If artificial intelligence has aroused great interest in our species since the first computer was invented, it is because these types of technologies are associated with a really complex model of the human mind that, paradoxically, we are still very unknown, and because it puts us in a position in which we would be able to create life beyond the biological for which we would not be anywhere near prepared; discussion before which Disintegration wanted to join from its very conception by establishing the latter as a narrative starting point through which to unfold everything else.
The Integration of Two Minds (FPS-RTS)
*With an unexpected turn of events where the world of video games is capable of generating pure poetry, the name given to the work of V1 Interactive, "Disintegration", is completely opposite to the playable approach it offers once we enter its universe. And, if we say this, it is due to the fact that the studio has found a really fertile terrain of design in the conjugation of two genres well differentiated from each other: the first person shooter and the RTS, of which we will talk more calmly later *
Disintegration proves to be able to move away diametrically from those situations in which a company creates a product whose halves have been chosen as a result of a market study. Far from being an amalgam of pieces from the corpses of other proposals or, in other words, a new frankestein of video games, Disintegration presents a mixture that surprises with the naturalness with which it alternates each of its systems and, above all, for the efficiency with which the mechanics of each genre are integrated with each other (both in their campaign mode and in their multiplayer aspects)
At the end of the day, the overall feeling that stays on the rise as one plays Disintegration is truly paradoxical: it feels like a first person shooter and an RTS and, at the same time, something totally different; something that uses a set of ideas that you do not get into your head that no one would have used before in the same way.
The Courage of the Soldier (First Person Shooter)
The way in which Disintegration presents the playable mechanics associated with the genre of shooters becomes an exercise in ingenuity by making it seem obvious to us something that had not been practiced before in the same way: what would happen if the RTS camera turned into a ship piloted by the player to be part of the action? It is precisely in these terms that Disintegration allows us to become one more soldier in the team to which we will give orders; thus demonstrating that good leadership rises in the heart of someone who knows what it is to be at the foot of the canyon.
Leaving aside the somewhat psychopathic tendencies towards which my mind wanders and which I have just fully realized, Disintegration burst all my initial doubts of a cannon shot in the same tutorial of the game: V1 Interactive takes one of the inheritances that Marcus Lehto brings with him after working on the Halo saga to erect a sense of shooting, physics, and projectile impacts that few titles are capable of building.
The less human side of the machine
Speaking in narrative terms and with the goal in mind of developing a context so that you can understand the point from which the Disintegration plot is born, the V1 Interactive game will be set for several years in the future; specifically in an era where humanity has been subjected to various catastrophes and forced to resort to integrating the species with the highest robotic technologies in order to survive.
Although it is true that the Disintegration campaign has a series of missions that propose a good handful of varied situations in the playable, the plot of the game does not manage to accompany as well as it could those actions that you carry out within its proposal . And, although he is not particularly fan of analyzing a game not for what it is, but for what it could be, it is evident that the Disintegration narrative is several steps behind what it could become.
Mainly, because the cinematics that exist between each mission end up becoming video sequences that will not be able to alter the expression of your face, since the story is in charge of a set of characters that are not generators of the plot, but entities that react to her. This translates into the idea that V1 Interactive would have wasted a golden opportunity when it came to not delving further into a set of sections of the game between missions in which we can walk around the base to chat with our allies and units.
At the end of the day we find a proposal whose playable structure hides a series of paradoxes that make the experience it offers especially striking: it feels like an RTS and an FPS and, at the same time, something totally new; It builds a series of innovative ideas and, on the other hand, makes very successful use of the classic playable bases that make both genres so attractive; Or, instead, it shows a simplification of certain systems that does not go against the playable sensation that it wants to convey.
Disintegration has managed to become one of those proposals that, after seeing its credits screen, has made me get up from my chair with a need that I did not have before: with the need to play a genre that has caused me a thirst that I do not know very well how I will get satiate. But, at the end of the day, the latter is what makes us human and differentiates us from machines: accepting that everything good ends while still being open to what the future brings... and it is better for this to arrive with a Disintegration that has a ''2'' next to the last letters of its title.