I spent a long time thinking about what I could say about State of Mind. It’s hard to begin discussing this game without saying too much, but I could also ramble endlessly about how beautiful and intriguing the story, setting, and characters feel. It took me about a month to get through it; not because it’s a long game, but because the world in which it is set is so interesting that I wanted to explore every corner.

You start out as Richard Nolan, a journalist with a cynical view of robots who lives in Berlin in 2048. In a classic (if not cliché) touch of noir storytelling, Richard wakes up in a high-rise, luxury apartment and can’t quite clearly remember the last few days. One thing’s for sure – his wife and son are missing and there’s a robot manservant (not unlike those in I, Robot) tending to his home in their place.

The ensuing narrative takes you on a slow-burning mystery that touches on themes of artificial intelligence, transhumanism, dystopian government deception, virtual reality, and much more.

Along the way, you’re introduced to Adam Newman, yet another journalist who writes for the high fashion / art publication “The Present” in City 5. Though it’s not apparent at first, Richard and Adam’s stories are intricately tied together. As the plot progresses, there are uncanny parallels between Richard and Adam, to the point that it gradually seems too much to be a coincidence.

But Richard Nolan isn’t your typical video game hero. While he is definitely concerned about his missing wife and son, it turns out he’s been cheating on his wife and doesn’t spend much time with his boy. So it’s perhaps one of those situations where a person is taking for granted things that are actually precious without realizing it in time. Now that those things are gone, he’s laser focused on what matters – his family. Well, actually, you get decide that part.

It may not be the most original adventure (think Blade Runner meets The Matrix with maybe a pinch of Demolition Man), but it finds an original way of presenting itself. The character models intentionally have this low-polygon-count art style reminiscent of some of the 1990s-2000s’ forays into three-dimensional gaming. The color palette and shading remind me a little of the minimalist retrofuturism of the 1982 Tron light cycle battles at times.

The darkness that permeates certain scenes perfectly fits with the bleak, existential concepts touched upon in the game. Richard Nolan’s 2048 is a dark, rainy, sprawling urban mess with all kinds of colorful characters, some human, some machine, and some in between.

This contrasts sharply with Adam Newman’s City 5, which features a beautiful, perpetually afternoon sky, warm colors everywhere, and friendly robots wandering about. But as the characters dig a little deeper at the facade, it becomes clear that their worlds aren’t really so different.

In fact, the more you dig through the layers of subterfuge, the closer you get to the truth – maybe. From rainy city streets to dark, neon-splashed night clubs, you’re chasing down leads in an effort to find your family. But where your plans align with the motives of other parties, you find occasional allies.

For example, there’s an anti-authoritarian (read: terrorist) faction trying to uncover what’s really happening, but at what cost? They could be just another sinister political party furthering their own agenda, making it difficult to determine which way is up.

Despite taking place largely in Berlin, the story is told through English voice actors who handle it all very well. A bad voice-over can make an otherwise enjoyable game totally intolerable (see any Final Fantasy game, for example), so I’m glad to say that there’s none of that happening here. These actors may not be getting an Oscar anytime soon, but they do make a sometimes unbelievable story rather reasonable.

On paper, the story might seem rather run-of-the-mill. All of the familiar tropes are here: tall buildings, grimy tech, dark alleys, rain, crime, government surveillance, and surreptitious intrigue. That’s not to say these elements aren’t interesting, but maybe not exactly novel. Instead of these concepts being compelling in and of themselves, they come about in a context that makes them somehow new, yet still comfortably familiar. They’re fascinating because of where and how they’re presented, which is precisely how genre fiction should feel.

I’d even submit that the plot approaches originality for the same reasons. What makes the game so engrossing is the way in which the story is told. The player is presented with a handful of the same underlying themes commonly addressed in some of the best cyberpunk fiction. For example: at what point is artificial intelligence alive? What if our reality is actually a simulation? Where does the soul stop and the tech begin? What if we could change our consciousness or identity with technology – should we?

And even though the questions are familiar, the characters are humanized and relatable in the most subtle ways. This creates a more profound depth to the answers that would otherwise feel contrived or predictable. The culmination of art style, voice acting, and character arch craft identities that are sometimes noble, other times flawed, but always engaging. This updated take on what could have been a set of tired tropes is like a fresh paint job on a 6000 SUX – vaguely familiar, but still pretty fresh.

I’m not going to give away any spoilers. I went into this game blind and I feel like I got the most out of it as a result. I played it on my Switch, but it’s not a resource-heavy game, so I think you’d get pretty much the same experience on any platform. The chapters are neatly tailored into bitesized portions, so you can pick it up and put it down without investing more time than is practical. I’d highly recommend it to any fan of cyberpunk or any of the related genres.

State of Mind – 8/10