Stray Gods: The Roleplaying Musical

I first became quite interested in narrative-heavy adventure games back when Telltale was the gold standard in the 2010s. Be it The Wolf Among Us, Tales from the Borderlands, Game of Thrones, Batman: The Telltale Series, The Walking Dead, I played them all, and enjoyed my time with them. Which is what drew me to Stray Gods: A Roleplaying Musical, because while I'm quite impartial to musicals, the narrative-heavy structure of this game is right up my street.

The concept for Stray Gods revolves around the young singer, Grace, who is voiced by Laura Bailey (The Last of Us: Part II, Marvel's Spider-Man, Call of Duty: Vanguard), one individual that makes up a rather stacked cast of voice actors. Grace is a nobody, until one day an unusual woman known as Calliope walks into her life and soon after is murdered. It's at this point that Grace discovers that Calliope was an immortal being known as The Last Muse, and that following her strange death, Calliope's powers of song have been transferred to Grace. If this wasn't enough to have to stomach for Grace, a group of Greek Gods, known as the Chorus, that live and hide among mortals are putting her on trial as a scapegoat for Calliope's killer. Fortunately, Grace has the opportunity to prove her innocence and is given a week to figure out what happened to Calliope and why she is being framed for her murder.

The plot then takes Grace all over the city and occasionally to places 'beyond' as she meets with gods and immortal beings, communicating with them to learn more about Calliope, what she was doing before her untimely death, and likewise to piece together whether the gods themselves have alibis or are suspects. The tricky part is that these immortal beings are tough to wring information out of, and often you're left with more questions than answers as the clock slowly ticks away towards Grace's trial.

The narrative as a whole is compelling enough to keep the player interested, and the various twists and turns always throw a spanner in the works. The characters are also well defined and feel like complex and deep individuals with countless troubles beneath their usual attractive surface. And for what it's worth, the dialogue options ensure that there are plenty of ways to make this story your own, as you can always lead a conversation in a way that will lead to a unique outcome that will likely affect the story in a serious manner - or towards romantical options with many of the different characters.

My main gripe with Stray Gods is how counter-interactive it feels at times. This game is a very hands-off title, one where you barely need to do much as a player. The only input you have is to select a dialogue option, and there's no time limit on this when outside of musical numbers. Essentially, if you've been looking for a game where you can slouch into your chair, have one hand on your mouse and another in a bucket of popcorn, this is the game for you. But, if like me, you enjoy the interactive moments that allow you to wander around a small area to interact with the environment and NPCs, as is common in Telltale games and even titles like New Tales From the Borderlands, you will severely miss that here.

While I do like the art style and think that it adds a lot of character to the game, Stray Gods almost plays like a comic book, jumping from one still scene to the next, meaning you don't really even need to pay too much attention to what's on-screen either. It's a slowly paced game, and there is a charm and a benefit to that, but at the same time that comes at the cost of immersion and getting lost in the narrative sauce, if you will.

Looking at the musical numbers, I found these to be a bit hit or miss. I won't claim to be some kind of connoisseur of musicals, but I've seen my fair share of them, and to me what makes a musical special are songs that resonate with the viewer, tell meaningful narrative, and are performed well. Many of Stray Gods' songs never really fit this bill for me. The frequent use of drury melodies didn't do much to keep me engaged, and I'd often miss the timed dialogue options due to this. If anything, this basically is an example of the entire tone of Stray Gods, which is that of a quite bleak story, even if the vibrant and bright colour schemes will attempt to persuade you otherwise.

The cast however, are generally rather good. When you bring together veteran talent like Troy Baker, Felicia Day, Mary Elizabeth McGlynn, Ashley Johnson, Rahul Kohli, Anjali Bhimani, and more, you get believable performances, even if some of these individuals are clearly better voice actors than they are singers. But they make for interesting characters that you want to learn more about, so you can forgive the imperfections.

The one thing that Stray Gods does have going for it, is its replayability. By making different choices and even by selecting different traits (these essentially just unlock occasional different dialogue choices, not much else), you can open the door to different musical numbers and narrative outcomes. So, in this regard, there are plenty of reasons to play through Stray Gods at least a couple of times.

Stray Gods: The Roleplaying Musical is a bit of a mixed bag for me. On one hand it has interesting and compelling characters and plenty of dialogue options to explore, but on the other hand, it isn't the most immersive or engaging game. It has to fight to keep you entertained, and the musical numbers don't really aid on this front all too much either. If you're a fan of musicals or narrative-heavy games, this is definitely a game worth checking out, but if not, this probably won't be the game for you.