Got to the end of the demo. I have way too many observations but I will try to summarize them into more condensed points. First off, I'm really happy to see all the ways in which this was improved from the first game. Some changes don't immediately come across as improvements but I expect their purpose will become more clear further in development. A lot of the criticisms come down to personal preference.
The Positives:
- A lot of effort went into this and the huge amount of detail shows that. That can always be appreciated in a game.
- The humour was good, especially the visual gags around the station.
- The presentation is interesting enough to make you want to read the dry technical info on the game. I like that most information is presented as some in-world document or context.
The Negatives:
- The graphics, though high-fidelity, are generic. The game doesn't stand out visually and the characters have an ultra-fidelity uncanny valley look. Motion blur always looks bad in games.
- A lot of the interrogation problems that were present in the previous game carry over. Unlike the last game where I had no problems understanding the objective, in this one it's often that it's not even clear why you're interrogating the specific person and when you have all the needed information to finish the interrogation. Even if you figure out what you should be asking, at times the dialogue system is fighting against you and waiting for a very specific input.
- UI is somewhat disorienting. It's not that there's too much of it, it's that with that amount of UI there needs to be more attention given to organizing it for user experience.
Minor Issues:
- Movement is too floaty.
- Voices desync from captions constantly, making it more disorienting to follow dialogue.
- Interaction is frustrating to lock on to what you want to use.
- Typewriter doesn't take inputs from punctuation and it makes me wonder why.
I don't have an issue with how AI was used, but as a player my first assumption is that if it was used then the game is likely not worth my time. Many potential players might think the same and skip on a game they might enjoy, which is why it would have helped a lot to communicate the effort behind the game if at least the graphics weren't generic. The game still needs a lot of polish, but I'm keeping an eye on it because I have some faith and interest of where you will take it.