That feels like it should be a good thing, injecting a sense of realism and urgency to a genre whose pacing can be glacial (even when the story is trying to tell you that the stakes are high and there’s no time to lose). But the charm of The Occupation is in its story, in unraveling the web of intrigue and jealousies that have been festering in the heart of the privatized surveillance state. Until you bring all the important context into focus, The Occupation isn’t even clear about what story it is poorly telling about its cast of bland middle managers. Yet you’re discouraged from lingering over your discoveries and listening to the odd interrogation recording in favor of speeding through offices, sucking up every spare passcode and keycard that you can like you’re on the Nickelodeon Super Toy Run. And it’s only when you’re willing to basically cheat—using the codes you’ve written down from previous playthroughs, the knowledge you have about the routines the AI characters follow—that you can see and hear everything and, importantly, get the time to process it and think about how it fits into the story.