Minds Beneath Us relies on confusion – a hell of a lot of good confusion – to get the player invested in its dystopian reality. Illusion of meaningful choices aside, it tells a compelling sci-fi tale of corporations gone awry and hits the sweet spot of good sci-fi philosophy that fans may be wanting in 2024. It’s gorgeous, too.
There comes a time in a deep narrative where the player is presented with several choices that will ultimately decide the fate of the main character. It could be two polar options, or it could be a litany of options that lead to a wealth of endless possibilities. Part of what makes Bethesda’s games special is that they’re more-or-less written with the latter scenario in mind. While there is an overarching narrative that pits the player in the midst of a grand standoff between several factions in which you can only choose one, several branching paths can potentially redirect the narrative in a way that leads the player to believe that their outcome is unique instead of predestined. Who wants to play a narrative title in which the player’s choices don’t ultimately matter?
Not me. I wouldn’t imagine that you would want to participate in that style of narrative, either. After immersing yourself for six, ten, or even twenty hours inside a universe, a meaningless ending is the biggest buzzkill to one’s mental investment in making a narrative designer’s words a temporary reality. It kills the immersion. If you’ve been paying attention to any of Starfield’s criticisms (some of which are valid, now that I’ve spent over 100 hours in-game), you might already be aware of players’ frustrations with the lack of stakes and/or absence of impact after making a critical decision. Sure, you can [spoiler alert, sorry] do a New Game Plus an infinite number of times, but players want to see their current universe react and reshape based on their decisions.
I digress. This is not a Starfield review. It’s a review about BareBoneStudio’s Minds Beneath Us – a point-and-click narrative set in a futuristic Taipei ruled by corporate bodies grappling with utilizing AI to the point of requiring human capital to power a world that is quickly crumbling to bits. And then there’s that three-body-problem of the player’s mind controlling the body of an unwitting individual…
Minds Beneath Us grapples with cyberpunk futurism in a more direct fashion than Starfield was anywhere close to addressing, at least in its first 40 hours. There are some side missions in Starfield that beat around the carbon-fiber bush, but the good content is buried so deep that most players wouldn’t really see it.
I have mentioned Starfield more than Minds Beneath Us so frequently in this introduction because of how, during my first three hours playing Minds Beneath Us, I was convinced that this is what Starfield should have been grappling with all along: AI-fueled capitalism that is consuming humans more than ever before, questioning the extent to which artificial intelligence is self-aware and overriding its original directives, and the creation of injecting another consciousness into a separate body. These topics equate to the core of Minds Beneath Us.
As a fan of Michael Crichton’s work, Minds Beneath Us was thrilling. It constantly threw wrenches into its story beats through plot twists within plot twists. Rather than simply pulling the rug from under my feet in a traditional “gotcha” whodunnit format, every chapter concluded with an introduction to a new force who was working behind the scenes to cause havoc. All this occurred while my character, Jason Dai, was expected to play a charade and maintain relationships with coworkers who acted as foils to an otherwise dreary reality.
I was put into the body of Jason Dai, an ex-military-turned-civilian who was expecting to start work at VISION Corp. thanks to the bureaucratic pull of his significant other, a high-ranking member of this megacorporation. This megacorporation was one of the leaders of “flop-processing,” a type of tech that involved hooking human beings up to racks in order to meet the energy processing needs of the advanced AI that has put everyone out of work. In this reality, the threats of underemployment and rising sea levels drove citizens to seek the assistance of flop farming companies to hook themselves up and become “juicers” to make enough money to stay afloat.
As depressing as this world was, it felt alive. As I walked from my apartment to the subway for my nightly commute, I could eavesdrop on conversations that were being had by random NPCs who were stuck at a gacha machine trying to get a specific action figure, drinking coffee, or having a smoke break. I could pet a dog and talk to its owner when walking past a bar. In the office, I could pause and watch the news to figure out what was happening outside of the walls of my office and get a clearer picture of the stakes of the citizens seeking the assistance of the company.
It’s clear that BareBoneStudio has done ample work in bringing this reality to life and believable – I could envision a near future where capitalism, if left unchecked, required humans to power the needs of executives whose sole purpose was to see lines go up as they slowly encroached on governments. The human issues, despite being unique to a futuristic reality, were fully realized and connected with present-day working class struggles of attempting to find meaning while working for a corporation. (DigitalChumps is no corporation, mind you, but I would imagine that you, dear reader, may ask yourself if you’re doing the right thing as you’re working a 9-to-5 for a large business.)
I’m hesitant to go further into Minds Beneath Us’ story, if only to let you (the reader) experience the narrative with fresh eyes without being spoiled. Every one of its six chapters is chock full of intricacies and easter eggs. Based on how you talk to specific NPCs, future conversation options can unlock which may or may not open up a short-lived side quest. Jason’s thoughts also act as narrator for you to use as a backup in case you’re unsure how to respond to someone else’s comments. If you go “off script,” you can get some humorous responses given that NPCs have formed opinions about how they expect Jason to react in any given situation.
My two biggest criticisms of Minds Beneath Us, however, is that it didn’t allow me to get comfortable with its universe in the sense that I could find a routine. Most importantly (and damningly), my choices did not really matter, either.
Let’s get the first issue out of the way: The first major decision occurred in chapter 3 in which my character was (in theory) given an option to choose one of two jobs. Based on my actions in chapter 2, the decision could be made for me or, if I had done “well” enough, I could apparently make the choice myself. Both jobs had separate “minigames” of sorts – I use quotes here because they weren’t truly minigames in the purest of senses. One job had me interview candidates and select the “best” one based on a variety of factors while testing my logic; the other had me prepare bodies on a factory line while testing my memorization and reflexes. In a vacuum, these minigames could have been good filler in demonstrating the monotony that is Minds Beneath Us’ reality. It could have been used as a contrast to the chaos that is its fourth, fifth, and sixth chapters. Instead, these minigames are treated as one-and-done trials in a larger series of clicking through dialogue trees.
There’s nothing wrong with clicking through a waterfall of dialogue trees, mind you; this is a point-and-click narrative! But, it would be good for something consistent to have been introduced as a reprieve from the worldbuilding.
Onto the second issue: Most of my decisions ended up not mattering in the end. Only in a handful of moments was I given a critical choice that could alter the fates of my own character and his compatriots, and even then, the branching paths ended up merging back to a central narrative. I can understand that Minds Beneath Us is not meant for saving and reloading to stress-test the extent to which decisions matter, but having branching paths like this should lead to permanent shifts in the way the story is told. I want multiple endings in a story if I’m given the opportunity.
If the story is not meant to have multiple meaningful endings, it should instead lean far into a specific direction. Take Decarnation, for instance. This point-and-click tale forces the player to have a deep emotional investment in a horrifying setpiece within the mind of a hostage. While it didn’t really hit home in making the player feel like they had an active role in that tale, the fact remains that it overcompensated for the lack of agency by digging a massive pit in my tummy to a point of seemingly no return.
Back to Minds Beneath Us, the illusion of choice ended up being my biggest issue with how it tells its story. The fact that I could go back in and replay the title with small variations without feeling like I made a terrible mistake should tell you that it doesn’t reward the player for replaying it only to see what other choices yield.
It’s written incredibly well, though, and that’s what matters most. I can look past the illusion of choice just as I did for other narratives. It hits home on the dangers of unchecked capitalism that requires humans being fed to fuel AI that supposedly is solving the issues that originated from human overconsumption. The decisions I made had no correct answer, as “both sides” were morally ambiguous to the point of me having to deduce the lesser of multiple evils. Heck, the NPCs who joined me in conversation even admitted that these decisions were evil in and of themselves. By the end of the story, I was left to believe that I myself was part of the problem and just as evil as the corporations pulling the strings.
I’m going to assume that you’re in the market for a point-and-click narrative, and if so, you’ll be blown away by the depth of Minds Beneath Us. You might have some minor quibbles with the lack of an always-on run option (to speed up walking portions) or a missing auto-advancing-dialogue option, but these UI options can be added later. What can’t be added later is quality – Minds Beneath Us tells a quality tale that’s worth the investment.
Minds Beneath Us relies on confusion – a hell of a lot of good confusion – to get the player invested in its dystopian reality. Illusion of meaningful choices aside, it tells a compelling sci-fi tale of corporations gone awry and hits the sweet spot of good sci-fi philosophy that fans may be wanting in 2024. It’s gorgeous, too.
