It’s time to hack…
Back in 2017, Bloober Team, fresh off the success of Layers of Fear, dove into the cyberspace realm with Observer, a cyberpunk detective adventure starring legendary actor, Rutger Hauer. With the launch of brand new consoles in the Series X/S and PS5, Bloober Team decided it was time for a facelift, remaking the game to take advantage of HDR lightning, 4K support, and even raytracing, something that just wasn’t possible on previous generation hardware. With a few other enhancements and a few new quests to take on, Observer: System Redux is easily the best version of this cyber-thriller adventure.
My experience with the original release was only a few short hours, trying the game out back when it hit Game Pass back in 2018. Even despite that short sampling, I could tell from the very beginning that this remake has certainly enhanced not just the textures and lighting, but the remade character models and animations are drastically better as well. With the industry being so fascinated with remakes and remasters, Bloober Team might just have shown everyone how it’s done, as everything has seen a major or noticeable facelift, enhancing every single aspect of the game, while still retaining the feel of the original. Now, it’s not all sunshine and cyber-daisies as there are some issues that still remain here, but we’ll dive into those later.
Observer is in much the same vein as what we’ve come to expect from the developer; part walking simulator, part point-and-click adventure. You’ll walk around environments, activating triggers that change or progress the world around you. Hallways will distort, twist, or morph in every direction, bombarding you with grotesque imagery and flashy holograms, often with sounds that look to enhance the shock or horror they are paired with. As an Observer, which is more or less a detective, you’ll piece together clues to solve the crimes or cases you’ll come into contact with. You’ll also have the assistance of 2 visual modes; Electromagnetic and Bio vision that alternate between electronic or organic scanning. You’ll also be equipped with a hacking tool, allowing you to jack into the minds of the living, or the recently deceased.
Observer takes place in Krakow, Poland in 2084, after a nanophage took the lives of thousands, resulting in civilians being designated into certain classes depending on numerous factors, such as excessive drug use, or other addictions. During this time, Chiron, a megacorporation, took control of Poland, creating the Fifth Polish Republic, and founding the Observers, a sect of police units charged with special hacking skills. You play as Daniel Lazarski, one such Observer who receives a call from his estranged son Adam and goes to his apartment building to find him. Upon arriving, Dan finds a decapitated body that may or may not belong to his son, and the apartment building then suddenly goes into lockdown, trapping Lazarski inside the building with not just the people who call the building home, but his son’s possible killer as well.
The story pushes Dan through the apartment complex across its many floors, talking with its tenants, who are trapped in their rooms. You’ll speak to them through their intercoms attached to their door, getting to know them and their concerns about the lockdown. You’ll find a few cases as you explore around, including three all-new cases that are actually some of the best content in the game, and feel as if they were always there. While you are largely limited to just the apartment building, you’ll visit strange locations that are presented as either highly detailed holographic environments or locations that feel like trippy hallucinations. Dan also suffers from an illness, requiring him to take medication fairly often, with his symptoms causing digital distortion all around him. You’ll find the medication pretty frequently, and I never once had it feel like it was overpowering or in the way.
What Observer does well is through its world-building, and your interactions with not just the environments, but with its characters. You’ll only interact in person with a single character, Janus Jurkowski, the owner and janitor of the district tenement building. Sporting a whole new character model, he’s rather enjoyable to talk to, and he features into enough of the game to feel important, especially as the game features two different endings. While you’ll only converse with the tenants through their intercoms, if you spend the time to talk with each and every one of them, you’ll find some interesting characters, especially a sex doll that was unexpectantly activated during the lockdown, alone in the apartment as her owner is nowhere to be found.
System Redux features a wealth of quality of life changes that give the game more focus and, as a result, make for a vastly better experience. Stealth is far more forgiving, and with better enemy AI, it’s far easier to navigate a path of your own instead of the single-minded paths of the original. Hacking has been changed to work more like a mini-game, having you pick out static numbers and letters from an ever-changing assortment. Neural Interrogations, when you jack into the mind of another character, have been far more streamlined and focused to be quicker, and far more to the point. These interrogations are very enjoyable and allow for some very strange environments and satisfying puzzles, such as trying to navigate a maze of doors and the way it implements the clues you need to follow.
The biggest change to what System Redux offers is through its vastly overhauled visuals. This new version supports improved volumetric lighting, global illumination, and remade character models to bring each of the cast to life, or the one’s you find face down on the floor anyway. The game runs incredibly well on the Series X, with the only noticeable slowdown I found when navigating from the basement to the first floor, which tends to only stutter for about a second. Environments have been painstakingly remade and look drastically better with much improved textures, ray tracing support for the platforms that support it, giving each surface incredibly detailed reflections and lighting. The detail to each apartment and the building itself is staggering and allows each location in the game to feel drastically lived in. The PS5 version also takes advantage of the Dual Sense controller’s triggers, applying haptic feedback during many encounters and interactions. As I only had a code for the Series X, I was unable to test the PS5 version at this time. For a better look at the differences between the original and this remake, check out this video below that shows how much the game has improved.
Now, I mentioned at the start that while everything has seen a vast improvement to how the game looks, sounds, and in some cases, feels, the controls of interacting with items is still far too precise and clunky on a controller. You can easily tell this game is designed for a mouse as trying to open drawers or cabinets can be a bigger pain than it needs to be. It’s not horrible, but some objects just require far too many tiny precise movements to interact with that I often ended up ignoring most of the desks and tables that had multiple drawers. My last issue with the game comes with the dragged out final chapter feeling just a bit too long, overstaying its welcome with a series of stealth encounters, and moving from location to location with little to no detective work, which is when the game is at its best. These final moments are not bad in any significant way but does feel a tad stretched out regardless.
Observer: System Redux is a very impressive remake that does much to make the original game even better. The story and characters have been expanded upon, and the new quests feel right at home and have some interesting twists that make the world here even more interesting. What made the original so engaging, from my experience with it anyway, is still here; a captivating story, solid voice acting, and some really immersive environments. The power of the Series X/S and PS5 really showcase the enhancements that drive home the added details and visual punch that developer Bloober Team has reimagined here and it simply takes a game that was already fantastic and makes it just that much better.
Developer - Bloober Team. Publisher - Bloober Team. Released - Nov 10th, 2020. Available On - Xbox Series X/S, PS5, Windows PC. Rated - (M) Blood and Gore, Partial Nudity, Intense Violence, Sexual Themes, Strong Language, and Use of Drugs. Platform Reviewed - Xbox Series X. Review Access - A review code was provided by the publisher for the purpose of this review.