Vol.
2, Issue 15
March 15, 2000
.“brother
can you spare a body?”
he
premise behind Omikron:The Nomad Soul, developed by Quantric
Dream, is that the soul is transportable, able to move with a
disturbing fluidity between “shells.” It is appropriate
therefore that the game’s cinematics are so centered around constant
movement. During the opening credits sequence, we are forever
moving forward, flowing with a preternatural smoothness down streets,
across courtyards and above the city as David Bowie’s neo-futuristic
title song (written explicitly for the game) hums like a crackling
current. Every cut is a shift from the end of one movement
to the beginning of another, a steady wave surging forward across
the landscape.
The cinematics
are broken into two sections. The first thing we see is
a commercial for a cola of some sort, heartily endorsed by a rather
enthusiastic talking head. But, as we discover, this is
a giant billboard a la Blade Runner when the “camera” veers off
to the side and passes down a street packed with hovering cars
and bejumsuited citizens. A man on the run, hotly pursued
by bi-pedal tank like machines similar to the ED 309 of Robocop
fame, rushes past us, firing back at his pursuers before exiting
stage left by way of a stolen vehicle. We cut from a strip
club to a snowy wasteland to a desert ruin, the same running man
being chased by a gang of less than sharp shooting soldiers, all
the time catching glimpses of a demonic eye glaring out at us
from the shadows.
The opening
certainly grabs your interest, getting the ball rolling as dramatically
as it does, and what it lacks in spectacle it makes up for in
curiosity inducing detail. The animation is similar to Outcast’s
in that it flows rather nicely and comes across as pleasantly
“realistic,” with the noticeable exception of the brief strip
club sequence, nude bodies not making the best computer animated
subjects, all plastic sheen and frighteningly defined angles.
The occasional snow beast, however, looks great as does the odd
explosion and resulting dash for cover. But this is only
the beginning.
We learn
a bit more of the meaning behind all of this frantic running about
in the “second act.” Standing before a swirling blue circle,
an out of breath man tells us that he is from a parallel world and
that we are needed. He explains to us that we will have
to transfer our soul into his body in order to cross the dimensional
rift (man oh man, are those popular). But beware for, as
he warns, we “can make mistakes” and must live with the consequences
of our choices. What is so charming about this intro strategy
is how cleverly and yet how simply it references the fact that
the player is about to interact with a game. The character
actually mentions that it is our computer that will allow us to
enter his world and that he will step in to reclaim his body when
we take a brake from game play. There is a wonderful honesty
about all this, an oddly effective attempt to not hide the fact
that Omikron is a game but, at the same time, not reduce
the stakes of the mission.
It is
because of this directness that the creators’ use of a character
looking at us and explaining the goings on does not seem boring
or trite, but instead refreshingly earnest. This strange
directness is continued during the before mentioned credit sequence,
where all the arial views and slanted angles are depicting the
everyday movements of this city of the future, as if the drama
is always being played out in the most mundane of settings, forever
present but always out of sight. There is a slightness to
the cinematics of Omikron, a breezy lack of substance that
is ultimately a bit damaging if only due to the fact that nothing
makes much of an impression, but that is also intriguing because
of its very insubstantialness, a ghost like quality that strikes
the viewer with the same oddly urgent significance as experiencing
deja vu.
-
Joshua Vasquez is the resident film critic here at loonygames.
He also writes for the Internet film site Matinee
Magazine