Tacoma

Tacoma explores an (awfully close) dystopian future, where our society is fully dominated by large corporations and is much worse because of it, by focusing on the crew of a space station in crisis. Transforming audio diaries into something new and refreshing, the title only slips up at the very end, when a single plot twist alters how we view the main character, but comes too late for it to matter.

Tacoma is a first-person adventure game in which we control Amy, a woman recently hired by the company Venturis to retrieve data from the abandoned Tacoma space station, alongside the AI that used to control it, called ODIN. Upon arriving at the station, however, Amy encounters several AR recordings, which show colored holograms of the crew doing their chores and discussing with each other, living their lives, and she realizes that they were recorded before the evacuation took place, and so can reveal what actually happened there.

The main mechanic involves the handling of these holographic recordings, which show the Tacoma crew working together or alone, in their more private moments. The recordings can be fast-forwarded, rewound, and even paused, making the holograms move and act accordingly in the room. Since the crew members are rarely all in the same place in a single room, rewinding the video is essential to observe everyone: while the network specialist Natali is talking to her wife in a room, and Doctor Sareh Hasmadi is talking to ODIN nearby, for example,  Commander Evelyn is in another room arguing with a colleague about their chances of survival.

The first recording we find shows the crew during a party, capturing the precise moment when the station is hit by meteors, and the oxygen supply becomes limited. Our role is basically that of a voyeur, visiting each installation to watch the holographic recordings in a non-linear fashion while trying to put together the ins and outs of what happened with the station and its crew.

The fact that their dialogues are transmitted by holograms works much better than a simple audio diary would because it makes the characters more tangible, allowing us to observe not only their words and intonation but also their body posture and gestures. Paradoxically, the holograms are also generic in their appearance, incapable of faithfully representing the crew. They capture only their shape, designating a specific color to each of them and a symbol for their job on the ship. In other words, the way the holograms represent the characters is ambivalent: they make the Tacoma crew feel more human and alive than a simple audio diary would be able to, but, at the same time, they also remove their facial features, dehumanizing them in the process.

The ability to control the hologram’s speed in an area further reinforces the voyeurism aspect of the narrative, since we won’t just be hearing those people speak without their consent, but will also be following them as they walk around the station, watching their every move intently, going back and forth. In other words, by turning audio diaries into holograms, Tacoma turns an action that was static and passive – that of a simple listener – into a dynamic and active one.

This also generates moments that play with perspective. Following Evelyn’s hologram in a certain scene, for example, allows us to witness a brief conversation with Sareh, viewing it as a common, ordinary event, without paying special attention to it. Following the doctor’s point of view, on the other hand, will make us witness Sareh having a panic attack minutes before that same meeting, which is then painted as a moment of bravery and self-control. That’s often the beauty of narratives that play with point of view, the reminder that no moment holds the same meaning for us as it does for the people with whom we share it.

The personality of each crew member is gradually shaped as we explore the station, watching their recordings, but also reading their e-mails, notes, and even the tabs left open in their computers. Natali, for example, who is appropriately identified by the color red in the holograms, has her agitation and verve transmitted by her liberal use of ALL CAPS in messages. Her casual attitude towards her peers can also be felt in her frequent informal choice of words (“I asked Odin to look up some stuff“), while her joviality can be clearly seen in the playful way she treats her wife, the mechanical engineer Roberta, as she even jumps into Roberta’s arms in one scene.

Meanwhile, the botanist Andrew is developed through his relationship with his family. His pride is fully displayed in an email to his husband, which shows him refusing financial help from his in-laws, preferring to remain working far away from his family and loved ones if this is what it takes to be able to afford his son’s education by himself. Andrew openly considers himself to be undervalued by his family and work colleagues – thanks to their rejection of the orchids Andrew grew all by his lonesome. However, his sacrifices are often shown to be self-imposed, with his attitude towards the orchids being even passive-aggressive sometimes: “So glad SOMEbody wanted one of these beautiful orchids,” he wrote to Sareh, who was basically his only friend in Tacoma.

If Natali reacts to the imminent tragedy by becoming even more hectic, searching frantically for a solution to their plight, and by sending lighthearted messages to her colleagues in an attempt to maintain some semblance of normality and keep their spirits up, one of the tabs left open in Andrew’s browser is about Venturis’s life insurance policy, which displays not only his fatalism but also his concern for his family.

The private rooms of each crew member are also packed with narrative details. The doctor, Sareh, who always comes up talking to ODIN in the holograms, sometimes confiding secrets to him – never do that to AIs, people, please – , sometimes questioning his degree of autonomy and sentience,  has at her bedside an autobiography written… by an AI. Poor Sareh.

These environmental elements build not only complex characters but also a fascinating dystopian universe, in which capitalism has been overtaken by great corporations that have basically completed their metamorphosis into full-fledged states, all thanks to their influence, power, and wealth. They have their own currencies, their own universities, their own apparatuses of coercion and control. It’s an oppressive future, in which a person works for a company in order to be able to pay, with that company’s own currency, the tuition for that company’s university, in the hopes that their child, in the future, can work for the very same company. There are depictions of hell that seem more pleasant. So, the characters here are trapped inside the Tacoma station by the meteor strike, but also outside by their contracts with Venturis, trying without much success to escape the clutches of their ridiculously rich employers.

Tacoma‘s story works well with this premise, exploring how a system that places profit above everything else inevitably turns basic human empathy into a luxury afforded only when it also happens to be profitable. In the scene where they question if Venturis will do anything to save them, the leader, Evelyn, explains the sad truth to her crew, being very direct about the reasons why they’re on their own: “If it doesn’t make dollars, it doesn’t make sense.”

In the game’s universe, the political power of mega-corporations has become so great that they can openly become the true legislators of modern society, which frames the existence of unions as a last line of defense against the exploitation of labor: in Tacoma, modern society is a place without a true democracy. After all, the common people are, at best, a tool for those who really legitimize the State’s political power and, at worst, an inconvenient obstacle that can be easily overcome by them. It’s not a surprise, then, to see unions appearing as symbols of resistance: as the characters’ own journey shows, the only line of defense against an oppressive employer is precisely, well, the union between employees. It’s the power of friendship in a work environment! Or something like that.  Competitiveness is usually reinforced by a company’s culture precisely to help dilapidate the forces that can pose a threat to the exploitation of labor. They don’t want you to be friends, but you should embrace the Sora that exists inside yourself.

The narrative not only villainizes companies but also imbues them with immeasurable power – Venturis’ CEO is seen as a god by a magazine – treating them like they should be, as merciless enemies devoid of humanity. And if these discussions work so well here, it’s precisely because they don’t remain in the background, as mere worldbuilding, but are instead tied to the main plot, shaping the personal conflicts of the characters and dictating the twists and turns of the story.

Of course, the suspense surrounding the events in the space station couldn’t be built without the mystery about the artificial intelligence called ODIN. With a sinister avatar that resembles an inverted Illuminati pyramid with an eye at the center, but boasting a calm and gentle tone of voice, ODIN is an ambivalent figure: on the one hand, it can appear oppressive, with its omnipresence allowing it to be everywhere at once, mixing tasks of disparate tones: ODIN may be carrying out a routine administrative taskin one room, recording a monthly report from Evelyn, while, on another, a crewman dictates to it a farewell letter to his family. On the other hand, the AI can also appear to be empathetic and kind, helping Sareh out of her panic attack, for example, and even asking how she is feeling near the end, as if it really cared about her fate. As Venturis blocks access to ODIN’s code, its participation in the events immediately becomes a constant source of suspicion, leading us to analyze the ambiguities of its many comments in search of something revealing.

Unlike Fullbright’s previous title, Gone Home, Tacoma’s narrative also doesn’t contain red herrings, with all the elements introduced indeed being put to use by the story. The main problem of the game lies elsewhere. The character we control is Amy, and she is a blank page throughout the whole story, never saying anything of note. This would have made her a perfect avatar for the player, but this connection is severed by a last-minute twist that decides to suddenly acknowledge her as a proper figure. This shift is jarring, to say the least, and so ends up hampering an otherwise great story, coming too late to actually matter: if she were a full-fledged character all along, we would have loved to hear her detailed thoughts throughout the whole game.

Even so, Tacoma is an imaginative title that manages to transform the audio diary format into something refreshing and engaging – instead of treating it as a mere tool for worldbuilding. It’s a shame, then, to attest that the perspective through which we see the game’s fascinating world is not nearly as fascinating as that world itself.

Review originally published in Portuguese on May 26, 2018.

June 26, 2026.