AI: THE SOMNIUM FILES

One rainy night in November, a woman’s body is found at an abandoned theme park, mounted on a merry-go-round horse. She had been stabbed repeatedly, and her left eye was gouged out. Kaname Date of the Metropolitan Police Department arrives on the scene. He recognizes the woman. Suddenly, he hears a noise from inside the merry-go-round. He breaks into the merry-go-round’s central column to find a young girl. And in her hands, she grips a bloody ice pick... AI: The Somnium Files takes place in a technologically advanced Tokyo in the near future, and follows Kaname Date and his top-secret team within the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department, known as the Advanced Brain Investigation Squad (ABIS). ABIS is responsible for investigating crimes through the process of Psyncing, exploring the subconcious dreams of persons of interest via a machine connecting the two together in a dream state known as Somnium. ABIS agents doing such are known as Psyncers, and act as observers in subjects' dreams who are able to retrieve secrets and clues the subject may be hiding or may not be aware of. To ensure psyncers are not subject to adverse effects, their time in a subject's somnium is limited to a maximum of six minutes. Also featured in the universe is the topic of advanced Artificial Intelligence, based around a global cloud-based system known as the Wadjet System that acts as the core of AI.

AI: The Somnium Files is a mystery adventure and visual novel set in a near-future Tokyo. Players take on the role of Kaname Date, a detective with a secret police unit who investigates crimes using an experimental technology that lets him dive into the dreams of witnesses and suspects. Aided by an artificial intelligence named Aiba housed in his prosthetic eye, Date is drawn into a chilling serial-killer case that begins with a gruesome murder. As he alternates between examining crime scenes and exploring surreal dream worlds for hidden clues, the branching investigation gradually pulls him toward buried secrets connected to his own lost past.