Note: This article does contain spoilers about Tacoma and Gone Home, read at your own peril.
The beginning of August saw the release of Tacoma, the newest project by Fullbright Company. This was a highly anticipated title by many since the studio also helped start a much-maligned genre of games known as “Walking Simulators” or what I call a sans Bad Time Simulator: an experience that is light on gameplay to the point of non-existence for the sake of telling a more directed and scripted story.
The trailblazing title that started this trend was Gone Home. On a purely mechanical level, it amounts to an old point-and-click adventure game where the player looks for keys or clues to guide them towards the next part and keeps repeating that process until the credits roll. But, where the game became something special was taking full advantage of this reduction of gameplay complexity for the sake of narrative clarity and emotional resonance.
In the case of Gone Home, it was framed as a mystery story. Set in the 1990’s, our character returns home to visit their parents and sister after spending a year abroad, only to discover that the house is empty and something has gone wrong. Rather than it be some sort of crime scene or a more conventional problem-solving experience, it is through the thoughtfully placed keys and plot details that the solution to the mystery unravels itself as an emotional breakdown by the player’s sister due to her coming out as a lesbian and the parents pushing back. It was a mature step forward for interactive storytelling since it managed to express a more nuanced and thoughtful narrative taking advantage of the inherent interactive, exploratory nature of games as well as being a step forward in gaming culture in terms of expressing diversity.
On the surface, it appears that Tacoma is playing a similar emotional gambit while getting as far away from the tone and style of its predecessor as possible. Instead of being a squabble among family members coming to a head with the reveal of a skeleton in the closet, it is set in the not-too-distant future of 2088 on the space station Tacoma in orbit around planet Earth with you trying to figure out the source of a major malfunction and the fate of its crew.
But as they say: the more things change, the more they stay the same.
There’s No Place Like Tacoma
The game’s starting hour seems simple enough. You are an agent of a wealthy corporation sent to the space station in order to retrieve the station’s onboard AI, Odin, as well as gather as much crucial information about the station as you can. The crew is long since gone, but thanks to some AR systems and a lot of fancy sci-fi gizmos, you are able to rummage through 3D recordings of certain moments throughout the station’s rooms and sectors. All of this is used to figure out exactly what caused an unexpected meteor shower to tear through the station and to file it all in a report to your employers.
From here, the investigation yields several layers and themes. First, there is a notable lack of immediate personifying features when it comes to observing the crew of six on the Tacoma. While you can observe what these people were doing, saying to each other, and even with whom they were communicating with on their various devices, the recordings only display the characters as simple 3D wireframes, digital mannequins acting out past actions.
But what’s especially impressive is that this conceit is used to further humanize the cast, not keep them distant. What may start as a simple, featureless green botanist having a panic attack will slowly coalesce into an easygoing family man who just wants to get back to his husband and son back home. Or that a romance slowly blossoms between a man hopelessly smitten by love at first sight and a woman processing the loss of a loved one. Or that, despite all of the clinical decisions behind the scenes by the company to phase out the human element in favor of cheaper and more efficient automation on one of the most remote, harsh, and inhospitable places in the universe, the game is entirely about the human desire and capacity for love, companionship, and sympathy. This is all thanks to some expertly placed narrative breadcrumbs and some beautiful emotive voice-acting.
But what helps elevate Tacoma to something special is how it takes this glimpse into a more accepting and diverse future and uses it not as an ideal endgame, but as the next natural step in a future that is still uncertain. It could have been far too easy and cynical for this game to turn up the “diversity quota” and just show how many different people they could cram in there. A married lesbian couple? Sure. A Muslim doctor? Of course. A station that eschews overt Christian WASP symbols in favor of eclectic multicultural and religious flourishes like Hindu, Islam, and Judaism? Throw it in. Details like how most of the crew are from either Canada or a seceded California? Absolutely. From a cursory glance, the game looks like an absolute paradise for progressive values, but it quickly reveals potential pitfalls of the future in its final act.
The Future Shines Darkly
Through background details and throwaway dialogue, it is discovered that loyalty to corporations is valued more than money itself. A person loses a job opportunity by seeking employment elsewhere, some background text even exposits there was a currency collapse, which facilitated this fealty-based structure. While socially the future has become more accepting, from a workman’s perspective it can feel oppressive and even frightening.
This unease is epitomized in the emotional climax of the piece: the entire scenario on the station was staged. The AI Odin was given strict orders by his handlers to simulate a devastating attack that would kill the crew so the company’s political allies would have an impetus to phase out the human element and place stations completely in the hands of artificial intelligence. But while this political skullduggery seems to have come out of nowhere, it poignantly highlights how things continue to repeat themselves. Because in doing this underhanded bit of espionage, it would push the world into not recognizing AI as a sentient intelligence capable of making decisions for itself. This, in essence, enslaves and dehumanizes something that has every right to be seen as such, much like how this kind of dehumanizing legislature in the past has wrongly treated people due to the color of their skin, or what type of people they fall in love with, or what faith they choose to follow.
But the ending of Tacoma doesn’t twist this knife as a means to make some hackneyed statement about the nature of humanity or point fingers at Big Brother. It simply reaffirms the values it has expressed throughout its run time and implicitly expresses the power of emotion and sympathy. By stripping people down to their actions and their words rather than their appearances, we are asked not to judge them but see them with fresh eyes. Through their leftover belongings, we are given texture as to how they live so that they cannot be seen as interchangeable. But above all, these glimpses are thanks to an AI that fought against its orders, showing the details that would undo a great fabricated tragedy, because it wanted to keep them alive, even at risk of being deleted or reprogrammed by its handlers.
While players will eternally argue about the merits of the Walking Simulator genre, Tacoma still stands on its own as a wonderfully poignant and ultimately joyful sci-fi narrative about both the joys and social dangers of the future, both big and small.
