The best science fiction doesn’t just follow green people in space with pew-pew laser guns, it burrows under the skin and challenges the way we see humanity in relation to the sciences: technology, biology, and the like. And sometimes it still has pew-pew laser guns. The first episode of The Fall was one of these stories, using adventure game puzzles as a mind-bending framework for exploring themes of AI and consciousness. As a side-scrolling exploration adventure in a long abandoned AI testing facility, it was creepy, smart, and easy to pick up. The Fall Part 2: Unbound, builds on the ideas of the first, but this time, your AI isn’t tied to one robot body. By inhabiting multiple robots with different personalities and purposes, the puzzles and combat have more variety (and morbid human corpse humor) than before.
During my short demo (which you can watch below) I inhabited a soldier AI and fought off a horde of faceless drones in a simple, satisfying rhythm combat game, and I convinced a butler bot that his employers were, in fact, very, very dead. As the middle part of a planned trilogy, Unbound is shaping up nicely, and as far as I can tell, it’s bound to impress.
