Observation
A stylish sci-fi thriller with a unique twist
a network of cameras dotted around the station are your eyes and ears
You’ve seen rogue AI in science fiction before. HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey, GlaDOS from Portal, SHODAN from System Shock 2. It’s one of the most reliably terrifying setups for a sci-fi horror story. But what’s interesting about Observation, a new game from the makers of horror anthology Stories Untold, is that you are the AI.
You are SAM (Systems Administration and Maintenance) and something terrible has happened aboard the space station you’re in control of. Emma Fisher, an astronaut voiced by Kezia Burrows (who played Amanda Ripley in Alien:Isolation), is your only human point of contact, at least in the demo I played, and the pair form an uneasy alliance.
The DNA of Isolation runs through Observation, with many of its small dev team (and a few contractors) having worked on SEGA’s horror masterpiece. It feels like a spiritual successor in a way, with the same kind of ominous atmosphere and stylish analogue video degradation. But No Code stresses that this is a thriller, not a slasher in space.
As SAM, a network of cameras dotted around the station are your eyes and ears. You use these to scan documents, devices and so on. Scanning gives information directly, but it also lets you perform actions that help Fisher; opening an airlock, say, or debugging systems or giving damage reports.
This is one of my first jobs, as Fisher tries to determine how much damage the station has taken. I run through a series of tactile, interactive diagnostics and feed the information back to her. When she asks me something, I hover over the appropriate information and squeeze a button to reply in an eerily calm, wellspoken voice. If you give her the wrong information you’ll hear her get frustrated, which reinforces the fiction, with SAM acting strangely and being disobedient.
Screen Burn
No Code founder Jon McKellan was responsible for many of those wonderfully grimy, lo-fi, distorted interfaces in Alien: Isolation, and while Observation is more contemporary looking, it still has that hard-edged, functional aesthetic. The station itself is beautifully realized, too, cluttered with detail and things to scan.
It’s not completely rooted in reality, though. No Code has taken some liberties with the science, and not just in SAM’s hyper-intelligent AI. On a table I notice a sphere-shaped drone, and McKellan tells me that, later in the game, you’ll be able to fly this thing around the station. But these are only slight diversions, and I love how believable everything is. It reminds me of sci-fi from the ’70s, which is an obvious influence on the game.
But here’s where things get creepy. As I’m helping Fisher navigate the station, my feed is interrupted by strange signals, including the words BRING HER. Worse still, at the end of the demo it’s revealed that the station has, somehow, drifted from Earth, and is orbiting Jupiter. I could almost feel Fisher’s dread when I saw the planet looming in the distance; a palpable sensation of hopelessness and, well, isolation.
It’s an intriguing end to the short slice of the first act I got to experience, and I’m immediately won over. I’d happily play a game purely about being an AI and helping an astronaut fix things, but I think Observation will get really interesting when this corrupting influence creeps deeper into SAM’s systems. McKellan tells me the game gets chaotic later on, so I’m predicting bad things for Dr. Fisher. Stories Untold was one of last year’s biggest surprises, and I’m glad to see No Code expanding on the concept with this clever twist on a popular sci-fi trope.