TThe story begins on a road miles from the border of another American state. The danger is clear, even when everything else is clear. Pax, the player character, is a black woman in her 30s who has just finished a robbery with friends. The border means freedom. A police car telling you to pull over means trouble.

Pax and her allies are anomalies, people with manipulative voice abilities called Vox. Pax is able to manipulate people into doing what she wants by making them feel bad for her, using abilities she calls “Triggers” and “Cancels.” Her ex-partner, Noam, is able to placate people with an ability she calls “Gaslighting.” What Dustborn is trying to communicate is certainly not subtle. Soon, we encounter people infected with weaponized disinformation.

Vox is available in certain situations, such as dialogue choices, often when the issue is time-sensitive. When you tap on a dialogue choice, you're presented with Pax's thoughts before you decide. Does Pax think it would be better to use a block to stop someone from asking a question, or would using a trigger to start a fight be the better option?

This is a very handy feature, especially when it's not clear what a one-word dialogue option represents. In my case, my first run-in with the police ends with an agitated officer stepping onto the highway and a truck doing the rest. This is just one of many tense encounters between the group on their way to safely delivering the stolen data drive to Nova Scotia, Canada.

It's amazing how well Dustborn remembers your choices: a little comic book icon appears on screen whenever a character mentions a past event that was influenced by a choice you made. This often happens multiple times in a single conversation, making Dustborn feel like a narrative experience that you're actively shaping.

Dustborn also has hack-and-slash combat, but it's very easy and monotonous. If you're not enjoying it, you can reduce the frequency of encounters. There's also a small rhythm game section, as the group travels around undercover as a touring punk rock band. It's a fun diversion, but the songs are pretty awful. Maybe it's because of the band's undercover story, but I can't stand songs that rhyme the word “born” with “born.” Three times.

The game will certainly irritate some people by stating the characters' politics loudly and explicitly – Nazis are bad – but it also doesn't say anything else of note beyond that. The setting, for example, doesn't stand up to casual examination. A paranoid JFK is said to have “basically resurrected Nazi Germany” after surviving an assassination attempt. To be clear, Dustborn's setting doesn't reflect the horrors of Nazi Germany in any way. The problem is, it might think it does. There are stories of people talking about book burnings and “fighting,” but it never really connects to anything substantial. A lot of ideas are vying for space – robots, a near-apocalyptic event, the dangers of totalitarianism – but none of them get the space they deserve.

Meanwhile, real-world problems are transformed into supernatural ones, and later in the game you learn how to cure people infected with disinformation. Point the device at a person, and the person regains consciousness screaming something like “Wait, the awakened mind virus doesn't exist! What was I saying?”. Transforming the real fight against disinformation into a supernatural element is very damaging to the game. What's even more offensive is that issues like racism don't seem to be involved. Every member of the team is from a minority background, and none of the characters feel the need to comment on it. This is a good thing, but from my experience as a minority, it's just as offensive as not having any diverse characters at all. The game didn't need this kind of set dressing, it didn't even need supernatural powers. A lot of it would just make the well-intentioned message worthless.

Meanwhile, the characterization is fantastic throughout. Dustborn is a game where characters talk about their feelings openly and in detail, which is charming and complemented by regular check-ins with friends around the campfire after each mission.

Dustborn's fundamental problem is its apparent desire to balance serious themes with the supernatural, and to alternate between fun moments, activism, and drama, but it ultimately fails to achieve this balance. For example, a raccoon's birthday party is held after a tragedy befalls the entire community. I enjoyed it more once I stopped taking it so seriously, because the standout moments come when Dustborn leans into the ridiculousness of its supernatural storyline. In Dustborn, you might expect a tense journey across the United States, but what you actually get is the equivalent of an interactive Marvel movie, and that's fine.