Observation
Developer No Code Publisher Devolver Digital Format PC, PS4 (tested) Release Out now
PC, PS4
No Code’s wildly ambitious follow-up to the eerie Stories Untold casts you as an AI that feels as flawed as a human. The game’s elevator pitch is essentially 2001: A Space Odyssey, but from the perspective of HAL – and while Observation doesn’t quite match up to Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece, your role here is similarly, fascinatingly ambiguous. At various points during this gripping narrative adventure your actions will leave you feeling squirmingly uneasy. Are you really doing the right thing? Can it can be justified by the fact that you’re playing a computer? All the while, you have the shivering sense that at least one of Asimov’s laws will be broken by the end credits.
It spins an absorbing sci-fi yarn that’s been carefully constructed around a series of surprises that shouldn’t be spoiled. Suffice it to say you’re on a low-orbit space station, wherein medic Emma Fisher is going through her routines; as the ship’s AI, SAM, you help out, interfacing with pressure modules, resetting hull contacts, running network diagnostics and the like. Suddenly there’s an incident, and Emma and SAM end up, well, somewhere unexpected. Your goal is to pool resources, human effort combining with artificial intelligence to figure out what not on Earth is going on.
As such, it plays out as a kind of singleplayer co-op game, or an escort mission where your partner has a brain for once. On more than one occasion we’re reminded of Metroid: through Emma, via interfacing with different systems, obtaining new protocols and combining data within his memory banks, SAM’s abilities steadily improve. Soon, you’re no longer limited to flicking between camera feeds – which can be zoomed and panned, letting you pair with laptops to download audio logs and documents – as you steer a floating sphere around the station.
SAM’s faltering systems enforce this manual approach. The tactile quality of the various interfaces – the combination of old and new tech and the range of operating systems speaks to both the history and the multicultural contribution to the station – which variously require you to hold several buttons, twiddle analogue sticks and even engage in the odd QTE, make these otherwise straightforward tasks more involving. And, yes, they make SAM feel like more of a tangible presence – and given the themes in which Observation’s story trades, that’s clearly no accident. The choices you’re invited to make don’t fundamentally change the narrative – this is a story with a single, canonical ending – but force you to consider your role within it, with some decisions bringing questions of trust and empathy into play. You can be a stickler for the rules, justifying your intransigence by your programming. Or, at times, you can be more playful, if sometimes to Emma’s chagrin: she’ll grow exasperated if you do the wrong thing, or if you’re too slow to get to her.
Sometimes that might be because you’re simply nosing around, since there’s a wealth of detail to take in, whether you’re bothered about fully reassembling SAM’s memory banks or not. In one of countless clever touches, the image quality appears sharper inside the spheres, with the station’s lo-res external cameras a remnant of the VHS age. Meanwhile, if you collide with any floating detritus – or even Emma herself when she’s moving around – your feed will crackle and go fuzzy, taking a second to snap back to crystal clarity.
But the story can only progress when you’re doing what you’re told, and though there’s a certain nerdy thrill that comes from interacting with a new piece of tech, there’s more busywork than brainwork involved. For the most part, it feels like a necessary trade-off, with puzzles made relatively straightforward for the sake of narrative pacing: if a laptop requires a password, you’ll find it on a Post-It nearby, while one particular method of communication amounts to an abstract twist on Simon Says, although the context makes it more compelling than it sounds. You won’t get stuck, then, but you might just get lost. There’s a waypoint system that’s both easily missed and takes some getting used to – it’ll zip off when you enter a new room or corridor, and not always in the direction you’re supposedly headed. And while for the most part your objective is clear, once or twice you’re left flying blind. At one point we’re left listlessly milling between a handful of rooms, little realising that listening to an audio log had stopped us interfacing with a mission-critical hatch.
Otherwise, it sustains a strong pace, and a constant, fidgety tension. As Emma, Kezia Burrows is inspired casting, not just for the quality of her performance but because you naturally associate her with Alien Isolation’s Amanda Ripley. Spoiler alert: you’re not being tailed by a xenomorph here, though it’s apparent even from the early stages that you’re not entirely alone. And No Code springs shocks in clever ways, borrowing a trick from found-footage horrors in the way blank camera feeds reveal surprises when they’re fixed. It cranks up the pressure with the odd time-sensitive task, too; the threat of failure isn’t always followed through, but Emma’s cries to hurry up alongside ticking timers make for a convincing illusion. And it knows just when to snatch away control, locking you into a single feed or having Emma holding a sphere module so you don’t get distracted from key developments – or sometimes simply to make sure you’re looking the right way.
True, Observation doesn’t always find the perfect equilibrium between systems and story. But it doesn’t fall far short of its aims. By the time its eye-opening endgame has played out, it’s provided more memorable moments than games five times its length, with 50 times the budget. Kubrick would surely approve.
All the while, you have the shivering sense that at least one of Asimov’s laws will be broken by the end credits
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