But, after escaping from prison with the help of a baby falcon, I meet my Auntie, and she calls me by another name, my full name: Sarangerai, or “Ara” for short. I tell her, “I missed the way you say my name. They always mangle the pronunciation.” She replies, “Machine tongues, girl. Though it’s not their fault. Don’t think the people who built them cared about getting our names right.” But she adds another note: It’s not that they’re ignorant of the importance of names, in fact, “they know they’re important. Especially when they get them wrong.”

My name is 0507. At least, that’s what my robotic wardens call me. I’m stuck in a prison operated by the Outer Ring Company, an interstellar mining corporation that hops from world to world, draining planets of their resources. And to them, a number is all anyone needs: simple, clean, universal identification.

Outerloop’s Falcon Age tells a story all too real, a story in which colonizers have claimed an inhabited land for their own, stripped it of its resources, forcing the colonized to "cooperate,” or risk fatal consequences. In this world (as in our own), “cooperation” is expected to be enacted as obedience, subordination, and assimilation. This is Falcon Age at its strongest, in which it illustrates the very real ways colonizers chip away at the traditions and values within the colonized’s culture—beginning with a name.

It’s a promising start. You set off to shut down each of the Outer Ring Company’s refineries, helping various NPCs with their problems along the way. As you, on foot, explore the world around you, your falcon follows from above.

Although I did not play in VR in my review playthrough, I did get the chance to briefly try it out during my demo at PAX East. As she was perched on one finger, I loved watching the way the falcon’s feathers moved as I pet her, and seeing her hop from finger to finger as I turned my hand was really cool.

Throughout the game, you forage, hunt, and fight robotic enemies together. By pressing L2, you can point her in the direction of cliffside fruits or small rabbits, sending her to retrieve various resources, which can then be used to make snacks to boost her stats, like heath or stealth. Hitting L1 while she soars above calls her to perch on your arm. Here, hitting square triggers one of several different interactions, my personal favorite being one in which she shakes your pinky finger with her claws, as if you’re shaking hands. There are also various hats and toys you can collect for your bird, one of which turns your full-grown falcon back into its baby form (without any changes in stats). It’s extremely cute.

In your attempt to push back against the ORC’s colonization effort, you’ll break into refineries, clear minefields, and solve simple puzzles. To take down drones and other robot enemies, you must first send your falcon in, exposing their weak points, after which you can take them down with a few whacks of your shock-baton. Other obstacles include turrets and towers that release little scorpion-like robots, which you can disable thanks to a whip upgrade on your baton from Auntie. You can also use impact grenades to stun your more formidable foes.