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Dustborn is an action-adventure video game developed by Red Thread Games and published by Quantic Dream on August 20, 2024.
In the year 2030, the protagonist Pax (Dominique Tipper) is an Anomal living in Pacifica, a country that was once the state of California before seceding from the Republic. Although she sustains herself with minimum wage work and small cons, she seeks to escape to a place where Anomals have rights. A scientist from the Weave resistance, Jacob, recruits Pax for a job to deliver Puritan Protolanguage data to the Weave in exchange for safe haven in Nova Scotia. Pax and her Anomal friends, Noam and Sai, team up with the Weave operative Theo in order to steal data from the Puritans. The crew breaks into the Puritan headquarters, fights against the organization's cyborgs, and copies the data onto a datakey. The crew then drives to La Torre in order to dispose of their getaway car and obtain a tour bus, which is part of the crew's cover story as a punk rock band. The crew also recruits a robot, later known as Caretaker, to drive the bus. Throughout the journey, Pax encounters a Puritan, Axiom, in her dreams, who condemns the negative effect of language on human civilization and beckons her to bring him the ultimate Vocal.
Once the crew enters the American Republic, they recruit various Anomals to their cause while trying to evade Justice and the Puritans. The new recruits include Ziggy in Oregon, Eli in Nevada, Girl and Sol in Colorado, Ophelia in the remains of Kansas, and Nainai in Michigan. The crew also discovers that Justice is secretly kidnapping children to turn into Anomals and that Justice caused the Broadcast for their Protolanguage experiments. The mission faces several setbacks, such as encounters with Justice, the Puritans' constant pursuit, and Sai unexpectedly leaving the crew. In an encounter with Justice in Rotown, Pax receives a near-fatal injury from Prefect Kim, Caretaker sacrifices themself to save Pax, and the datakey is lost. Kim and Praetor Walker confine Pax to a Justice-affiliated hospital, where they interrogate her and are surprised to learn of their superiors' Anomal experiments. When the Puritans attack the hospital, Walker releases Pax, who is then rescued by Sai, Ziggy, and Eli. Once they reunite with the rest of the crew, Sai reveals that Justice blackmailed her to give them the datakey, but she instead gives the crew a secret copy of the datakey before leaving to oppose the government in her own way.
At Schoodic Point, the crew gets into a three-way battle against Justice and the Puritans. At the pier, the Puritan Overseer takes the non-combatants of the crew hostage in order to force Pax to give up the datakey. Pax realizes that her usual brute-force approach to Protolanguage cannot resolve this situation, so she instead uses the empathy she developed throughout the journey to affirm her friends' paths in life. This results in a Vocal that encourages her friends, giving Theo the bravery to defeat most of the Puritans with an EMP device. Axiom kills Theo and attempts to steal Pax's powers, but Girl concentrates a multitude of Echoes into Pax's womb area. This allows Pax to unleash a powerful Vocal to defeat Axiom, allowing the crew to mourn Theo, complete the mission, and find their paths in life. After the credits, Caretaker's head is reactivated among a group of other robots.
The game was developed using the Unity engine and the team wrote their custom to accomplish the comic book-inspired look. Due to its character designs, the game was noted by the BBC as experiencing online backlash from those who believe developers are being forced to make their games more diverse, though creative director Ragnar Tørnquist denied the cast's diversity was due to outside pressure, stating that "publishers and developers are just understanding more that there's a wider and more diverse audience".
The game released on August 20, 2024, on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S. The macOS version of the game was released on July 8, 2025.
Following the game's launch, the developer released a statement condemning the "tidal wave of hate and abuse" aimed towards them and the game. The publisher released a similar statement affirming their support for the developer and their "zero-tolerance policy for threats, hate speech, or harassment" on their social media platforms.
Malindy Hetfeld, writing for The Guardian, rated it 3 out of 5. Hetfeld noted the difficult balance as the game attempts "to alternate between fun moments, activism and drama – a balance it ultimately can't hit." Hetfeld enjoyed the game most when it "leans into the silliness of its supernatural storyline" calling it "the equivalent of an interactive Marvel movie, and that is OK." Rachel Weber of IGN rated it 7 out of 10: " Dustborn brings angst to a comic book caper about an alternate-reality America, and you'll get an emotional ride with a few exciting punk performances if you stick with it through a slow start".
GameSpot reviewer Mark Delaney, rating the game 5 out of 10, called Dustborn "one of the most overtly political and, more specifically, unapologetically leftist games I've ever played", which he felt "makes its early hours very interesting, but it falls apart in the second half due to monotonous combat and a final few chapters that undo the stronger first half". GameRant commented in its 2 out of 5 review, that while "the diverse cast's goal of fighting back is noble", the "dialogue is irritating and never lets up" and that the "bloated narrative is full of poor or meaningless beats".
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