October 3, 2007 - A melancholic piano sighs under the backdrop of sea-blown wind. As you meander along the paths of Doolin village, your steps color the scene with murder, suspicion and knowledge of the many realms of the Netherworld. This surreal and often-times haunted journey is the journey of Folklore - and this is one great reason to own a PlayStation 3.

Folklore, a title developed by Game Republic, is a game that documents the eerie quests of two individuals and their mysterious calling to the village of Doolin - a place where (supposedly) the living can meet the dead. This title, for the most part, is an action/adventure RPG, and charges you with the task of unraveling the mystery and intrigue that envelope this small community. To do so, you'll need to walk the halls and fields of the Netherworld in search of clues that will ultimately reveal the cause of a blood-stained 17-year-old strife - a strife that's left families bitterly torn and memories buried under psychological trauma. Sound interesting? It is, but there's a lot to it, so let's start (as we usually do) at the beginning.

Ellen is a soft spoken, charming young woman who lost her mother at an early age. However, as the game begins, she receives a letter, signed with her mother's name, that beckons her to the village of Doolin. Amazed and frightened, she sets out at once in hopes of seeing her long-lost parent and making sense of her clouded and depressed life.

At the same time, Keats, an editor for the occult magazine Unknown Realms, receives a strange and panicked call. A woman, speaking of faerys and Doolin village, begs for help before being cut off. Intrigued and going on instinct, Keats also makes his way to this quiet place in search of answers and a good story.

You'll be playing as these two characters through the entirety of the game, and Folklore lets you choose who you want to be for each chapter. Keep in mind, however, that while each individual has separate chapters through the beginning and middle of the game, their stories will converge at the end, which means you'll eventually need to have them both reach the same point. Considering this, you may want to alternate between each character chapter by chapter, but that's just one way to do it. The choice is yours, but you can't play Folklore exclusively with one character - you must complete their respective stories.

The world that this game inhabits is certainly unique and somewhat surprising. While many adventure games boast massive worlds to explore, the real world of Folklore is actually just a single village, which you won't end up leaving. Granted, the village is beautiful, but the real exploration comes from visiting the different realms of the Netherworld, which are all connected to the village in one way or another. Consider Doolin as a hub of sorts, that serves as your gateway into the many fascinating worlds of death. Each chapter combines a lot of dialogue and narrative in the real world, and then your questing and combat play out in the Netherworld. This is the game's primary structure, and it works very well. Doolin will begin to feel like an (eerie) home and will grow familiar to you as you spend each day piecing together the game's narrative puzzles.

If the beauty of Folklore could be summarized into one general theme, it would undoubtedly be its nearly masterful execution of stillness and motion, and the interplay between them. Without getting overly technical or poetic, let's just say that the imagery, sound, and even some of the gameplay mechanics harness these two opposing energies to induce some incredible effects both tangible and otherwise. We'll discuss this more as it becomes relevant, but let's take the real world/Netherworld structure as the first example. The stillness of this particular dynamic is rooted in Doolin, and its unchanging, gray-skied melancholy, while the movement comes from the greatly diverse and kinetic realms of the Netherworld, which are constantly ripe with battle and exploration. This balance is what makes the game so interesting not only from a gameplay standpoint but from a poetic standpoint as well. Even more moving is the chilling reversal of this juxtaposition because the living world is the world that feels deathly still, while the realms of the dead ripple with life.