One of the hooks of the game is that there isn’t any kind of prologue or cut scene that leads you into the main story. When you first start the game up you meet Republique’s protagonist, Hope, as she’s begging you for help through a smuggled cellphone. She tells you that she’s in great danger and that the people who are after her want to either kill her or put her through some sort of brainwashing.

"In a kind of Watch Dogs fashion, you use these cameras to look up the hallway and around corners to see where you want Hope to go and what obstacles she will encounter when she goes there."

While we’re originally led to believe that Hope is in some sort of prison, we soon find out she’s actually in a futuristic school that is overseen by the villainous “Headmaster” who is referred to often throughout the game but kept in the shadows until it’s time for his reveal.

This is one of the things the game does right, because without the benefit of a large number of cut scenes that take you out of the story, you’re forced to discover just what the world entails as you go along. The goal of Republique Remastered is put simply, to help Hope escape from her sadistic jailers/school security and you do this by moving her along using well-worn stealth techniques such as those you might see in Assassin’s Creed or Metal Gear Solid titles. Where the game differs from those titles is the addition of the ability of your player to take over the many, many security cameras that are placed throughout the facility.

In a kind of Watch Dogs fashion, you use these cameras to look up the hallway and around corners to see where you want Hope to go and what obstacles she will encounter when she goes there. You’ll also be able to hack into various computers and machines and unlock doors by stealing passcodes from clipboards or computer monitors in the building.  This is also where the game introduces its first big drawback in the gameplay. There are many cameras that have rather odd angles to the room that can actually cause the player to lose their bearings.

"It seems as though Republique Remastered has indeed had its graphical look remastered, the game is quite pretty but the load times certainly could have been fixed and sped up now that it’s on a more powerful console platform."

It’s likely some of this is done on purpose, in order to ramp up the difficulty. Other times there’s a lag from one camera to another that seems pointless and is definitely annoying. There are instances where load times are so long marked only with with black screens that players might start to think the game had crashed. This is especially disconcerting considering this is a port from a game that was originally offered on the iOS platform.

It seems as though Republique Remastered has indeed had its graphical look remastered, the game is quite pretty but the load times certainly could have been fixed and sped up now that it’s on a more powerful console platform. The load times between cameras aren’t the only part of this aspect that gets quite bothersome. At certain points in the game, you will be shifted from one camera and point of view to another automatically. Taking the control that is offered for most of the game out of the player’s hands does two things. One, it breaks the immersion level of the game since the player has grown quite accustomed to having control over how they view the story.The second drawback is that the camera jumping can already be off-putting when the player is deciding when to jump and when not to switch.

Another aspect of Republique that can interrupt the immersion of the game is the treatment of these imposing security forces placed throughout the school. At the beginning of the game, there is a mention of a character that has died before you joined the story. It’s heavily implied the character was killed by the very people keeping Hope prisoner. This detail is obviously meant to convey how dangerous this world is and certainly delivers that message well. The problem is that when these same evildoers catch Hope out of her cell and attempting to escape the school entirely, they merely lead her to the nearest holding cell, and then walk off. Certainly this was a conscious choice made because the developers didn’t want to have the girl die only to start over. This title’s version of death is being caught, but that leads to a leap in logic when thinking about the intelligence of an enemy that finds a girl who has escaped her cell a myriad of times, yet doesn’t need a more watchful eye.

"Another aspect of Republique that can interrupt the immersion of the game is the treatment of these imposing security forces placed throughout the school."

Despite the fact that the danger of getting caught is ramped down by being locked up an infinite amount of times, there is still a decent amount of tension when Hope is sneaking around, attempting to avoid detection. She’s not armed to the teeth as characters can be in games like Assassin’s Creed. Hope can score a gadget here and there throughout Republique but there are very few offensive weapons. There’s no killing from your side either, as pickpocketing and knocking someone out are your main modes of “melee.”

When all is said and done, Republique Remastered is one of those games that takes just enough of what other games have done before it and changes it, that it’s a unique feel. The story is one we haven’t seen all that often before either. In that regard it’s a very good game. Unfortunately, the way the story is carried out and the mechanics throughout leave an awful lot to be desired.

This game was reviewed on the PlayStation 4.

GamingBolt had a chance to speak to Unity founder David Helgason about the changes and improvements that Unity 5 brings to games, the engine’s biggest strengths and what we can look forward to in the future.

" We do the hard work behind the scenes so that developers can focus on making games rather than porting to different systems. Unity 5 adds a lot of incredibly powerful features that will help developers create even prettier games and push the limits of hardware on devices."

Rashid K. Sayed: Republique Remastered is the biggest stand-out from the jump to Unity 5, especially when it comes to the improvement in lighting. How have you improved the global illumination in Unity 5, especially with regards to the different workflows?

David Helgason: One of the great things about Unity 5 is the inclusion of Enlighten from Geomerics. It’s known for in-game real-time GI, but it also provides is a vastly improved lighting workflow for artists. Faster workflow means faster iteration which means better looking levels and content in general. Part of this is due to an iterative mode which removes the need for explicitly baking the scene. This basically means the scene will pre-compute and bake in the background and the Editor will automatically track changes made to the scene and execute the tasks needed to fix up the lighting. Many of these lighting iteration tasks will be nearly instantaneous.

Rashid K. Sayed: The biggest strength of Unity throughout its history has been its wide range of support across platforms. How will Unity 5 influence the development and porting of new titles on mobile platforms, high-end PCs and gaming consoles?

David Helgason: Unity 5 supports even more platforms than ever, and we just announced support for the New Nintendo 3DS and HoloLens, and we are working on some other things in the lab. We do the hard work behind the scenes so that developers can focus on making games rather than porting to different systems. Unity 5 adds a lot of incredibly powerful features that will help developers create even prettier games and push the limits of hardware on devices. The introduction if the groundbreaking IL2CPP technology will also increase performance to native speeds on all platforms, eventually making it even easier to bring the best quality games to multiple platforms.

Rashid K. Sayed: Mobile devices haven’t quite had games with AAA production levels, especially in the graphics department. With the ever-increasing power of mobile phones – the recent Tegra K1 allegedly outperforming the PS3 and Xbox 360 – how will Unity 5 help developers leverage the hardware for better quality visuals?

David Helgason: Mobile devices are getting more powerful with each new release and the energetic competition from entrenched device manufacturers such as Apple, Samsung, and newcomers  such as China’s Xiaomi is accelerating that improvement. As you know, Unity 5 is a graphics powerhouse with features like physically-based shading and real-time global illumination using Enlighten. If target device hardware supports what you want to render, Unity has the power to display it. As each year’s new generation of supercharged mobile devices comes out, Unity 5 helps developers be prepared for the transitions, especially with huge performance boosting backend features like IL2CPP.

"Unity really stands out is in workflow and the ease of making games work on many different platforms, with Unity having support for 23 platforms including the recently announced New Nintendo 3DS and HoloLens."

Rashid K. Sayed: Unity 5 is available for free to start-ups with less than $100,000 of revenue or funding. While this helps the vast majority of indie and crowd-funded devs, especially those which can’t reach Star Citizen levels of funding, how does it ultimately benefit Unity as a whole?

David Helgason: One of Unity’s core principles has always been to strive towards the democratization of game development. The end goal is to get these creative tools in the hands of as many people as possible so that the world can be full of as many creators as possible and not just consumers.

Having those who may not have a technical background have access to some really powerful tools like these is likely to spark some really imaginative ideas which ultimately has a great and positive impact on the industry as a whole. From our standpoint as well, we want developers to be successful.

Partly because it’s a great feeling to know that we’ve had something to do with that, but selfishly, we hope they become successful enough that they can invest in the Professional Edition which helps us invest into making the core technology (and our range of services that help developers in various ancillary ways) even better.

Rashid K. Sayed: How would you contrast Unity 5 with Unreal Engine 4, especially since both engines are becoming more and more accommodating of smaller devs? What features of Unity 5 do you believe will ultimately help distinguish it in the current generation?

David Helgason: Unity really stands out is in workflow and the ease of making games work on many different platforms, with Unity having support for 23 platforms including the recently announced New Nintendo 3DS and HoloLens.

Rashid K. Sayed: Tell us more about “The Blacksmith” demo and how you went about creating it. What various graphical features of Unity 5 does it best show off?

David Helgason: The Blacksmith was created by a team of three full time developers out of our Stockholm studio and supported by some contractors creating art and music. Of course, the demo would also not have been possible without the work of the core team creating all of the wonderful features in Unity 5. The demo was created to show how far Unity has come and what can be accomplished with a small team in a realistic technological setting (a reasonable gaming PC that anyone can buy, and not a futuristic rig which is what new demos are often shown on).

"We have been able to hire many of the world’s best game engine developers to work with us, and the intention is to make Unity impossibly good to use. In short you’ll see massive improvements, tons of innovation, and a torrent of incredible games made by an insanely talented community of game developers."

It takes advantage of pretty much everything in Unity 5, but the showcase features are physically-based shading and real-time global illumination. It makes an incredible difference to the look of a realistic environment to see materials and shaders functioning in a way that’s predictable to real-life and have Enlighten working with those surfaces to calculate correct bounce lighting. It really is easier to believe in a place as being real with those kinds of features working in unison.

Rashid K. Sayed: What kind of impact do you think DX12 will have on Unity when used in conjunction with the Xbox One?

David Helgason: The API alone doesn’t give a significant performance boost, it simply allows scaling on multiple cores, and that’s what we demonstrated at GDC.

Once our code is ready Unity rendering will just be faster – most users probably won’t have to change a thing in their projects to receive the performance improvement,  because all we will do is scale their rendering on to multiple CPU cores.

Rashid K. Sayed: Oculus Rift support is another key feature of Unity 5. There will be a wide variety of VR devices in the coming year though with HTC Vive, Sony’s Project Morpheus and Samsung Gear. Will Unity cater to these devices as well?

David Helgason: We haven’t announced anything specifically about official support at this time for Vive though nearly all of the demos shown at Valve’s GDC booth were made with Unity. Morpheus is part of PlayStation 4 and we already support that system. Samsung Gear VR is also already supported as part of the upcoming Oculus integrated support currently in beta.

Rashid K. Sayed: With all the improvements made with Unity 5, what does the future hold for the engine?

David Helgason: The result of our intense commitment to the quality and usability of Unity is that we are able to pour ever-increasing resources into the platform. We have been able to hire many of the world’s best game engine developers to work with us, and the intention is to make Unity impossibly good to use. In short you’ll see massive improvements, tons of innovation, and a torrent of incredible games made by an insanely talented community of game developers.

Opening with a killer punchline that sets the dark mood and unsettling tone for the rest of the game, it’s clear that players will be in for one  creepy and disturbing adventure as they explore the dark and grizzly future of this dystopian nightmare. After receiving an urgent phone call from a young Lady by the name of Hope, who’s clearly going through severe stress and nerve-wrenching panic, players will be placed in control of a distant hacker going by the name of Cooper.

By playing host as her eyes and ears throughout this point and click adventure, it’s Cooper’s priority within the game to take advantage of the networking and surveillance systems enforced by a power-hungry Government, so that Hope can be freed and bought to safety away from the clutches of this brash and corrupt totalitarian enforced state.

Where the game does so well in blending its narrative and gameplay mechanics, it’s best to think of it as “Watch Dogs Phone Simulator”. Take away the glitches and the trench coat wearing revenge cliché, who thinks it’s sexy to stroll across traffic while it’s pouring down with rain, and that’s essentially what you have. A game about hacking that makes itself evident throughout the entire aesthetic of the overall game.

"Where the game does so well in blending it's narrative and gameplay mechanics, it's best to think of it as "Watch Dogs Phone Simulator". "

Upon entering the game where an introductory cut-scene sets up the narrative for the game, something stood out to me that some may consider very specific and personal in regards to my own experience. The game is over-confident in terms of how intuitive it thinks it actually is.

During this first five minutes of the game, players will find no tutorial system for how to play the game and how the control scheme actually functions. While it’s not anything of a major issue, tapping the keys and discovering what each key does when there’s actually little to nothing to do in this opening section of the game does indeed feel strange, if not left unfinished.

This feeling of left being unfinished is even more evident within the game’s main menu and options, where toggling various setting holds no explanation whatsoever as to whether or not you’ve set the particular option on or off. Along with non-rebindable keys in-conjunction with the game’s non-existent tutorial, having to tap keys and pause the game to find out what exactly each one does, just feels unpolished.

This theme of minimalism takes itself to far in some places and I sense this has something to do with the game’s overall theme for disregarding text in favour of icons in an attempt to look stylish and modern. Frankly it just looks like an overblown iPhone display and it would do well to make use of text, something of which I feel it could have incorporated successfully without actually harming its overall aesthetic of appearing minimalistic.

"This theme of minimalism takes itself to far in some places and I sense this has something to do with the game's overall theme for disregarding text in favour for icons in an attempt to look stylish and modern. "

After the opening of the game however it does make up for the lack off introductory tutorials, as it introduces the player’s character and how he or she is required to play the game from here on out. With all that being said it would seem as though giving the player control, during the introduction of the game seems quite pointless, as there’s nothing of importance they’ll be required to do but sit back and watch.

Once the game gets underway however it doesn’t disappoint. One of the game’s biggest stand-out points which helps the game differentiate itself from other games on the market is the way in which it tells its story, in reference to who the player’s main character actually is.

Where the game gives no real explanation as to what’s taking place within its narrative, which is done in order to deliver a sense of mystery. The main character in the game is not actually being controlled by the player. The player is simply a guide, a guide of significant importance that the main protagonist is highly dependent upon as the player is required to keep her alive.

One thing that is quite attractive about the game’s aesthetic and theme is the way in which it’s connected to elements both in-game and outside of the game. Pausing the game for example brings up a display titled “Connection Lost”, and due to the game’s mechanics of interacting with the main character and other elements of the game from a semi top-down perspective, the game does well in invoking a sense of great immersion, which makes you feel as though you’ve never really left the game even when it’s paused.

"One thing that is quite attractive about the game's aesthetic and theme is the way in which it's connected to elements both in-game and outside of the game. "

There’s something worthy to be said of the game’s camera angles and how it relates to the player’s control scheme. Switching through different perspectives through the surveillance system of the game’s levels, hold an amazing cinematic quality without actually taking anything away from the player.

This leads on to the game’s tremendous use of character voice acting and personality, that is both convincing and interesting to listen to as it succeeds in keeping the player interested in the game’s narrative. While it’s fair to say the game delivers on an immensely satisfying and detailed feeling of immersion, it does fall short in some places and sadly enough it breaks its own mold which leaves both the player and itself in a place of contradiction.

As the player comes across new objects to interact with within the game some such as audio notes, documents, PIN codes, and other things of interest within the environment.  The player’s own character which is best described as remote-assistance, fails to present itself in a believable manner in reference to the rest of the game’s connected theme and aesthetics.

"There's some worthy to be said of the game's camera angles and how it relates to the player's control scheme."

As Cooper explains these items of interest along with their use-case within the game by speaking directly to the player, there’s a constant switching of first and third person perspective which leads the player into thinking that Cooper isn’t actually the character they’re controlling.

It seems as though Cooper is just explaining things to himself and this is highly evident throughout various interactions that the player will come across during the first section of the game. Interacting with charging stations where Hope is required to keep her phone battery sufficient so that Cooper, the player, can remain in contact with her is a prime example of where the game snaps its own sense of immersion.

Since Cooper explains these mechanics by talking directly to the player it just comes off silly and distracting, leaving the player in a bit of a muddle as to why he’s talking to himself about things he already knows. While the explanation of game mechanics is necessary for obvious reasons, had the design decision to have Cooper explain these things to Hope as a simple reminder as opposed to instructing the player, then it would have strengthened its narrative and its own character interactions between Hope and Cooper.

As the game places an immense amount of detail and focus towards its game mechanics and narrative through a system of point and click, there’s no attention being placed on enemy interactions by the way of combat, which believe it or not is actually a good thing. The level of intensity being delivered by the game as Hope is required to remain undetected as the player guides her through hallways and corridors of such, means that patience and precise timing through the use of stealth is key to the success of progressing through the game.

"Since Cooper explains these mechanics by talking to directly to the player it just comes off silly and distracting, leaving the player in a bit of a muddle as to why he's talking to himself about things he already knows."

Hope does have a few tricks up her sleeve however, and this comes in the form of simple gadgets and physical interaction by the way of pepper spray and tasers. While progressing through these lengthy missions the player is also required to solve puzzles and collect key items.

Working alongside Hope the player can distract guards using objects within the environment, keeping them busy while they lead her to safety. Where there is some entertainment to be found amongst its intriguing storyline and fascinating gameplay mechanics, the game isn’t without it’s one or two faults, which are predominantly down to its level design and pacing.

Guiding Hope through the game’s stunning atmosphere brings to mind an artistic direction reminiscent of Deus-EX, Remember Me, and the original Metal Gear Solid. Where these games hold strength in keeping the player’s attention by mixing up environments and delivering something new to see, Republique Remastered unfortunately fails.

Corridors and hallways that break themselves up through the use of kitchens and dining rooms bring about a sense of limitation and linearity. This doesn’t bold so well when the player has no real sense of direction as to where they’re supposed to be going, and this can lead to pointless pacing and backtracking. More times than none I found myself burnt-out through certain areas of the game where pacing issues let the game down and its objectives overstay their welcome.

"Working alongside Hope the player can distract guards using objects within the environment, keeping them busy while they lead her to safety."

The game’s visual presence is fairly decent when looking back to it’s original release back on the iOS platform. The game delivers enough graphical settings to tweak and mess with, and performance proves to be rock solid while still being scalable down to the lowest-end of PC hardware.

That being said the game does look amazing and this is primarily down to its art direction. It’s just a shame this is restricted to linear interiors of prison hallways and bland stairways. République Remastered is a game may be well worthy of anybody’s time should they find interest in rich gameplay mechanics and a compelling narrative.

Being told through a point and click adventure divided through episodes, with an emphasis on stealth and pacing there’s certainly a lot of depth and detail, replayability to a certain extent also. Should the pacing issues that some players may experience with the game be refined in upcoming episodes, then I feel the game could potentially become more enjoyable and hold the player’s interest for a greater amount of time.

This game was reviewed on the PC.

Camouflaj’s stealth adventure game République will be launching on PC and Mac this month as République Remastered, the developer confirmed today.

“Ever since we committed to doing a desktop version of République, we’ve been haunted by the task for delivering something truly special for PC players,” says Ryan Payton, designer at Camouflaj. “When we got a glimpse at the next iteration of Unity we realized that this was the answer — beyond redesigning the game’s controls and UI for desktop, we’ve completely gutted all the game’s art, rebuilding everything using Unity 5’s cutting-edge graphical features. The result is something you have to see to believe.”

République Remastered has, as Payton explains, been completely rebuilt in Unity 5, and they promise they will share more details about the PC and Mac version of the game at GDC 2015.

République Remastered releases on PC and Mac on February 26th. It will be available on Steam, GOG and the Humble Store. There will be two editions available- The Standard Edition, which is $24.99, will include the first three episodes of the game, with the upcoming fourth and fifth episodes becoming available as and when they become release. The Deluxe Edition adds the complete soundtrack, a making of documentary and two game prototypes for $34.99.

Stay tuned to GamingBolt for more coverage.