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A soul-sucking parallel world | page 1, 2
And to top it all off, you can switch characters whenever you want -- essentially, as the game puts it, "transferring your soul into a new body." Besides Kay'l, a policeman who looks like he stepped straight out of a new wave band, there's Syao, a sexy jewel thief in a black cat-suit, and Plume, a fashion designer who wears some kind of hideous fur across her shoulders, plus a host of others. All across Omikron you'll meet metal-faced fighters, exotic dancers and playboys whose bodies you can snatch if you chant the correct spell. Omikron easily stands among the most engrossing and well-conceived virtual worlds that I've come across in a game. The creators have provided 3 CD-ROMs' worth of graphics and at least 50 hours of available gameplay, enough to kill your productivity for weeks. Not only is it artistically beautiful, it's mind-bogglingly detailed. Omikron is a huge futuristic city, very "Blade Runner"- It's also clear that the world of Omikron wasn't produced by the typical action-oriented gaming company; Quantic Dream is a group of Parisian artists and musicians, headed by David Cage, who came together specifically to create this game. They turned to Eidos Interactive, the British gaming company that brought us Tomb Raider, for design direction and support. For the soundtrack and additional character design, Quantic Dream snagged David Bowie. Bowie recorded hours of music for this game, writing eight full songs and 35 shorter pieces of ambient music. From the silly supermarket jingles to the plodding and ominous tunes that follow you through the streets of Anekbah, the soundtrack is evocative, perfect for the game's mood. The songs, although written for the game, also appear in modified version on Bowie's latest album, "Hours," which was released simultaneously with the game. Also Today The man who fell to mirth
Bowie also lends his appearance to two critical characters in Omikron -- giving the chameleon-like artist a chance to undergo not one, but two reinventions within one game. The first character is a "virtual" being named Boz whose soul is trapped inside the Omikron Internet (called Multiplan); he serves as the ethereal leader of a resistance group called the Awakened, which is fighting the totalitarian government. The other is a depressed-looking singer, clad in skin-tight tights and looking exactly like a young David Bowie, who heads up an underground band called the Dreamers. At several points in the game, you'll happen across their concerts, where you can sit for a few minutes and watch a digital Bowie lip-sync along to a real Bowie song. While the Dreamers sing about freedom and "angels of promise," the world of Omikron represents a grim vision of a potential totalitarian future. Buried within the game are commentaries on government control, religious brainwashing, advertising, sports and technology. News, as seen on the Transcan -- Omikron's version of a holographic television -- is riddled with spoofs of our contemporary society. But the ultimate conceit of Omikron is that it's not a game -- it's a real world, parallel to ours, that you are trapped in. "You mean Omikron isn't just a game?" you're forced to ask an evil policeman at one point in the game. "A game? Do I look like a game?" he responds. "Everything you see around you is real! Your computer is just a gateway to our world. Your body is still in your world, but your soul has been here ever since you agreed to occupy Kay'l's body. You think you're safe behind your computer screen; you better think again." This theme -- that the game isn't really a game -- comes up over and over again throughout the game, tying in with the plot. The lead singer of the Dreamers, for example, is apparently channeling music from your world, Earth (channeling, perhaps, Bowie himself?), and his herky-jerky dance style is a result of the physical pain of receiving those messages. It also seems that the video game is a ruse designed to lure innocuous gamers into Omikron, so that the meta-demon Astaroth can feed on fresh souls. At moments, this conceit seems stretched a bit thin -- a game that's not a game at all? Computers used to lure you into a netherworld from which you'll never return? Suspension of disbelief notwithstanding, it occasionally seems rather self-referential and far-fetched. Yet perhaps it's not so far-fetched after all. As those who've spent hours hunched over Quake or Myst or Everquest -- even Tetris -- can tell you, video games can certainly be soul-sucking creatures with the power to turn you into a twitchy, pasty-faced demon. "We'll trap your soul!" the creators of Omikron are winking at you. You might as well stop fighting it and start playing.
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