Whatever it was, all I know is that I simply must find out what’s going on at the heart of The Last Worker’s Jüngle, even if I have to drag the reluctant Kurt and his hover cart all the way down with me.The Last Worker, will be ready for dispatch on Thursday, March 30th, 2023 on PlayStation 5 and PS VR2. Or maybe it was the feeling of inherent power that came from the fantasy of being the last person left against an impossible force, and choosing to stand against it anyway. Maybe it was because the absurdist hell of The Last Worker hit close enough to home that at a certain point, all I could do was laugh. I went in expecting to end up depressed based on its premise alone, but for reasons I couldn’t quite explain,y I was elated instead. Most of my session was the basic movement and box moving tutorial, followed by the stealth sequence, but every trailer I’ve seen indicates there’s so much more going on here, and a VR version only compounds that.Įither way, the Last Worker was by far one of the most surprising breakout games I played at Gamescom. But I’ve also seen so little that it’s hard to suggest it won’t, either. It sounds (wonderfully) horrible.īased on the short preview I played, what I’m left the most unsure of is if The Last Worker can ensure its gameplay remains interesting enough and married closely enough with the story it’s trying to tell to keep players hooked. Trailers indicate I might at some point get to see what’s inside all of those boxes I’m delivering back and forth, too. It’s especially evident in Kurt’s face, which we can see weathered and defeated in the rearview mirror of his cart, but there are plenty of well-made little details throughout the factory as well. It’s got that cel-shaded style we’ve come to know from games like Borderlands and Telltale, but a bit more spiffed up perhaps thanks to time and tech. It doesn’t hurt that The Last Worker also happens to be extremely nice to look at. There’s nothing subtle or soft about The Last Worker, but its aggressive, deliberate portrayals of these horrors ultimately landed within the sections I saw. Their banter, which undergoes a significant shift between the two segments of the game I played, is underscored by the voice of Jüngle’s tech bro head echoing through the factory in every corner, urging the workforce onward in a thinly-veiled attempt at spit shining the ambitions of a billionaire. His only companion is an obnoxious company robot that treats him like an optimistic newcomer, offering a stark contrast between the company promise and the reality of Kurt’s situation. It’s easy to feel for Kurt, who’s trapped in a job where death is the only imaginable escape, as he spends his days fulfilling the cynical “dreams” of people placing orders on the outside.
The Last Worker is deeply, darkly funny, with a laughing acknowledgement of its depressing premise that somehow works even as it clearly lays its railway tracks from our current capitalist mess of same-day delivery to the fictional future it’s portraying.
Because while I’ve seen my share of dystopias, I’m hooked on what’s going on here due to the strength of its writing and performance. The Last Worker isn’t offering up hardly any of its plot secrets in the demo, but that’s okay. And all the while, a second robot companion urges him on, seemingly leading him on a mission to stop something even worse at the heart of it all. Boxes upon boxes fly through chutes, delivering useless plastic commodities to invisible people who must surely exist out there, somewhere far beyond the metal prison Kurt’s trapped in. As he ventures through the factory he hides behind enormous crates containing withered, defeated cows that appear to be headed for an incinerator or something like it. A later section of the game involves Kurt exploring the factory after hours in a stealth mission, where being caught by any of the robotic workers results in a grim end for the one remaining human.
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