#I am alsto high so that does not help

[zahai]

As someone who knows nothing about ai: the somnium files: what are your favorite things about ai: the somnium files? (the more you elaborate the better (<-said kicking my feet holding my head in my hands (i love hearing about people's favorire things)))

Oh my goodness me, a chance to ramble about one of my favorite games? How ever will I cope with such a situation??? I suppose... I must... Ramble!

And then I took that very literally and rambled a whole lot. I've put everything under a read more because this is just nonstop stream-of-consciousness and I'm mostly unapologetic. Enjoy!

Firstly, and really I do mean firstly, the ARG that launched with the game announcement! I've had a small interest in ARGs for the last ten or so years. Never anything relevant, weirdly enough (somehow I managed to completely dodge Gravity Falls until well after both its series AND post-series ARG had concluded), but having a new game by one of my favorite directors launch with him introducing us to his new virtual idol who he cared for deeply? Yeah I was hooked. A-Set, Uchikoshi's Virtual Star of the Internet, was a charmer. I found her annoying at first, but her weekly vlogs were a wonderful way to introduce us the players to some of the locations and cast members. There was also a twitter component where A-Set would interact with her in-world self-acclaimed Biggest Fan - Ota Matsushita - and real-world game director - Kotaro Uchikoshi - freely. I didn't and still don't have an account on that website, so I relied mostly on updates fed via discord bot for that.

This ARG was... Fascinating. I honestly highly recommend checking out, at the very least, A-Set's youtube channel. It barely scratches the surface of just how wacky things became (three additional characters eventually began participating in the ARG on twitter - Japanese A-Set, Japanese Ota Matsushita, and Japanese Kotaro Uchikoshi - only one of whom was really relevant in the end but they sure did make things confusing for a bit), but it covers more than enough to be intriguing on its own. And honestly? It made A-Set a more interesting character for me to consider on all of the routes I spent not hanging out with her.

Routes? That's right, this game has different endings! A handful of main endings, a couple of joke endings, a few bad ends scattered here and there. And it's pretty easy to figure out what route you're on because this game is.... A visual novel! Fully voice acted! Yeah I spent all that time up there rambling about an ARG that a majority of players didn't know about, didn't care about, or came too late to participate in, and only now am I actually going to tell you what kind of game Ai: The Somnium Files even is!

AITSF is a fully voice acted visual novel with multiple endings, starring not A-Set because she's too busy being a teenage internet idol, where you play as Horny Idiot Special Agent Kaname Date. The horny is important - trust me. Date's not alone out on the streets of Japan though, he's got a partner with him at all times who goes by the name of Aiba. I would say she's the brains to his foolishness, but we've all begun to realize the failings of AI and oh yeah! I should probably let you in on that little tidbit too, huh? Aiba, short for Ai-Ball, is an artificial intelligence housed inside of Date's left eye socket who has been his false eye and as his partner for the last five years. Sometimes she looks like a gelatinous hamster. I want. To hold her. So badly. So badly... ;-; I will never know the satisfaction of holding my own treasured eye in the palm of my hand, seeing myself reflected through an eye that is and is not my own, I will never feel her tiny little hamster feet trod across the palms of my hands as she lists off all the bugs she saw that day with her little cheers I will never be able to fail resisting the compulsion to put her in my mouth and swallow and thank everything for that because sometimes that gummy bear looks tasty even though she is literally the color of water and I wish I could tell you what it is but the best I can give you is a shrug and maybe a nickel.

So Date and his eye, Aiba, now that we finally have main characters for this game, are introduced to Problems almost faster than we are introduced to the characters themselves in-game. We've got a corpse on our hands (okay well actually it's in the saddle of a busted-down merry-go-round horse) and it's missing a left eye, and our Boss is looking none-too-pleased to be tromping around in the mud in her heels. From there, I'm sure you can imagine what Date's role is for the rest of this game. Find out who killed this woman, and figure out why everyone's so cagey about that case six years ago that this one is apparently so similar to.

We've got a job now, yay! How do we do it though, other than clicking on every single thing you can see on screen until every character runs out of dialogue, then panning the camera over six inches and repeating the process? There's also the generic "drive to X location" travel option, but neither dialogue decisions or travel choices impact how the story unfolds. That depends entirely on how you handle certain gameplay sections called Psyncs.

I hesitate on what to call psyncs other than what they are. It's not an interrogation, not in a traditional sense. Special Agent Kaname Date is a member of the Advanced Brain Investigation Squad of the Metropolitan Police Department. Members of ABIS use the psync machine to peer into the dreaming minds of people they're investigating in order to advance their investigations. Not great, but honestly probably one of the more ethical settings Uchikoshi has made up. I'm going to level with you - the insanely unethical bullshit that SHOULD NOT fly is most of the reason I come to Uchi games. They're fucking bizarre and there's NO way people signed off on it, and yet somehow????

During normal world investigation and interaction, Date takes the lead. He's got the bigger body of the Date-Aiba duo, and also the advantage of not being Some Annoying Blond Guy's Eye. Aiba will chime in whenever Date is too pervy, too annoying, or A BUG!!!! appears, and will also scatter in commentary to Date while he talks or looks about. During a Psync, this flips completely. Aiba's got herself a snazzy little Human Look, and everyone immediately dubbed her A Shrimp. A Shrimp Wife Who Has My Heart. I would die for her in any form. I love my hamster shrimp wife with glowing hair and a wig that I want to make some day I love her silly puns I lvoe her stupid faces I love how she teases I think it's so funny that she's decided to fuck with Date as part of her job I love how much she cares I lovve her I lvoe her so much she's everything and I would blow myself up for her no questions asked

sorry

anyways. Psyncing. Unethical, but fun! Aiba gets to explore and Date hangs back and plays the chatterbox role this time. For the most part. Aiba has six minutes to run around in whoever's brain, except not actually! Thanks to ABIS's tech guy, Pewter, time only passes normally while you're moving around. As long as you're standing still, time passes at a much, much slower rate. Psyncs are a dive into someone's dreams and psyche, so a wonderful way for a player to look at what makes a character tick. The choices you make in them decide how the story unwinds, and oh my goodness can it unwind. Before the game launched, back when all we had was the ARG's version of Ota (which actually is no different from how he is in game just so you know), I didn't like him. I didn't like him for my first several hours. I full-on sobbed at his ending because of just how HARD it went. And then I went to my next path thinking that surely this one wouldn't make me cry nearly as hard now that I'd gotten it all out early on the worst character, right?

I don't remember how many times I cried over this game and its characters. I'm tearing up now, just thinking of one of my favorite psyncs, one of my favorite somniums. and Now I'm realizing I never chained that final dot. Oops. You're Psynching into their Somnium. That's all. Sorry I forgot, I really didn't mean to. Anyways. The somniums get more and more complex the further in you get, and there were some that I replayed five or six times before I finally cracked them. They still feel good to go back and replay, actually! The complexity is just deep enough between wandering around investigating things, and figuring out how to wander around and investigate them again, but DIFFERENTLY. Because the choices you make set what path the investigation takes, with different paths revealing different clues.

Wonder what that's about.

I think I've just gone and summed up everything but the OST at this point instead of telling you what parts are my favorite. Truth be told? I love it all. Even the music. There's a lot of that, but I'm going to force myself to wrap this post up before the two hour mark even if it kills me and quite honestly there are a few tracks in there that have me tearing up just thinking about them. I'm also tireed of tearing up when I don't even have the game on.

I. I love the game's story. Not all of them, I don't really love any of the endings where Date winds up shot, but I love the big stories and the small. I love the depth and complexity to each individual ending, the way each one can hit differently once you've spent enough time turning them over, and the amount of care the charactters express through the game. They care about each other. Yes in found family no in found family say what you will but the connections between all the individual characters is just chef's kiss perfection. Every time I go back and replay aitsf I go down certain paths first because I care about their stories most. And I still cry.

If you read all this - holy shit. Thakls. I didn't make my deadline ): that's okay though, because I had fun. I'm gonna replay my game. I can't wait

BTW it's got a free demo and is available on pc, switch, ps4, and xboxone(I think? Idk how microsoft does their. naming)~