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Where the Water Tastes Like Wine

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  • Alternative Character Interpretation: Many of the stories all but invite the player to try that.
    • Is Dupree a victim of physical and emotional abuse, and a society which leaves a beautiful woman so few other avenues to pursue their own goals? Or is it that, as she herself claims, she is simply a hustler by nature, a pathological liar and an unapologetic cheat?
    • Is August a pitiable, shellshocked wreck of a person who could've turned out different if he hasn't lost everything he loved, or a pathetic loser whose life was one long line of responsibilities shirked and blames shifted?
    • Is Cassady a tragic victim, rejected and emotionally toyed with by a callous lover, or a self-centered obsessive who couldn't take a hint, spinning an epic tale of victimhood out of his refusal to accept that the subject of his overblown hero worship (who, for all we know, might not have even been gay, or aware of Cassady's feelings) wouldn't reciprocate?
    • Was Jimmy an ultimately virtuous man with a heart of gold who didn't care about labels and credentials if it meant doing the right thing, or a grifter who spent his whole life giving people false hopes by claiming to be someone he never was?
  • Audience-Alienating Premise: It's almost impossible to describe this game in any capacity which actually describes what you do in terms of gameplay and makes it sound engaging. The trailers focusing on the (admittedly very charming) visuals while relegating the game part to a casual mention of "gathering stories" doesn't help. The game's actual draw, the stories and characters, which explore the plights and difficulties of the American underclass and racial minorities, can come across as Anvilicious.
  • Awesome Music: The soundtrack sets the stage perfectly for the personal, human stories which you collect. "Heavy Hands" stands out in particular.
  • Enjoy the Story, Skip the Game: The general consensus. Although the visuals, voice acting and writing are all excellent, the gameplay amounts to little more than walking around the map learning and retelling stories, and features several mechanics that weren't fully polished.
  • Funny Moments: While the game often goes into the darker side of America, there's still some funny bits:
    • Dupree telling the player how her mother caught her kissing another girl, and she exclaimed: "But Ma, you told me I wasn't supposed to be kissing boys"
    • One story you can collect is a ghost of someone's granny who haunts people... because she has a hankerin' for trotters.
  • Guide Dang It!: One of the little explained mechanics is that the trinkets gained from completing a traveler's storyline is an instant teleport to one of the cities, avoiding tedious traveling.
  • Nightmare Fuel: The game starts with a hobo who makes the mistake of joining a supernatural game, and finds against The Dire Wolf, resulting in his flesh being stripped from his bones as part of his wager, and more only comes as the player collects stories.
    • Several of the stories use Nothing Is Scarier for their benefit, like the story of the abandoned farmhouse. Just what the hell was in the basement?
    • Some of the forms the travelers have in their final arc can be pretty nightmarish: Althea gains a stony exterior with a gaping hole in her chest, Little Ben becomes a mechanical monster, while August and Mason are physically representing their traumas.
    • One event has the skeleton accidentally stumbling into a sundown town and getting severely beaten by the locals, with heavy implications that people have been killed - and the player can, in fact, be killed. Thanks to the Dire Wolf's deal, however, it doesn't stick.
    • The Devil can be encountered, who while polite to the Skeleton is none the less is clearly on the hunt for people who are expected to pay up for their deals.
  • Scrappy Mechanic: Due to the unpolished features, many mechanics to make traveling less tedious end up becoming more annoying than just walking - whistling to walk faster brings up a mini-Rhythm Game that is hard to keep up with the layout on the keyboard, and hitchhiking is only situationally useful due to all the roads being one-way, and hitching a ride on trains can result in the Skeleton being caught and either robbed or beaten by train guards.
  • Tear Jerker: Along with all the others, many stories often have sad or melancholy endings.
    • Quinn's story is terrible, as they left home because their parents purposely let their sick sibling die rather than pay for medical care, and had been neglectful, turning a young kid into a very cynical survivor.
    • Mason not only lost a limb in the Great War, he is also clearly suffering from PTSD which was poorly understood in the period, he's alienated from his sister because she couldn't understand his trauma or want to deal with it, and believes he's being ungrateful by joining the Bonus Army - which is about getting the benefits he and many other soldiers were promised.
    • The white deer being hunted, regardless of what the Skeleton tries, it ends up being killed.

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