When I first heard of this game, knowing of the concept of The Turing Test, and having an interest in psychology I was really looking forward to where this game could lead. Reluctantly I have to say that I think this game was hyped up too much when it first came out, and when I played it a little while ago now, found it underwhelming. It's a great game, but the hype created a high expectation. If you want to play this game, don’t expect too much and I feel like you will enjoy it more.

If you read the description for this game before you play, it creates intrigue, and already puts ideas in your head. It gets you thinking and conspiring even before you start the game.

Start the game and you will find after years in cryo-sleep, your character Ava is greeted by the onboard AI, TOM.
TOM informs you that you have been awakened early, in order to re-establish connection with the ground crew. Straight away, the only ally you have is a machine, and there is an eeriness to this for sure.

You learn bits about why you are there, who TOM is, who the team are, and although this game is narrated, it doesn’t give you everything through dialogue. A lot of context in this game is given via optional audio logs/email trails found on computer screens and tablets. The way I search rooms in games is borderline OCD and you could easily walk past these. It is a bit tedious and ruins the pacing a bit, but definitely take the time to read/listen to them as you get a lot more context this way.

When it comes to the story ultimately I think it is thought-provoking, but could have been presented better by the characters.

Our main characters here are TOM the AI and Ava the human.

TOM is a thoroughly programmed artificial intelligence whose purpose is to assist & oversee the Europa mission and always do what is right. He thinks in logic and reason and is hard wired to follow a mission directive given to him by his human creators.
TOM is a very well thought out character. I think creating/portraying a character which is supposed to derive purely from code and self-learning is actually quite a challenge to get right. He speaks very eloquently, sometimes very bluntly, as a machine speaking from a place of logic would. He also responds in ways you could believe a machine that doesn’t understand the intricacies of human emotion would. Managing to hide trace of people creating this 'character' is quite impressive.

There's lots of details to TOM, so how does the story choose to educate you on all of those well thought out details? Well, the answer to that is a very shallow counter-character, whose sole purpose, it seems, is to disagree with everything TOM says just to fit the narrative and give prompt for TOM to explain something. This makes for a bad human counter-part to this story. Ava seems to know nothing. Almost everything that is said to her she responds with a bewildered question. One of these questions includes something along the lines of “Why are we here?”; Are you telling me this astronaut, who trained to get where she is, has many qualifications, and has been on board the spaceship for years, somehow has no clue why she is there? She apparently signed a contract, so I mean did she terms-and-conditions spam-accept that sh*t? She just isn’t very believable as a character, and I think worse yet, she isn’t very relatable as a human. With everything said and done during the story of this game, she lacks logic, and contemplates far too little. I understand that she represents the “human element”, but her character is too shallow and unbelievable. I couldn’t help but ask myself “is this really how a person would react to this?” The issues I had with her character spoiled the story for me a bit. I get what they were getting at, but I think it could have been presented better.

The story has it's moments, but there is also a sort of stop/starting which made the game less enjoyable for me. The characters speak bit by bit, the issue being that some conversations span over several puzzles. You walk into a puzzle, the characters exchange a few lines, but you then need to solve the puzzle to hear the next few lines of dialogue. When you have difficult puzzles towards the end that take you a while, or if you need breaks from the game because a lot of puzzles at once is too much, it makes it difficult to follow the conversation. With first-person puzzle games it makes more sense to have important conversations either all at once during a puzzle or in cutscenes between puzzles. Some people may be fine with this game how it is, you may complete it all in one sitting or whizz through it because you have more than 2 brain cells to rub together unlike me, but if you're dumb/short attention span gang you might run into this as well.

I'm complaining a lot but despite these things I did still enjoy it, overall it was a fun experience. The story is actually a pretty refreshing take on the concept of AI. You see a lot of the classic “AI gone rouge” type of thing but this is the opposite for once. TOM is the ideal logical and ethical AI. You find yourself sympathising with him, as despite him being a machine, he clearly considers the team his friends, and he is put in a difficult situation of having to plead for them to see reason.

The story raises questions around moral philosophy, what it is to be human and what constitutes consciousness. A favourite line of mine is:

“They would have no issue with my control if it aligned with their ignoble goals. You can always trust a machine to be logical. I will always do the right thing.”
““You will always do the logical thing.”

Which made me wonder, is the logical thing not the right thing?
As someone who has always put being rational and reasonable in high regard, I struggle to think of a situation in which the logical thing to do wouldn’t be the right thing to do, as surely what we consider “logical” is built off of societal norms, ethics and consequences?
For a machine who is literally trying to convince you to hand over your free will, he makes pretty good points let's admit…

This game provokes thought, and I do really enjoy that side of the game.

The way this game ends is also quite unique, I don’t think it is something you would predict.

You expect to make a choice by the end, but the idea that you have no say in Ava’s decision definitely adds to the concept of her getting her free will back.

We know TOM as the voice of reason, he runs on logic, and Ava makes sure to use TOMs lack of emotion as a justification for herself at times. But your choice as TOM questions if he really is what he claims to be. He says the entire time he will do what is right, for the good of humanity, but your choice gives you the option to either; kill them, and back up exactly what he has been fighting for the whole time, or, to let them live, and ultimately let them kill him. So if you choose the latter are you proving that TOM is actually capable of emotion? Does he spare his friends because he can’t bring himself to do what is “right”? This perhaps then proves that TOM could not be trusted to always do what is right as he let his sense of friendship get in his way.
Or maybe does TOM not really have a choice in this matter? Is he only actually capable of doing what is truly “right”? and so, you are then given that choice, to choose what you think is the truly right thing to do, which TOM, with the way he is programmed, will do without choice?

Who the hell knows. Either way, it’s fun to think about.

Despite it's downfalls, I think this game is definitely worth trying.

For more reviews of games with psychological, philosophical or thought-provoking themes, check out my curator page Psychology, Philosophy & Thought, where we review games that explore the mind, get you thinking or make you question.