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If you drive on the highway of the near future, Born of dustThere’s a lot to take in in the opening sequence of The 4000. The view out the window may be dull, but in the car you’ll have to contend with a cheesy rhythm-based sing-along game, a branching dialogue system with some fevered cursing, getting to know your three accomplices, learning about the mysterious cargo you all apparently just stole – and finally, flashing lights in the rearview mirror.

It’s an effective introduction, not least because if the narrative-driven game doesn’t grab your attention at this point, it probably won’t for the rest of its frenzied running time. In the year 2030, your quartet is on the run across North America, disguised as a punk rock band called The Dustborn, after stealing a valuable data key from a technocratic cult. They’re also all Deviants – people with powers that manifest through their voice.

In terms of gameplay, you’ll use conversational cliches like gaslighting, triggering, and normalizing as powerups in the game’s occasional fight scenes, and there’s enough nuance to force you to think about the power everyday interactions can have on others. It’s not the deepest combat system—and the game perhaps knows this, peppering the confrontations with entertaining banter between you and your opponents to keep things interesting. Most of them find this as unorthodox as you do: “Why are you talking all the time? It’s just deeply weird,” asks an outwardly identical henchman breaking with convention.

In the long run, the way you interact with your companions will affect their reactions as well as the fate that ultimately awaits them. As you progress through the story, a comic book gradually fills up with the choices you’ve made. It’s a nice aesthetic counterpart to the game’s cartoonish graphics and has more than a hint of graphic novel to it, thanks to the clever dialogue and musical interludes. Scott Pilgrim.

Born of dustThe cast is mismatched, but the dialogue is smart and snappy enough to create chemistry between them all. Their exploits touch well on the game’s talking points: self-driving cars, smart technology, banned books, and techno-propaganda, to name a few. It’s not unconditionally critical of the future, but reflects its more controversial elements through the hopes and fears of its sympathetic protagonists. If the narrative can be boiled down to a single spirit, it’s that of helping the characters come to terms with their fluid identities in a much more inflexible world.

The voice acting mostly holds up to this rollercoaster ride of late capitalism, supernatural talents, and on-off relationships, although I did encounter a few technical issues where dialogue overlapped or didn’t quite work as it should. But be prepared for hours of dialogue – it’s the backbone of the game, and there’s plenty of it.

That makes Born of dust a unique offering: an emotional but also funny and snappy road trip story with a few action sequences and punk rock rhythm games, but above all a celebration of the power of words. Just like its characters, its identity is constantly changing; just like them, it’s all the more interesting because of that.

★★★★☆

From August 20th on PC, PlayStation 4 and 5 as well as Xbox One and Series S/X