If you don't like staring at a screen like this for hours, you might want to stop reading right now.
Credit: Inkle
If you don't like staring at a screen like this for hours, you might want to stop reading right now.
Credit: Inkle
Although the catalog contains short excerpts from each of these discovered works, it is the additional notes added to each article by later researchers that place each title in its full context. You end up browsing through these research notes looking for clues about the existence and chronology of other authors and works. Picking out specific names and years points to the codes and titles needed to unlock even more reference pages in the computer, sending you further down the rabbit hole. Imagine something like that Her storybut replace the cinéma vérité surveillance video clips with a library card catalogue.
You will slowly begin to unravel and understand how the countless authors of the game world influence each other with their cross-pollinated writings. The treatises, novels, pamphlets, and journals discussed in this database are full of academic acumen, intellectual intrigue, and interpersonal blending across multiple generations of work. Ultimately, it's all about a long-term search for a metaphysical key to life itself, which most authors manage to approach, but never quite arrive at a full understanding.
Matching titles with reference codes is the most “gamey” part of the game.
Credit: Inkle
Matching titles with reference codes is the most “gamey” part of the game.
Credit: Inkle
As you investigate, you also begin to learn more about the personal affairs of the researchers who collected and cataloged all this reference material, and about the vaguely defined temporal capabilities of the information synthesis engine in the computer you all worked on. Eventually, you will stumble upon the existence of core commands that can unlock hidden parts of the computer or modify the vast research database itself, which becomes the key to your ultimate goal.
Through it all there is a slowly unfolding parallel story involving Liam, the invisible voice that guides you through the research process itself. Through occasional spoken segments, Liam eventually hints at the existence of a powerful and fast-advancing threat that wants to stop your progress by any means necessary, adding a bit of dramatic tension to your academic pursuits.
