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 this game was over-hyped when it first came out, and when I played it, 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.
You start, and find that 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 here and there, and although this game is narrated, it doesn’t give you everything through dialogue. A lot of context is given via optional audio logs/emails found on computers and tablets. You could easily walk past these. It is a bit tedious and ruins the pacing a bit, but definitely make time for them as you get a lot more context this way.

When it comes to the story ultimately I think it's thought-provoking, but could have been presented better by the characters. Our main characters are TOM the AI and Ava the human.

TOM is a thoroughly programmed AI 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 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 logically might. He also responds in ways you could believe a machine that doesn’t understand the intricacies of human emotion would.

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 counterpart to this story. Ava seems to know nothing. Almost everything said to her she responds with a bewildered question. One of which was something along the lines of “Why are we here?”; Are you telling me this astronaut who trained to be here, 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. 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 asked 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 its moments, but there is also a stop/starting which made the game less enjoyable for me. The characters speak bit by bit, and conversations span over several puzzles. You walk into a puzzle, a few lines are exchanged, 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, it makes it difficult to follow the conversation. 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 it how it is, you may 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 rogue” thing but this is the opposite for once. TOM is the ideal logical & 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?
I put being rational and reasonable in high regard, and struggle to think of a situation in which the logical thing wouldn’t also be the right thing, 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…

The way this game ends is also quite unique and unpredictable.
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, 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 its downfalls, I think this game is definitely worth trying.

Achievements: Included
This is a really easy 100%, as you just need to complete the game and a bonus puzzle in each chapter.

For more reviews of first-person puzzle games, check out my curator page The Best: First-Person Puzzle Games

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.