When Amnesia: The Dark Descent and Soma developers Frictional announced Ontos, their philosophical horror game set in a mad science hotel on the moon, the internet’s jimmies were rustled by the presence of an AI server made out of rats. I have several questions for Frictional regarding that talking rat wall, based on my peerless track record of arts and technology journalism.
Firstly, can the rat wall run (or play) Doom? If yes, can it run (or play) Crysis? Can it summarise PDFs for me, and if so, can it also help me welch on any hypothetical million dollar earn-out bonuses I may contractually owe to any hypothetical developers of ocean survival games? Is the rat wall a smart choice for Gamers On A Budget, or have Microdentsoft and Nvermindia already monopolised the global rat supply and sent prices soaring? Is a talking rat wall still a “mischief of rats”, or does the presence of a networked intelligence require us to come up with a new collective noun? Is there any commentary intended about real-life experimentation on animals, or are we firmly in the realm of the Wacky? Have I secretly been a talking rat wall, this whole time?
Frictional’s new 10 minute, loosely edited video of Ontos does not have any concrete answers for any of these questions. It does, however, get some way towards addressing my other, overarching question: is Ontos going to be any good? The current verdict: yes. Be wary of mild spoilers if you click play.
Watch on YouTube
Frictional have framed Ontos as more of a creepy and deranging puzzler than a game of munsters and spiking heartbeats, and that comes across in the video. There’s the fleeting suggestion of direct hostility in the shape of a swivelling security camera, easily bamboozled by lobbing a cardboard box. Beyond that, the majority of the video consists of peaceably picking at story-rich, possibly puzzle-relevant sci-fi ephemera: terminals full of emails; whiteboards with layouts and blueprints stuck to them; chunky pronged dictaphones the size of your forearm. I can see a few overt plot connections to Frictional’s previous Soma in journal entries about clones and copies.
The location itself is gorgeous – curving, padded walls, coloured pipes and bright utility signs, scratched metal and glossy glass. It’s not a nice place, mind you. There are a few gentle tugs on the nervestrings during exploration, like the cheeky positioning of a “no running” sign, just as you enter an ominous dark area. Also ominous: those paper lanterns, familiar from the game’s announcement teasers, which feel like foreshadowing – I think of the porcine masks in Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs.
And then there are the rats. It starts with just the one, squirming on a table with gadgets stuck in its head, surrounded by instructions as to the correct insertion or removal of said gadgets. Shortly after, you encounter the talking rat wall, and are invited to perform a similar process of gruesome rewiring. The serried rat tails twitch like tongues while the entity is talking to you.
In case it wasn’t obvious, there are several ways to resolve the scenario – the devs say a little more in a Steam blog. The game launches next year, and I’ve already demanded the right to review it according to the traditional RPS selection ritual of “first person to be named Edwin, wins”.