(I streamed my Binary Domain playthrough to get up to speed for Waypoint 101. This piece contains spoilers!)
Popping up from behind cover, I pull the trigger and shatter the head of a robot distracted by my tactical decoy. “Dan, check you out! I’m absolutely speechless!” my teammate cheers. As one headless enemy thrashes around, another bears down on us. I leap forward, smashing it apart with the butt of my rifle. “Dan! Fight like a soldier! Or would you rather run home to mommy?” sneers the same teammate. This is a game full of mixed messages.
Binary Domain takes place in a near-future Tokyo where global warming has left cities across the world flooded and uninhabitable. Rapid technological advances address the need for labour by mass-producing a workforce of humanoid robots. New cities are built above the waterline, and a New Geneva Convention is signed in 2040 prohibiting nascent research into developing artificial intelligence for manufactured bodies.
The New Geneva Convention frames the events of Binary Domain - we follow a ‘Rust Crew’ deployed to Tokyo in 2080; a covert international task force sent to investigate a suspected breach of the New Geneva Convention.
Binary Domain is a third-person, cover-based shooter developed by SEGA’s Yakuza team, launched in 2012 into an already-heaving sea of well-established third-person, cover-based shooter franchise entries; Gears of War 3, Saints Row: The Third, Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception, Mass Effect 2, Mafia 2 and Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots amongst others.
In a 2011 interview, Toshihiro Nagoshi said “One thing I’ve found from observation of some Western games is that […] in terms of the drama and the story not many game developers create a deep or compelling story.”
So, with such strong competition to draw on, and such a clear creative goal to set this project apart from the competition, why is Binary Domain so bad?
SEGA’s goal was to create a game that innovated the swollen third-person shooter genre by folding narrative development into the gameplay rather than partitioning it into cutscenes. The ‘Consequence System’ was presented as a dynamic way to use “an unlimited number of options” to cooperate with NPC allies in and out of combat, using optional voice recognition to give orders.
This sounds, on the surface, like the evolution of the Bioware’s Mass Effect and Dragon Age companion system, where each choice risks improving your relationship with one teammate whilst compromising another.
Character interactions in Binary Domain generally have an NPC saying something like “Wow, that robot was large but you kept your cool, good job!”, and rather than offer responses that have consequences or give depth to your relationship, give you options like “Yeah”, “No thanks” or “God damn”.
The real struggle with this system is that at face value, a Sci-Fi third-person shooter that borrows Persona’s Social Links sounds amazing. It conjures imagery of building up relationships with your squad, learning about the people you’ve been thrown into battle with and in the process, being able to collaborate with them more effectively.
Instead, invisible NPC priorities leave them pivoting wildly between lavishing praise on you for punching a robot in the face, and calling you a coward for using the game’s holographic clown decoy grenades.
The voice recognition is challenging. The Consequence System boils building trust down to simply agreeing with whoever you’re talking to (which itself offers a concerning view on trust), and the combat sequences never require tactical play at a level that encourages the use of squad commands, either.
This aggressive inconsistency is present throughout the game; building trust with Faye, the Rust Crew’s femme fatale sniper (a Chinese character voiced by Laura Bailey, which is a conversation in itself) unlocks an awkward romance scene with no real precedent, complete with racial slur.
This kind of jarring shift happens regularly; in our first visit to the neon-drenched slums of Tokyo, the game jokes at a sex worker’s expense before asking us if we’re interested in dating a 15-year old girl.
Later in the game, we discover the ‘Hollow Children’ we’re sent to investigate are able to reproduce with human partners, creating fully-biological ‘Hybrids’. More so that than, Faye is one of them.
Hollow Children have their metallic skeletons concealed with flesh and blood, Terminator-style. They have a well-developed sense of individuality. They have free will. They’re smarter than humans, resistant to disease and are described by their creator as less violent than humans.
Hollow Children have no idea they’re machines. They pass the Turing Test. They’re indistinguishable from humans, at least until their soft exterior is damaged — which seems to happen a lot — and their shiny bones revealed.
Humanity’s hostility towards Hollow Children comes from fear of their bodies. They’re similar but different. Introducing fully-biological Hybrids should address the cast’s fixation with destroying ‘scrap-heads’ by making them biological. It’s an opportunity to reflect on the philosophy they’ve been blindly championing for about seven hours by this point.
Shortly before a late-game boss battle with Faye, the Rust Crew announce that Faye needs to die because she’s different. Orders from the top, they say. Everyone is on board, except for Dan; who has a crisis of confidence about how their strong connection, and human she is.
After the ruckus, Dan pretends to shoot Faye before letting her go. Not because of a change of philosophy, or because he realises valuing folks based on their similarity to you is awful, but because he’s attracted to Faye.
In a plot twist so sharp it’s liable to rend flesh from bone, we discover the US plan all along was to acquire the AI responsible for these events, wipe out every Hollow Child and Hybrid and use the AI to further US interests.
Rather than unpacking the substitution of robot bodies into a racism metaphor, we stick to a narrative about US Imperialism that stays the course right to the end, challenged only by one man’s desire to fuck.
As a player, we have no input in these developments. We’re given the illusion of agency through our interactions with shallow conversation trees, and the trust we build with the other members of the Rust Crew leads to one of four endings that affects how many of the cast members survive the finale.
I appreciate that this sounds just like Mass Effect 2’s ‘we’re-probably-not-gonna-make-it-out-of-this-alive-but-who’s-with-me’ finale; but imagine heading into that without having spent the game getting to know your crew.
It’s Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty’s Raiden without the awful, awkward scene about his civilian life. It’s Uncharted’s Nathan Drake without the defence mechanisms and supporting cast that humanise him. It’s as if millions of audio logs suddenly cried out in terror, and were suddenly silenced.
Post-credits, we see Faye on the run, the last-surviving Hybrid, about to be ambushed. Dan arrives from nowhere, saving the day with a closing scene full of more awkward romance, complete with racial slur.
I’ve seen this game celebrated for asking questions about transhumanism, racism and imperialism, and likened to Blade Runner and Ghost in the Shell for thought-provoking commentary on artificial life.
Binary Domain affirms these topics exist purely by inclusion. It doesn’t ask questions and give answers. It pushes us to submit our own, but denies us the ability to do so. Hollow Children aren’t permitted agency, and neither are we.
Nat is a non-binary queer streaming part-time on Twitch, usually talking emphatically or critically about good scenery, lovely robots and storytelling.
Find them at twitch.tv/NatelliteDish or support them at ko-fi.com/NatelliteDish!
Special thanks to the folks who dropped in to watch my streams, and to Anna, who I owe dearly for screaming in unison with me about this game.
