Harry 
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Oh I hope this is a good idea. Now I’m more of a movie guy. Obviously. I’m not the most prolific gamer, most of what I grew up with were Sim-Blank games. SimCity, SimGolf, SimCoaster, Spore,
[Game Footage: SimGolf] as well the Civilization series and Sid Meier’s Pirates.
[Game Footage: Pirates] But, I'd say that I really like video games.
[Game Footage: Civilization 4] Games, more than films or television or books, involve the player in the process of storytelling.
[Game Footage: Fallout New Vegas] I think it’s a very exciting medium.
[Game Footage: Cult of the Lamb] If I find something interesting on Steam I like to give it a shot. And that’s what happened to me when I came across Suzerain. Suzerain, released December 2020, was developed by Torpor Games and published by indie label Fellow Traveler. You play as Anton Rayne, newly elected President of the fictional country of Sordland. Having watched the country go through military coups and civil war growing up, Rayne is determined to bring reform and stability to the country. But there are lots of powerful people with their own agendas, and there is no way to please them all. You have to pick and choose whose interests to serve, negotiate between them, and try to not have the world burn down around you. Now, I’ve been a big fan of Paradox games for a few years. Europa Universalis, Victoria, Hearts of Iron, and Crusader Kings have become favorites of mine. So of course I see a game that looks like this and I think: "Wow! A map with a bunch of text-box pop-ups!? That's peak gameplay." This is your interface through the game. It’s worth noting that this map only changes very slightly through the playtime.
See that? You just built a highway, now the line is red. Congratulations. There’s a war you can potentially fight later in the game, but it’s fought off-screen, without your direct involvement. You can decide early on how to structure the army, how many resources they have, and where they get allotted, as well as a general strategy, but you don’t command the armies like you do in a Paradox game. Where the game really shines is in its writing. In the introductory sequence, we see two things going on. One, the history of Sordland is laid out for us, giving us vital information and context about the setting. Two, we begin to define Anton Rayne’s backstory, the way we, the player, want to. And the choices made here will have different kinds of effects. For example, you can decide if your parents were rich, middle-class, or poor. Not only does this influence your personal wealth at the start of the game, which can be used to lobby for bills and reforms, but it also causes subtler changes in the dialogue.
At an important dinner meeting, Anton might recognize the vintage of a wine if he came from a prestigious background, while a less wealthy background will not recognize the wine. This knowledge could be used to impress the person that Anton is having dinner with. It's a nice touch that I think exemplifies the attention to detail present in this game’s writing. Different characters might feel a more ready kinship to you based on your background. Every option you choose for Anton’s backstory can give you a slight edge in negotiations with certain people, or carry certain trade-offs. Again, if you’re born rich, you have more money for lobbying but you get a popularity penalty. If you study law in school you can convince Supreme Court justices to side with your reforms, but if you study history you can more deftly negotiate with foreign leaders. And that leads into the main conflict of the game. When you take office, Sordland is at a crossroads. The bloody civil war of the past was resolved by Colonel Tarquin Soll.
His iron-fisted peace, at first a relief to the Sordish people, began to grow chafing, and his grip on Sordland eventually broke with Rayne’s predecessor Alphonso. Alphonso’s free market reforms had partially succeeded, but, they threw the economy into crisis, while failing to nurture Sordland’s fragile democracy. And when Rayne takes over, there’s a lot of moving pieces. Soll has retired from politics but his influence can still be felt. Wealthy oligarchs want to see an enlarged private market, but conservatives are opposed to giving up state institutions. Making any kind of reform means encroaching on another institution’s authority, and they will fight you for it. There are ethnic tensions with the Blud minority, and some of them have tried taking up arms in what they view as self-defense.
Trying to suppress their more militant members may lead to escalating terror attacks. Trying to reconcile may lead to reactionary race riots. Whatever path you take requires a careful balance. And as if that’s not enough, Sordland is surrounded by other nation-states who want to renegotiate trade deals, have you recognize their land claims, involve you in totally-not-genocidal military actions in exchange for free oil, and so on. Negotiating trade deals is vital for jumpstarting the economy but it will require concessions on your part. Some of them are more belligerent, and you’ll need a deft hand at diplomacy, espionage, or military strategy to deter them. And as if THAT'S not enough, Sordland is sandwiched between two competing spheres of influence, with the capitalist Arcasia and the communist United Contana each eager to add Sordland to their list of allies, again, in exchange for certain concessions and obligations. But if you do that, the military will side-eye you as someone possibly compromising Sordish independence, and well… Sordland is a country where the military is known to get involved politically.
And as if all THAT is not enough… you’re married. With a teenage son and young daughter. And what you do impacts them too. Monica, your wife, is very passionate about promoting womens’ rights. You can choose to dismiss her concerns or promote them – but if you do the latter, you run into trouble with the conservative wing that can be very important for pushing your reforms through. There’s a way to navigate through it all but it’s a narrow path, and the slightest deviation can ruin your marriage, or your political career.
Like I said, a lot of moving pieces. But the game manages to present these things in a way that doesn’t feel overwhelming. Situations are doled out at most three or four at a time, pointed out with these little markers, and each situation comes with a little refresher of relevant priorities so you’re not left lost. There’s an encyclopedia available with background on characters if you’ve forgotten any, or want more background about different people and organizations. However, I didn’t find myself forgetting any characters, and I think that’s a major strength of this game. There are lots of great characters in Suzerain that I got really invested in. Each person has their own intersection of motivations and beliefs and rationalizations, and they can be complicated. Even morally reprehensible characters believe that their actions will precipitate a greater good, and if they believe you are a threat to Sordland’s well-being then they will turn on you.
And some characters can do a lot more damage than others. Everyone you meet has some secret they’re hiding, and the thing is you can’t uncover everyone’s dirty laundry in only one or two playthroughs. As the world keeps turning, Anton Rayne only has so many people he can win over in each game. Even in my fourth and fifth playthrough, I was still finding surprising plot elements and connections that I hadn’t realized before. There is only one truly innocent character in this game: Serge, your loyal driver. Serge is best boy. Beyond talking to characters in the game, you can also see news stories pop-up with context for events going on. You’ll notice the interface doesn’t have a discrete Popular Opinion value. You have to assess how well people like you from the world around you, which I think is more interesting than just a number on a dashboard. Contrast this with something like Democracy, another political simulation game.
You can see more exactly who supports you and what effects each policy is having, but there’s not really any characters. Your randomly generated advisors don’t talk to you except to resign if you make their randomly generated interest group unhappy. There’s not much of a story unfolding here, while Suzerain has a lot more going on. One aspect of the story that I think could be stronger though, is Rayne’s family. Given how interconnected the rest of the political web is, Monica and the kids feel a bit more off-to-the-side. Monica’s feminist cause obviously ties in well, like I described before. But even if you go for a maximum family-oriented guy in the prologue, your son Franc still ends up being just as moody, and still follows along largely the same path. I would have liked to see your choices with your family influence the main story even more, and vice versa. That said though, I’ll go back to an aspect of the storytelling I do like, which is the decision to make this an entirely fictional world.
It allows us, the player, to more freely interact with the whole spectrum of characters and routes that Rayne can take, without our own preconceptions of each ideology fogging things up. For example, the word ‘communist’ is used fairly rarely actually. Instead the ideology is referred to as ‘Malenyevism’, allowing it distance from the real-world tenets of Leninism and Stalinism and Maoism. But while there is a distance there, there’s also real-world parallels that are inevitably drawn. And that’s okay. It’s this sweet spot where it doesn’t feel too politically charged, but it’s also not totally alien from our own world, so we’re still invested in what’s going on. There are no 'Nazis' in the world of Suzerain, but there are nationalists with socialist tendencies and racial prejudices. The point is, it feels like the developers actually know what they’re talking about when they have characters discuss their motivations, these ideas and words aren’t just tossed around to sound smart.
The lack of buzzwords makes this game feel refreshing, as well as the lack of a truly set goal. Because, here’s the thing. Rayne gets elected, and at your first meeting, the game sets you down and points you in a direction: constitutional democratic reforms. That’s the goal you’re handed. But it doesn’t have to be your goal. You don’t have to reform the country. You can choose to throw it out the window and do whatever you want. Or, you can reform the constitution and give yourself dictatorial powers. And even if you do hit those democratic reforms, you still have about ten gazillion other issues to deal with.
You can try to mollify racial tensions or exacerbate them. You can go to war or play the pacifist. You have to dole out your budget and decide whether to spend more to keep your administration happy at the risk of triggering a debt crisis. It’s a delicate web to navigate, and if you don’t navigate it well, people die. You can literally trigger an apocalyptic World War III if you’re not careful. And that’s what’s so fun about this game. It’s a really challenging political simulator. You have to make difficult choices, and those choices stick. You can’t just slap on a smile and become everyone’s friend. Trust me, I tried. The first time I played this game I tried to be nice to everyone, to satisfy every faction. And in return, I was impeached on bogus charges, imprisoned, and everything I worked for was washed away by the establishment. Nice. One of the more controversial features of the game is that it has one and only one save file at a time. Every time you talk to someone or make a decision, it auto-saves.
No chapter system. If you mess up, your only recourse is to restart from the beginning entirely. Now to be sure, it can be frustrating after having gone through it several times. Having to play through the early game just to try a different path in the late game can admittedly feel tedious, especially since each early game feels largely the same. It’s only after your choices pile up that the narrative truly branches out. But at the same time, this system truly leaves you racing to consider your options. You know that if you say something wrong, this entire deal you’ve been trying to craft can fall apart. And that mimics the feeling of being there very well. Anton Rayne doesn’t have an easy undo button, so you don’t get one either. It is a trade-off, and I absolutely sympathize with people who want a chapter system, but it does feel like an intentional choice, not a careless one. In the world of Suzerain, there’s no easy way forward. There’s not one correct path forward. You can run for a second term and win by being a successful reformer or by being a tyrant.
You can choose to retire in glory or in shame. There's so many different ways you can end up, and you’re invested in the outcome of this whole thing because the characters are so interesting. I’d recommend checking out Suzerain on PC, Nintendo Switch, iOS, or Android. Because, who knows, maybe your President Rayne will save the world on their first try. [Captions by D.M.].
