Dustborn - TV Tropes (2025)

Dustborn - TV Tropes (1)

Dustborn is a single-player, story-driven action-adventure game developed by Red Thread Games and published by Quantic Dream. Revealed in August 2023, it was released on August 20, 2024, on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and PC via Steam and the Epic Games Store.

Pax, Noam, and Sai are a trio of Anomals, people who can use their words as superpowers. Unfortunately, they live in a timeline where John F. Kennedy started the militarized police force Justice, which evolved after his death into a corrupt agency that enforces an oppressive law and order over the American Republic. Although some states split off from America, almost every state persecutes Anomals. One day, the trio makes contact with Theo, who will help them get into Nova Scotia and start a new life in exchange for helping him steal data from Pacifica's government. Now the group must make off with the data while avoiding the authorities of both Pacifica and the American Republic, all while masquerading as a punk rock band.

A demo is available on its Steam pageDustborn - TV Tropes (2).

Please put all character-related tropes on the character page.

  • Alternate History: Instead of JFK being assassinated, his wife Jackie was the one who was killed, leading him to marry Marilyn Monroe and form the federal agency Justice to crack down on crime and terrorism. Similarly, Marilyn Monroe did not die in 1962 (a year before JFK's assassination) and survived all the way to the 2030s as a centenarian. Unfortunately, Justice became corrupt under JFK's successors and turned America into a police state, despite Monroe's efforts to oppose the current president, Samuel Ward.
  • Ambiguously Evil: JFK is the one who founded Justice for the sake of preventing internal threats in America, but whether or not he intended for them to resort to authoritarian control is ambiguous. An in-game book in Noam's apartment, "Stolen Legacy" by Vivian Chapel, claims that after JFK died in 1983, his successor Barren Sadler made many misguided policies. Once Samuel Ward became the current president, he completely transformed Justice into an authoritarian agency. However, in the Justice underground school, Pax speculates that JFK wanted Justice to take its current path. Since JFK is a Posthumous Character, his true intentions for Justice remain ambiguous.
  • Artificial Stupidity: Enemies can cause friendly fire to each other through AOE actions, even if they're not affected by Pax's Discord vocal. This is a necessary feature for the final Issue, where there is a three-way battle between the party, Justice, and the Puritans.
  • Artistic License – Religion: Early on the party stops to roast hot dogs over a campfire and Sai makes a point of making sure that the hot dogs are halal ("permissible"), which the robot confirms that they are. Afterwards, Sai has a beer can next to her, which is not halal, but rather haram ("forbidden").
  • Auto-Save: The game autosaves after certain story events, but there's no way to manually save and each run uses only one slot. The 1.8 patch reveals that each slot internally consists of several save files, which act as checkpoints to specific autosave events. However, loading an older save file deletes all newer files in that specific slot.
  • Badass Bystander: While the crew is being chased by Justice officers in Chicago, if Pax saved the pro-Medina-Castillo protesters, they'll trip the two cops.
  • Balance Buff:
    • In the 1.8 patch, the guard button can be held to guard for longer, though triggering a counterattack still requires nearly frame perfect timing.
    • The 1.8 patch also changes Pax's combos in certain situations to be more efficient and slightly faster, like giving her a kick if she attacks from a running animation.
    • The 1.10 patch gives Pax a new Taunt action for aerial enemies, where she uses an electrified bat throw. In previous versions of the game, Taunt attacks would whiff on aerial enemies.
  • Beginner's Luck: This trope is discussed by the party if they manage to nail their performance of "The Dust Born" at the Pacifica-Oregon border. They admit they didn't expect to succeed when they have so little experience as musicians and acknowledge that they should practice harder so that they don't have to rely on luck.
  • Benevolent A.I.:
    • The Henry and Betty robots are this by design, since they are supposed to run Standard Energy Stations and Betty's Diner locations respectively and need to have a friendly attitude to maintain their customer base. If Betty accidentally lets slip that Pax is pregnant, she will apologize when Pax tells her that was supposed to be a secret.
    • Averted with Betty 2.0, a reboot of Betty's character aimed at a younger, more hip consumer base. Betty 2.0 lacks the kindness of the original and is utterly dismissive of the unemployed Henry near her shop.
  • Benevolent Abomination: When using the Me-em device, Pax can see monstrous squids, which have a tendency to eat any Echo she attempts to record. In Issue 6, an even larger one appears that is visible to everyone, but it only attacks Justice, since it realizes the party isn't with them. It turns out the squids are trying to return the Echoes to the Tree of Tongues, which is a good thing because the Echoes are misinformation that was never meant to be released from the tree.
  • Big Bad Ensemble: The Overseer is the leader of the Puritans and the Justice Magistrate is the leader of Justice, making them in charge of the enemy factions hunting down the crew. They oppose each other, since they have different intentions for using the party's stolen data, with the Overseer seeking to eliminate all Anomals and Protolanguage usage while Justice wants to use Protolanguage and Anomals to control the masses.
  • Boss-Altering Consequence: If Caretaker is on the Prophet Coda right before the Issue 9 boss, they will gather several old robots of the same model to assist Pax, Ziggy, and Eli in fighting Praetor Walker, which is helpful because Walker has his own underlings too.
  • But Thou Must!: Some conflicts seem to have no solution other than using Vocals, including harmful ones. An example is when Fred gathers a mob to attack Annie, which can only be solved with the Discord vocal as indicated by the comic.
  • Capitalism Is Bad:
    • In Issue 1, the YuYu workers discuss how exploitative their food delivery company is and how little they are paid for their work. One worker criticizes the company and claims that only those as lucky as themselves can escape the financial death spiral of being an employee, but the other supports the company and claims their current success is due to hard work rather than luck. Pax and Sai worked for this company in the past, and the former used Vox to con customers in order to make ends meet.
    • The Henry and Betty robots were produced to manage the Standard Energy Stations and Betty's Diner locations, and they were given friendly family lore along with very advanced AI. Unfortunately, despite their lore and sentience, they are still considered disposable labor to their creators. Many of their locations are neglected at best and shut down at worst, leaving the robots managing those locations in the streets with no work prospects. Even the ones who remain employed are saddened by how they're tied to their locations and unable to visit their partners, becoming Star-Crossed Lovers in the process.
    • This is deconstructed in Issue 2, where the party visits Pax's old anarcho-primitivist home, Liberty, which wanted to escape the flaws of the American Republic's capitalist and fascist society. Unfortunately, they went too far in the other direction and couldn't sustain themselves economically, leading to Annie making compromises between the ideals of Liberty and reality in order to ensure the commune's survival.
  • Character Development: Every character has a Coda, which indicates their current mindset and relationship with the rest of the party. For example, Theo can end up seeing himself as a friend to the party, a Team Dad, or strictly the boss of their heist. It's possible to change from one Coda to another by picking dialogue choices to push characters towards a certain mindset. Pax also has her own Coda, but that information isn't displayed alongside everyone else's Coda.
  • Church Militant: In Utah, there are some locations where the Mormon Guard, a police organization, has jurisdiction and Justice doesn't. This is because due to factional disputes within the American Republic, Utah became a Mormon theocracy.
  • Combination Attack: Some of Pax's Vocal abilities can be followed up by an attack from an ally by pressing the taunt button.
    • Block causes Sai to follow up with an AOE attack to hit the temporarily immobilized enemies.
    • Push causes Ziggy to Flash Step to the enemy for a sucker punch.
    • Hoax and Bully cause Eli to summon an illusionary beast.
    • Cancel causes Ophelia to follow up with a Vocal that deals additional mental damage.
  • Commune: After the Protolanguage Broadcast caused a breakdown of public trust, many people formed their own communes that seek to escape the authoritarian rule of the American Republic. Liberty in particular was once an anarcho-primitivist commune that abhorred technology, but eventually abandoned the primitivist part when too many people left and they needed robot labor. After Justice cracks down on Liberty, the people of that commune flee to other communes in order to survive.
  • Compelling Voice: Some Anomal abilities allow them to influence people with words. Pax can plant thoughts or use some commands on people while Noam can cancel out strong emotions. There are limits to these abilities, since in one possible scenario, Noam will attempt to cancel a cop's agitation, only for the cop to notice and regain his anger.
  • Company Cross-References: Sai is wearing Wonker's shirt in the prologue, with the latter being a character from Dreamfall: The Longest Journey, which was also worked on by Ragnar Tørnquist.
  • Curse of Babel: According to Pax's dream in Issue 4, Lebanon, Kansas is actually the original location of the Tower of Babel. Humanity originally had control over Protolanguage to allow them to change reality itself, but eventually, humans lost control over Protolanguage, which got split into the various mundane languages.
  • Didn't Think This Through: In Issue 4, the party neglected to keep the newer members, Ziggy and Eli, fully updated on the cover story. This causes two Justice officers to be suspicious of the party, since Eli still has his Horned Rider outfit and doesn't look like a roadie. Additionally, Theo implies that Ziggy and Eli were grilled by the cops and failed to keep their answers consistent with everyone else.
  • Divided States of America: The American Republic is extremely divided. Some states, such as California and several southern states, have split off from the American Republic and their respective military/police forces are hostile towards each other. This works to the party's advantage somewhat, since authorities from one nation cannot chase them inside another nation without risking retaliation from the native authorities. Based on the in-game map, it seems that Mexico has re-annexed Texas and New Mexico, Russia has annexed half of Alaska, Florida has sunk into the sea, and the Mormons have carved out their own territory in the Midwest.
  • Early-Bird Cameo: In Issue 1, the player can find Lottie and Sol's photos in Luna's office in La Torre, long before they are introduced in Issue 4 and 5 respectively. This is because Lottie, Sol, and Luna are all part of the same Weave resistance movement.
  • Emergency Authority: Justice declared martial law after the Broadcast occurred, due to that event causing people to become Anomals that can use speech to activate superpowers. As a result, the American Republic increases surveillance and grants the Justice cops more power to arrest Anomals. Later, it turns out Justice caused the Broadcast through their Protolanguage experiments, and they're rounding up Anomals not for public safety, but because they want to use the power of Anomals to control the public.
  • Everyone Has Standards: Although Marilyn Monroe helped JFK establish the Justice militarized police force, she still despised outright tyrants like the current president, Samuel Ward. Datamining reveals two pages from "Mother of Justice: The Marilyn Monroe Story" by Malcolm Luckinbill, which contains Monroe's criticisms of Ward and states that she tore into him at a White House fundraiser.

    "She thought he was a sham, a shameless populist who rode on John's coattails, yet tried to cast blame for America's misfortunes on the JFK presidency."

  • Everything Is Racist:
    • Deconstructed. In Betty's Diner in Issue 4, if the player waits long enough for a certain part of the conversation to play out, the female cop asks if Pax and Eli are related or are a couple. The male cop tells her that her statement can come off as racially insensitive while the female cop defends herself by stating that it's still a possibility. While this shows that the police in this setting condemn traditional racism and try to watch their words, in the same conversation, they also shamelessly repeat conspiracy theories about Anomals, showing that opposing one form of bigotry doesn't necessarily mean applying the same thought process to another form of bigotry. If the conversation goes on long enough without Vox usage, either Pax or Ziggy will call out the officers for dehumanizing Anomals, causing the officers to try to arrest them, since they now suspect that the party contains Anomals, who are criminalized by American Republic law. Noam has to use their Gaslighting Vocal to trick the officers into believing that Pax and Ziggy mistook them for traditional racists, in which case the officers apologize for the "misunderstanding." The conversation shows that despite the cops attempting to follow the letter of racial bias training to avoid this trope, they don't truly understand the spirit of it.
    • In the aforementioned conversation, Pax can use the Trigger Vocal before the officers start talking about Anomals, accusing them of traditional racism. This causes the female cop to get defensive and state that she's just trying to describe potential Anomal and Horned Rider suspects accurately. When the male cop tells her to calm down, the female cop points out that she could just as easily accuse him of sexism by twisting his words. The cops then leave the diner on much worse terms with the party than if the conversation played out without Pax's racism accusation.
  • Evil Is Easy: The Voxless solutions to many situations usually require more complex actions and prior knowledge. Using Vox can resolve a situation in a more straightforward manner, but the game notes that doing so is not something to be proud of, since it interferes with the target's free will and can even traumatize them.
  • Evil Versus Evil: Justice (the fascist United States government) and the Puritans (transhumanist corporatocracy California Big Tech) are both pursuing the crew for the data they stole from the Puritans, but both groups are also enemies of each other. The former wants to use the data to advance their Protolanguage research and use it to control the populace while the latter wants to use Protolanguage to censor everyone, especially Anomals, and prevent anyone else from abusing this power.
  • Face Doodling: If Noam isn't on the Maybe Someday Coda, Ziggy will draw a mustache on a sleeping Pax's face at the start of Issue 4.
  • Face of a Thug: Eli can summon an illusion of Bituman the Asphalt God, a towering creature with antlers, a huge maw on its stomach, and a body made of tar and motor oil. When he summons an illusion of Bituman during his storytelling session, they have such an intimidating presence that Sai puts some distance between her and Bituman. However, Eli believes Bituman is a benevolent deity who guides the purehearted on the highways, despite the latter's frightening appearance.
  • Fantastic Racism: Anomals are persecuted and sent to camps because people fear that their abilities will harm the unpowered.
  • Fantastic Slurs: Anomals, people who can use the power of words to enact phenomena, consider it a slur to be called "divergents", an outdated, government-created term typically used by well-meaning but ignorant normals. Normals who actively hate Anomals called them "deviants".
  • Faux Flame: Illusionary flames generated by Pax and Eli function just like real flames in terms of dealing Damage Over Time to enemies and Pax can even light her bat on fire with it. However, these illusionary flames don't work on robots, since robots are mentally unaffected by Vocals and therefore cannot perceive themselves as being set on fire. Conversely, the illusionary flames work perfectly fine on the Fireman, since his Vocal protects his body from real flames while his mind is just as vulnerable to illusionary flames as any other human.
  • Food as Bribe:
    • Deconstructed. When Sai holes herself up in La Torre's bathroom out of fear of the authorities and the treacherous heist, Pax has the option to offer Sai the latter's favorite jerky to get her to leave the bathroom. This only serves to anger Sai, since this action is inconsiderate towards her worries and solves none of her problems. Sai will accept the jerky during less stressful camping segments, but if the bribe was attempted before, she will remember it.
    • In Issue 4, Pax can use a bag of expired peanuts to bribe the raccoon, Mr. President, into stealing Lottie's voicebox.
  • Foreshadowing:
    • In Issue 2, the player can find Sai near a supposedly broken video phone, but if the player examines it after she moves to a different spot, it turns out to be still operational. This is a hint that she's secretly contacting Justice as The Mole and feeding them information about the party's whereabouts.
    • Pax usually learns harmful Vocals, but Normalize is the most benign because it makes the target feel like their current mental state is normal, which can help them cope with trauma as shown in Girl's case. It's to the point where it's her only Vocal that cannot be used in combat. This is foreshadowing that her Vocals are not actually restricted to only harming others, and that they only do so because of her own perception of language as a weapon. Realizing this allows her to create an encouraging Vocal by understanding and accepting her friends.
    • In Issue 6, Caretaker believes they won't be able to outlive humanity due to their need for maintenance, but Noam suggests using other robots. In The Stinger, CT is brought back from their supposed death by other robots, who reactivate their head.
    • In Issue 7, Eli uses his illusion powers on the TTRPG manual so that anyone who tries to illegally read it will get wrong information. This foreshadows a choice in Issue 8, where Pax can ask Eli to create an illusionary entry on an attendance sheet so that the bar's bouncers will let the crew in.
  • Fragile Speedster: Echo-possessed human enemies attack very quickly and aggressively due to being in a paranoid berserker state. While their durability is nothing to write home about, their sheer speed and numbers allow them to Zerg Rush Pax and stunlock her if the player cannot crowd control them efficiently.
  • Genre Deconstruction: Of stories about resistance against a dystopian government. Sol mentions that there used to be armed and violent resistance to the American Republic in the past, but none of them ever made any significant gains because they are hopelessly outgunned by the militarized police force, Justice. They ended up having to shift to non-violent methods to stay under the radar, such as preserving banned books and researching Protolanguage, but even that has its limits due to Justice employing moles like Sai, allowing them to take down almost every hidden Weave base in America. While the party does fight their way through the American Republic, most of these are just small scale battles to give them enough breathing room to escape from the cops, and the physical injuries and mental trauma they sustain makes it clear that a drawn out war is impossible to win. Additionally, the stress of avoiding the government's oppression puts a strain on the crew's relationship, and part of the difficulty in the game's dialogue system is figuring out how to rebuild these relationships all while the situation with the mission worsens. For the most part, the game is about trying to escape from pursuers rather than actually overthrowing the government. While the Librarian ending has Pax join the non-violent resistance and the Ronin ending has Pax resort to vigilante justice, the former ending is portrayed as more hopeful than the latter due to Nova Scotia possessing the Puritans' Protolanguage data.
  • Go-Karting with Bowser: The crew's last stop as a band turns out to be a Chicago cop bar filled with Justice officers. The Anomal crew end up partying with the Justice crew; at one point a drunk Eli even yells out "Death to Justice!" and the officers just laugh it off since they're not "on the clock". It's only at the very end that the crew's cover gets blown by Praetor Walker and Prefect Kim, who met Pax in Issue 5, and they're forced to flee.
  • Godzilla Threshold:
    • The party stole data from Pacifica's ruling class, the Puritans, and whatever is on it is so important that the Puritans are willing to pursue them on the American Republic's territory. This is despite how the the Republic will retaliate against them for trespassing. In the final Issue, they go as far as to attack the hospital that Pax is staying in.
    • When the Puritans corner the party in the abandoned mall in Utah, Lottie calls in a favor from someone in the Mormon Guard who owes her, resulting in the Mormon Guard distracting the Puritans. This ends up compromising Utah's only Library, but it's the only way for the party to escape.
    • At the end of Issue 5, the crew is desperate because multiple Libraries have been exposed to Justice, leaving them no safe haven on their way to their next destination. Pax decides the only option is to head through the Great Plains Exclusion Zone, even though that location is uninhabitable.
  • Goo-Goo-Godlike: In the confrontation with Axiom, Pax and Girl direct a multitude of Echoes into Pax's womb, allowing Pax's child to use a powerful Vocal to blow away Axiom, despite the latter being the strongest of the Puritans.
  • Guide Dangit:
    • There are many conflicts where Vox is optional, but it can be difficult to find a Voxless solution without considerable trial and error, or just plain luck. An example is the negotiation with Ziggy in Liberty's kitchen, where the game will try to trick the player into thinking Vox is mandatory, only for the Voxless solution to be pressing the crew button until Ziggy relents.
    • Although Pax has a Coda like everyone else, her Coda isn't displayed in the menu and there are no indicators for gaining progress in her Coda, making it nigh-impossible to intentionally work towards a Coda without prior knowledge.
  • Hero Antagonist: While hunting for Echoes, which are a supernatural representation of disinformation that drive people to paranoia, Pax will occasionally come across squids that can only be seen with the Me-em machine. Unfortunately, the squids have a tendency to eat Echoes just as Pax is about to capture them. Defeating the squids allows Pax to take the Echoes they ate. In Issue 6, the squids turn out to be servants of the Tree of Tongues and are on a mission to reclaim the Echoes that the tree was forced to produce, which Sai likens to being social media moderators. The bionic enemies also turn out to be working for the tree and indiscriminately attack anyone who tries to approach the tree, whether they be Justice or the crew. Once they realize Pax can free the tree, the bionic boss carries the party to the tree's prison room.
  • Historical Villain Upgrade: Downplayed. John F. Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe aren't generally perceived as having had particularly radical politics in actual historynote, and Kennedy in particular is known for his support of civil rights. In this game's timeline, the two created the militarized police force Justice. Although the "Stolen Legacy" book claims Kennedy used Justice's vast power with a fair hand and fought domestic threats, his successors misused Justice's power and turned America into a police state that seeks to use Anomals and Protolanguage as tools to control reality.
  • Jerkass Has a Point: In Betty's Diner in Issue 4, if Pax chooses to use Trigger to accuse the Justice officers of being racist, the female cop gets defensive, causing the male cop to tell her to calm down. The female cop points out that it's unfair to misinterpret her words as racist and that she could just as easily interpret his words as sexist. The male cop is stunned silent because he can't refute her words and awkwardly declares that it's time for the cops to get back on the road.
  • Job-Stealing Robot: Deconstructed. The Henry and Betty line of robots were built to run gas stations and diners respectively, but in order to increase their appeal, they were given advanced AI capable of socializing with humans, as well as lore where the two of them are a couple. Unfortunately, their advanced AI also gives them a capacity for suffering, which bodes poorly when they start going out of style and their employers start shutting down their locations, firing them, and neglecting their maintenance. Even the ones that are still employed are unhappy with not being able to easily meet up with their counterparts. Ultimately, the Henry and Betty robots are treated less as threats to human employment and more as fellow victims of corporate greed.
  • Jurisdiction Friction: The Puritans are the corporate military force of Pacifica, but because their country split off from the American Republic, they aren't allowed on Republic territory. Breaking this rule could result in a war between Pacifica and the American Republic. Similarly, Justice won't interfere in most locations in Utah, since the Mormon Guard is in charge of that state.
  • La Résistance:
    • The Wildflowers is a resistance group, but unlike the Weave, they are willing to use violence and guerilla warfare to fight against Justice and rival insurgency groups like the Loyalists. Sol was once a member of the Wildflowers, but switched over to the Weave after he was no longer able to hold a gun like he used to, though he retains his knowledge of explosives.
    • In Ziggy's Pragmatist Coda ending, she and Sol join the east coast resistance, which is implied to be the Wildflowers due to their flower flag. In Sai's Way of the Fist Coda ending, she joins the same armed resistance group.
  • Living Is More than Surviving: If Pax chooses to talk about the future in Noam's apartment, she'll state that even if she wasn't an impoverished Anomal in Pacifica, that place has nothing to offer her in terms of fulfillment or purpose. In Liberty, one dialogue option with Annie has Pax argue that Ziggy isn't truly "living" in Liberty and that she needs to leave, since Ziggy is only in Liberty because she feels like she has no choice but to stay.
  • Look Both Ways: In the opening cutscene, if the player chooses to have Noam use their Gaslighting Vox power on the cop pulling the party, the cop will be enraged and focus entirely on the party for being Anomals. The cop fails to notice that he's standing in the middle of the road, despite the party's warning, and he gets run over by a robotruck. This also happens if the player waits out the conversation, resulting in Sai accidentally turning her hands to stone in front of the cop.
  • Manchild: Downplayed and justified. On average the crew members are actually mostly in their mid-30s, but Pax, Noam, Sai, and Ziggy act much more like young adults in their mannerisms and behavior due to their own circumstances, with Theo and Sol acting as father figures to balance them out. Each of them have their own Freudian Excuse or Dark and Troubled Past to explain their struggles with maturing, with Pax being exiled from Liberty at a young age and resorting to cons to survive, Noam having neglectful rich parents that they're estranged from, Sai being put in juvenile hall for graffiti and being forced to become a sleeper agent for Justice, and Ziggy developing abandonment issues from Pax's exile. The four go through Character Development concerning their flaws, but they're still less mature than Theo and Sol, since the road trip forced them to grow quickly.
  • Mêlée à Trois: The first part of the final battle is a 3-way fight between the party, the Puritans, and Justice.
  • Molotov Cocktail: In Issue 3, Pax tries to use a Molotov cocktail to light a tire on fire to lure the Horned Riders, but misses and hits a couch instead, which still gets the job done. The Horned Riders also have Molotov cocktails, which they will use their their fights to set the party members on fire. Finally, during the bike sequence, Pax can throw Molotov cocktails at the Horned Riders to prevent them from pursuing the party.
  • Moral Myopia:
    • At the performance on the border between Pacifica and Oregon, the party has to play "The Dust Born" in order to prove to the Justice officers that they're a real band. If they score high enough, one of the officers states that he identifies with the lyrics about outcasts because he feels that people judge him for being a cop without considering that there's a person inside the uniform. Pax, who would be hunted down by Justice if they found out about her Vox powers, silently notes the irony of that statement.

      Officer: You know, I often feel that way myself. People passing through see the uniform but not the person INSIDE the uniform. You know?
      Pax: [thinking] Oh, buddy. You have NO idea.

    • On the flip side, it's possible for Pax to fall into this if the player chooses to use her Vox powers to control social situations as much as possible, despite her opposition to the police state.
    • The Adjunct considers it a sign of intellectual prowess for the Puritans to use their technology to dominate their enemies, but cries foul when Theo uses an EMP grenade to take out their shields.
  • Morality Kitchen Sink:
    • The American Republic and Justice oppress Anomals and the leadership wants to experiment on them in order to use Protolanguage to control the masses, but they support equality for non-Anomal minorities and most Justice officers are portrayed as well-intentioned but misguided in wanting to maintain public order, despite the Republic being an authoritarian police state. However, two in-game books present the leadership as Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist charlatans who care more about their own power than actually protecting the public.
    • Meanwhile, the Puritans want to censor all language, Protolanguage, and Anomals to establish their own vision of order, but they likewise show no desire to persecute other minorities.
    • Nova Scotia/the Weave is the most benevolent of the three major factions because they respect Anomal rights, but are still willing to use Protolanguage to change reality as they see fit.
    • The Horned Riders are a biker gang that is willing to rob innocents, but they are better than the Republic and the Puritans about respecting Anomal rights.
    • Finally, Pax's crew is mostly an Anti-Hero Team that is willing to resort to ruthless tactics to deliver Puritan data to Nova Scotia, including intrusive Vox usage, all so they can escape persecution and not have to worry about being outed as Anomals. At the same time, they are willing to help out other Anomals in need even if it interferes with their mission. In the ending, it's possible to have most of Pax's team align themselves with the Weave and Nova Scotia to support the latter's less violent methods, though it's also possible to have them resort to vigilantism and guerilla warfare to fight Justice.
  • More than Mind Control:
    • Echoes can fill someone's mind with resentment and paranoia, and it usually builds off mental hangups that they already have rather than truly add anything new.
    • Similarly, most mind-affecting Vocals tend to work only if the target is at least somewhat receptive to the user's intent. However, some Vocal usages fail because the target either actively tries to resist it or because the user doesn't understand the target's thoughts. While Pax is able to get Theo to act on his doubts about the datakey to get him to analyze it, she is unable to make Sai cheer up because she doesn't understand why Sai is stressed out in the first place.
  • Mundane Utility:
    • Eli can use his illusion powers to conjure lifelike images while he tells stories at the campsites or acts as a Game Master for a tabletop RPG.
    • In Issue 6, Eli uses creates illusionary instruments so that the party can appease the giant Protolanguage squid with music.
    • Echoes always create a small air explosion when they are recorded, which can open up paths or reveal hidden items. In Issue 7, the Girl lures an Echo near the door to the abandoned house's basement so that it can act as an improvised bomb and break the door down.
  • No-Sell: Vox only works on living beings, which means they cannot influence robots or directly harm them in battle. Pax notes the only way to get around this is to use Vox to enhance one's own physical abilities to more efficiently fight the robots.
  • Not in This for Your Revolution: Other than Sol, who is a member of the Weave resistance, every member of the crew is more interested in the Weave's offer of a new homeland or removal of unwanted Vocal powers than the resistance's actual cause, making them mostly Punch Clock Heroes. However, some Codas will have the protagonists become invested in the Weave's plans to preserve banned media and utilize Protolanguage to undermine Justice.
  • Older Than They Look: Apparently while JFK has long died of natural causes (though there are conspiracy theories that he's still alive and running Justice from the shadows), Marilyn Monroe is still alive by the 2030s and still looks great despite being a centenarian.
  • Oppressive States of America: The game takes place in the Justice-controlled American Republic, where they not only censor media and have militarized police, Anomals are disappeared into camps. While other states and territories split off, they are also very hostile to Anomals, forcing Anomals to keep their powers a secret to avoid persecution.
  • Painted CGI: The game's art-style is heavily inspired by western comics. After every chapter completion, a recap comic will become available to read, which describes choice-dependent outcomes in red text. There is also a comic without red text, which describes what Pax, Noam, and Sai were doing before agreeing to Theo's heist.
  • Perp Sweating: In the diner in Issue 4, two Justice officers ask questions about the crew's activities in the American Republic. When speaking to Pax, they pretend that they're asking questions for the first time, but they already asked all other crew members and will compare Pax's answers to the others. Unfortunately, even if Pax answers all questions correctly, Ziggy and Eli apparently failed to give consistent answers, which when combined with Eli's biker appearance, makes the group look suspicious anyways.
  • The Power of Language:
    • Anomals has the power to weaponize language as Vocals. This can range from manipulating people's emotions (Pax and Noam) to self-strengthening (Sai). However, using Vocals doesn't always guarantee the best outcome in social situations and most of them have very short-lived effects when used to manipulate targets, making them less reliable in some ways than simply using regular words wisely.
    • This becomes a Decon-Recon Switch if Pax bails on Sai, Noam, and Theo's conversations less than three times by the end of Issue 6. She states that she used to see language as a weapon and shield, which is for the sake of feeling in control of situations. However, she acknowledges that it's better to use language to listen, empathize, and communicate with her friends. This empathy eventually allows her to use a Vocal that fills her friends with courage, allowing Theo to use an EMP bomb to free himself, Noam, Girl, and Nainai from the Puritans.
    • The source of the Anomals' power is Protolanguage, a mysterious language that can alter reality and is the foundation of the universe. Anomals can only use a subset of the Protolanguage, meaning their power will usually just mentally influence people or affect their own body. The goal of Justice is to use Protolanguage to take control of the populace and the world. The Puritans want to prevent anyone from using Protolanguage and wish to censor Anomals and all speech to prevent this power from being abused.
  • Prolonged Prologue: The combat tutorial doesn’t happen until about 3-4 hours into a typical playthrough, which requires the player to clear Issue 0 and make it to the end of Issue 1.
  • Reality Warper: The true nature of Protolanguage is the code of the universe itself, and Anomals can only tap into a subset of that language. This explains why Vocals cover not just mind manipulation, but also body and physics altering effects. Researchers from both the American Republic and Nova Scotia believe that further mastery of Protolanguage will allow humanity to rewrite reality.
  • Retraux Flashback: The crew's raid of Purity happens before Issue 0, but in Issue 7, they retell the events of that day to new members. The events are portrayed as a pixelated turn-based RPG where the party has to fight various Puritan enemies, with the Adjunct serving as the Final Boss.
  • Rhythm Game: Since the party has to act as a punk rock band for their cover story, there's a rhythm minigame involving four input buttons and one Rock Power button to temporarily grant a score multiplier. The button prompts are displayed on two axes where they will converge on the center, which is supposed to correspond with the face buttons on a controller.
  • Save the Villain: If the player chooses to have Noam use their Gaslighting ability to calm the cop pulling the party over or if Sai gets agitated enough to turn to stone, the cop realizes what's going on, steps away from the vehicle, and draws his gun. The party tries to warn him that he's at risk of getting hit by traffic, but he doesn't listen and gets killed by a robotruck. Even in later chapters, Sai is still haunted by the cop's sudden death. However, if Pax uses Block to freeze the officer before he can step into the other lane, he won't get run over by the truck.
  • Shadow Archetype: A crucial part of Pax's Character Development is that for much of the game, her base assumptions about Protolanguage are actually the same as Justice and the Puritans, seeing language as a weapon of control. Justice seeks to use this power on a large scale to control society while the Puritans fear Protolanguage and want to prevent its use through any means necessary, even if it means absolute control over society in other ways. Pax eventually realizes that language is best used as a means of understanding others than controlling them and explains this to the Puritan Overseer, but the latter doesn't understand at all and never changes her view on language.
  • Skill Scores and Perks: After Ziggy gives the electromagnetic bat and gauntlet to Pax, it becomes possible to spend machine parts to upgrade the bat while in the bus or while Pax is carrying the bat, granting Pax additional abilities like extra melee hits, extra targets when throwing the bat, and countering after a successful block. The fourth tier skills can also be further upgraded for enhanced effects. Machine parts can also be refunded if the player is unsatisfied with their current build.
  • Star-Crossed Lovers: There are multiple Henry and Betty robots that were created to run the various Standard Energy Stations and Betty's Diners respectively. Although they are a couple in their lore, many of the robots have no means of contacting their counterparts because of how far away their establishments are from each other. Pax can agree to deliver letters and gifts between them, but she also notes that due to the linear nature of her own road trip, the next Henry and Betty robots will be different from the ones she met before.
  • Stealth-Based Mission: At the Standard Energy Station in Issue 3, the party has to steal bikes from the Horned Riders in order to catch up to their bus. The party can sneak over to the bikes without the Riders noticing, but getting caught will result in a boss fight against Patsy and the Riders.
  • The Stinger: The 1.8 patch includes a post-credits scene where several Rotown robots find Caretaker's head and revives them, but their intentions for CT are unknown.
  • Stylistic Suck: The groups musical ability leaves much to be desired, which is to be expected as they are only posing as a band, and so are mostly amateurs when it comes to songwriting and singing. Downplayed if the player manages to get a high score on their first performance at the border, and even then, the band notes that this could have been Beginner's Luck and that they need to practice hard in order to ensure consistent success.
  • Suspicious Video-Game Generosity: In Issue 9, the Rotown area has a lot of machine parts, making it easy to get every passive ability in the skill tree. This is before a rather long gauntlet against Justice, ending in a boss fight against Praetor Walker.
  • Technologically Advanced Foe:
    • While Justice's tech level is firmly 20 Minutes into the Future (i.e. shock weapons, robots, and the occasional Mini-Mecha), the Puritans (implied to be a pastiche of Silicon Valley, UC Berkeley, and the Illuminati) are at a full sci-fi level of technology, with a Protoss-like design aesthetic and tech like personal anti-gravity flight, Deflector Shields, energy swords, and transhuman augmentation.
    • The Weave uses older communications technologies to contact each other, since the newer ones are monitored by Justice. As a result, their communication only has dial-up speed and there aren't that many terminals available, giving them a communication disadvantage compared to their enemies.
  • Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Sol states that in 2018 or 2019, the Wildflowers resistance group, the Horned Riders, and several anarcho-primitivist groups teamed up to fight the Loyalists, a fascist paramilitary organization that is separate from Justice. However, the coalition didn't agree on anything politically other than hating fascists.
  • The Theocracy: Due to the American Republic's political turmoil after the Broadcast event in the year 2000, Utah is mostly independent from the rest of the Republic and has a government that enforces Mormon values. Not all Mormons agree with this government, since Lottie is a Mormon who joined the Weave resistance group.
  • Tranquil Fury: In Issue 8, Ziggy, Eli, and Noam get drunk before the Battle of the Bands performance. If Pax allows the conversation to play out without choosing any option, the other three stop drinking because they're scared of Pax remaining silent while staring at them angrily.
  • Video Game Caring Potential:
    • At the campsites, Pax can gift items to the other crew members, though the game makes this trickier in later chapters by also throwing in gift choices that don't match the target's interests, though the target will usually appreciate the thought.
    • Pax's initial interactions with Ziggy are a more complicated example, since trying too hard to talk to her and force reconciliation can make it harder to get her Idealist Coda, making it important to respect her space and allow her time to process the chaotic events in Liberty by herself.
    • At a rest stop in Issue 5, Pax can choose to save an elderly couple from being interrogated by Justice, even if it means getting into a skippable fight, reasoning that the group's previous fight with the Justice officers led to the innocent civilians being implicated and therefore they are obligated to help.
    • Another complicated example is Henry and Betty's sidequest. Henry asks Pax to deliver a letter to the next Betty she comes across, but after she does so, that Betty asks Pax to deliver a photo to the next Henry. Although there are multiple Henry and Betty robots, they don't share the same memory, meaning the first Henry won't get a response to his letter. This causes Pax to question if the sidequest is worth it if she can never reunite with the previous robots in the chain to update them on the deliveries.
    • At the end of Issue 6, the game will tell the player if they bailed on conversations with Sai, Noam, and Theo less than three times, with the three noting that Pax is more willing to listen to others than at the start of the game.
    • In Issue 8, Pax can choose to save the protesters from being arrested by using Normalize on the Justice officers. This will result in the protesters tripping Praetor Walker and Prefect Kim when the two chase Pax and Noam.
  • Video Game Cruelty Potential:
    • The use of Vox powers in the game to manipulate people like a sociopath is even outlined in the powers themselves.

      Cancel's entry: "We've learned how to CANCEL someone. CANCEL will allow us to isolate people from their friends and compatriots. In battle, this could be a useful tool against enemies."

      Cancel's description in battle: "When we CANCEL someone, they try to HURT themselves."

    • At the rest stop in Issue 5, Pax can choose to abandon the elderly couple that is being interrogated by Justice, despite how the group's earlier fight in that area caused Justice to wrongly suspect the civilians in the first place.
  • Villainous Rescue: In Issue 4, the Mormon Guard is the police force in charge of the area around the only Library in Utah. Although the Librarian, Lottie, has someone on the force who owes her a favor, the Mormon Guard and the Librarians are generally opposed to each other. However, Lottie ends up having to call in that favor when the Puritans attack Utah's Library, allowing the party to escape at the cost of compromising the Library's location to the Guard.
  • You Were Trying Too Hard: Pax's relationship with Ziggy starts off on a rough spot, due to Ziggy being bitter over Pax never contacting her while in Pacifica. Ziggy is also shaken by the events in Liberty, where Fred's mob was barely stopped and Justice forced the residents to flee. For those trying to get Ziggy's Idealist Coda, it is optimal to not only pick the correct choices, but also to cut the conversation short, since Ziggy needs time and privacy to process her life being turned upside down. Otherwise, the other Codas will go up and potentially compromise the Idealist Coda. Even after the two reconcile, the Idealist Coda usually goes up when Pax lets Ziggy and Eli have their Ship Tease moments rather than getting too involved in the conversation.
Dustborn - TV Tropes (2025)
Latest Posts
Recommended Articles
Article information

Author: Terence Hammes MD

Last Updated:

Views: 5363

Rating: 4.9 / 5 (69 voted)

Reviews: 84% of readers found this page helpful

Author information

Name: Terence Hammes MD

Birthday: 1992-04-11

Address: Suite 408 9446 Mercy Mews, West Roxie, CT 04904

Phone: +50312511349175

Job: Product Consulting Liaison

Hobby: Jogging, Motor sports, Nordic skating, Jigsaw puzzles, Bird watching, Nordic skating, Sculpting

Introduction: My name is Terence Hammes MD, I am a inexpensive, energetic, jolly, faithful, cheerful, proud, rich person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.