1000xResist begins with you stabbing your god in the back, and it gets even more intense from there. The sci-fi story told in 1000xResist makes it one of the absolute best games of last year, but until now, it was only available on Nintendo Switch and PC, meaning a lot of players were missing out on the incredible, unique adventure. Now, players who missed its first release are getting another chance to experience one of the most fascinating game narratives ever, as 1000xResist is finally expanding to more platforms.
As of November 4, 1000xResist is finally available on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and S. While it’s not getting a new edition or any extra features for the new console releases, it frankly doesn’t need them — getting to play 1000xResist just as it was originally released is worth getting excited about on its own.
1000xResist is set in the far, far future, in a setting that’s a total mystery when the game opens and only slowly becomes more clear as you play. What you know from the start is that you’re one clone among many, living in an enclosed city called the Orchard occupied by identical “sisters.” That god you slew in the game’s intro (which you won’t catch back up to until many hours later) is the progenitor of them all. The figure you now know as the Allmother was once a teenage girl named Iris who survived a worldwide plague brought on by an alien invasion, becoming the template for the clone society you live in. One of the big mysteries to uncover as you play is just how she went from a normal girl to your so-called god.
If that all sounds a bit complicated, well, that’s just the start of it. You play as a character named Watcher, one of a small group of sisters selected to carry out the Allmother’s will, each with a specialized task assigned to them. As Watcher, you keep an eye on your sisters and administer communions — devotional sessions where you guide them through the memories of the Allmother’s early life to learn more about her and how the world of her youth became the world of today. Most of the game’s key moments happen not in Orchard itself, but in these communions, which begin to reveal things that even the Allmother has kept hidden.
That all makes for a compelling sci-fi story on its own. The world of 1000xResist is fascinating, the narrative turns it takes are genuinely surprising, and the characters you meet along the ay are all interesting and developed personalities. But what really sets 1000xResist apart is how it ties its sci-fi world to the present and recent history of ours.
As it’s revealed to her in communions, the present day is just as perplexing to Watcher as her time is to us. We learn through these visions that while Iris grew up in Canada, her parents were originally from Hong Kong, fleeing the country in the wake of increasing crackdowns by China that were eroding Hong Kong’s sovereignty. Her parents took part in uprisings that began in 2019, becoming the largest protest movement in Hong Kong’s history in the real world. As distant as that might seem from the fantastical world imagined by 1000xResist, the legacy of those protests and the desire for freedom they represent is all over the game, having shaped Iris’ world and the world of her “daughters” in turn.
It would be impossible to explain in full what makes 1000xResist so compelling to anyone who hasn’t played it for themselves. The way it weaves real-world history with its far-future plot and incorporates its developers’ experience working in theater into its design make it feel like no other game out there, and one that needs to be experienced to understand. With its launch on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S, a huge swath of new players now have the chance to do that for themselves and play what is without a doubt one of the best games of the decade.
