Track down five of those objects and you’ll be able to summon and speak to your fellow phantom. Some of them will be exactly where you’re told they were, and others may have moved in the intervening years, requiring a combination of light deduction and ghost-magic to find. You do that by finding still-living Shelmerston residents who knew them, and peering through their memories to learn of objects that may have been significant to them in the past – a veteran’s war medal, an old coin – then tracking those items down in the present day. In each stage, you’re given a (very dead) individual to learn about. Primarily, that mechanic is translated into a treasure hunt. Slicing becomes the core of practically every interaction you have with I Am Dead’s world, and it’s a deeply enjoyable one, offering a feeling of constantly being on the verge of finding another secret. Others feel more redolent of stories to be told: a pocket holds a keepsake from a long-lost friend, a bush with a shovel stuck in it might hide secrets beneath ground level, a person’s mind reveals their memories. Some are inconsequential, but gorgeous: dull rocks reveal beautiful internal crystalline patterns, a ship’s computer shows off intricate circuitry, a toilet cistern contains a stowaway lobster. Travelling across multiple brightly-coloured areas of the island in turn – from a lighthouse-turned-yoga-retreat to the ragtag group of vessels that fills its harbour – you’ll be able to slice through hundreds of individual items. Noire where you pivot an item around in your hand looking for clues, except now Detective Phelps can plunge his eyes directly through the molecular structure of those objects. Slicing is the representation of that detail - you can zoom into locations, then zoom into items in those locations, and then zoom physically inside those items. He might be unable to interact directly with the world, but Morris can now examine anything on it in minute, normally impossible detail. In short order, his spectral dog, Sparky, tells him that the island’s dormant volcano is about to erupt, and he needs to convince a fellow ghost to become the island’s spirit and hold back the disaster – he just needs to track them down first. Morris, having died offscreen, reappears on his fictional North Atlantic island home of Shelmerston as an invisible ghost. Core to I Am Dead is the idea of ‘slicing’.
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