Beyond the horrendously irritating voice, and the extremely poorly thought-through puzzles (context: other voices are fine, and some puzzles are decent), comes a violation of the player’s illusion of choice. There’s a point early in the game where it’s suggested to you that you can be honest about something important, but it’s a fake. You’re forced into lying. Here it’s done really well, and lying is by far the more interesting path for the game to take. To this I take no exception. But at the end there’s a veil-parting twist. And in that revelation you’re given a huge choice, and what is an extremely moving choice. What makes the complete game so very interesting is the certainty of failure, the overwhelming knowledge of doom spelled out from the beginning. And this choice, in light of this, is so deeply significant.
But it’s no choice at all. It’s another fake, and a ruinous one. All the emotional depth on offer is robbed from you as a player. It’s such a tragic moment, but for absolutely the wrong reason. You’re given, essentially, two doors to choose from. That’s how stark the suggestion of choice is. But one of them cannot be walked through. And for that I wanted to throw the game into space, then destroy it with a giant space laser.