A gruesome crime scene, a woman mounted on a merry-go-round, her
left eye gouged out. A broken down theme park, slicked with rain. It's a
perfectly noirish opening, introducing us to a future version of Tokyo
and our hero, detective Kaname Date. Soon Date is interrupted by his
partner, a - and there's really no way to ease you into this - fully
sentient AI who lives in his left eye socket and sometimes takes the
form of a one-eyed transparent hamster or a young woman. Her name is
Aiba, short for eyeball.
Date and Aiba travel from place to place, interrogating witnesses
and suspects and searching for further clues. Through all this, Aiba is
as much a snarky sidekick as she is a helpful tool. She checks the
internet for information, creates heat maps of suspects to tell whether
they're lying and gives you x-ray vision. As one murder is followed by
another, Aiba and Date use another special instrument in their arsenal
to attain the information they need to find leads: a machine that
allows them to enter another person's subconscious and interact with it
via a dreamscape called a Somnium. This kind of joke, randomly thrown in, is a surefire way to break my immersion.
These sections play out like small escape room puzzles. You take
direct control of Aiba to interact with a handful of enigmatic items in
order to break the dreamer's mental locks which keep important secrets
and traumas buried. Every action deducts time from a six minute time
limit. Some actions allow you to conserve time via so-called TIMIES, but
you can also collect negative TIMIES with can stack throughout a
Somnium. Among the many aspects of The Somnium Files that are
surprisingly difficult to describe, these rank at the very top, and
puzzle solving is a very generous term for some trial and error kicking,
tapping and poking each item.
As frustrating as making essentially random decisions can be,
especially on a time limit, the dream puzzles showcase The Somnium
File's main appeal - sheer creativity. Both the interactive segments,
including some quicktime events randomly thrown in for variety, and the
visual novel portions where you just follow the story, are full of
moments that completely took me by surprise. What a delightful rarity!
The Somnium Files also makes use of branching narrative paths, in a
similar manner to designer Kotaro Uchikoshi's Zero Escape series.
Depending on the decisions you make during a Somnium, the direction of
the overall plot radically shifts - quite often, really
radically. You can later go back and make a different decision in order
to follow the alternate path. Without giving anything away, it's fair to
say that each path is completely the others, and each path is vital to
putting the whole story together. Just do yourself a favour and finish
one branch first before going back, it helps connect the dots better. Then again, things get so dark, so quickly, you might be glad for any humour.
In investigation segments you scan a static screen Ace
Attorney-style for clues, clicking on objects in view - although there
are less frustrations than you might find in Capcom's series. As long as
there are still questions to ask or things to look at, you simply won't
be able to leave the map you're on, which at least tells you there are
still options to exhaust. The only thing that takes a bit of getting
used to is that asking the same question several times will get people
to elaborate, rather than repeat themselves. If you want to check
someone's statement again, use the game's log. You can also check a
glossary for the many terms specific to the universe. That will hardly
be necessary however - you will all but drown in repeated exposition and
conversation summaries.
The Somnium Files features a small cast of characters, each with a
distinct look, and Uchikoshi takes the time to build their personal
stories. I wouldn't say there was anyone I liked per se, I don't think
this is the kind of story in which likable characters emerge, but their
motivations are cohesive and it's exciting how everyone you meet, from
pink-haired streamer Iris Sagan, to your 12-year-old charge Mizuki to a
corrupt politician and the yakuza, are somehow involved in the case. Of
course it's thanks to a distinct type of anime logic that a bunch of
teenagers would be involved in a crime spree at all, but discovering the
hows and whys, as overwrought as they can be, is half the fun.
Everyone's personality also comes through in the superb voice acting.
Date for example is voiced Greg Chun, who also voiced Yagami in
Judgement. The only aspect that detracted from the overall mysterious
thriller atmosphere for me was the sleazy humour, reaching from jokes
about Date dating underage girls to low-effort innuendo. Nothing
egregious - just stuff that comes with the anime/visual novel territory. Some of the fun things you get up to in a Somnium.
The futuristic setting fits the mood of the story, and the pacing
is excellent, with new revelations and twists emerging just as you think
there will be a dip in the action. Most of all I think that AI: The
Somnium Files showcases a great way to use branching storylines and how
to make players want to go back and explore some more, it's a technique
some of the very best visual novels of the genre, such as CLANNAD and
Steins:Gate, are so good at. That's why I think The Somnium Files is
broadly recommendable - to those still new to visual novels, to fans of
Uchikoshi and this brand of games in general, and to those simply on the
hunt for an engrossing interactive story.
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