Kotaro Uchikoshi
From Spike Chunsoft and Kotaro Uchikoshi - the director of Zero Escape, we have the upcoming game of AI: The Somnium Files. It is a new mystery puzzle-adventure game. This game has all the stuff that you want from interrogations, investigations, serial murders, and many twists.
I am not surprise that AI: The Somnium Files takes on the grotesque and bizarre factors, you can see more of that in the below trailer. From the trailer, we have got a glimpse into all the action and a taste of the early gameplay. Seems like it in the same vein with other works of Uchikoshi but with its unique flair.
The 999 - Nine Doors, Nine Persons, Nine Hours, Zero Time Dilemma, Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward is together made a trilogy of mind-bending experiences around solving a puzzle. Uchikoshi has stopped from making twisted escape the room in his previous games in this game he put the hat of a detective onto you.
Uchikoshi said to us that "What I had in mind is that I wanted to make this for adventure game fans around the world, including investigations into a separate dream world," and "I can't go into details right now, but as an adventure game, you want to expand as much as you can so everybody can have fun. Everyone knows what an adventure game is like, but in 2019 I wanted to make that a little fresher."
The DNA of AI: The Somnium Files
This new game shares some similarities with Suda51's The Silver Case and Quantic Dream's Heavy Rain both have thematic twists. Some other influences for AI are Life Is Strange and The Walking Dead pointed out by Okada. However, we can track a lot of AI's DNA back to the famous title Zero Escape. For example, just like in Zero Escape in this game your main objectives is to investigate many mysteries from 1st person perspective, in the role of Kaname Date.
With the hat of Date, you will go chat around the neighborhood and explore the surroundings. Kaname Date also has an Aiba ( cybernetic eyeball) - which helo him in solving crimes. It also capable of bringing Date to an alternate dimension to look for shreds of evidence, explore the thoughts of other characters and find a way to unlock the secrets. This feature is kinda similar to Phantom Thieves in Persona 5.
Your Aiba also has an anthropomorphization effect, which allows you to roam around in a transformed version in the crime scene as a third-person point of view. The things are that you only have a very short time to use in this dimension, and interacting with an important object will also shorten your time fund. The game offers you a main a changing narrative with many paths control by your actions and decisions.
Balancing the difficulty level
Okada also told me their approach to balancing the difficulty level in an adventure narrative-based game. He said, "In general you would play more and more of the game, doing puzzles, and that was the challenging part, for me as well, playing a ton of puzzles and trying to balance the levels together,". He also responded "But in general, playing the game multiple times will help the player out, help understand the puzzles." and, "We think a lot about accessibility, options for difficulty, options for games that aren't entirely story based. So I think that's still a big concern."
Iris Sagan
AI: The Somnium Files has one major driving force, it is its heavy narrative. Moreover, in that sector, there was that lead-up to the game back in 2018. So during Anime Expo 2018, Uchikoshi has revealed his next project - AI. In that event, he also hosts some panel to talk about design philosophies. Then they started to do promotion for the game with Iris Sagan, and pop start and an in-universe influencer. She flew into the real world with music videos, songs, and fan interactions.
However, not long after that, the fans notice the YouTube videos of Iris are corrupted with subliminal messages. They also posted a few creepy videos a few weeks ago. There is one that has only footage of her house without any trace of the owner, and there is also a video of a polar bear who wants to chop her head off with a saw blade. After that, they only posted two more videos about the game and her comments on Uchikoshi and the lore of the game. While in the trailer we see her crying to ask Date for help while she is on the verge of death.
Kaname Date
Too much focus on Iris already I think. We should pay attention to other characters as well - especially our main protagonist Date. We don't have much information about him yet. The only thing we could tell at this moment is that he is an employee of Tokyo MPD and six years prior he has lost his memory.
I have also asked the developers about the way they create characters and what I could waiting for from cast of the game. Uchikoshi responded to me"First of all, the care and balance of personalities is very important to me. So the character types don't double up. If we have a sad person, we don't want another sad person. And the game is based on a murder mystery, so we kind of want you to try to figure out who these characters are, while everyone's working together."
So I couldn't get much information about other characters in the cast, however, one thing that I discovered that the major appeal is character design. However, Spike Chunsoft has employed Yusuke Kozaki a real talent when it comes to design ( he is very well known for his works on Pokemon Go, Fire Emblem and No More Heroes). On this topic, Okada has said "I think since the illustration and art are visually attractive, during the whole game, while you're playing, it'll draw you to the story also. Looking at the characters, that's how I started getting hooked. The visuals would get you first, then the mysteries will get you to keep on playing."
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