I tell myself it was always going to be a one-way trip. That’s what love is. It’s the trip between who you were and whatever the hell you become next. So let’s take it from the top. Like a jazz standard. Play it in our own time. As loud as we dare.
James Savage (Xalavier Nelson Jr.), El Paso, Elsewhere
Love can be magnificent. It can push people to break through themselves, to change the world, to elevate.
Love can curdle. It can pull people into an abyss, sell the lie that hurt is care, and leave behind ruin.
And when love turns bad, even when you get clear of it, there’s a chance the thorns linger — the hurt, the sorrow, and, trickier still, the joy and care — even when you know it was poisoned, even when you’re clear of active harm.
It is difficult, terrifying even, to navigate. And navigating it is essential.
My ex is Draculae, lord of the vampires. 15 miles from here, in a tiny motel in El Paso, Texas, she’s conducting a ritual that will end the world as we know it. It’s what she always wanted. Even when she said she didn’t. If I don’t save the people she’s taken, or kill the things she’s conjuring from the void as we speak, the world dies today.
I threw away six months and 11 days of being sober for a chance to save the world. 98% of me is screaming in pain, or exultation. Glad for an excuse to fall. And the last tiny fraction — that’s you...
My name is James Savage.
Here’s to believing.
James Savage (Xalavier Nelson Jr.), El Paso, Elsewhere
El Paso, Elsewhere is a third-person action shooter developed by Strange Scaffold Studios. Strange Scaffold’s founder, Xalavier Nelson Jr., wrote its story, headed its design, rapped on one of its two soundtracks, and voiced not only its action-folklorist protagonist James Savage but a significant chunk of the background cast.
El Paso, Elsewhere is a work of astonishing precision and balance, a tale of living with addiction and recovering from an abusive relationship that’s simultaneously about a trench coat-clad badass blasting through the forces of evil while reality crumbles around him. It could have failed, and failed disastrously. It doesn’t. It threads that needle — and threads it with such skill that, as of now, El Paso, Elsewhere is my favorite game of 2023.
Playing El Paso, Elsewhere is like playing music. Like the jazz standard James mentions in his opening monologue. Notes are notes. James moves and his weapons act in specific, set ways. The monsters Draculae’s (non-royal name Janet Drake) ritual has unleashed against him likewise act in specific, set patterns. And there are so many ways that they can bounce off each other.
Alone, a glowering, partially mummified, Orlok-ian vampire is dangerous if it can close the gap between itself and James. In a horde, it can provide a crucial distraction and shield, giving, say a more fragile and more destructive damned bride a chance to launch a health-bar eating energy attack. And even as James descends deeper into the capital-V Void bound to the hotel and the cast of creeps grows, no monster ever becomes obsolete. In their shifting patterns and varying weaknesses, they’re a challenge all the way to El Paso, Elsewhere‘s gorgeous, impeccably scored penultimate level. (Seriously, composer rj lake’s work is so damn good. Only Jacek Paciorkowski and P.T. Adamczyk’s score for Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty comes close in my book.)
James’ arsenal is designed similarly. Each of his weapons is useful, many of them in more ways than one. His vintage tommy gun (per James, it might actually date back to the 1920s, and it’s my personal favorite weapon to use) can be a powerful sharpshooter’s rifle when diving into bullet time. And when fired rapidly, it can chew through the hide of horrible and horribly durable Frankensteinian golems. His grenade launcher can punch a similar hole in the beats, and it can clear a path through a pack of charging goons who could otherwise tank enough damage to get within striking distance. Barring El Paso, Elsewhere‘s two bosses and Frankensteinian mini-bosses, who need a classic stake to the heart to go down for good, there’s no one way to fight through the Void. Indeed, over-relying on one weapon is a really, really great way to get overrun. Success in El Paso, Elsewhere depends on knowing your tools, knowing your enemies, and being able to adjust on the fly.
It’s the last of those that’s the truest key to El Paso, Elsewhere as a game. Its core loop (fight monsters, save hostages, fight back to the elevator, and continue further into the Void) is constant. The shape of that loop, however, is far less fixed. Sometimes it’ll be a maze, other times a gauntlet, still other times a morbid madeleine of James and Draculae’s relationship turning bad. It’s consistently challenging — one false move can end a level very quickly. But it isn’t punishing for the sake of meanness. If you screw up, well, you screw up. And then, like the re-load screen sez, “YOU KEEP GOING.” The only way out is through, and the fight is a joy.
El Paso, Elswehere is a blast to play. And it’s a hell of a story. In terms of immediate craft, James Savage is a tremendously compelling protagonist — driven, brilliant, emotionally intelligent and struggling. For all that he understands how and why Draculae (Emme Montgomery, excellent) abused him, that knowledge is tangled up in the love he had — and on some level still has — for her.
It’s one thing to fight through a crumbling reality to kill your abusive ex when she’s trying to destroy the world if that abuse was physical. But Draculae never hurt him like that. She didn’t punch him. She punched the wall. She didn’t beat him up. She shattered dishware that wasn’t theirs. She didn’t draw blood from him. She self-harmed. Or went out and fed even when she’d claimed she was trying not to. Her behavior was vicious, inexcusable, and left him scarred. But emotional scars don’t heal the same way physical scars do.
And Draculae? She doesn’t get it. She knows she hurt him, sure. But she does not understand how little daylight (sorry) there is between her constantly reminding him of her capacity for violence and the conventional physical harm she pointedly refused to inflict on him. (To get personal for a moment, as someone who escaped an abusive housemate last year, the conversation where James lays that out hit like a truck. It’s a tremendously insightful, thoughtful piece of writing, and I salute Nelson for it.)
As James descends deeper into the void, he must face his history with Draculae/Janet through memory (including audio recordings of their relationship), the machinations of a sadistic cosmic horror, a confrontation with her mentor, the Pharaoh Djedefre, and ultimately through conversations with Draculae herself:
Throughout, James’ narration is marvelously hard-boiled. He’s bemused by the surreality of his quest (the Void using a crummy motel as its base means that the first time James fights a werewolf it’s in the bathroom of all places), thoughtful about the origins of his foes (even on a suicidal quest to save the world, he thinks like the folklorist he is), and increasingly willing to let out the hurt and regrets tied to his relationship with Draculae and his addiction. He’s a tremendously compelling, likable protagonist, and Nelson plays him marvelously.
El Paso, Elsewhere is, for my money, the best game of 2023 so far. It’s a thrill to play and take on. It’s crafted with care and precision, especially with regards to the heaviest parts of its story. It’s deeply, deeply moving. In other words? It’s something special. It demands to be sought out. So seek it out.
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