The Fall Part 2: Unbound releases soon

The Fall was an excellent, haunting sci-fi game, developed by Over the Moon Games and originally released in 2014.

Four years later, The Fall Part 2: Unbound is the sequel, releasing on 13 February.

The original game followed A.R.I.D, an AI in control of an environmental suit housing an unconscious, injured person who had fallen down on to an alien world. It was A.R.I.D’s first priority to find medical assistance. The story hooked you from the get-go, and as A.R.I.D explored the planet in the hope of finding help, the tale unfolded into a deep sci-fi narrative with plenty of twists, turns and philosophical questions around the laws of robotics, emergent artificial intelligence and morality.

The Fall Part 2: Unbound picks up where the original left off, following A.R.I.D’s further adventures. A.R.I.D has rewritten its protocol to follow one rule: ‘save myself’. Thanks to this, A.R.I.D can now possess new hosts including a posh butler completely out of touch with reality, a sexy service companion and a mysterious combat drone known only as ‘One’.

The game continues and expands on the last game’s format with metroidvania exploration, point-and-click puzzles and lots of dialogue to read through.

The game also looks like it will continue to explore complicated questions around subservience, survival and existential crisis. The launch trailer showcases an unsettling section of the game where A.R.I.D possesses a robot and uses them to achieve its own aims.

A while back at EGX I had the opportunity to play through the section involving a robot butler who was stuck in a routine, completely unaware that its charges were long gone. The whole mood was dark, twisted, more than a little creepy and yet entirely absorbing to play.

Questions in the first game were explored with sensitivity and complexity, so we will probably go down more rabbit holes in this sequel. The Fall is also planned to be a trilogy, so look forward to a devastatingly good conclusion.

The Fall 2: Unbound releases 13 February on Playstation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, PC, Mac and Linux. Find out more at overthemoongames.com or follow @overthemoongms.