Tails Noir (aka Backbone) - A crafted visual story of a raccoon PI in over his head

Time estimate: 8 hours
Available: Steam,PlayStation
Game Type: Visual Novel w/ World Exploration

It starts like most noir stories, with a raccoon private detective asked to check up on a wife’s spouse who she suspects of cheating. But what starts off a simple case may lead to something far deeper than the private detective had in mind. Tails Noir (formerly known as Backbone) is an exploration and visual novel-like game where you take control of a private eye raccoon as he investigates a local speakeasy-like club called the Bite.

Art in motion

The art style and music of this experience is top class. The city feels real and lived in and your character feels a part of it, even if like most noir detectives his part in it is a piece of driftwood caught in a raging torrent of conspiracy. This semi-pixelated world has lighting and shadows that stretch across its canvas. Characters you encounter, with little mini-quests sprinkled in, help to give that extra charm throughout as you visit the various locals.

However, it is important to note that this is an adventure visual novel and not an RPG or point and click adventure. Similar to Night in the Woods, you can move around the world and explore and converse but nothing you do is ultimately going to impact the story itself. And interestingly, similar to Night in the Woods, there is a lingering thread of narrative that highlights the numbing late-stage societal consequences and its impact on the hollowing out of society. Only, instead of the town being the symbol of this in Night in the Woods, it’s your main character himself that shows this.

If you like to experience a story and furry art and sounds like you’d enjoy this then I think it’s worthwhile. Though, there is an element of tragedy that goes a bit beyond the game itself.

If you were to read many of the other reviews of this game you’ll note that many talk about a major event before the third act that basically changes the direction and theming of the story so drastically that it ends the story and themes built up so far. Most will just leave it there, and if you plan on playing the game I’d suggest doing so at this point, the remaining will be my interpretation of the event and its meaning to the story.

The controversial ending, and what is says about the world

Again, it is recommended if you have any interest in playing the game to skip this section until you complete it. If you have no interest or already played, please proceed. Like most stories a review needs to include the reflections of the consumer over what is consumed and not just a synopsis to encourage conversation over the work. Spoilers start in next paragraph until end of section.

As you make your way into a secret lab funded by the ape elitists, you find yourself encountering an alien cryptid type creature that is part of the experimentation and it latches onto you. Following this encounter, it latches onto you like a cancer. It grows on you and consumes you and the story becomes a sort of psychological horror. While this story beat does appear to come out of nowhere, there was an ironic foreshadowing through an easter egg in the form of a pill on a jacket worn by a gang member in an earlier part of the story. I had instantly recognized this as a symbol from another jacket worn by Kanada in the popular anime “Akira”. And in a twist it reminded me of how many people found the third act of that particular film to be jarring with the world building of the earlier parts. Akira similarly had a ‘strange’ third act that went down the psychological monster route that seemed to jar with the world building of the early more memorable parts of the film that drew people in.

While one could say that the monster that is war can sweep in and destroy what you knew, and tear apart relationships that could have been, so too can the drone of duty in a world that demands more of you as an individual until it consumes you. Akira’s ending in my mind reflects the former, and this story attempts to show the latter. After your private detective finds himself awake after being latched onto by the alien creature, he hangs around and does simple chores for a commune encampment under the bridge at the edge of the city. This group contains actual furries playing as their characters, usually those who also fantasize about a world free from the leech that the promise of capital has on our time. Deo, the Tasmanian tiger is a real-life furry who was made famous by pointing out the fascist beliefs of high staff in the now defunct Rocky Mountain Fur Con, mans a garden nearby, while Chase Explosion, another furry who plays a sloth seems to stand watch over the small encampment.

But interestingly, this part feels separate and distant from the earlier parts where your private investigator was diving into the heart of corruption of the city, and had more turned into a story of acceptance and survival. In this essence it, like the story of life, can symbolize how as young idealists can set out to seek truth and fix the world, in the end we can only do so much as individuals and can find ourselves in a position that requires us to just be there for the others left behind instead of trying to fix things from the top.

This sort of burn out can occur to anyone, whether it be a person writing news stories and reviews for a furry news site in what feels like a medium that dies daily as the creature of big tech “Artificial Intelligence” is used to excuse the siphoning of our words for its very own use while gobbling up all the power we tried to save by buying some battery powered car. Or perhaps someone wanted to make a grand noir story and now find it getting harder to keep up with it and the other tasks needed for your community and your survival, so you find yourself hollowed out of the passion you once had and simply move forward as the world seems to spin around you, so you push forward to reach the conclusion even if it’s not the original one you wanted to work toward. Or maybe it was, but you don’t feel like you have enough to give it the quality you once demanded of yourself.

Conclusion

The helpless feeling of being a stone in a raging river is not an easy one to face, but in a way the noir genre is about tragedy in that way. In the end, like life, there isn’t really an ending, but a purpose that drives one forward until life decides for you when your particular thread ends.

For furries I think this is a story worth experiencing. It is a very stylish game with fantastic art direction and world building that will immerse you in its world. But I would warn if you didn’t like Night in the Woods, Akira, or stories that have some, what may feel, nihilistic bend to them, in the end you’re probably not going to like this.

Personally it made me think of how zombified I’d become in a world where it's easy to succumb to numbness of content, and that perhaps it isn’t about trying to change things for everyone, but being there for the few that care for you before it’s too late to do so.