The place Skyrim had Lydia, the most recent large Steam survival hit—Sons of the Forest—has Kelvin. He’s there to assist, regardless of how a lot his ears bleed, and other people completely love the cute, lobotomized handyman.
In Sons of the Forest, the brand new Early Entry sequel to the enormously common The Forest, you play the survivor of a helicopter crash, stranded on a peculiar island inhabited by cannibal mutants. Nevertheless, this time you’re not the one absolutely human survivor—while you get up from the opening sequence, you’re accompanied by Kelvin. Deaf and mute, and seemingly considerably extra inhibited than that, we all know his identify as a result of it’s on his badge. However past that, Kelvin is a thriller.
Blood drips from each of his ears, suggesting one thing very unhealthy occurred to our poor buddy when you have been out chilly, however no matter it was, it’s left him very keen to assist. With puppy-like enthusiasm, Kelvin will fetch you sticks and rocks, construct crude shelters and fires, and most significantly, observe you to the very ends of the Earth, regardless of how lengthy it’d take him.
On this approach, Kelvin is enormously harking back to The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim’s preliminary companion character, Lydia. Besides Lydia’s lobotomy is just assumed, an inevitability of that decade-old RPG’s hilariously abysmal AI, whereas Kelvin…effectively, Kelvin has these bleeding ears.
He might be very helpful! Gathering wooden and stones isn’t an enormous deal in Sons of the Forest, nevertheless it’s busywork that distracts from the extra enjoyable duties of constructing bigger constructions, or simply exploring the bizarre island’s myriad secrets and techniques. Having him mild a fireplace can be super-helpful if you happen to’re off searching squirrels, that means there’s someplace to prepare dinner the meat when you’ve gathered your haul. He may even go catch fish for you, even the place there aren’t any fish. However how useful is he total? Effectively, Kelvin tries laborious.
In my time with Kelvin, he’s set himself and the encircling space on hearth so many instances, every time with probably the most endearing look of full shocked naivety on his face. It’s this mixture of enthusiastic innocence and frequent incompetence that’s making the NPC so common amongst gamers, and resulting in some glorious #content material™.
Setting himself on hearth is a typical theme, however he may also attain the alternative excessive, merrily strolling round on the backside of lakes with no obvious want for air.
Kelvin additionally likes to destroy, which is actually upsetting a good few folks.
Nevertheless, I don’t suppose there’s a greater instance of Kelvin’s demolition than this one on Reddit. Poor Kelvin. He’s attempting so laborious!
Then once more, issues usually go unsuitable for the poor fellow too.
Many gamers are declaring their love for Kelvin, which I feel maybe is revealing slightly bit extra about themselves than maybe they notice. (“My superb individual is lobotomized and crudely makes an attempt to observe all my instructions.”)
It seems it’s potential to clone Kelvin, permitting you to have as lots of him as you want. And every might be given separate directions, permitting you a complete Kelvin workforce busily finishing up your bidding!
Oh, and if you happen to by accident kill your Kelvin (since you’d by no means do it on goal, proper?), there may be truly a method to deliver him again.
So please, inform us your Kelvin tales. In the event you’ve performed the sport, you absolutely have some.
