Good writing in gaming is certainly challenging, mostly since trying too hard makes you come off as artsy, while trying too little makes you come off as lazy. The line between those or being a legitimately good experience is a narrow one, and the tipping point is debatable depending on who you ask. While story isn’t something I tend to always hang my hat on when it comes to the purchase or value of a game, someone else may have a terrible time if there’s no enriched tale or characters to get behind. Fullbright’s other game Gone Home surprised me in how much I enjoyed it, and I was hesitant on picking up Tacoma because of that very reason; sequel lightning doesn’t always strike twice. Much to my joy, not only was Fullbright able to deliver on another (mostly) well written experience, they expanded upon the previous investigative gimmick with some neat new additions.
Tacoma is a story walker (not a walking simulator, a term I reserve for badly written games) that has the player take the role of Amitjfoti Ferrier (Amy for short) who is contracted to investigate what happened to the abandoned titular Tacoma station. Akin to Gone Home, the player character doesn’t have direct or major impact to the investigation itself since clues, plot elements and red herrings don’t change the ending, but it does give canonical reason as to why Amy would poke her nose in just about everything around the station. What does matter is the past recordings of the long-since vanished crew of the station that can be found in specific places, and downloading them will allow Amy to view a playback of the scene. Each crew member is represented by a cyber humanoid shape along with a color and a icon for their role; Sareh the doctor is blue and has a medical cross for example. While it’s jarring at first to listen and watch cyber echoes chitchat and socialize, I had the uncanny thing happen with my interpretation of these scenes where the longer I played, the less I saw said echoes and could instead imagine each crew member in the flesh - A majority of that belief suspension being due to the voice actors’ performances which is solid across the board, though I wished for more emotion and tension during the later acts of the story when the stakes started to rise.
Clues are peppered about the ship, character quarters and data logs to give you further understanding of who the crew is and what makes them tick - In positive and negative ways. What’s more is that you could miss out on finding character traits or plot points and be completely in the dark about the how’s and why’s. The only reason to go digging is for the sake of completion or curiosity, both of which I personally desired in spades once I figured out skeletons were in closets and quirks were needing unravelling. This leaves things up the player for how much (or little) they want to investigate; you can blitz each area, download the required information to satisfy Amy’s job while ignoring everything else and rush the ending, but while I’m one to avoid dictating how a game should be played, this would effectively defeat the game’s purpose. While tracking down each crew member or finding out when you can access their pop-up personal logs isn’t hard to do (thanks to a handy timeline you can scrub through), it can interesting to see what different characters are up to at the same time, even if they’re having a conversation on another side of the room you can’t hear but can see.
Among my issues with Tacoma is that for a story based game, some of the characters are rather weak. Though one could argue this as personal opinion, the fact most of my least liked cast members take their leave part way in the story is too comical to be called a coincidence. There’s still plenty of spoken and well performed dialogue to take in by the remaining cast, so at best the weaker faces step aside to let the more developed ones take forefront. I dare say the story benefits from these decisions more than it takes away, since I at first made assumptions that characters were leaving due to time and budget cuts with the script. My other disappointment was when Tacoma ended; it took me just around three hours to complete (including plenty of investigating), so it coming to a close was an indication of me wanting to know more about these people. While the story has an overarching conflict that the cast is caught under, there’s less focus on a resolution and more on the characters themselves. This ties into my previous gripe regarding the voice acting and how the tension felt by the cast isn’t all that noticeable, or at least is muted in most cases. Certainly the dialogue expresses their concerns, worried and fears, but everyone comes off as defeatist or cynical in their tones.
Story, self-paced exploration, reading and listening; ‘excitement’ isn’t a word in Tacoma’s dictionary, but if these items are up your alley, then Tacoma is a strong recommendation from me. The follies of ‘agenda pushing’ are nowhere to be found, and while I didn’t have as much of a personal takeaway as I did with Gone Home, I came away from Tacoma satisfied with my brief time spent with it. I played through it in one sitting, and I would suggest doing the same if you can set aside a quiet evening and devote a few hours to poking around a space station.