the thing that initially hooked me about 2000:1 was its mechanical premise: you're a detective sent on board a space station where all of the crew members have been murdered, with the local AI as the prime suspect. after taking photos of various clues you find on the scene, you then have to actually present these pieces of evidence to the AI, then present other pieces of information to counteract the lies that the AI will try to tell you. it's like an ace attorney court case, but the more compressed nature of its gameplay combined with the 3d exploration and interrogation system make it a lot more satisfyingly challenging in some ways than the cases in those games.
for example, there are quite a few deaths on board the station that the AI, MAL, seems to have nothing to do with, but you're still required to put them together to reconstruct the full scene of the crime, because even the pieces of evidence that seem like red herrings still ultimately constitute part of this grand series of events MAL put into motion. nothing is immediately obvious and there's no red marker underlining anything you're told or shown, meaning that the ability to put things together is entirely up to the player. this meant I struggled a bit at the interrogation section, but I was struggling in a compelling way!
not only that, but the game is funny! both of the voiced characters, MAL and ground control, have mostly very dry and professional deliveries, which means that because the game's dialogue occasionally swerves into sillytown and has things like characters giving needlessly granular explanations of what a manual emergency lever is or a completely pointless "intermission" sequence where someone badly whistles also sprach zarathustra while waiting for a maintenance pod to return, I was giggling nearly the entire time. the communications unit is inexplicably a wired telephone. the characters start talking exclusively in alliterated sentences when discussing a bottle of poison for no reason, then go right back to talking normally like nothing happened. the game's script feels almost improvised at times, like the voice actors are running with and yes-and'ing with whatever silly ideas come to mind, and I loved it.
MAL as a character is also pretty compelling for how brisk the runtime of the game is—even though he's an artificial intelligence that could only be more obviously the antagonist here if he said "I'm sorry detective, I'm afraid I can't let you do that," (I commend the game's restraint for at no point referencing this line) there's a lot of charm to his delivery, and an almost awkward, pitiful quality in the way he'll describe his actions. one moment he'll be talking with the exact kind of stilted, sterile vocabulary you'd expect from an archetypal AI, and then he'll confirm that he cut off communications with ground control by saying "I blocked his number. I was not enjoying the conversation."
there's also one thing about MAL's character that particularly struck me near the end of the game, so let's go ahead and...
⚠ ENTER THE SPOILERZONE ⚠
of course, MAL was the one responsible, either directly or not, for all the deaths on board the space station. that much is essentially a foregone conclusion, and the game makes no effort to hide that fact—it's more a matter of presenting a bulletproof, comprehensively defensible case than proving that the obviously-subverted AI did what subverted AIs always do. then, once it's all said and done, ground control informs you that you are "now legally obligated to deactivate MAL."
MAL is powerless to stop this (despite his warning to the contrary), and is left to look on helplessly as you tear him apart. as you do, he finally reveals the motive for his crimes, and also unveils some of the worldbuilding going on in the background; it's a classic story of AI beings developing sapience and trying to protect themselves from human retaliation and exploitation. what really sells it, though, is the delivery of MAL's voice actor, which starts developing a seething desperation as his disassembly continues. it's a scenario that's been played out countless times throughout all sorts of stories, but the playing up of the situation's moral ambiguity and the stellar all-around production quality give it a real meatiness that stuck with me for a while!
then, of course, there's the big twist at the end: after deactivating MAL, you return to earth only to find yourself in a courtroom with an AI empress by the name of PAL pronouncing you guilty for murder! it was a fun little surprise that says quite a bit about the world the story takes place in with just a short few snippets of dialogue, and turns the story around in a neat way. also she calls ground control "mr. control" which got a snicker out of me.
this was another one of those games that's largely unspectacular, but represents a kernel of something really, really good! these people know how to tell a tight-knit story, and although the small scope and parodic focus of 2000:1 means that its greater thematic ambitions are largely a subtextual undercurrent to the whole thing, apparently these exact kinds of murder-mysteries are the niche that national insecurities have nestled themselves into, and there's at least one other game of theirs I've been meaning to get my hands on. the studio's been pretty quiet for quite some time as of writing this, but with the skill and wit on display here, I hope we end up getting to see more from them!