AI: The Somnium Files

I'm clearly unable to stay afloat on these posts and I know their overall quality has fallen pretty significantly - begging the question, why keep this blog going? - but also, fuck it, I don't play many video games anymore and this one's worth spending some time discussing.

Long time readers, if they exist (they don't) may recall a series of DS and 3DS games called the Zero Escape trilogy. They're more like visual novels than games, but I really loved them, or at least I loved the first two.

Now the creator of those games has made a new visual novel called AI: The Somnium Files. (God, why are video games always burdened with the weirdest and shittiest names?) "AI" here stands not only for artificial intelligence, but is pronounced "eye," because the artificial intelligence in this game is housed in the protagonist's artificial eye. And "somnium" is Latin for "dream," and this game is as much about dreams as the Zero Escape games are about escaping, so, sure, yes, the title works.

But yeah - the framework of the game is that you're a detective looking to solve a murder mystery, and you have two primary tools at your disposal. One of them is the aforementioned eye with AI - it's capable of things like thermal and X-ray vision which can help you find clues at murder scenes and deduce when people are lying. But the other key element is the "somnium" one - a machine that lets you enter the dreamscapes of another person - a witness, a suspect perhaps - in order to kind of sort of interrogate them without interrogating them. Sounds crazy illegal, right? And like anything discovered in said dreamscapes would be inadmissible in court? Well, yes - and the game kinda sorta alludes to this. It's part Inception, part Black Mirror. It works. Mostly.

But it quickly becomes clear as you play through the game that there's a bigger mystery afoot than just the murder case you're trying to solve.Blatantly and ominously, you yourself, as a protagonist and detective, have no recollection of your life before five or six years ago. Coincidentally, there was a spree of murders that took place five or six years ago. And coincidentally, the murder that takes place at the start of the game bears a striking resemblance to the murders that took place back then. Namely, the victim has had one eyeball removed.

There are just enough recurring themes and twists and red herrings here to keep things from being obvious, and that's really what I loved about this game. Like, I had elements of the overall "big story" figured out pretty early on, and a few suspicions where I was on the right track. but then also there were a few things that threw me off completely - chief among them, I think, was the way the game unfolds in a branching fashion. I'd say more, but Sweeney is playing this game right now and if there's a single person reading this blog anymore, it's probably him.

These games aren't for everyone, at all, and I can't even say I liked this one as much as that original Zero Escape trilogy. But I liked it enough to come back for any spiritual or direct successors. Your mileage may vary!