Unknown 9: Awakening is an action adventure video game where you take on the role of Haroona, played by Anya Chalotra. She can venture into a mysterious realm, overlapping our own, called the fold. She'll learn to master her abilities as she takes on the ascendants and tries to save humanity.
Haroona's quest starts out as a personal one for revenge following the death of her mentor. However, as she tracks down Vincent, the leader of the ascendants, she'll soon stumble across something that's a lot bigger than herself.
Haroona is what we call a Quaestor. She has a unique connection to the fold from which she draws her abilities. On top of being an excellent brawler using physical and umbric attacks, she's one of the few people in the world that has a unique ability called stepping. Using the fold, she projects her consciousness into a target's body, briefly controlling them for a certain amount of time. This gives the gameplay a really unique tempo, where you set up devastating chains of attack and then watch them unfurl.
As Haroona tracks down Vincent, the leader of the ascendants, she's going to find allies in the Leap Year Society. They're a benevolent group of adventurers and scientists who are studying the unknown 9 to further improve humanity. The ascendants, on the other hand, are also seeking that information, but for much more self-serving goals. They intend to rise up against the unknown 9 and dramatically change the course of humanity.
The game takes you to many amazing locations across the world, commonly less-seen in action adventure video games. So you're going to go to the dense jungles of India, the Mauritanian desert, and my personal favorite, a palatial estate with Gothic architecture in Sintra.
The video game is unique in that it is but a stepping stone into a larger new narrative universe created by Canadian studio Reflector Entertainment. Awakening is their first video game, but Haroona’s world is peppered with references to different adventures unfolding across podcasts, novels, comics, and many more.