It’s fair to callSons of the Foresta slow burner. Though someone hasalready completed the game in eight minutes, I spent my first two hours accomplishing very little. I built a tent on the beach (and, misunderstanding how ineffective it was, one of the log shelters too), and wandered around fairly aimlessly responding only to my most specific needs as they flashed up on screen. However, I haveplayed enough to decide that I really don’t like Kelvin, or feel comfortable around him.
If you haven’t played Sons of the Forest or are so deep in the woods you’ve forgotten how it started, it begins with a helicopter crash. You appear to be in the military, though exactly where you are and why you’re there is not made explicitly clear. You’re shot down, and see your fellow soldiers fall from the helicopter into the waters below, where they presumably drown or die on impact. You then crash on the beach where you find your bearings and, unfortunately, Kelvin.
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We know Kelvin was initially with you as part of your military operation, so we can assume at least some intelligence or ability for organised thought. When we find Kelvin his ears are pouring with blood, and in what is a great bit of visual communication from the game, instantly understand that he’s deaf now, and so we cannot talk to him. From his hunched appearance, dopey expression, and enthusiastic body language like over vigorous nodding, we also understand that he’s taken a severe bump on the head and now has reduced capacity.
Kelvin exists in the game’s world as a helper. He can gather wood, go fishing, or build simple structures while you’re off doing more important work - or more likely, doing the same thing but want it done twice as fast. It’s a pretty standard role in these sorts of games, and they’ve always been brainless, wordless drones that do our bidding. But Kelvin is literally wordless, and (almost) literally brainless, leaving an uncomfortable impression.
It’s a horror game, and I have found dead bodies sprawled, skulls scattered, and jars of human viscera floating in rivers, so I know it’s meant to get under your skin, and maybe Kelvin is supposed to exacerbate those feelings of unease. You aren’t two friends or two highly trained soldiers surviving together, but instead you’re dealing with a man of extremely reduced facilities, and the only way you can both effectively survive is to take advantage of him. It’s a dark premise, but it’s one that so far has only been explored for comedy, and which has been turned into an endearing meme by the fanbase.
You assign Kelvin tasks by scrawling on a notepad and showing it to him, to which he responds by leaning in, nodding with a goofy smile then trundling off to ‘get… sticks… and… drop them here’. But the first time we give Kelvin a task, we slap the paper into his chest unnecessarily. It amplifies the discomfort of having a man who clearly needs serious medical care obey our every command.
You need to order Kelvin around to survive. The game is designed to rely on Kelvin, and to accomplish anything at a reasonable pace you’ll need him doing the graft behind it. But every time he leans forward and gurns at my request to get some logs, it seems to undermine the game’s haunting tone by playing its darkest element for giggles.
Maybe Kelvin’s condition, our initial treatment of him, and the eventual bond we forge, will become part of the story. But right now, it’s a weirdly off-putting part of the game that others have embraced. I’ll head back to the forest to uncover why there are rotting bodies, who shot me down, and what I need to do next, but I won’t enjoy talking to Kelvin again.
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