look. i know people love this game ... i'd heard good things, i wanted to love it too ... i'm sure it's really cool how the story unfolds & secrets unveil themselves & such ... but i just fucking hated this. i couldn't finish it. i'm sorry.

my tolerance for misogyny in media varies ( you may be surprised to hear how much i liked metal gear solid ) and i am generally willing to give stories the time of day despite it, but ... i couldn't do it here. i gave AI: the somnium files a good, solid shot: for four hours, i nodded & smiled as the main character of this game barely contained his lust at the sight of every female character on screen -- including a character who is assumed to be underage, but excluding an "old" woman ( whose design is curiously stylistically dissonant with the rest of the cast so far ) -- until i decided i'd seen enough & put it down.

please understand: i don't care if characters are horny or if a story is driven by sexuality; what i do care about is presentation & intention. because as much as people argue over concepts like "death of the author" and the idea that fiction exists in a vacuum ( which is another topic entirely ), the truth of the matter is that every piece of media is informed by the person or people who made it, and their values will come through their works whether they want them to or not.

like of course the somnium files crew was interested in more than just Women Sexy; of course they had other values when making this game. but genuinely 50% of the internal dialogue here was actual sleuth work ( this is ostensibly a mystery game ) while the remaining 50% was fantasizing every woman our player character met was a tantalizing sexual prospect; and in fact, the nail in the coffin for me was during a segment where he repeatedly just refers to an unnamed secretary as "boobs" in his head -- which was so on the nose, if i wasn't so annoyed by the rest of the game's treatment of its supporting cast, i would have thought it was hurdling towards parody.

and maybe it was, honestly. i didn't get far enough in the game to know where things were going. but in the time that i gave it, the somnium files failed to suggest to me in any way that its treatment of its women was anything but sincere, and i decided i didn't care enough to keep trying & find out what else it had to say. if it is not already obvious, i find it very difficult to engage with a work or take it seriously when it consistently regards its own cast in such a demeaning way.

i'll say here at the end, though -- i do think the art style for this game is nice. and the concept of an amnesiac detective in a sci-fi setting is good. i just really can't get over how ridiculously the women were presented. they all clearly have arcs & personalities ... it's just everything feels so hollow through the perspective of our oppressively horny male protag.