Citizen Sleeper 2 asks how we keep human in a hopeless future

Life for Sleepers is fraught. They achieve consciousness in a state of indentured servitude, an emulated human thoughts inside an android physique, pressured to work till they’re discarded. Those that escape don’t final lengthy on account of trackers of their our bodies, and their hardcoded dependence on a drug often called Stabilizer. With out it, a Sleeper’s physique will ultimately reject its biosynthetic organs.

If this appears like tech’s worst excesses of the current taken to their most excessive, you are greedy what Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector’s creator, Gareth Damian Martin, is driving at.

“Citizen Sleeper was me drawing on issues from after I was in my early 20s,” they inform me. In the past, Martin has spoken extensively about how the time they spent as a gig economic system employee knowledgeable the alienation and atomization of labor that ran by way of the unique sport, which they launched to widespread critical acclaim in 2022.

“With Citizen Sleeper 2, I’m not taking a look at issues from that perspective, I’m considering a bit extra about how will we proceed to construct a future after we know that it’s going to disintegrate. We all know that there’s an inevitable entropy to every part, not simply political programs and buildings, however our lives and our bodily our bodies. We all know it’s going to disintegrate, and but every day, we hold getting up and we hold doing issues.”

For story causes I gained’t spoil, the protagonist of the upcoming Citizen Sleeper 2 has managed to deactivate their tracker and not wants Stabilizer, however that hasn’t made their existence any much less precarious. The place Citizen Sleeper happened solely on a single area station, Citizen Sleeper 2 lets the participant discover the Starward Belt, a location that’s referenced ceaselessly within the first sport.

With the change of locale comes a ship and crew for the participant to handle, and a dramatic enhance in scope. At roughly 250,000 phrases lengthy, Citizen Sleeper 2’s script is almost double the size of the unique sport’s. The stakes are increased too, with a company proxy struggle threatening to engulf the Starward Belt.

Martin has been engaged on Citizen Sleeper 2 for almost two years, or about the identical period of time it took them to finish the unique sport. All important programs had been already in place, permitting Martin to spend extra time on gameplay experimentation and story writing, drawing specifically on two of essentially the most beloved (and deeply human) area operas.

“You understand, Cowboy Bebop is a extremely good story in regards to the gig economic system,” Martin says, laughing. “And other people neglect how little the characters in Firefly like one another, proper? They’re extra colleagues than associates, so there’s one thing actually relatable in that.” Throughout their days as a gig economic system employee, Martin notes they met many individuals from totally different walks of life and locations, and whereas the work pulls individuals aside nearly by design, staff nonetheless discover solidarity and human connection.

The brand new sport inherits a lot of its predecessor’s gameplay programs. Every day or “cycle,” the participant has as much as 5 cube to assign to actions that may earn them cash or advance the story. The probability of finishing an motion efficiently is determined by the die the participant assigns to it. A 5, as an example, has a 50-50 probability of manufacturing both a impartial or optimistic final result, whereas a six ensures success. Every process additionally carries with it a danger issue, with destructive cube rolls leading to extra extreme outcomes on “dangerous” and “harmful” actions.

Then there are what the sport calls “clocks,” the system that binds every part collectively. Most story goals require the participant to chip away at a process throughout a number of cycles. On the similar time, there’s typically a competing clock counting down the period of time earlier than a narrative deadline.

On the floor, all of Citizen Sleeper’s programs are easy, however they arrive collectively in a method that reinforces the sport’s narrative. At the very least they did firstly. On my first playthrough of Citizen Sleeper, my character ultimately earned sufficient cash that securing Stabilizer for them was not a problem. Martin tells me that was by design.

“I knew I wanted to have gamers on my aspect,” they are saying of the primary sport. “I wanted to win individuals over. If the sport was too harsh, I felt like gamers wouldn’t give it the time that I wished them to offer to it. This time round, I really feel in a really totally different place.”

Citizen Sleeper 2, in contrast, is a extra assured sport — in itself, and in its gamers to simply accept a sure diploma of struggling. There are story beats and content material the gamers can miss, which was largely not true within the first sport. It additionally options a number of issue settings, and on the toughest one, the participant’s Sleeper can expertise permadeath. (If you wish to proceed that save file, you want to decrease the issue, however your Sleeper can be perpetually modified.)

“I did not know the way Citizen Sleeper 2 was going to finish after I began making it,” Martin tells me, describing that as a “harmful sport” for a developer to play. “However as a result of I might made the primary one, I felt assured that I might play that sport, and that it will come to one thing actually thrilling.”

The meant impact of Citizen Sleeper 2 is for the participant to really feel like Martin is main them by way of a tabletop RPG expertise, like Dungeons & Dragons or Blades within the Darkish. The story ought to really feel improvised, shocking and shifting.

Nowhere is that newfound confidence and TTRPG inspiration extra obvious than with “Contracts,” Citizen Sleeper’s 2 signature new gameplay characteristic. Contracts take the Sleeper and as much as two companions on jobs away from the protection of the Starward Belt’s inhabitants facilities.

An early one duties the Sleeper’s crew with diffusing a broken company battle drone. In apply, that meant deactivating two separate programs on the spacecraft, with the catch being that as quickly as I gained entry to at least one system, the timer for each began ticking. Every Contract is a miniature stress cooker, with self-contained dangers that may’t be relieved till the Contract is over or the participant fails.

Contracts additionally allowed Martin to discover one in every of Citizen Sleeper’s much less totally realized concepts, “that the cube are the Sleeper’s physique.” Throughout Contracts, destructive and impartial rolls made throughout dangerous and harmful actions will trigger the Sleeper’s stress gauge to extend — a system harking back to the necessity to receive Stabilizer within the first sport. Because the gauge fills, particular rolls will start damaging the participant’s cube. Every of the Sleeper’s 5 cube can maintain three hits earlier than they break; they cannot be repaired till totally damaged, and never till a Contract is over. Crewmates even have stress gauges, and filling them will go away them out of fee for the rest of a Contract.

Additional complicating issues is that even after fixing the Sleeper’s cube, they don’t work as anticipated immediately, on account of one other new mechanic referred to as Glitch. Relying on the elements the participant makes use of to repair the Sleeper’s physique, they may fill roughly of the Sleeper’s Glitch gauge. In flip, which means there’s a better probability of an everyday die being transformed right into a glitched one, which has an innate 80-20 probability of manufacturing both a destructive or optimistic final result, and talent factors do nothing to vary these odds.

At first getting a glitched die feels punishing, however I believe it is likely one of the smartest programs Martin has added to the sport. The truth that glitched cube aren’t impacted by expertise means in addition they ignore destructive modifiers, which made them nice for trying duties my Sleeper wasn’t good at, and it actually felt like I used to be pushing my luck. In a pleasant contact, there’s even an achievement gamers can earn, an apt nod to Cowboy Bebop named “Whatever happens, happens,” once they rating a optimistic final result with a glitched die.

I by no means felt comfy enjoying Citizen Sleeper 2 the best way I did with its predecessor. The sport’s fixed surprises meant I typically needed to push my Sleeper’s physique to its breaking level to finish a few of its tougher situations. In that method, Citizen Sleeper 2 is much extra profitable at bringing collectively its narrative and gameplay ambitions.

I additionally discovered the story profound and important at a time when it feels just like the world isn’t shifting in the correct course. The characters of Citizen Sleeper 2 are surrounded by infinite hardship, and but they discover a technique to transfer ahead.

“Is it pointless that we proceed to try to have human, significant relationships and construct lives after we know that there are buildings greater than us which may crush us at any second?” Martin asks me. “Or is it that, though these buildings are so massive and highly effective, we nonetheless reside and work with a way that we are able to construct one thing and have significant relationships as a result of our realities are very private, actual and direct?”

Like every good GM, Martin isn’t desirous about handing anybody the reply to that query however hopes Citizen Sleeper 2 may make them their very own.

Citizen Sleeper 2 arrives on January 31 on Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 5 and PC.

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