Official Review
There aren't enemies to fight. There aren't endless icons with side quests to chase. Most of the game is focused on two things – scouring the ocean for marine life to scan, and souring the sea bed for "treasures" to pick up. There's a narrative in there about an important coral reef that is critical to the ocean ecosystems but is being destroyed at an alarming rate (I like to think the developers learned about the Great Barrier Reef and were offended by Australia's dismal efforts to preserve it, so decided to do their bit to teach us a lesson). It's a perfectly adequate narrative, but it's also not designed to be the central experience.
The central experience is just calmly exploring and discovering, at your own pace, with no penalty for not discovering. There are 500 or so different species to scan and catalogue, and while, in theory, you're meant to be out there searching for creatures so rare they were deemed mythical, there's no clock placed on you to find these animals. If you just want to swim around and take in the ambience, that's okay too.
There are underwater structures like temples and shipwrecks to explore, and the loot that you're searching for is often artefacts of lost civilizations – like a non-violent underwater Indiana Jones, if you will. But again. You do all this on your own time, while the game otherwise tries to put you into a meditative frame of mind.
The music is tranquil, as is the water itself. In fact, I think that one of the reasons that I find Endless Ocean particularly compelling as a relaxing experience is its aquatic nature. For obvious reasons, humanity has a close bond to water, and while I've never seen any psychological studies out there I would bet substantial amounts of money that the ability that water has to soothe and calm us comes down to our understanding that we're in the proxy of something so utterly essential to our survival.
Think about how soothing a shower or a bath is. Or how any relaxation experience we might go on will involve some kind of water-based therapy. Think about how frequently water is a motif within the arts. Monet – the artist behind the incredible Water Lilies painting – himself put it beautifully when he said "These landscapes of water and reflection have become an obsession."
In fact on one of my trips to Japan, I found myself at a most fascinating art exhibition: A museum of modern art had collected together a wide range of different classic artworks, and then installed modern interpretations of them in the same room. One such artwork was the Water Lilies itself, and the modern interpretation was a large pool of water with metal "lilies" floating in it. When those "lilies" collided, they made a beautifully serene "clang" in an otherwise silent room. I remember all of this because I spent well over an hour in that room just in quiet contemplation without realizing how fast time was flying by.
I've since noticed that water is a recurring motif in my own stories – the visual novel that I'm working, of example, features a lot of water. I'm also always taking photos of rain and the ocean, and now that I live in a place with a view of the ocean I feel perpetually more calm. None of this has been particularly conscious. It's just been part of my unconscious mind, so when something like Endless Ocean comes along, which presents an aesthetic and tonal vision of water that does run parallel to mine, I feel a particularly strong connection to it.
I also love that it's genuinely educational. Every one of those 500 marine creatures that you can scan has a short description to explain what these are, their noteworthy features and behaviors. These descriptions aren't any more substantial than you'd find in an aquarium (appropriate, given that the game is a virtual aquarium experience), but they're enough that you'll come away with knowledge. Knowledge and, perhaps, an interest to learn a little more. I think we all allow ourselves to forget about just how incredible the world is under the oceans, and how teeming with life it really is. The occasional reminder of that is important.
Given the "virtual tour" quality of the experience, Endless Ocean probably would have benefitted from being in 4K on a big TV with the PlayStation 5 chugging along. You know how when you walk into an electronics store, they always have little demo videos running on the TV screens to show how incredible the picture quality can be? Endless Ocean feels like it should have looked like that kind of tech demo. It runs fine on the switch and the developers have wisely saved most of the rending power to make the fishes look as photo-worthy as possible. Aesthetically it is one of the most pleasant-looking Switch games, and it needed to be because it hasn't got any action to hide behind.
Finally, there is a multiplayer mode for up to 30 players. I'll be honest here: In the lead-up to the review embargo lifting Nintendo organized some time slots for people to jump on and try the multiplayer component. I didn't join these and have no intention of playing this online with anyone. For me, the loneliness in Endless Ocean's single-player modes is the point, and just like that Monet exhibition I mentioned earlier, I imagine that much of the potent ambience would be lost if you added too many people.
It's ironic given everything I have just written above that I would never be game to go scuba diving myself. I can be pretty severely risk averse, and just like bungie jumping, skydiving, and motorsports, I'm not going to be jumping into the ocean depths anytime soon. That just makes me appreciate Endless Ocean all the more. It's a chance to enjoy the qualities of scuba diving at their best (at least, as I imagine them to be), without having to actually put myself out there. This is a beautiful, serene and relaxing experience and I loved every second of it.
