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Yesterday’s Nintendo Direct was just full of goodies for PC-focused sickos like myself. A shadow-dropped Saga Frontier 2 remaster, a remake of a great PS2 Shin Megami Tensei spinoff, and even a next-gen Super Robot Wars game headed to PC in English. But nestled among the announcements was a special treat, just for me: No Sleep For Kaname Date, the next in the dream-diving detective mystery series AI: The Somnium Files. It’s out just before my birthday this July and confirmed coming to Steam.
It looks like the moderately unhinged dream-detective Kaname Date (absent for most of the second game) is back on his usual beat. That is, saving the frequently-kidnapped Vtuber Iris Sagan (aka A-Set) from danger once again. She really needs to take out some insurance against this kinda stuff.
The debut trailer below (ignore the Nintendo branding, the PC version is confirmed) shows her in some kind of pseudo-ancient UFO with a dwindling oxygen supply. Given that she’s a conspiracy-brained weirdo herself, it’s likely that this isn’t the work of aliens, and might just be a dream, but those are pretty important in this series.
For those new to the series, they’re story-heavy point-and-click mystery adventures set in near-future Japan. Kaname Date is the lead detective at an oddball new agency that solves crimes by diving into the dreams of victims, witnesses and suspects alike with the aid of his sassy AI companion, Aiba. She’s built into his cybernetic prosthetic eye—an Ai-Ball, even. These games are kinda goofy.
While dreams tend to be weird tangles of un-logic, if you can pull at the right threads of memory or solve the right puzzles, you can uncover all kinds of buried or even suppressed thoughts to use as clues in the mystery at large. While the previous games kept most of their puzzles relegated to dream-diving, Spike Chunsoft promise/threaten some ‘real-world’ escape rooms to fry your noodle this time that should follow slightly more coherent reasoning. Hopefully.
Interestingly, series writer and director (on the first game, at least) Kotaro Uchikoshi is relegated to the role of ‘assistant scenario director’ this time, according to the game’s official announcement page. This time, the lesser known Kazuya Yamada is stepping up as primary writer and development lead from his earlier role as sub-director on the previous game. So, talent from within the team, but I’m a little concerned that it just won’t be the same without Uchikoshi’s particular can of brain-worms being in play.
Also as a returning fan of the series, I’m curious whether they’ll be expanding on the B-plot of the previous game, The Nirvana Initiative. Not to spoil too much, it was a fun optional mystery to pick at, even if it threatened to punch some large, messy holes in the fourth wall. Just an easter egg, or a hook to hang the next adventure from? I’m looking forward to finding out on July 25th. In the meantime, I highly recommend the first two games. They’re deeply weird, unapologetically packed with anime tropes, and great rides.
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Kurt Indovina
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