Tacoma review narrative space game is engaging and convincing … – The Guardian

Tacoma revolves around an imaginable near future of space travel and advanced AI. Photograph: Fullbright Productions

It seems unavoidable to compare Tacoma to Gone Home, the previous game by developer Fullbright Productons. Along with Dear Esther, it is often credited with popularising a certain type of linear narrative-focused game, often pejoratively labelled walking simulators. As soon as Tacoma was announced, people starting calling it Gone Home in Space. Again, you play as a woman exploring an abandoned environment, and again youre piecing together what happened to the people who used to be there.

But here the focus has shifted from the recent past to the not-so-distant future. Where Gone Home is set in a spooky house in 90s Oregon and intentionally plays on horror tropes, Tacoma takes the traditional science-fiction setting of a space station the titular Tacoma. The futuristic placement allows for changes both narrative and mechanical. Whereas the charm of Gone Home, for many, was the familiarity of the 90s setting, the plot of Tacoma in 2088 revolves around an imaginable near future of space travel and advanced AI.

An augmented-reality (AR) system has replaced smartphones, and allows the player to witness audiovisual recordings of the crew as colour-coded 3D figures superimposed on the world. This is the players main way to experience story moments, a logical next step on the path from the audio diaries of Gone Home through the light shows of Everybodys Gone to the Rapture. The voice acting is inconsistent (though some is excellent), but the animation is convincing; you cant see the crew members faces, but you can see them brace themselves on a hand rail or pace around a room.

Interestingly, while the players role in Gone Home as a member of the disappeared family encouraged emotional investment in the stories they left behind, in Tacoma your character isnt supposed to be watching these recordings. You are Amy Ferrier, subcontractor to the Venturis Corporation that owns the station and all data recorded onboard, and youve been sent just to retrieve the stations AI, called ODIN.

But Amy is a quiet protagonist for the bulk of the game, reminding the player of her presence only when an arm reaches out to open an airlock door or a neat conceit to log on to something in AR by gesturing in American sign language. And she does have an excuse for being nosy about the crew records. Her task will take her through three areas of the station, and in each she must plug in a device that uploads ODIN, slowly. A loading bar shows that progress does tick along at a rate of 1% every few seconds, but it jumps up every time you retrieve an AR recording. Its a great way to encourage players to take their time without worrying about the pressure of their main goal.

In the first section Amy explores, you witness the crew gathering to celebrate Obsolescence Day, a holiday meant to mark the successful prevention of plans to fully automate stations like Tacoma. As theyre about to cut the cake theres a crash, which is all the more disconcerting because all you can see in the recording is the crew reaction superimposed on the present environment already in disarray. From that point on, each section has a couple of these group recordings in roughly chronological order that show you and Amy what happened next, as well as a handful of recordings of smaller groups of crew members from earlier in their year of service that provide context on the characters and their relationships, as well as the state of this future world.

The group recordings are by their nature more interesting, not only because they advance the mystery element of the plot but because they involve all members of the crew (and if youre observant the station cat Margaret Atwood). Tacomas new-ish take on this kind of story delivery is that you can rewind the recordings, and replay contemporaneous moments featuring different people in different rooms.

To encourage this, each recording features points along the timeline at which you can retrieve additional data from a particular crew member, marked by their colour and symbol (for example the botanist, Andrew, is green and represented by leaves). Once youve tracked that crew member down at the right moment, youll see their AR desktop open in front of them; click on it and you can see what apps they had open at that time: an email from a loved one back home on Earth, an instant messaging conversation with another crew member or with ODIN, a page in a book, and so on.

Here is where Tacoma shines as an interactive narrative. The story is entirely linear and unaffected by the players actions, but no other medium could so effectively engender this feeling of investigation. Sure, the narrative content is clearly marked both in these AR recordings and in visibly meaningful objects in the environment, but you still have to go looking for it, occasionally even using a hidden code or physical key to open the way.

The station is a perfectly manageable size, divided as it is into these three sections each with a handful of rooms. But each area has been carefully crafted to convey character, whether through directly informative written notes or indirectly through good old environmental storytelling. It can feel formulaic at times (several crew members have a box in their room in which you will find something sentimental) but it works. Tacoma feels lived in.

And the people who lived here feel real too, no doubt in part because theyre deliberately designed to avoid stereotypes: more women than men; of a variety of races, sexualities and body types. Its satisfying to gradually learn more about them by putting together the pieces you find, perhaps witnessing the posh British man call station administrator EV mon capitan and matching it up with something he was reading on his AR about how to banter in the workplace. Even ODIN has a personality that develops through the game. If theres anything missing, its evidence of occasionally insinuated tension between some crew members, though perhaps that would have detracted from the tightness of the narrative.

Over the course of about three hours, your investigative journey through Tacoma has you rooting for these characters by the time their story concludes. A space station powered by an advanced AI might not be a particularly original setting, but the team at Fullbright has taken these familiar pieces and used them to tell a different and engaging tale. Its what youd expect from the people who made Gone Home, but thats no bad thing.

Fullbright; PC (version tested)/Xbox One; 14.99; Pegi rating: 12+

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Tacoma review narrative space game is engaging and convincing ... - The Guardian