Welcome aboard the Tacoma
The Fullbright Company, known for being the creators of Gone Home and having previously been part of 2K Marin where they devised “Minerva’s Den”, an original expansion for Bioshock 2, now brings us a new narrative experience very similar to its fir
st title although with novelties and a much greater amplitude. 4 years have passed since 2013 when Gone Home saw the light, a purely narrative gam
e in which we accompanied Katie back to her family home to find the reason that drove the family to move and leave the house, discovering a beautiful story .
Tacoma proposes a system very similar to the one seen in the company’s previous game: to walk through a space where, through interaction with different objects, we end up spinning and discovering a story. Still, this time have introduced new mechanics and
more depth to the plot, to add more characters, a larger space and a new way of finding out what happened. The synopsis of Tacoma could be su
mmarized in that we are in the year 2088 and incarnated a specialist in Artificial Intelligence sent to a lunar space station(which shares name with the game) to find out what happened to the crew that inhabited it and get the core of the AI on board. For
this, we have a system of RA (Augmented Reality) that will allow us to see and hear various fragments of the last days of the crew, which were recorded by Odin, the aforementioned AI that controls the ship.
The game begins when our character, identified as Amy, converses with a nice AI named Minny to know the current state of the lunar Tacoma transfer station. It informs us that the crew has been evacuated and the AI system aboard is deactivated. As for the air s
upply: for one person it should be enough. We docked with our small ship and we entered the great Tacoma with
many questions in the head and the desire to explore every corner. In the next room we placed a kind of RA (Augmented Reality) chips and the first thing we experienced is the reception of the aforementioned Artificial Intelligence in charge of monito
ring the installation: ODIN (Operational Data Interface Network), represented by a reverse pyramid with a eye on each side. Yes, it could be considered ”
That is precisely the essence and importance of the plot of the game, in its characters: “EV” (the administrator), Clive (operations specialist), Natali (specialist in AI), Roberta (mechanical engineer), Sareh (doctor) and Andrew (botanist) each with a primary
role to ensure the proper functioning of the installation. We will know them through the recorded recordings and each of them will appear with a different color, as if it were a shadow. We can discover their faces and see them in flesh and blood through the photo
graphs and profile images they present, with a very realistic style. Even so, when we see them moving, they will only appear in the form of the mentioned shades of colors,
The system for reliving these recordings through RA is based on walking through each area of the Tacoma and reproducing the records, b
eing able to pause, go back and advance at any time, something useful since in large areas we will have up to three or four simultaneous conversations, so we will have to move from one to the other to find out every detail of what
was said among the crew members from all angles. In addition, we can explore freely and without limits each section of the ship to discover some secrets, codes of some closed doors and documents that will provide complementary and relevant
information to the plot. We can interact with virtually any object on board (even play basketball in zero gravity, a very interesting detail) and access the computers of the crew to read their mails and discover their particular stories. We are not presented w
ith puzzles or any complex system that makes us decide or act as players, just a story that has already happened and the tools to discover what happened.
This new system of exploration of several simultaneous story lines and the fact of presenting 7 characters (including ODIN and without telling ourselves) makes it stand above Gone Home in terms of depth of the plot and “complexity” in gameplay . In add
ition, the relationships between the crew and their very human and well-built profiles (in addition to the wide range of racial and sexual representation) will make Tacoma a very interesting narrative experience for lovers of the genre.
