Nobody Wants To Die has almost every detective noir staple in one game. You play as a hard-boiled detective with a tragic past and a drinking problem. There’s a good-cop/bad-cop dynamic with your partner as you work together to solve a murder case that exposes the city’s morally corrupt underbelly. It takes place in New York City. It’s constantly raining.
It sounds like your typical film noir crime drama from the mid-1900s. I’ve seen all of these tropes play out in similar games in the genre like the grounded LA Noire, the haunting Murdered: Soul Suspect, and the anime wackiness of Master Detective Archives: Rain Code. So, what’s Nobody Wants To Die’s unique twist? It expertly blends cyberpunk elements with a gritty 1940s aesthetic. Even with some issues, Nobody Wants To Die kept me enthralled from start to finish.
Back to the future
Nobody Wants To Die is set in the year 2329, but I wasn’t able to discern that right away. The game starts with our protagonist, James Karra, as he sits next to his wife, Rachel, in a 1940s-era classic car. While watching a movie together, she glitches out and disappears. James then opens his door and there are flying cars right beneath him. What I thought was the start of another typical old-school detective noir game all of a sudden looked more like Blade Runner. It left its mark on me; I wanted to see what other tropes it would subvert next.
New York in 2329 is still dealing with the same issues we face today, like capitalism and corporate greed. While these themes have been explored to death, Nobody Wants To Die throws in another twist: humankind has achieved immortality. Once you turn the age of 21, you have to pay a subscription in order to keep your body, and if you’re unable to, it goes off to auction to the highest bidder. This is how the powerful and ultra-wealthy can extend their lives indefinitely, by using poor people by transferring their consciousness to younger bodies.
By connecting that to a critique of capitalism, Nobody Wants to Die‘s sci-fi premise feels close to home. It helps that it does a superb job of building its world. James himself is in a new body, which his consciousness was transferred to after his previous one was involved in an accident. In his apartment, there’s a note saying that he has to be careful as his new body has allergies. Humanity has essentially achieved godhood, but in the end, they’re still human.
Between the game’s investigations, James and his cop partner, Sara, exchange conversations about mortality and existentialism. James would rather give up extending his lifespan if it meant seeing Rachel again in the afterlife. It’s sobering and eye-opening moments like these that make Nobody Wants To Die stand out among its genre peers, despite heavily relying on detective noir tropes.
I’ll be your guide
On the gameplay front, Nobody Wants To Die has James scour crime scenes for evidence using futuristic gadgets. The main one is a gauntlet called the Reconstructor that lets him rewind time and see how events played out at the scene itself. James also has X-ray and UV light devices to check for additional clues.
The issue with Nobody Wants To Die’s gameplay is that it entirely guides players through the investigation process. Sara and James will say the next step out loud, and then a marker will appear on the screen to show players what to do next. I didn’t have much agency in my investigation; it’s all just trial and error with no fail state. If you’re looking to actively solve a mystery or puzzle like in Zero Escape or Ace Attorney, then this isn’t the game to do that.
On the plus side, I appreciated that I never got stuck on a particular clue or sequence, and seeing how the scenes play out with the Reconstructor felt just as satisfying as if I solved the crime scenes myself. I could just sit back, relax, and enjoy the story, which is the ultimate draw here.
Nobody Wants To Die has multiple endings, but like many mystery games, subsequent playthroughs lose their luster as you already know what happened and who did it. There’s one autosave slot, so if you’re looking to see all of the endings, you’re going to have to play through the entire game again.
Even with its shortcomings, the seven hours I spent with Nobody Wants To Die were stimulating. There are so many smart twists packed into this tightly paced detective story. While it doesn’t reinvent the detective noir genre, its emotional story beats, striking setting, and killer style had me yearning to revisit New York again.
Nobody Wants to Die is available now on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC.