Tacoma

I stand corrected: Unlike my assertion in my last post, sometimes games are shorter than books! And when that happens, it's generally a good thing!

Tacoma is the latest entry in the long line of Awesome Games That My Younger Brother Gifted To Me That I Took Way Too Long To Get Around To Playing. In this case, though, once I started it, I was able to finish in just a few delightful hours.

 

Tacoma is the latest entry from Fullbright, who made my beloved Gone Home. It isn't a sequel, but plays and feels very similarly to their earlier entry. A so-called "walking simulator", it's more about exploration and discovering the narrative through the environment than through traditional gameplay.

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The most obvious difference is the change in environment, in time and space. Gone Home was a deeply nostalgic and personal story, set in our near history and filled with objects we've personally touched in our own lives. Tacoma is set in the speculative future of 2080, with some science fiction underpinnings. I actually found myself thinking of Prey a lot while playing it: of course, the games are totally different in tone and style, but the sense of being in space and watching people make lives in the void felt similar. You can sort of piece together the story of how we got from the present to the future, and it seems like Elon Musk gets a lot of the praise. I guess that when Fullbright was working on this game back in 2016 or so Musk would have been primarily seen as the SpaceX guy, but some of those references have not aged very well.

 

Like in Gone Home, Tacoma's game controls are very simple. You can move around; but since this game is set in a space station, you can sometimes move around in three dimensions thanks to zero-G. You can pick up a single object in your hands. You can inspect it closely, moving it around in all axes. Every once in a while you'll find something useful this way, but the vast majority of the time it's just an object. And that's a big part of the pleasure of this game! The environments are real and lived-in and tell stories. I mean, if you came over to my place, most of the stuff you saw wouldn't be like a clue to the password to my computer, but it would strongly suggest how I live and what type of person I am.

Back to the gameplay: Tacoma does add one new mechanic, which is an augmented reality overlay. As you investigate the station, your computer automatically collects historical logs from the surroundings: audio feeds, video recordings, and so on. Then you can project what are essentially ghosts from the past into the physical space of the present. This works a bit like an old-fashioned VCR: you can play it forward, pause, rewind.

 

What's really cool about this is that, in addition to the written artifacts we had in Gone Home, Tacoma also demonstrates social dynamics. You'll play a recording of two people talking, and observe a third one coming to join them. Where did he come from? You can then rewind, following that third person back along his route, and see where he was talking with a fourth person, or running something past the station AI, or performing some task. Some of these interactions are moving: A medical officer calmly walks a panicking botanist through a difficult choice, listens to his concerns, excuses herself, walks away... and, once she's out of earshot, bursts into tears. Both of them, oblivious to the other, call up the ODIN AI and ask its advice on the interaction.

 

There is a mild gameplay element to this. At certain times in the scenes, the characters will bring up their own AR desktop, at which point you can then access it and collect more information. Again, this is typically insight into their lives and personality, but occasionally a passcode or other resource needed to progress.

MEGA SPOILERS

The overall emotional arc of Tacoma closely resembles that of Gone Home. In both games you're exploring an eerie, deserted environment, surrounded by the evidence of people but with no living people to be found. As a player of video games, you naturally assume that something terrible has happened: what else could "No life signs detected aboard" mean? As you collect evidence, you start to speculate about the plot: did the peculiar uncle come back as a ghost? Did the ODIN AI follow the path of HAL and SHODAN and GLADOS and kill everyone? There are a lot of cues in the game that we automatically latch onto because they're such ubiquitous tropes. There are six people on the station? It must be a whodunit!

But, in both games, the actual answer ends up being surprisingly peaceful and... nurturing, maybe? Nobody's dead. Everything's fine. That wasn't blood in the bathtub. There was nothing wrong with the cake. This non-shocking ending actually feels shocking because that's not how we're used to games working.

 

As I was playing this, I sometime found myself wishing I had played this before Gone Home, or memory-wiped that game from my mind: not because of the similarities in gameplay, but more because I was at least somewhat anticipating a peaceful ending, which I wouldn't have if I'd gone in cold. So I was pleased that I did get a surprise, at the very end, with the revelation of who the main character is working for. That's a cool shift from Gone Home: in that game, you learned a little about "yourself" as the older sister, but the focus was very much on the rest of the family. In Tacoma, you (as the character) end up taking a much more active role in the narrative, even though you (as the player) don't recognize that role until the end.

I guess that the other major change from Gone Home is that there actually is a villain in Tacoma. It isn't the AI or the crew or aliens: it is their own employer, Venturis Corporation, and more specifically its CEO, Sergio Venturi. I did like how the game addresses political and economic issues, and I especially loved how it takes a point of view instead of the both-sidesism that plagues AAA titles.

 

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Tacoma was a terrific little game, and also a nice, albeit temporary, milestone: it was the last unplayed game left in my Steam queue! This happens once every five years or so and is always very welcome. There's a lot on my radar that I'm looking forward to digging into eventually, like Red Dead Redemption 2 and (one day, eventually) Cyberpunk. In the meantime, though, I'm going to check out the Federations DLC for Stellaris and get back to those books I've been raving about!

Can't Go Home Again

I lucked out and managed to snag Gone Home during a brief window when it was available for free download. This was very generous of the developer, who offered it "for people who need something about hope and love right now". That definitely applied to me last weekend, and I was grateful for the chance to immerse myself into something new and positive.

Gone Home has been dimly on my radar for several years now. It has a reputation as one of the archetypal indie games: using games as an innovative storytelling device, with a unique perspective, a clear thematic goal, and non-traditional gameplay. That last point can trip up so-called "hardcore gamers," who are often left asking, "Is this even a game?" Without enemies to defeat, or resources to acquire, or other traditional markers of progress, this wave of indie games seems to step back from the ordinary signifiers that reward players for their effort. In my opinion, though, that ultimately magnifies their impact: you aren't trying to bump up artificial numbers, and instead can focus on the pure narrative in front of you.

In many ways, Gone Home looks like a fully-polished modern game. In contrast to the retro/pixel-art style loved by many other indie developers, this game is done in gorgeous 3D, with a lovingly detailed interactive house for you to explore. Ambient lighting, sound effects, and such contribute to the fantastic atmosphere. Again, there's no HUD to distract you, no inventory screens to manage. When you pick up an object, you simply hold it in your hands. Most objects are pointless, but it still feels weirdly good to be able to interact with your environment in this way. You can inspect loose ballpoint pens, flip around magazines, check out the logo on the back of a dinner plate. Occasionally, an object will reveal additional uses, such as a cassette tape that can be loaded into a nearby player.

MINI SPOILERS

I got a SERIOUS nostalgia rush while playing this game. It's set in 1995, and its environment overlapped in many ways with my own childhood and teenage home. I was often struck by things that I hadn't thought of in years - at one point, you find a table that folds out into a sewing machine. In an instant, I was transported back to the sewing room in my basement, where I played with that exact same model. That machine is long gone, and I might never have thought about it again for the rest of my life if it wasn't for this moment in a game.

There are a lot of very specific ways in which the game diverges from my own experiences, most obviously in the family itself. This family just has two sisters, with you playing as the older and the story primarily interested in the younger. I think the developers are drawing on real-life elements for these stories, but those details are less familiar to me - girl punk bands, beauty magazines. And that's good! The shared experiences help it feel authentic and immediate, while the unique experiences help me share in thoughts and feelings that I personally haven't held before.

MEGA SPOILERS

The game doesn't have clear rules for progression or goals, but as you explore, you gradually figure it out. There are a handful of very simple mechanical obstacles (I don't want to say "puzzles") to overcome. You might find a key that opens a locked door to a new wing of the house, or a fragment of the combination for a padlock. While the overall feeling of the game is incredibly free and lets you wander anywhere at any time, these few guards help establish narrative coherency and dramatic progress. Deeper secrets are only revealed after you have discovered the clearer ones.

Early on, I thought that the game would be about learning what has happened to your family. In this pre-Internet era, you've flown back from Europe on short notice, to find a seemingly-empty house waiting for you. Going through old letters and messages and press releases and such helps reveal what's been happening in your parents' lives. Your mother has been rising in the ranks at the National Park Service, and there are some hints that she may have become romantically entangled with a younger ranger. Your father is a failed novelist, shamed by his own father for writing conspiracy thrillers, and is skating by with tedious equipment reviews for an audiophile magazine. Each has a happy ending, though. Your mom seems to have ended things gracefully with Rick, who is getting married, and your father has received recent encouragement and inspiration that has rejuvenated his creative writing. For a while I'd worried that they'd both left the house due to unhappiness, but it turns out that they're off on a week-long retreat for couple's counseling and therapy. They've recognized the problems they face, and are working to rekindle their marriage.

While those are interesting stories, though, it eventually becomes clear that the real heart of the story is learning about your sister. You learn about your parents through written fragments, but you can actually hear Samantha's voice, narrating the diary that she left behind. There's also a ton of artwork, and some really engaging short fiction that she wrote. This was probably the most impressive part of the game: just how fully-fledged of a character they were able to create, one who never appears and you can never interact with, but who still feels incredibly vibrant and alive.

I had a sense early on of where her story was headed, and loved what they did with it. Samantha gradually falls in love with a schoolmate named Lonnie, over a progression of really tender and sweet realizations. They are kindred spirits, complementary and compatible. There's a ton to like about their relationship, but one high point was their collaboration, as Lonnie illustrates Sam's writings, or they work together on a girl-power zine.

 

I had a weird feeling of indirect guilt while playing as Katie reading Sam's notes. In-game, Katie has been gone from home for several years, and so hasn't been around to support her sister, or even know about what she's going through. That resonated with me. I haven't been in that exact situation, but as an eldest child, I've felt bad about not being physically or emotionally present for my younger siblings when they've gone through difficult events. That's actually lessened somewhat in recent years - we're all better at keeping in touch and communicating now, thanks to the Internet and maturity - but putting myself in Katie's shoes reminded me of my disconnection during high-school and college years, when I could have made a bigger and more positive impact.

I was also relieved at where the story ended up - there are some dark suggestions throughout the game that Sam might have come to a bad end, as well as ongoing hints about curses in the house. If the developers had wanted to, they could very easily have made a terrifying horror game here! There are a couple of moments, when a light goes out or a door creaks shut or you read an ominous warning, that your heart rate might jump up as you worry that things are taking a frightening turn. But it's ultimately the same sort of suspended dread that most of us have felt when we're all alone in a large and unfamiliar space. We jump, startled, but eventually realize that it's okay, we're safe, and everything will be fine.

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I loved this game. After the heavy narrative rush of Life Is Strange, this felt much more relaxing while still relevant and important. I feel like it opens yet another door when it comes to storytelling in games. I'm not sure if other developers will follow in these footsteps, or if it will remain as a bit of an oddity, but I'm really glad that it exists.

Oh, yeah: here's a little album! It spoils the story.