This one was originally launched as a KickStarter project. I didn’t back it but I did read up on it since many commented that it’s like playing a character in an episode of Star Trek. It’s billed as a sci-fi RPG set entirely within the confines of a ship but really since there is no character development system and the combat is so bad you should really avoid it as much as possible, I like to think of it as more of an adventure game.
There is an accompanying ARG which you are apparently expected or at least strongly encouraged to play. Since I never play alternate reality games I went in blind and was really, really confused about the backstory. One of the things that make this game distinctive is that even this confusion can be part of the story. Somewhat like the old Ultima RPGs, the conceit here is that you’re a gamer sitting at your computer playing a video game. But the game is only an interface that reaches into another dimension in which you take control of a person in that reality and interact with its denizens. As such, you can try to convince the people you meet that you’re really a gamer in an alternate reality past playing a game and at least some of the people in this dimension already know this for a fact.
Anyway the character you inhabit is apparently a combat specialist who works for the Consortium, a sort of global peacekeeping organization. The entire game is set within the confines of a large aircraft called the Zenlil which serves as the base of operations of your team. The rest of the crew is made up of a cast of around a dozen other characters, all of whom have distinct roles aboard the ship and with their own personalities and history. Since this is a video game, you start at the beginning of what will turn out to be a very, very bad day for the crew of the Zenlil.
As you can probably see from the screenshots, the production values for this game are pretty crappy. The graphics are basic at best, the inventory interface screen even worse and even the sound is prone to being cut off at unexpected moments. I understand that this game launched in a state that is best described as an unplayable clusterfuck of bugs. While things have obviously been much improved since I’d sad to report that I still ran into bugs. At one point in Mission Ops my feet seemed stuck to the floor and I couldn’t move at all, yet I could move again after reloading a save and replaying to that same point. While doing the virtual reality training room I’d once reached a state in which there are apparently more enemies to kill because it wouldn’t let me move to the next stage but I couldn’t find any enemies in the level.
What this is supposed to do well is to take decisions and consequences to a whole new level. The game is short. A playthrough should take no more than four or five hours. But there are so many possible paths to take that I ended playing it three times. The decisions aren’t just about what you choose to say either, although there sure is a lot of dialogue in the game. It’s also about where you choose to go on the ship at any given moment and what you happen to see or hear there. A great example of this is that you can discover through observation that the pilot of the plane is romantically involved with another crew member. This fact is never told to you in conversation and as far as I know you can’t mention it to anyone either, though it’s clear that at least one other crew member knows about it but refuses to speak about it. It also doesn’t affect the main story. It’s just one little nugget of knowledge that exists in the gameworld for you to notice and discover.
The dialogue is also extremely interesting and unique in that they feel like how conversations would work in real life and not in video games. Your interlocutors take it badly if you try to use them as information dispensing machines as you usually do in video games since your character is supposed to already possess all kinds of background knowledge even if you don’t. Personally I hesitate to call this good writing since I don’t care much for the story or the extensive world and lore they’ve constructed. But I do appreciate how different the conversations here feel compared to most other games.
Still, I can’t understand why they felt the need to have combat in this game as it is literally one of the worst implementations of a shooter I’ve ever played. I also can’t help but notice that despite all of the many permutations that are possible, the main story is essentially still stuck on rails. I can do a terrible job and get lots of people killed and yet still be considered the best candidate for the mission that is supposed to be the subject of the sequel. Finally, as I’ve mentioned, I simply dislike the setting and the overall story even if I do like the presentation. Ending a game with confusing visions and ambiguously weird stuff just feels so unsatisfying. For all these reasons though I consider this to be a fascinating experiment in game design, I’m not really interested in the upcoming sequel.