The lack of difficulty makes it feel like you’re trapped in the mystery.
Except your ship never stays at the bottom of the salt for long.
There is no escape, which works wonderfully as both a story and lore mechanic.
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It’s about a world that’s already miles deep and full of questions that will never have answers.
The questions slowly pile up, and it’s satisfying to just try and answer them.
What’s making its face fall off?
What’s giving it the ability to emit human cries?
Are its motivations the same now that it’s been mutated by some sort of alien presence?
There are many questions and more come up for every proposed answer.
Few answers are received as the game progresses.
My heart beat faster and faster the first time I was caught in the darkness.
But that punch in of horror didn’t last long.
An eerie black ship appeared in the distance and gave chase.
I was new to these waters, so I didn’t know where to head.
It eventually sunk me, but I woke up, unharmed, shortly after.
One of the primary critiques Dredge received was that it was too easy.
The sense of dread and danger fell away shortly after the first few expeditions out into the unknown.
That’s somewhat true, but it’s far from the main horror of this fishing expedition.
Every chapter offers new mysteries and new questions.
It keeps reeling you in further with new twists.
Who is this mysterious man in a decrepit mansion on an island outside The Marrows?
Who are these cultists that line the outskirts of almost every location on the map?
Why are all these fish growing in grotesque and freakish ways?
The game’s mechanics are built around exploration.
Dying provides a necessary trade-off to those mechanics.
It all fits within how Dredge is built.
That sort of difficulty can be enticing, but it also wears down the horror on its own.
Dredge, on the other hand, is always, at the very least, creepy.
The sense of doom that fills every way from Gale Cliffs to Twisted Strand is always there.
And that’s maintained when you revisit the game to play its latest expansive area, The Pale Reach.
Answers are never provided, even as you roll credits and experience one of Dredge’s multiple endings.
Whether it be Annihilation or Dredge, the core of Lovecraftian horror is the unknown.
It’s about grappling with things that can’t be comprehended and could possibly be fatal.
Dredge has both, and we’re lucky it’s just a game and not a real place.
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