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The fish can also lead you farther into the sea you're exploring. The effect of swimming smoothly into an open, shallow area after sneaking through a cave only to find it teeming with fish ranging from teensy to enormous is mesmerizing. Not only are they modeled to look like their real-world selves, but also they behave like actual fish, flowing in tight schools. The elegant icy caverns and sun-dappled reefs you swim through are heavily populated, with what Nava describes as "tens of thousands" of fish. What Abzû lacks in terms of technological realism, it makes up for with ichthyology accuracy. Rather than break the illusion of exploring the ocean floor, the unreality of your scuba gear is freeing, letting you come to terms with the diver's initially tricky, but ultimately silky swimming controls. Abzû's heroine can stay underwater indefinitely, peering into submerged caves and kelp fields as she moves forward.
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During a brief introduction at a pre-E3 event, Nava explained that he and his team want your time as a submariner to be totally uninterrupted by onscreen displays or a pressing need to fill up on oxygen. Rather than Journey's desert or Flower's verdant pastures, Abzû drops you into the middle of the ocean as a young woman sporting a black-and-yellow wetsuit as well as some miraculous scuba gear. Even in a pre-alpha state, Giant Squid's game makes you feel like you're somewhere else. Of all the games from E3 2015 I got to play at early events, Abzû is the one I didn't want to stop playing. Even in just a brief demo session, though, Abzû is equally transcendent. This undersea adventure is immediately familiar, clearly of a piece with Journey's nomadic wandering and Flower's breezy environmentalism. In playing Abzû, though, any cynicism born out of its similarity to Nava's past work floats away like so much foam on a wave. Studio founder Matt Nava, the former thatgamecompany art director of those aforementioned art house gaming touchstones, is making yet another emotionally bald, deeply pretty game about communing with nature through fluid controls here. Abzû, the debut game from game development house Giant Squid, may as well have the subtitle Journey 2 or maybe even Flower 3.