Observation Review
Given how movies and books depict artificial intelligence, I think it’s safe to say that, at this point, basically no one trusts AI. In just about every piece of fiction, if there’s an AI character, that character is going to be the one that’s evil or at least dangerous to the protagonists, and this goes double for any story taking place in outer space. Sure every once in a while you get a character like Data who shows that some robots are friends. Then again, Data has an evil twin brother Lore, so the counter-example has its own built-in counter-counter-example. So if modern audiences are naturally inclined to distrust AI, what happens if the audience becomes the AI character? Observation answers this question by putting players in the digital shoes of a space station AI right after something very bad has happened.
In Observation, players become SAM, the System Administration Maintenance AI of the space station Observation. Unfortunately, all is not well aboard the Observation. As the game starts, all but one of the crew has vanished and the station is no longer in orbit around Earth. To make matters worse, all of SAM’s memory cores have been corrupted and nearly all functionality has been lost. This means the player must work with the remaining crew member, Emma, to restore their memory and abilities while trying to solve the mystery of where Earth and the rest of the crew went. As the cryptic cherry on top of this miserable pile of mysteries, SAM has discovered a new directive. It reads only “BRING HER” and players must obey.
Where Observation really shines is its atmosphere. As SAM, players don’t have a traditional character to control. Instead, players move around the space station by switching to different camera feeds in different rooms of the station, or occasionally into mobile drones to access parts of the station with broken cameras. This slow, decentralized play style goes a long way to making players feel like they really are an AI flitting through the various hardware of the space station. There are plenty of small touches helping cement that delusion, like how the player’s vision is initially out of focus when switching to a new camera, or the slow deliberate speed of moving those cameras to a new angle. A more frustrating atmospheric touch was that, as a computer, the player is expected to remember a lot more things than in most video games. This helps build the mood but was also frustrating at times, especially with how vague Emma the human could be with her requests. If I’m being honest, playing Observation made me wonder if I’m being too demanding of the electronics in my life.
The story in Observation is almost as good as the atmosphere. Without getting too much into spoiler territory, the origins and executions of the “BRING HER” directive make for an enthralling story, made better from the player’s non-human perspective. Because SAM is controlled by directives, players are controlled by them as well. This means that players are required to help Emma most of the time, but sometimes moments of conflict arise between directives and players must make a choice. The first example of this is when Emma attempts to log into the higher-level commands of the station and must pass a voice authentication test. Players hear her speak and are also given a digital readout of her voice. Regardless of whether or not system memory says that the voice test passes, players can accept or reject the login. If players reject it, Emma will clear her throat and try again. There are several moments of choice like this in the game where players will come up against not only what they think is best for the mission, but what they have been programmed to think is best for the mission. But maybe, just maybe, there’s not much of a difference between those two.
The mystery of where the “BRING HER” directive comes from is even more interesting. With most of the crew gone and Emma focusing on restoring the station to full working order, players are left alone to deduce where this directive comes from and what it means. Eventually, players begin communication with someone other than Emma, resulting in some worrying questions about the true mission of the Observation and humanity’s place in the universe. As these communications continue and more of SAM’s memory cores are restored, players must come to grips with what their role in this story already was and how that will affect their decisions going forward.
Observation has a lot of good things going for it, but unfortunately it’s a real hassle to play. The same deliberate slowness of the machines players live in that makes the game so atmospheric also serves to make the game feel like it’s moving unnecessarily slow. This applies to many of the game’s objectives as well. Because Emma sees SAM as a fully-capable AI assistant, she’s often not as clear as she could be about what she wants done and how to accomplish it. Sometimes, objectives must be completed by finding information on pieces of paper scattered throughout the station, but the paper is nearly identical in color to the walls of the station, making tracking them down extremely frustrating. But the worst of Observation’s sins is the save system. It’s now 2019 and honestly I can’t think of a good reason why any game doesn’t have manual saving at any time. Observation, though, decides that checkpoints are the way to go, so players better make sure to get a major plot point finished before they stop gaming or they could lose upwards of 30 minutes of progress for stepping away. I’m sure to some readers this complaint will seem minor but I very nearly stopped playing Observation at one point because the game decided to ignore my progress because I had the audacity to go to work.
Observation tells an incredible story with a really compelling mechanic. There’s so much to like about the game, it’s really frustrating that some of the choices they made to build the game also get in the way of enjoying it. And I can’t say it enough: there’s absolutely no reason to not let me save whenever I want. It’s 2019 for crying out loud and I’ve got other things to do with my time.
Buy this game on sale
It’s worth playing, just not at the price they’re asking
