Observation

Microsoft is currently offering three months of Game Pass Ultimate for 1€. Unfortunately I subscribed a day before that deal went live so I only got the previous deal which was one month for the price. But looking at how I've already beaten three games of the five (or six if/when EA Play is included in the service on the 15th) I wanted to play in less than two weeks, one month will be just plenty.

Unsatisfying scifi puzzle adventure

Observation is a perfect game to play on a service like the Game Pass: it's short, has no DLC, and barely any replay value; it won't matter much when you lose access to it when unsubscribing. It also has an unusual premise which makes it worth a try at least.

You play as an artificial intelligence called Systems Administration & Maintenance, or SAM for short (like in The Turing Test), monitoring Observation, a space station originally orbiting Earth but now somewhere else. Gameplay consists of eyeballing the station's modules via its many cameras, turning systems on and off, and solving puzzles. You even get to float around when you possess some sort of a probe orb.

Observation is maybe even to a surprising degree an on-the-rails experience. You're pretty much allowed to interact only with what is related to the current objective. No playing around other than maybe looking at documents for your collectibles collection. Sometimes the game even progresses regardless of your attempt to halt it, like by not authorizing a crew member, for instance. Quite often the game also takes control from you so that you don't miss a cutscene. It's clearly going for a cinematic experience. The horizontal black bars reinforce that impression.

Observation was developed by a Scottish studio No Code whose co-founder and this game's director Jon McKellan previously worked at Creative Assembly as the lead user interface designer on Alien: Isolation. And boy, does that show in Observation! All the game's puzzles have the same feeling as the various terminal interactions in Isolation. A lot of the time you have no idea what exactly is happening on them but you're still able to understand what the system wants you to do. I enjoyed that sense of familiarity.

McKellan wasn't even the only one in the team who had worked on Isolation. There were character and concept artists, as well as voice actors Kezia Burrows (likeness and motion capture of Amanda Ripley) and Anthony Howell (Samuels), who is SAM -- an excellent and fitting choice. I guess No Code is where a part of the disbanded Alien: Isolation crew went.

I hope No Code gets a bigger budget for their next title. And a better writer: Observation's narrative has no meat. It's a nonsensical scifi adventure that lacks interesting characters and a rewarding ending. This kind of low-on-gameplay title would really need those.

Observation runs on the Unity engine and looks pretty nice, very realistic. There is a good amount of options to set to your liking although no field of view slider. I would have preferred a wider FOV for when possessing the orb: I felt like I couldn't see enough around me. Space outside the station I found disappointing. There are so very few stars and the Sun is nowhere to be seen.

Edited 2020-12-19: Improved few sentences.