Review - >Observer_
Investigating a crime is always a risky business, but to interrogate the dead? That’s a whole new level. Bloober Team, the developers behind Layers of Fear, created a game that asked exactly that when they made >Observer_. The player is placed in the position of a futuristic investigator as they analyze crime scenes and enter others minds in order to find the truth. While the investigative portions of >Observer_ are about as typical as can be seen in the industry, the interrogations are incredible works that play with non-euclidean geometry and abstract imagery to place the player in the position of each character.
The gameplay of >Observer_ is divided between two main sections. The first is the investigative portion where the player wanders a cyberpunk world as Dan Lazarski, a special operations police agent. In this portion, the player wanders around an apartment block following an investigation. In the course of this, the player will either investigate a crime scene using various cybernetic implants or speak to the people who live in the apartments. The latter is mostly a tacked on bit of the game. The player will have to speak to some occupants to further their investigations, but the others are just stereotypes and attempts to deepen the world by adding glimpses into social conflicts or philosophical questioning. However, the interaction is little more than following every path down a dialogue tree and conversations are so short and disconnected that most issues raised by them are given no substantial discussion to back them up.
The second section of gameplay is when the main character jacks into another character. The player enters the mind of the other character and experiences what they experienced. There is no single way to classify what a player does in these moments as they are highly experimental and variable. They pull from non-euclidean map design, like what is seen in Antichamber (the player might turn in place only to find a completely different corridor behind them), and distorted imagery to make the player feel what each character experienced. These moments are the real highlights of the game as the investigative portion of >Observer_ is fairly typical and bland with the scenery being more interesting than most of what the player does.
So let’s talk narrative. In the main portion of the game where the player investigates crimes, the narrative is fairly plain. It is a fairly standard cyberpunk where the growing augmentation of humanity is juxtaposed to a more idyllic organic existence with smatterings of mega-corporations, because you can’t have cyberpunk without those. The main character Dan Lazarski (no doubt his name is rooted in Lazarus, just a little side note) is looking for his son after a mysterious call led him to the titular apartment. Really, this is not a very inspired portion of the game. The main story was laid out pretty typically in terms of what can be seen in other games.
What >Observer_’s main story did well was building an atmosphere through all of the game elements. The environment was a fairly archetypal cyberpunk with glitzy neon hiding a rotting interior. Think Bladerunner with more holograms. The necessity for the player to take drugs in order to prevent their cybernetic implants from causing them problems kept one of the main themes, that being cybernetic versus organic existence, constantly in the player’s mind as they couldn’t ignore the visual glitches caused by that. On the flip side, nothing really happens if the player doesn’t take their drugs, so an opportunity was missed there. Beyond that, the main story is pretty standard, especially in it’s presentation as it is mostly given through dialogue or text pieces and a bit of visual storytelling.
As I mentioned, the game tries to tackle a lot of smaller themes throughout the game. This is done through the mechanic of knocking on people’s doors and talking to them. These people tend to be archetypal characters like the religious nut, the digital addict, or the sexualized female. The conversations are short and usually have an underlying point such as the detrimental effect of constantly being plugged in (digital addict) or the deep rooted dehumanization of a person (sexualized female). However, these topics are only very briefly brought up and tend to be either trite nods to social issues or overly didactic regarding their points. These conversations give some flavor to the world, but fall short in pressing their individual ideas.
Now for the real meat of the game, jacking in. In order to further some investigations, the player will have to enter the mind of a person to see what they saw. These scenes are highly experimental in their design. They use non-euclidean designs to disorient the player, changing the world that is out of the player’s view while they look around. Repeated sequences pushed the player to feel the habit of a person’s life and the daunting weight of meaningless repetition. These scenes are great. The developers pushed the boundaries of interactive expression here, integrating systems that were generally relegated to artsy indie games into a more developed experience.
While all of the “dream” sequences are good, they also miss the mark quite a bit on certain points. It is the nature of the cutting edge to get as much wrong as they do right. Many of the scenes, such as the ex-con, do a decent job of explaining the character’s history, but don’t do a great job of having the player live that reality. Many of the scenes in the ex-con sequence in particular (although this is not exclusive to that scene) played more like movies where the player watched the character struggle rather than having the player act out or experience those struggles. Other scenes did this well, such as the ex-con’s wife’s sequence which use repetitious imagery that caused the player to feel the most crushing aspects of her daily habits.
The other issue with these sequences that I wanted to mention had to do with the game over screen. In the second sequence, the player will eventually find themselves chased by a terrible creature that they simply have to avoid, ala basically every horror game after Amnesia. This was fine, except that when the player was caught the only thing that occurred was a jarring and experience breaking game over. Game over screens have a place in gaming, but it’s important to be cautious of their use. This screen existed only to destroy the experience for the player. You died and restarted back at the beginning of the room with all of your immersion broken. This could have been an opportunity to have the player trapped in some puzzle that represented the fear that had just caught them, with the escape from said puzzle allowing them to return to the room. In this case, immersion wouldn’t have been broken and more story could have been told. It’s a shame, but certainly no deal breaker, that the developers chose the easy way out on this mechanic.
Overall, >Observer_ is a brilliantly interesting experience. The investigative gameplay is rather standard for games of that genre, but the “dream” sequences were very powerful works. They tried to have the player experience the story through their lived experience of the character’s past. While not every element of the sequences succeeded to that degree, they all tried something fundamentally different from most gaming experiences. It would have been nice to see more player initiative, as most of the game was little more than walking around and following the path laid directly in front of the player, but the experience made up for all of the flaws. This is a brilliant work and anyone who enjoys games should give this one a play.
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