Tacoma is the perfect distillation of why I think the concept of a VR movie is stupid. A story that happens in linear time while you can wander away from the action exacerbates the drawbacks of both mediums. If context is hidden in optional scrapbooks outside of the linear narrative, then the acting happening in linear time is less engaging. And if the context is found first, how will you know what is relevant to remember unless the temporal story has felt incomplete first?

I conceptually understand the idea that perhaps the gradient of comprehension could be part of the point, that there are multiple potential "ah ha!" moments based on the timing of player actions. I quite liked a game that did so on purpose. But if you want intentional dramatic effect, you need to account for the possible combinations that a player could learn information. When left too open ended, the most you can hope for is curiosity, but drama is impossible.

I want to be clear that I'm making a distinction between temporal / found-story hybrids and experiences that are solely one or the other. From Software has found great success demonstrating how people love to treat temporal narratives like puzzles. In their approach, everything is disjointed and displaced out of time. Thus piecing together a temporal sequence of events is the point of the experience, and is purposefully as impactful as the player's willingness to invest themselves in discerning it. (I personally am fine with lore being seasoning, but I sure as hell ain't watching a two hour history video on a made-up place.)

Anyway, the point is Tacoma does not have an interesting story. It has an interesting setting, but it is not at all strengthened by the primary gameplay loop of pausing a video recording to look at scraps of fictional corporate fluff. If your idea of a narrative "reveal" is figuring out someone's gay by reading their emails, I guess the kindest thing I can say is the reward is commensurate with the effort exerted.

Glad this was only the length of a movie.