The bleak and poignant open world sidequest design of Dread Delusion

talking to the "Inquisitor" at the beginning of the game

Dread Delusion (2024) by Lovely Hellplace is a retro-style indie first person RPG about exploring strange floating islands and talking to the NPCs who live there. It takes about 15-20 hours to complete.

inventory screen

Many compare it to The Elder Scrolls: Morrowind, with its emphasis on charming low poly 3D world design and worldbuilding. It also shares Morrowind's weightless combat -- but it's not as bad as failed dice rolls to stab a rat. It just treats combat with the contempt it deserves; there's no real benefit to killing stuff, no XP to grind. Pacifist builds are not only viable but very OP. (In the last dungeon, I just ran past everything at 50 MPH.)

So I want to focus on Dread Delusion's great strengths, specifically its world region / quest design. I've tried to write this for a general gamer audience to unpack what the game does. Consider this your last SPOILER WARNING: I'm going to talk about what happens in this game and what you do in it.