13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim is many things, but at its core, it's a time travel story. This is noteworthy because time travel stories are notoriously confusing, especially if multiple timelines and versions of characters are involved. Vanillaware's RTS/adventure game hybrid features both of these elements and plunges gamers into a deliberately convoluted plot that takes hours to even begin figuring out. Despite this, 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim manages to be compelling right off the bat and stays that way, even when the player has very little idea of what's going on. Most of this has to do with the very clever way the game is constructed.
Most adventure games and RTS games take a linear approach, but some prefer branching narratives. While this generally serves as a perfectly acceptable avenue of storytelling, adding time travel throws a wrench into things. Shifting between multiple time periods can lead to a lot of confusion, especially in a story that's already set up as a surreal mystery, but 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim's story is immediately compelling. This holds despite, and partly because of, its cold opening and refusal to fully explain what's happening until the player is well into the game.
13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim - The Power of Remembrance
13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim has three distinct gameplay modes, but Remembrance mode is the main storytelling venue. There, gamers can play through and swap between 13 different stories chronicling a series of strange events from 13 different perspectives. Each of the game's protagonists has their own story mode with their own unique goals to achieve and obstacles to face. These stories do overlap in terms of setting and often feature the same cast of characters. However, the focus on each protagonist's internal life and specific experiences as the plot unfolds brings a very personal lens to an otherwise confusing story.
The plot of 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim doesn't start making sense until several hours in, but the characters are immediately vibrant, likable, and easy to understand. From a group of 80s high school students to child soldiers from the 1940s to an amnesiac who may not even be from this dimension, each protagonist brings something new to the table. When they all become embroiled in the events of the game, each of them has a unique reaction to the chaos happening around them. And players can pick and choose whose story they're following at any given moment.
13 Stories Woven Into One
This means that, rather than just going through the story from beginning to end, players can focus on observing specific events from multiple angles and figure out what's going through each character's head as they made decisions. In turn, the decision to focus on different perspectives of the same events means that the character writing can really come to the fore. Even if the events of the story are bizarre and often go unexplained until well into the game, the characters are strong and vivid enough that gamers are willing to follow them into the unknown. As proven by its sales, 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim did something truly special with its format.
13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim's non-linear but deeply personal approach to storytelling may be the ideal approach for time travel stories in general. It lets the audience go through the plot at their own pace and follow the characters they like best. However, no matter which path the player takes, everything ultimately weaves together into a single unified whole. The result is a story that feels structured and vivid even when gamers have no idea what's going on. The desire to find out what happens to a gamer's favorite characters or the circumstances around a single event ends up driving players onwards in a very organic manner. Other time travel stories should learn from this game's mechanical and storytelling achievements.
13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim is currently available for the PlayStation 4 and releases for the Nintendo Switch on April 12, 2022.
