I spent Part 1 reviewing this game. This, today, is a
special; I’ll discuss some themes of the game. As I mentioned previously, 2064:
Read Only Memories is a game that touches on a lot of social topics that are
still controversial, especially among gamers. I mean, I don’t have a high
opinion of people in general, but I’ve seen some gamers exhibit the worst kinds
of behavior. A certain event in 2014 But I digress. Long story short: Don’t like this game and
the subjects it brings up? Don’t read this, simple as that. Also, if you do
read, be aware that there is a spoiler alert; I’ll be spoiling details of the
plot here.
Race, gender, orientation… and
ROMs
The world of 2064: Read Only Memories shows a society
that has moved past many of the questions of our time.
If there’s still racism in that world (outside of the
Hybrids case), it’s not depicted. Homophobia and transphobia also seem to be a
thing of the past, seeing as various people throughout the game are revealed as
being either gay or trans, without any form of discrimination affecting these
characters – nobody seems to mind. Majid, one of the owners of Stardust, is
from Pakistan, and his origin is a problem to no one. And no one bats an eye
when it’s mentioned that the second owner, Gus, is his boyfriend. Meanwhile, Lexi Rivers,
the ex-girlfriend of the protagonist’s sister, occupies an important position
at the Neo San Francisco Police Department. Sympathy is a woman sporting a
beard and cool glasses, and if everyone around her didn’t keep referring to her
with female pronouns, I’d be certain she’s a trans man, or a woman currently
transitioning. In fact, that might be the case, her fellows maybe just didn't start calling her with male pronouns (and we could argue it's still not very respectful...). TOMCAT is nonbinary, and is always referred to with the correct they/their pronouns… which is also an option for the main character. In other words, this
has all become normal, banal even, which is pretty great.
Where do ROMs, that world’s robots, factor in all
this? Well, for starters, Turing also wants to be referred to as nonbinary,
having no personal concept of gender nor a desire to identify as either gender.
Their design and voice leads some people to assume that they’re like a young boy,
and use male pronouns. Here comes the major spoilers: Turing is the second ROM
made by Hayden to exhibit emotions; the first one, Grace, identified as female.
Also, the best ending in the game sees Turing transmitting Hayden’s emotion
matrix code to all ROMs on the planet, leading to widespread machine sentience.
Or, at least, as close to sentience as robots can be. And with this ending, we
can see that a) not all robots are happy with it, b) many struggle in dealing
with these new emotions, and c) all robots can now make choices in line with
the ones done by humans in 2064. I think one or two robots even mention what they want to be addressed as from now on, with which pronouns. The advantage being, ROMs having no gender to
start with, they’re free to choose how they want to be identified: Nonbinary,
male, female... I’ll discuss machine sentience later.
Hybrids (and cyborgs) versus the Human Revolution
Arguably a good idea; in some science-fiction stories, too much cybernetics on a single person would make them go insane. |
My personal stance on the matter? Choosing to become a
hybrid only for fashion isn’t really worth it. It’s a major decision that
cannot be taken lightly. As the game shows, this treatment will radically
change the life of the person undergoing it. Doing it just to look cool is
overlooking all of the potential difficulties that can result from such a
drastic change. And a person becoming a hybrid “for fashion” must be ready to
face these changes in the eyes of the people around them – since hybrids suffer
from discrimination. However, there are some people suffering from rare or otherwise
untreatable diseases who survived through gene splicing.
What if it IS the only way to cure them? |
Oh, Jim Sterling may have a voice to make this guy
sound as trustworthy as possible; doesn’t matter, Mulberry is a jerk. Good work
from this game to realistically portray this kind of thought process.
Big
Brother is watching… and editing
That woman was just thrown out of a third story window. We don't find out by who until the final chapter... ...not counting the epilogue, of course. |
It thus turns out that someone or something is aware
of the protagonist and Turing’s investigation. And indeed, something is aware.
The sparse leads are eventually tied together – and bring the two to Parallax,
the enterprise Hayden was working for, and the most important ROM manufacturer
out there. We learn of Big Blue and Baby Blue, two projects set up by Parallax.
Big Blue is, basically, a program that will extend to every single ROM through
the network and keep a complete database of every person’s preferences… in
anything. So, you know, a less subtle version of social media that keeps track
of everything you talk about and makes ad suggestions to go with these
preferences. Except all of this data would go to Parallax… and considering all
the people that died to bring this project to fruition, they’re not doing it for the good of mankind.
Obviously, if someone is plugging these leaks , then the heroes are getting into far more trouble than they ever thought! But is Baby Blue really responsible for this? |
Machine
sentience
At the end of 2064: ROM, the player and Turing spread
the latter’s sentience-replicating code to all ROMs in the world. I discussed
it earlier, machine sentience has a lot of effects that nobody saw coming, in
particular Turing and the protagonist on this quest to stop Big Blue.
The program transmitted to all robots truly acted like
they suddenly gained a personality and emotions – or, basically, as if they had
a brain. A sudden acknowledgement of sentience has to be disorienting. A sudden
surge of sentiments, this new creativity… The ROMs of the world were clearly
not ready for this.
This concept draws parallels to other instances in
fiction of robots developing something that feels eerily close to sentience,
like Sonny in I, Robot (I still need to read the damn book, I only saw the
movie with Will Smith). An artificial intelligence so powerful it makes a robot
more like a person than a machine. This is reflected in the playable epilogue
of 2064: Read Only Memories. Since Turing was the only one living with this new
program so far, all the robots are asking him for advice. Some robots who were
designed to fulfill certain purposes no longer want to, they either want to do
something else or just be lazy.
For the record, it's that tiny spherical thing on the floor speaking. It now has intelligence... but not many ways to use it! |
Long story short, an artificial intelligence that is
strikingly similar to sentience sounds incredible – and it is, but we’d have to
keep in mind the other possibilities brought by it. If machines become as
intelligent as humans, or gain a similar “emotional intelligence” or “creative
intelligence”, must we start considering them as people? That’s the conclusion
2064: Read Only Memories reaches, and draws parallels with the Hybrids. In a
way, the two situations aren’t all that different. This new intelligence opens
ROMs to discrimination from humans (“Why would you want that? You may be smart
but you’re just a stupid machine!” type of comments), not all that different
from the kind of things Hybrids often hear in that world (“Why should I
consider you a human anymore? You’re more of an animal anyway!”). Granted, it gives Jess plenty of work since she's a lawyer who defends cases of such discrimination, but still...
I guess, the entire point is that, whenever there’s a
major change to the world, there will always be people who hate that change and
everyone who gets something from it.
---
Well, that was quite the analysis! I still suggest you
play the game, though. On this, I say, see you next Friday for the next review
on Planned All Along!
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