Nightmares and Electric Sheep

Most people are familiar with Blade Runner, and a good deal fewer are familiar with Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep; neither of which have anything to do with this game at all, except that they both set the tone for what we’re getting into here. I’m not going to review the game, beyond saying that if you enjoyed either the book or the movie, you’re probably going to enjoy this game. Observer mixes elements of both Blade Runner (1984) and Ghost In The Shell (1995) into a cyberpunk horror story that has you questioning reality itself, as you explore the dreams and subconscious minds throughout the story. A lot the themes in Observer are familiar; transcendentalism, augmentation, and the meaning of humanity are mainstays of the Deus Ex-series of games, and are core aspects of Transmetropolitan, the comic by Warren Ellis. (If you haven’t read it, I suggest doing so as soon as possible.)

[Spoiler Warning]

Observer

Daniel Lazarski -voiced by the legendary Rutger Hauer, by the way- is a widower, a father, and an Observer. All aspects of his character that leave him both miserable and open for nightmares as he begins to lose his grasp on reality. Observers are mind-hackers: cops who enter the subconscious mind of the insane and the suspect. His wife died years ago, refusing to undergo augmentation treatment which could have increased her chances of survival. Daniel heavily influenced her decision, at least as far as Adam, his son, sees things, and this began to deteriorate the relationship between father and son.

This turned even worse when Daniel got wounded and had to undergo augmentation as to not leave his son an orphan, something his son sees as a hypocrisy that could have let his mother survive. Is Daniel a hypocrite or did he sacrifice his ideals for the sake of his son? Daniel himself sees it one way, while Adam sees the other way.

The game starts with Daniel waking up in his car, answering a call from dispatch, setting the scene and providing some background information. Abruptly, a mysterious call from Adam, his estranged son, sets things into motion, and soon Daniel heads to an apartment building in the slums to investigate, and to hopefully find Daniel’s son.

Observer might seem like a neo-noir mystery thriller, but at its heart it is the story of the wounds between a father and son, and the story of a father desperate to save his son.

The Maltese Head

When reaching the apartment where the call came from, we discover a headless body, with all signs pointing to it being Adam. Daniel refuses to admit so and hopefully, no, desperately carries on the investigation to find his son. The fact that the body has been dead since before the phone call being the sole evidence he bases Adam’s survival on, and I’ll admit; it’s a solid one.

The apartment is rented out under a pseudonym, but clearly belongs to Adam, scattered with personal artifacts as it is; there is an old family photo, and an ID-card that shows Adam was working as a researcher for the Chiron Corporation, a massive mega-conglomerate who has, for all practical purposes, has replaced the government, who also run the Observers. There is an antique physical edition of George Orwell’s 1984, which seems out of place to Daniel, but has significance for Adam. It all shows that Adam is a stranger to his father, but it also shows that his father desperately wants to help his son and that there is paternal love there.

Adam has come here on the run from Chiron Inc. and taken up with some of the seedier elements that he happened upon here. Jack; a disgraced cyber-doctor, now working as a tattoo artist, and Helena; a young female acquaintance of the doctor are both involved with him, and they are both, along with Helena’s husband, gruesomely murdered.

We learn that Adam had made use of Jack and Helena to infiltrate Chiron Inc. to get back the research he had to abandon when he went on the run, and soon after it seems that they all became hunted by a cybernetic monster sent by Chiron Inc. that one after another murder them all. But all is not as it seems. The monster is Adam; not the cybernetically enhanced Victor, whose body dysphoria has made him turn his body into a werewolf facsimilia. That is the point of the game; the monster is not obvious. Adam is willing to sacrifice both those who have worked with him and his father in order to achieve his goal. To a certain degree, he even sacrifices himself.

Adam hates and blames his father for the loss of his mother. And this loss has sent him into research concerning human consciousness and the uploading of said consciousness to the Net (we get a not so subtle hint of this early on when we look through Adam’s library in his apartment), with such a fervor that he his actions has become very ethically questionable. Daniel continues to bemoan what his son has gotten himself into, yet it soon becomes clear that it is Adam that is the driving factor behind everything. He is the one that got this motley band of misfits, that now lie dead, together in order to get back his research; he is the one that orchestrated the whole miserable affair and used everyone, including his father. The signs are there, but Daniel refuses to see them, desperate as he is to rescue his son.

The twist of the game is that Adam has been dead since before the game started –a suicide by proxy- and has uploaded his consciousness onto the Net, and it has been this “AI-Adam” that has been communicating with us. Is it Adam? Is it merely a piece of sophisticated software that either thinks it is Adam or is programmed to say it is Adam? That is for us to interpret, the game gives us no definitive answer.

 

Body Horror

All of this tie into one of the core questions posed by the game: are you still human when you’ve replaced your leg with a prosthetic that allows you to walk as normal? Most people will say yes. But what about when replace both your legs and your arms to be able to climb better than a chimpanzee? Or when you have augmented your eyes to see in the infrared specter? When you’ve augmented your brain so that you can upload your consciousness to the Net? What does it mean to be human in the technological age?

Our connection and relationship with our bodies, our flesh, has always been a strange one, especially as technology has begun to allow us to enhance or alter what we know a human body to be. The thought that our bodies are not our own is unsettling; to what extent the body influences the shape of the mind is something humanity has often wondered. Is it the same case as when water takes the shape of the bottle? Will changing the body change the mind? And on that note; what are the limits for what can be called human? If an AI is indistinguishable from a human being, is it human?

Most of the characters you meet in Observer are, at the very least, connected to the Net, while others have more invasive and cruder augmentations. Cheap and utilitarian modifications that work, but which leave you looking non-human and twisted. Deus Ex comments upon the same issues from a socio-economical viewpoint, while Observer on the other hand looks upon it and sees it as horror. Both in the sense that you look down upon these characters and see them as less, as something disgusting; and in the sense that they are something other, something foreign that you cannot understand or make sense of. Something to be terrified by, especially when you’re constantly reminded that it could be you.

Reality Dysfunction

Reality breaks down more and more as we jack into the minds of the murder victims, and journey through their decaying sub-consciousness looking for answers. Both we -as the player- and Daniel lose our grip on what is real and what is not. While the game is straight forward at the start, our experience of the game becomes spotty and filled with disorienting holes towards the end. We lose control, and we lose recollection of what we have done. In short; the game is messing with us. Adam is messing with us. It is beyond what we’ve come to expect in the sections where we’ve mindjacked into the murder victims; Daniel’s sub-consciousness is bleeding out into reality, and even what we’ve learned to expect from the previous mindjacks no longer matter.

It makes us question everything, and it does so strategically. As we lose our grip on reality, Adam makes his way into our mind and takes more and more control. In the end, when Adam has pulled our strings and gotten us where he wants us, we get the choice between accepting Adam and letting him into Daniel’s mind; or to deny him, which makes him evict Daniel from his body and place him in the janitorial robot. If you accept him, Adam/Daniel leave the apartment complex; if you deny him, you mindjack into the landlord’s body and Daniel tries to kill AI-Adam as he is about to leave, before being killed by the police.

The victims and the other inhabitants of the apartment complex are immaterial by this point; the story has come to be solely about a father and his son, and about what it means to be human. The metaphors and visions we experience in both the mindjacks and as reality deteriorates, show the dangers of technology and ask us if we’re ready to explore these themes and the potential consequences they have for humanity.

Victor and Adam are two sides of the same coin; both suffer from deteriorating relationships with their fathers, and both use technology to change what they are. Victor is the human monster, which shows that no matter how much we change, we stay the same; while Adam is the monster human, that show how change can make us inhuman. We can relate and feel with Victor, for he is essentially human, while Adam is a terrifying uncanny valley-like entity.

The End

I love this game, truth be told. It infers more than it shows, and it relies heavily on suspense to produce its horror. There is a love for the craft here, and an understanding about what makes this kind of story work. It keeps you on your toes and let your savor the experience, rather than throwing more and more at you in a torrent of shock and awe.

It is rare to experience a game, especially a horror game, to forgo the chance for blood, guts and action, in order to let a story about the relationship between a father and son play out. It is even rarer to experience a game that manages to let this stand in the center light, but still manages to tie it into the other themes of the game at large.

Every part of the game is woven together with these central themes, of what it means to be human and human relationships, especially the side stories that you happen upon while exploring.  The most memorable aspect of the game for me would be a casual conversation through a door, with what Daniel soon realizes is a sexbot, where the conversation goes like this when Daniel is about to leave:

D: I’d say goodbye, but I guess there’s no point.
S: Yeah, cause that would humanize me.
D: …what did you say?
S: Please, feel free to use me. (intercom beeps)

 

*Still a literate bastard*