, and the spirit of order, called the Weaver. The Garou, unfortunately, failed in their duty by being a mixture of violent jerks as well as selfish marauders. It doesn't help that claws and teeth are not great weapons against Enron versus spreadsheets and journalism.

The art in this game is fantastic.

    The premise is that Maia is a Polish American college student who has decided to journey to the Białowieża Forest along the Belarus/Polish border in order to investigate her family heritage. It is one of the last remaining primeval forests in the world and a real life natural wonder. So, obviously, people want to cut it all down. Maia is having dreams of the forest speaking to her and these include many cryptic clues to the idea that more is going on than a controversial logging project. It's not much of a spoiler to reveal that, yes, Maia is a werewolf about to go through her first change.

    Honestly, Heart of the Forest is unlike any other werewolf game that I've played (tabletop or otherwise) as it goes out of its way to offer alternatives to violence. The opportunity for Maia to give into her rage and go on a killing spree is ever present but it felt wrong for her character. I was compelled to always try to seek peaceful solutions, defy my rage, and work toward mutual understanding. Understandably, I ended up becoming a Ragabash Child of Gaia but came within inches of being a Philodox instead. For those unfamiliar with W:TA that means that I'm a funny clever peaceful wolf rather than a grr-argh meanie wolf.

The Spirit World is beautifully described.

    For those unfamiliar with W:TA that means that I'm a funny clever peaceful wolf rather than a grr-argh meanie wolf. The game is still recognizably Werewolf: The Apocalypse but the violence is presented as far less justified and possibly counter-productive to the idea of saving the planet. There is no Pentex, or if it's there then it is far from the armies of Formori and Black Spiral Dancer-filled First Teams, and everyone around you is either a normal human being or a Garou. This makes the very interesting dichotomy of you being a terrifying barbarian warrior among ordinary people just trying to live their lives.

    Part of this may be the changing nature of the times. When W:TA first came out in 1992, environmental issues were certainly becoming pressing but the sense of urgency brought about by global warming wasn't the same level it is now. Also, protests being sabotaged by outside actors or slandered as violent wasn't quite as well known a tactic as today. When one of the werewolves thinks they should just kill every one of the loggers and sabotage their equipment, the mature modern player is likely to have a very different reaction today than perhaps when they were a teenage edgelord in the Nineties. Or maybe that's just me.

Exploration is simple but well-done.

    Indeed, the more nuanced approach to violence may put off some W:TA fans due to the fact that it gives a rather nasty portrayal of the Get of Fenris. Multiple Garou tribes are represented in the game but the Get of Fenris are dismissed as werewolf fascists. Much is made of the fact that they fought on the side of the Russians and Nazis during WW2 as well (albeit Maia's grandfather is a former Polish freedom fighter Get). You have no opportunity to join them and every werewolf you speak to talks about the Get with a mixture of contempt and disgust.

    This makes me wonder about the future of the Get because they've always been a group that has struggled against bad-faith actor fans. In 2003, I had a conversation with a developer of W:TA, who admitted that they had a Neo-Nazi problem in the fandom. Despite being a pro-indigenous, pro-racial harmony, punkish game, there were plenty of white supremacists who loved the game and almost purely played the hyper-masculine Viking-esque Get. It even led to the Swords of Heimdall, a in-universe villain faction, being executed because they were an explicitly white supremacist group.

    This is a tremendous game and I encourage everyone who enjoys the WOD to try out this visual novel. The story is a bit on the short side and I feel like we were only getting into Maia's story when it abruptly came to an end. I also feel like it perhaps worked a little hard on establishing its human characters since Anya and other normal characters felt more "real" than the actual werewolves. Still, I appreciated what seems to be a preview of W5 and if this is going to be the "new" W:TA then it seems like it is in good hands.

9/10