Silicon Dreams

Are you feeling lucky, cyberpunk?

Here we have a game that not only understands Blade Runner, but thoroughly deserves to be mentioned alongside it.

Your character is an android created with the sole purpose of running what is for legal reasons absolutely not a Voight-Kampff machine. The game (mostly) consists of a half dozen or so interrogations conducted with this machine. Usually you’ll be speaking with androids, but occasionally with a human. You see, while you will at one point be tasked with determining whether somebody is human or android, the experience for the most part takes sharp turns into territory you’ll never see coming.

With no voice acting and relatively simple graphics, there is enormous pressure on the script. The writing is incredible, some of the best I’ve come across in a game in years. Somewhat ironically, each and every android that I meet seems more human than most of the other countless characters I’ve met in other games.

The depth and texture afforded to the interview subjects is not only impressive, it is incredibly important to the experience. I’m being pulled in several directions at once. Every interview has an accompanying report to be filled in and, for androids, one of three choices must be made: release, send for maintenance (which guarantees a memory wipe), or destroy. Yet things are not nearly as simple as they may appear. As an android myself, I am expected to toe the company line at all times. It’s made clear that any attempt to defy my employers, or provision of information that contradicts their expectations (intentionally or otherwise), will immediately cast suspicion on me.

While the writing consistently displays impressive subtlety and enormous intelligence, I have mixed feelings about the first ending I got which. Nonetheless, it’s an experience that will stay with me for some time, and one that I know I’ll be going back to.

An extremely intelligent sci-fi interrogation sim that’s unpredictable for all the right reasons.