Hi there and welcome along to Discussion: [indie game] (spoilers!), a series that I’m rapidly running out of different ways to describe.

Today’s game is Orwell (also sometimes known as Orwell: Keeping an Eye on You, perhaps to distinguish it from its sequel), a game by Osmotic Studies and released in 2016.

Your task is to snoop on and investigate citizens on behalf of an authoritarian government, all in the name of safety and security, by making use of a top-secret system known as Orwell. Your first day sees you dealing with the aftermath of a terrorist bombing and an urgent need to track down the perpetrators.

Guided by your supervisor, Symes, the game involves trawling the internet and social media for clues, listening in on private conversations, and gaining remote access to suspects’ computers, uploading anything you think may be relevant in order to progress your case. Here’s a trailer:

As usual, that’s about all we want to give away at this point, other than that Orwell is broadly enjoyable and a single playthrough clocks in at around 5 hours (although there are multiple endings so you may want to have more than a single crack at it).

Otherwise, proceed to the discussion below only if you’ve played the game already, or don’t mind major spoilers.

***FINAL SPOILER WARNING!***

 

Jo branches out

Rik: This one was my choice, was it not?

Jo: Yeah, I think this was your choice, but it was definitely one we had on the list anyway. It was in my ‘Jo branches out’ bundle… [a 2022 Christmas gift curated by one sibling for another, based on an expression of interest in playing titles outside a certain comfort zone – Ed.]

Rik: I had better explain myself then! Orwell was a game I was vaguely aware of and was interested in, and it probably came out around the tail end of when I was still following mainstream modern reviews. I did think it would be a bit different from our usual fare, but I’m not sure it is, really.

Jo: Yeah, well I guess what we’re covering now is more broad – narrative based adventures. A category that walking sims could’ve also fallen into, but we kind of grouped those discussions together.

Rik: I guess I thought this might be a bit less of a guided narrative type thing, though.

Jo: Ah ok. What had you initially thought it might be like?

Rik: I dunno, I guess a bit more stressful and freeform? Which I’m glad it wasn’t, in the end.

Jo: I didn’t go in knowing much or having any expectations really (I know I **always** say that). The name gives you the impression that it will be surveillance based, but for some reason, maybe the futuristic overtones, I imagined it would be about AI.

Rik: Orwell is actually quite clunky as a system. But we’ll get onto that, I guess!

Jo: What made you want to give it a whirl?

Rik: I just thought it was potentially interesting. I always quite liked the idea of hacking/surveillance games.

Jo: Yeah, me too.

Rik: There was quite a weird one called Hacker for the CPC; I’m also thinking about examples on the PC like Covert Action and Spycraft…

Jo: Was there one call Uplink a way back?

Rik: Yes, Uplink is another one. Which I remember was maybe on the more difficult/intense side of what I might prefer.

Jo: I gave Uplink a go once, but I wasn’t any good. Too stressful!

Rik: I like the idea of that kind of game, and sort of figured Orwell would be a bit more forgiving. But it was more similar to other titles we’ve played in this series than I expected.

Jo: Yeah, I wondered if there’d be some kind of hacking type element, but it definitely guides you much more than that.

 

The future is now, and it’s scary

Rik: So the overall ‘vibe’ is vaguely contemporary/five minutes into the future. The future is scary BUT HANG ON, THE FUTURE IS NOW! AND IT IS INDEED SCARY! It’s arguably all a bit heavy-handed.

Jo: Yeah, I felt that way about it too.

Rik: Democracy is dying, the President looks like BoJo…

Jo: Hahaha!

Rik: ‘The kids’ are being annoying on social media, the media is compliant, etc.

Jo: I don’t mean this dismissively, but it’s all stuff that might be considered a fairly well-trodden path at this point.

Rik: Yeah, I did think, just because it’s actually not that hard to imagine, does that make it a bad story? Although it does appear that this nightmarish snooping software that you work with is extremely limited, i.e. not as good as Google in some cases.

Jo: It’s set up that you can’t just go around looking up one thing and then another – it’s more that one thing has to lead you to another.

Rik: Plus, as part of the ‘ethical Codex’ of the system, your supervisor is entirely reliant on what you upload, and can’t see anything himself. I completely understand why they did it this way…

Jo: Yeah, it would be too open I think otherwise. I’d certainly have found it a bit overwhelming.

Rik: You just have to accept the explanation and get on with it. Did you find the interface easy to negotiate?

Jo: Erm… yes and no. It wasn’t tricky per se – but a bit clunky maybe?

Rik: I think that it almost exacerbates the lack of freedom. It tries to help you by seeding the three main investigative tools: Reader, Listen and, er, the other one… where you log onto another PC remotely?

Jo: Insider?

Rik: Yes! At first it’s just Reader, which is basically ‘the internet’, while Listener tracks phone calls and messaging. Anyway, there are symbols and prompts to show you when there’s new stuff and/or any clues you still haven’t found.

Jo: Yeah, they were the most misleading thing, I thought. The red bookmark kept appearing on things I’d looked at and uploaded already. (And in my first go, I uploaded everything you could upload).

Rik: Oh, me too.

Jo: I was not discerning at all.

Rik: I put the initial suspect’s address as ‘in a rainbow’ or whatever she says on her socials.

Jo: Yeah, me too, and Symes gave me a bollocking.

Rik: I did something else stupid later, too, maybe add the DOB of ‘Initiate’ as ‘1912’. Duh! Schmitty!

Jo: I did get the feeling it encourages you to be that way on your first go, because you’re not really aware of the implications, or the wider story. It’s almost necessary to just bash through and see what happens.

Rik: I realised later that you can flag irrelevant stuff so it doesn’t show up any more. Which I thought might be helpful, but then I stopped bothering after a while.

Jo: I got in a bit of a tangle with conflicts [where two or more pieces of information contradict each other].

Rik: Yes, me too.

Jo: In my first playthrough I didn’t really understand the significance of them.

Rik: I don’t think that’s very well handled at first. I think you’re a bit, ‘how am I meant to decide what’s relevant or correct?’ But then I suppose it can’t explicitly say ‘you’re controlling the narrative depending on what you upload’.

Jo: Yeah, exactly.

Rik: I think the first example is when you’re deciding how to upload info on [initial bombing suspect] Cassandra’s previous arrest. And the choices are, ‘she got off’ or ‘her parents got her out of it’ – my brain sort of shut down.

Jo: Yeah, so you’re facing a decision between two very similar options – neither of which indicate what the impact will be of choosing one over the other. Later I found that when one conflict was found it didn’t show you what the other one was, and that made it even trickier to make a call.

Rik: I think you’re meant to hold off until you find them both, but I was very much on autopilot on my first go, just swiping info into Orwell asap.

Jo: Yeah, me too: I was just like ‘yup, that sounds about right’ *click*.

Rik: I mean, I got Cassandra flagged as a thief for ‘stealing’ her boyfriend’s credit card, when she’s just joking around with him. So she then couldn’t buy a bottle of wine to go with dinner…

Jo: Haha!

Rik: It’s so easy to upload stuff but it’s irreversible once you do, and there’s no real urgency or time limit really. So you should learn to be careful.

Jo: Yeah, there’s no undo. But only certain datachunks will move the story forward.

Rik: You sort of get addicted to moving the story forward though! At the cost of actually looking at things more carefully.

Jo: In my second go I felt like I was being really careful. But then I wasn’t progressing and started uploading things almost out of frustration to get going again.

Rik: I’d say perhaps the menu screen, which tells you what your next tasks are supposed to be, is a handy guide, even though it’s easy to overlook. I used it in my second and third goes, when I realised I’d better focus on what I was meant to be doing. If you’re meant to be finding info on a particular something, you can probably leave some of the other stuff.

 

Self-facilitating media node

Jo: After my first go, I didn’t even realise there were multiple endings, or different ways I could have gone, until I messaged you! I guess you’re kind of manipulating the data, so you can upload the out of context stuff that Orwell highlights…

Rik: I definitely got that message when it flagged Cassi as a ‘thief’ and ‘dangerous’…

Jo: Yeah, same here. For some reason it just didn’t even occur to me that I could be more selective with what I uploaded.

Rik: Part of me was lulled into a false sense of security by the story progressing. I kind of thought, oh right, we’re just having a story here, not realising actually that I had failed to engage my brain at various points and there were consequences.

Jo: That’s why I didn’t even acknowledge how much I was actually in control. On my second go, it seemed to click a bit more that while I could see everything, Symes couldn’t, and was entirely reliant on the bits of information I decided to share.

Rik: My first clue I guess should have been when the second bomb went off after I didn’t find it. I was a bit like, oh well, it must just be part of the story, and the bomb is meant to go off. But it went off because I had messed up, had not found the right way to lean on Cassi, and not found the location.

Jo: I think it only really started to twig with me when I, er, got [second suspect] Nina killed.

Rik: Yes, that’s the other big sign.

Jo: And then I still managed to get her killed again in my second go, when I was actively trying not to.

Rik: My record was: killed first time, shot and injured second time, saved third.

Jo: Ooh, well done! I think I’d carelessly profiled her as being aggressive on my first go (still not sure what wrong turn I made on my second go).

Rik: I should point out that my third go also ended up with the Orwell programme being strengthened. Whoops!

Jo: WHAT?!

Rik: Let’s not go into it. I guess I was quite interested in the idea of how easy it is to be addicted to the process of doing a job, or doing what’s expected, and how that can overtake everything else.

Jo: Yeah, there is a sense of being removed from the consequences – your critical thinking is shelved somehow and you just focus on the task at hand.

Rik: ‘Ah, you made a mistake! So bad things happen to you!’ I think also, there’s a point about having power over people who personally irritate you, to the extent that they get sent to prison. In Orwell, quite a few of the [protest/terrorist group] Thought members are pretty annoying.

Jo: Yeah, I really had it in for Hancock…

Rik: Hancock: if Nathan Barley was crossed with Johnny Knoxville.

Jo: Hahaha!

Rik: You’ve also got spoiled rich brat turned artist Cassi…

Jo: (Kelly Osbourne!)

Rik: You almost just look at their profile pics and social media, and it’s like, ok – jail for you! I’m playing a game, I’m meant to catch you, and I don’t like you either, so off to prison you go.

Jo: Yeah, exactly. I think it definitely plays with those biases. You start off by making snap judgements like, with Nina – who appears to want to instigate violence and you think ‘well you’re deffo quite dangerous’, but as you get more of an understanding of her, you quickly find yourself backpedalling. Similarly, I did not suspect Juliet at all in my first playthrough – she seemed the most inoffensive/sympathetic character and I was so shocked when she turned out to be the mastermind. Perhaps it’s set up that way?

Rik: I think that’s all deliberate. You’re trying to find the real ‘power’ behind Thought. It seems like a long shot that Professor Abraham is still alive and conducting things. But, could it be one of his students? Or the lawyer? It’s pretty clear Cassi isn’t the ringleader, then you look at Nina who appears potentially radical but then you soon feel bad for. Then it seems like it must be Hancock/Harrison.

Jo: Exactly, and because he’s so dislikeable, it’s easier to believe.

Rik: Yeah, the ‘media punk’ radical who ends up being a government shill. And then turns his back on them again.

 

What a way to make a livin’

Rik: I think there were a good few twists and turns in the story.

Jo: I agree, although, I did notice that when there’s a plot twist there’s a sort of ‘OH MY GOD!!’ sound effect.

Rik: Yeah!

Jo: Which possibly wasn’t necessary, but nevertheless did up the tension a bit. DUN DUN DERRR! ‘BET YOU NEVER SAW THAT COMING!’

Rik: Did Neo Cab have something similar? Or am I thinking of something else? It definitely reminded me of something.

Jo: I can’t say I remember it in Neo Cab, but that’s not to say it wasn’t in there. Maybe in the final standoff?

Rik: Possibly (yet again) I’m thinking of the CSI games on the DS. Orwell is quite good at making you think there’s time pressure when there isn’t. I mean, you even know there isn’t, but you still feel it.

Jo: Yeah, that feeling time pressure is all coming from you, but in reality, you could take as long as you like picking through the information. Considering it created that feeling so well, I don’t know that the ‘UH OH, THAT TOOK A DIFFERENT TURN!’ sound effect for plot twists was necessarily needed.

Rik: Each chapter builds up to something fairly dramatic: you have the second and third bomb finales in the first two chapters, then the Nina escape in 3, then Symes being exposed in 4. And 5 is the very last one.

Jo: Circling back to what you were saying before about doing horrible things as a job – each chapter is the end of the work day, and Symes (apart from when he’s exposed) is like ‘right, well let’s log off for the day’ when all this really horrible stuff is happening. There’s still a sort of 9-5 office work tone to your communication.

Rik: It is stated that you’re working weekends at one point I think…

Jo: Sorry, I don’t mean strictly 9-5, it’s more just the emotionless admin of it all.

Rik: I thought there was some urgency, e.g. Symes emphasising working over the weekend, to try and counteract some of that feeling. When the bomb goes off, he is fairly distraught, ditto if Nina gets shot. And also if she escapes, although for different reasons: if she gets shot, Symes expresses some regret that it happened. But if she escapes, he’s like, we’re going to get fucking fired. Were you shocked by Symes being exposed?

Jo: A little bit. I wasn’t really sure where they were going to go once the characters being watched found out about Orwell.

Rik: Yes, so there’s this rogue character, Initiate, who sort of spies on/helps the other characters. And they think it’s you before they find out about Orwell – Nina certainly does when she makes a run for it… oh, and speaking of people getting killed, in my last go Symes got shot dead at his house…

Jo: Oh really?

Rik: Whereas in previous goes, he’d just disappeared. I was wondering what I’d done differently, and thought maybe that it was because I’d unthinkingly added his address to Orwell. But they’d have it anyway, and he’d already been ‘doxxed’ by Harrison/Thought. As it turns out, he gets killed if [government minister responsible for Orwell] Delacroix is unhappy with your work. So letting Nina escape increases the chances of Symes being shot, I think.

Jo: Ah right, ok. Yeah, Delacroix (aka Meryl Streep) was unhappy with me, but maybe not that unhappy. I think she said I was sloppy or something like that.

Rik: In my first go, I failed to stop the bomb but Nina got shot, and Symes survived. So obviously those are the government’s priorities!

Jo: I think it’s hard to pinpoint exactly what leads to what outcome. Like, some are fairly obvious, but others less so.

Rik: Yes, I think it’s worth saying (and feel free to consider us thick, loyal readers and internet strangers) but when you’ve played a few times and try again with a specific outcome in mind and still don’t get it then possibly some of the fault might lie with the game.

Jo: In my first go, the lawyer gave information on Thought to an unknown party who’d sent him an email, in my second go he didn’t – but I’m not sure what I did to make it go either way. Maybe it’s that an earlier action leads to a later outcome?

Rik: In this last go, I was trying to get a particular ending, with Juliet arrested, and everyone else in Thought liking me.

Jo: Ok, so let’s compare and contrast. What happened in your first ending? I got Jules arrested, and then the government were after me for being a traitor.

Rik: I think first go I got Delacroix and Jules/Thought were fine. Second go, I blamed Jules, but Thought were fine. Third go, Orwell were strengthened, Thought a terrorist organisation. And somehow I managed to get Harrison arrested instead of Juliet – I definitely had a bit of a mental block with the tracking down their locations at the end, even though it shouldn’t be that hard.

Jo: Yeah, I got Hancock or Harrison or whatever he’s called arrested in my first go. And lawyer and Cassi went off in a sulk.

Rik: I think in the final conference call with all the characters where you don’t have control, that’s an assessment of how well you’ve done. But I managed to annoy Cassi and the lawyer every time.

Jo: Second time I was trying to get Juliet arrested, and they stayed on the call. But I don’t know what swung it that way. The location thing really threw me, because I think there’s only one location on Juliet’s phone that Hancock hasn’t been to. Also, it’s not immediately obvious what any of the locations are because they just give you an address out of context.

Rik: You can pinpoint both Juliet and Harrison, because there’s one location on each of their phones that isn’t on the other. Having said that, I still made a mistake on my last go.

 

Succulent, meaty datachunks

Rik: Did you look through all of Initiate’s stuff on his computer, at the end?

Jo: Yeah, I went through all of it.

Rik: I wasn’t massively interested in finding out who he really was. He was almost better as a total mystery that couldn’t be tracked down.

Jo: I was a bit overwhelmed by the stuff on the different characters’ computers.

Rik: Again, you have the time to calmly look through it all, without uploading anything. But somehow the adrenaline took over for me!

Jo: I think it’s just the volume of stuff, and not knowing what you’re looking for. That part where Delacroix takes over from Symes and says you’ve only got 20 datachunks to upload – it was a bit stressful, because you’ve got to be super selective while also trying to move the story forward.

Rik: Yeah, that is true. But I’m talking about the very, very end when you’re making a final decision. For some reason you sort of want to hit the final button, rather than look through it all methodically for story pieces.

Jo: I don’t quite know how that choice is made at the end, though. Juliet asks you to upload your own info into Orwell to expose it, Initiate asks you to expose Delacroix, but as soon as I touched any of Delacroix’s stuff she shut her PC down. How did you get Delacroix?

Rik: There’s another way to get her – you can get her phone info I think, and then find some messages about the bombings being a good thing.

Jo: I guess what I’m saying is I don’t really know how I got the endings that I did.

Rik: I think that is a weakness.

Jo: I played each game differently, and while I did get different outcomes, I can’t say I know exactly what I did to achieve what outcome.

Rik: Yes, agreed. And there are more different bits out there than I uncovered, but I don’t think I want to try to get them.

Jo: By the sounds of things we both did our first playthrough in a similar way and yet each got different endings – so there’s obviously some subtle differences there. But we aren’t really sure what they were.

Rik: I don’t think it’s one of those games where it’s like ‘do A or B?’ And it’s all signposted where you can make different choices to get different outcomes.

Jo: No, I agree – I think it’s probably a bit more nuanced than that – which is good, but it’s so subtle that it’s not really clear as the player what difference your choices make to anything. It’s not even like at the end of the game there’s a sort of choices summary – like in, say, Oxenfree – which kinda spells it out a bit more.

Rik: I think it’s got a few flaws that aren’t just down to me being a bit stupid.

Jo: I did my first and second playthroughs in fairly quick succession. I think if I’d spaced it out a bit more, I’d have given it another go before our discussion.

Rik: I got what I wanted to know about the things I was really interested in, i.e. which of the annoying youths was really behind it all. And I enjoyed giving some grief back to Delacroix et al. Plus – saving Nina. Things I didn’t care about: Abe creating Orwell, who Initiate really was…

Jo: The whole Initiate thing fell a bit flat for me somehow, I don’t know why.

Rik: I don’t know if you’re really meant to want to know who he is, but it’s there if you want. Similarly, I didn’t think Abe was really still active so didn’t care that he was motivated to work against Orwell by his work on it.

Jo: Initiate was pretty under-developed as a character – he just served as a way to reveal Orwell to the rest of Thought.

Rik: Yeah, right.

Jo: You could have removed that character completely and I don’t know that it would have made any difference. I kind of wish they’d done more with Initiate, so that you did want to find out more about him.

Rik: I suppose they just put a face and nationality to him at the very end, while revealing he has been spying on all of Thought.

 

Bombing is bad

Rik: I know we’ve touched on things being a bit heavy-handed (it is called Orwell after all!) but what did you think of the world in general? Like the nods to and digs at various bits of internet life? I quite liked the online disagreements on the Twitter-style app.

Jo: Yeah, the social media profiles were pretty well done. Particularly Cassi and the comments about her reinventing herself.

Rik: And the stuff with Harrison quitting the band and blogging to get a media job. Then getting ‘called out’ online for being a hypocrite.

Jo: Yeah.

Rik: I also quite liked the online dating profile stuff with Nina.

Jo: Oh, that was pretty heartbreaking.

Rik: One bloke messages and she doesn’t reply because he’s weird, another puts her off immediately by doing the ‘hey you seem nice… ok don’t reply then you BITCH I HATE YOU’ thing. And the last one is clearly put off by her child despite being a self-described ‘nice guy’. I agree, I thought it was all quite sad, but it was well done.

Jo: And as we said before, your first impression of Nina is that she’s radical but then you learn more about her and get to see a totally different side to her. I suppose it’s quite clever that way in that you never really have anyone’s full story.

Rik: Well I guess it’s back to that thing about not really knowing a person by snooping on them online. Which is emphasised by the game literally inviting you to put them in jail or get them killed based on that snooping.

Jo: Yeah, snippets of dumb shit people say on social media doesn’t capture their entire personality.

Rik: Right. Sorry to jump around, but I had another thought about Initiate… we can fix this in the edit! [Obviously not – Ed.]

Jo: Haha! What did you want to say?

Rik: You end up realising that he backs out of the most radical stuff and maybe represents the ‘safe’ narrative option. He doesn’t like murder, and ends up asking you to go after Delacroix. Even though Juliet is right that the government will ultimately just replace her. So I came to a point where I thought the game’s ‘ideal’ position is a compromise between that and Juliet’s position, i.e. bombing is bad so get Juliet arrested but keep Thought going. Anyway – was there anything else you wanted to mention?

Jo: No, I don’t think so.

Rik: So what did you think overall?

Jo: I quite liked it – I think I preferred playing through it a second time when I felt a bit more like I knew what I was doing. But parts of it were quite frustrating – like the unclear datachunk conflicts, and the bookmarks that meant nothing. And, of course, being unsure what action leads to what outcome. But the flipside is that it was not predictable in any way.

Rik: I think I probably could have taken more care on my subsequent playthroughs, and was possibly the architect of my own downfall at times. But I think part of the joy of these short narrative games is playing around with a few decisions and getting different endings. And I think for that still to go wrong might be my fault but also might be the game’s a bit too.

Jo: Yeah, I agree.

Rik: So potentially it risks being too hand-holdy for the hardcore, and not gentle enough for story types.

Jo: I think in each playthrough you can develop a better understanding of what triggers what, but having said that, I did also just get frustrated at various points and throw things into Orwell to try and move the story forward.

Rik: I also think you can enjoy it fine without combing through every element of the story.

Jo: Agreed. Although, as usual, I always have that weird worry that I’ll miss something key if I don’t check everything.

Rik: So not an unqualified recommendation, but a recommendation all the same?

Jo: Yeah, I think so. More of a casual ‘give it a whirl’ verdict.

Rik: There is a sequel…

Jo: Yeah, I just saw that on Steam.

Rik: How interested are you in it? (It’s your choice next anyway, and would be happy to do something else!)

Jo: I think I’m interested in seeing where they could go next with it, but would like to do something different next perhaps.

Rik: Fair enough!

Jo: If the Emily is Away burnout has taught us anything…

Rik: Indeed. Well, thanks for this, I enjoyed it as always!

Jo: Me too!

—

Orwell is available on Steam, GOG and itch.io for around £8.