Tacoma

Tacoma is a science fiction game that explores an (awfully close) dystopian future, in which our society is fully dominated by large corporations, while telling a story about a crew of a space station in crisis. Transforming audio diaries into something new and refreshing, the title just slips up at the very end, when a single plot twist changes the development of one of its main characters.

Tacoma is a first-person adventure game in which the player controls Amy, a woman recently hired by the company Venturis to retrieve data from the abandoned Tacoma space station, alongside the artificial intelligence that used to control it, called ODIN. Upon arriving at the station, however, Amy encounters several AR recordings, which show colored holograms of the crew doing their chores and discussing with each other, and realizes that they were recorded before the evacuation took place and so can reveal what actually happened there.

The main mechanic in the game involves the handling of those holographic recordings, which show the Tacoma crew working or in their more private moments. The videos can be accelerated, rewound, and even paused, making the holograms move and act accordingly in the room. Since the crew members are rarely all in the same place in a single room, rewinding the video is essential to observe everyone: while the network specialist Natali is talking to her wife in a room Doctor Sareh Hasmadi is talking to ODIN near there, for example, at the same time that Commander Evelyn is arguing with a colleague about their chances of survival in another room close to the others.

The first recording the player finds shows the crew during a party, capturing the precise moment when the station seems to be hit by meteors and the oxygen supply becomes limited. The role of the player is basically that of a voyeur, visiting each installation of the ship and watching the recordings in a non-linear way while trying to put together the ins and outs of what happened in the station and its crew.

The fact that their dialogues are transmitted by holograms works much better than a simple audio diary would, making the characters more tangible, allowing the player to observe not only their words and intonation but also their body posture and gestures. Paradoxically, the holograms are also generic in their appearance, incapable of faithfully representing the crew. They capture only their shape, designating a specific color to each of them and a symbol for their job in the ship. In other words, the way the holograms represent the characters is ambivalent: they make the Tacoma crew feel more human and alive than a simple audio diary would be able to, but, at the same time, they also remove their facial features, dehumanizing them in the process.

The mechanic of controlling the hologram’s speed in an area further reinforces the voyeur aspect of the narrative, since the player won’t just be hearing them speak without their consent, but will be also following them as they walk around the station. In other words, by turning audio diaries into holograms, Tacoma turns an action that was static and passive – that of a simple listener – into a dynamic and active one.

This also generates moments that work with perspective. Following Evelyn’s hologram in a certain scene, for example, will allow the player to watch a brief conversation with Sareh, viewing it as a common, ordinary event, without paying special attention to the doctor. Following the doctor’s point of view, on the other hand, will make the player witness Sareh having a panic attack minutes before that same meeting, which is then painted as a moment of bravery.

The personality of each crew member is gradually formed by exploring the environment, such as reading their e-mails, notes, and even the tabs which were left open in their computers. Natali, for example, who is identified by the color red in the holograms, has her agitation and energy transmitted by the profusion of words in all caps in her messages. Her casual attitude towards her peers can be also felt in her frequent informal choice of words (“I asked Odin to look up some stuff“), while her joviality can be clearly seen in the playful way she treats her wife, the mechanical engineer Roberta, as she even jumps into Roberta’s arms in one scene.

Meanwhile, the botanist Andrew is developed from his relationship with his family. His pride is displayed fully in an e-mail to his husband, which shows him refusing financial help from his in-laws, preferring to remain working far away from his family and loved ones if this is what it takes to be able to afford his son’s education alone. Andrew openly considers himself to be undervalued by his family – mostly thanks to his sacrifice – and in his work environment as well – thanks to his colleagues’ rejection to the orchids he grew all by his lonesome. However, his sacrifices are often shown to be self-imposed, with his attitude towards the orchids being even passive-aggressive sometimes: “So glad SOMEbody wanted one these beautiful orchids,” he wrote to Sareh, who was basically his only friend on Tacoma.

If Natali reacts to the imminent tragedy by becoming even more hectic, searching frantically for a solution to their plight, and by sending lighthearted messages to her colleagues in an attempt to maintain some semblance of normality and keep their spirits up, one of the tabs left open in Andrew’s browser is about the life insurance Venturis offers, which displays not only his fatalism but also his concern for his family.

The private rooms of each crew member are also packed with narrative details. The doctor, Sareh, who always comes up talking to ODIN in the holograms – sometimes confiding secrets to him, sometimes questioning his degree of autonomy and sentience – has at her bedside an autobiography written by an AI.

These environmental elements build not only complex characters but also a fascinating dystopian universe, in which capitalism was subverted by great corporations that basically completed their metamorphosis into States, all thanks to their influence, power, and wealth. They have their own currencies, their own universities, their own forms of violent persuasion and control. It’s an oppressive future, in which a person works for a company in order to be able to pay, with that company’s money, the tuition for that company’s university in the hopes that their child, in the future, can work for the very same company. The characters are trapped in the Tacoma station, but also in that society by their contracts with Venturis, trying without much success to escape the clutches of their employers.

Tacoma‘s story works well with this premise, discussing, for example, how the fact that capitalism puts money as the ultimate goal ends up making basic human empathy a luxury to be enjoyed only when it is profitable to do so. In the scene where they question if Venturis will do anything to save them, the leader, Evelyn, explains the sad truth to her crew, being very direct about the reasons why they’re on their own: “If it doesn’t make dollars, it doesn’t make sense.”

In the game’s universe, the political power of mega-corporations has become so great that they can openly become the true legislators of the modern society, which frames the existence of unions as a last line of defense against the exploitation of labor. In Tacoma, modern society is a place without a true democracy. After all, the common people are, at best, a tool for those that in fact function as the origin and legitimization of the political power of the State and, at worst, an inconvenient obstacle that can be easily overcome. It’s not a surprise, then, to see unions appearing as symbols of resistance: as the characters’ own journey will show, the only defense against an oppressive employer is precisely the union between employees. Competitiveness is reinforced by a company’s culture precisely to help dilapidate the forces that can pose a threat to the exploitation of labor.

The narrative, therefore, not only villainizes companies but also imbues them with immeasurable power – the Venturis’ CEO, for example, is considered a god in a magazine that can be found in the station – treating them as a merciless enemy devoid of humanity. These discussions work because they don’t remain in the background, but are instead tied to the main plot, shaping the personal conflicts of the characters and dictating the twists and turns of the story.

The atmosphere of suspense surrounding the events in the space station is also built by the mystery about the artificial intelligence called ODIN. With a sinister avatar that resembles an upside-down Illuminati pyramid with an eye at the center, and an opposite tone of voice, which is always calm and gentle, ODIN is an ambivalent figure: on the one side, he can appear oppressive, with his omnipresence allowing him to be everywhere at once, mixing tasks of disparate tones: ODIN may be doing a bureaucratic duty in one room, recording a monthly report from Evelyn, while, on another, a crewman dictates to him a farewell letter to his family. On the other side, the AI can also appear to be empathetic and kind, helping Sareh out of her panic attack, for example, and even asking how she is feeling near the end, as if it really cares about her fate. As Venturis blocks access to ODIN’s code, his participation in the events immediately becomes a suspicion, leading the player to analyze the ambiguities of his comments in search of something revealing.

Unlike Fullbright’s previous title, Gone Home, Tacoma’s narrative also doesn’t contain red herrings, with all the elements introduced indeed being put to use. The main problem of the game lies elsewhere. The character that the player controls is Amy and she is a blank page throughout the whole story. This would have made her a perfect avatar for the player, but this connection is severed by a last-minute twist that decides to suddenly acknowledge her as a proper character. This shift is jarring, to say the least, and so ends up hampering an otherwise great story.

Even so, Tacoma is an imaginative title that manages to transform the audio diary format into something refreshing and engaging – instead of treating it as a mere tool for worldbuilding. It’s a shame, therefore, to attest that the perspective through which we see the game’s fascinating world is not nearly as fascinating as that world itself.

Review originally published in Portuguese on May 26, 2018.

October 29, 2020.