If I ever go looking for my partner and find myself inside a planet-sized mega-mind about to become conscious, I won’t run out and zap the brain fauna with my magic cannons. I won’t jump on it and scan anything. Instead, I will consider Lessons from Harlan Ellison and I reluctantly curl up into a ball, awaiting my transformation into a gloomy puddle of goo.
It’s one of the many ways in which I apparently differ from the protagonist of Being, a new third-person action adventure from Studio Lifeforms, in which you “explore an interconnected maze of luminous architecture, solve spatial puzzles, and engage in fluid combat as you search for your lost love and decide what this new intelligence will become.”
I kept Being in reserve as a health potion, after reading articles on the happy RPS fanzine. PC gamer. Being in pretty colors. It’s the perfect antidote to, say, a day of writing about layoffs and generative AI. It’s colorful in part because it’s based on “the visionary science fiction of European graphic novels of the 1970s and ’80s,” in addition to Remedy’s somewhat more unofficial Control. Here’s a trailer.
In Being, you are a masked starjumper named Xyle. He’s a sort of Silver Surfer but with his skin ready to blend. He came to Orbis, said cosmic intelligence, in search of his soul mate Atel. Orbis isn’t just a bunch of silent neon neurons. It is home to entire societies, including two warring factions. There is also a network of “angelic technologies” that has become corrupted, giving rise to a “living geometry” that wants to kick your ass. You must exploit terrain features and learn behaviors to prevail, acquiring new abilities over time that allow you to reach new areas. Wait, I think this might be the first acceptable use of the marketing term “metroidbrainia”.
You’ll also perform numerous item scans to unlock story documents and gain insight into the awakening psyche you’re going through. I really like the way it looks – it reminds me of Metroid Prime. “Your choices and discoveries shape what Orbis will become” Steam page notes. “A living world brought back into balance, a transcendent divine spirit, or something far more terrifying.” Who knows, maybe turning into a puddle of goo is the order of the day after all.
There is no release date yet. I suppose a parallel might be Double Fine’s Psychonauts games, with their motley inner worlds that need to be returned and released into a state of well-being.
