I’m a huge supporter of players who like trying out games outside of what they’re used to. The Zero Escape series is one of those games that made me believe in this concept.
Created by Kotaro Uchikoshi, the Zero Escape series delivered a thrilling tale spun across three games that incorporated fact and theory into fiction, alongside dastardly puzzles that made you feel ready to tackle the story’s many twists and turns.
With AI: The Somnium Files, Uchikoshi takes a different approach to telling his latest mystery, while attempting to capture the magic of what made the Zero Escape series great. Did the gamble pay off?
Saddle up with us and psync right in, as we jack into a world of dreams with Detective Dante in tow, in my review, hours later. AI: The Somnium Files is a suspense thriller played as a hybrid visual novel with traditional point and click gameplay.
You play the role of Kaname Date, a detective working for a department called ABIS under the jurisdiction of the Tokyo PD.
A quick glance at Date will reveal that he is, in fact, missing his left eye, and in its place, is a ball of artificial intelligence named Aiba, that helps him with his investigations.
No sooner do we meet Date and his partner than we are thrust upon the first mystery of AI: The Somnium Files - a grisly murder occuring at an abandoned theme park, where the victim was repeatedly stabbed and had her left eye taken.
A closer inspection of the area reveals a suspect - a young girl, not even in her teens, holding an ice pick - mute - shocked and stunned by the things that transpired.
It’s this premise that sets up AI: The Somnium Files’ main hook; the ability of Dante, with Aiba’s help, to dive into the subconscious of his subject in order to reveal their many hidden secrets.
As Date explores the subject’s dream world, he will encounter Mental Locks that prevent him from uncovering the truth.
Because these dream worlds are of the subjects’ creation, normal logic doesn’t apply, and players will have to utilize what they’re given, in the form of a hint phrase and a short camera flyby at the start of each dream, to interact with the correct object, or. objects to open each Mental Lock.
But there’s a catch: You can only stay in the dream world for six whole minutes.
These six minutes begin as soon as you take control of Aiba, with time slowed down dramatically while you’re at a standstill, and time moving normally the more you move around the dream world.
Utilizing an object in a variety of different ways will use up a good portion of this allotted time, and if you’ve used all six minutes without unlocking the final Mental Lock, it’s Game Over.
From a game design standpoint, the time limit acts kind of like a mercy rule for players who can’t figure out what to do, hopefully clueing them that the solution is much simpler than what they might be thinking.
On the other hand, it also prevents players from freely exploring the dream world at their own leisure and understanding its rules more.
I lament at the many times I’ve spoken to players who absolutely dislike the idea of rigid time limits in video games.
Gamifying the time limit isn’t going to sit well with these players, and sadly, its implementation - coupled with asking players to figure out the rules of each dream world, will encourage more trial and error experimentation as opposed to creating genuine “Aha!” moments that many good puzzle games tend to reward the player with.
I find that the presence of these “Aha!” moments are crucial for these kinds of intellectual challenges, as it transforms the task of solving a puzzle from being a chore, trial and error, to being a genuine reward; that “Aha!” moment.
For my part, I felt that some of the dream worlds towards the end did evoke some of these moments, as if the developers felt more comfortable with creating puzzles utilizing the game’s gimmicks in those specific instances.
But for being set in dreams, much of AI: The Somnium Files’ dream worlds are set in places you’ve seen plenty of times before, with the occasional surprise popping up, but not often enough to make these events all the more significant.
Some might think that what I’m actually saying is that I hoped that the puzzles were just like the ones in Zero Escape, and there is a grain of truth to that.
When you’re following up a franchise known for its intellectual twists, turns, and challenges such as Zero Escape, wouldn’t you want something just as good, if not better, in whatever follows it?
While AI: The Somnium Files hits the ground running by throwing you into an investigation first-hand, the rest of the game’s storytelling falls more in line with contemporary visual novels with its slower paced build up.
It’s because of this that many of the game’s characters feel and sound outright angry, and often irritable, towards Date, with no real motivation for players to empathize with them outside of an interest to further the plot.
I understand that part of a good mystery is that you suspect everyone around you, but there’s also something to be said about characters in a story where it seems like everyone just feels too standoff-ish.
It’s a real shame that they don’t develop further until you’ve gone past specific points in the story, when the game begins to set up one of its many endings.
It’s during these moments where you really see the depth behind each person, with the game further revealing the reasons for each characters’ machinations throughout the story.
While I don’t necessarily think that every story requires some form of personal growth, the cast of AI: The Somnium Files almost felt one note for a good portion of the story, with very few details separating them from one another.
This comes across as though the presence of the game’s cast is really just there to service the main plot, with each individual ending made to address a specific character’s backstory.
It’s a pity, because while I despised Ota - one of the characters - for a majority of my time with the game, I came around when I learned more of his deeper motivations.
It’s in these moments that the potential of AI: The Somnium Files as a new series reveals itself, altering your perception of said character, but not wholly excusing the actions they’ve made throughout the story.
It’s just a pity that much of the game’s character development was relegated towards specific endings, and I couldn’t help but think that the game could’ve probably hinted or touched upon their motivations more than just focusing on deepening its own mystery.
Thankfully, you don’t have to linger much in those middle parts of the story, as AI: The Somnium Files features a functional flowchart that follows your every choice and represents the different paths to the end without spoiling the mystery.
This flowchart allows you to bounce around story paths freely, allowing players to progress the story in however way they wish.
Naturally,
there are bad endings if you make the wrong decisions, but the flowchart
clearly indicates any legitimate secondary choices you can make by just
outright showing it upon completion of the dream world.
One situation that this came in handy for me early on was realizing that I had approached the solution to a dream world in the wrong way, taking me on a path that I wasn’t ready to take.
I then just opened up the flowchart, redid the dream world sequence, and got onto a different path instead. It’s that easy. If you can figure out how to solve the dream world challenges in such a way that you’ll have a different outcome.
While I’ve said plenty about how the dream world’s designs may irk certain players or that the character development can be frustratingly slow due to the game’s mystery, AI: The Somnium Files does have the same kind of thrill and suspense that Uchikoshi’s previous series portrayed so well.
The feeling of getting pieces of information as you play through each of the game’s different paths, then slowly gathering them and finally making sense of everything, is a feeling that not many other games have done well.
And while I still feel that Uchikoshi’s work on the Zero Escape series - despite Zero Time Dilemma - was his best work, your final revelation of what really happens in AI: The Somnium Files’ mystery takes the whodunnit formula and turns it on its head.
Sadly, this too has its shortcomings, as a story mechanic that’s been used to rationalize parts of the story is an overused MacGuffin, that’s not properly explained or justified its existence in-universe.
This review might sound like I’m being overly critical of AI: The Somnium Files or even that I didn’t enjoy my time with it, and to that, I’ll say that I don’t think that’s entirely accurate.
I did enjoy my time with AI: The Somnium Files, uncovering its many hidden secrets, finally getting to know many of its characters, and unraveling the truth behind the murder.
But I can’t help but feel that due to its higher budget and production values that AI: The Somnium Files could’ve been so much more.
It’s an uneven package, with more attention given to certain parts of the game and not enough in other parts that needed it.
What we have here is a game that will please the most hardcore of Uchikoshi fans, but may potentially disappoint the rest of us who just enjoy playing his games.
And depending on how you feel about the things I mentioned, that’ll determine whether you think it’s worth the price of admission.
