I’m finding with this game the same sense I get from Metroid like games in that I can barely tell if my hampered progress is down to something I’ve missed or something I’m doing badly.
It creates a frustration which is compounded by the inability to sometimes hear what people are saying when this seems important (eg is that guy Welsh?) and the inability to get to certain memories without traversing through a series of them.
I feel like a lot of the obfuscations are intentional (hello colour scheme) so while it frustrates me, I wonder if that is an intent. It just doesn’t feel that interesting to constantly flip between “crushed” and “decapitate” and not know whether my interpretation was wrong or some other aspect was wrong. (There was one where a guy was mid death and the conclusion was definitely ambiguous at that point but I got the delightful bongs when I accidentally chose the right one).
I must also admit how perturbed I feel that the game puts me in a bit of a racist mindset (oh all the Chinese people wear these clothes, these guys hang about so they must be from the same place) which is too often confirmed. I sort of hate being put into a mindset like that and be submerged into quite a rancid environment with awful class and racial hierarchies using a first person perspective.
But then there are some really nice puzzles in there and the construction of the narrative and space feels like The Witness levels of impeccable. It’s quite astonishing how much character can be derived from no colour at sub SD resolution.