"When it was announced that SARS‑CoV‑2, the virus at the center of the COVID-19 pandemic, had evolved into an even more contagious variant called Omicron, public reactions varied. For those of us with long memories of computer and video gaming, it brought to mind a title we hadn't thought about in quite some time: Omikron: The Nomad Soul, released for Windows in 1999 and the Sega Dreamcast in 2000."
"But it made a wider cultural impact at the time by incorporating the performance of none other than David Bowie. Or rather, it incorporated performances, plural, by David Bowie: in the game, he used motion capture technology to play both Boz, the wholly digital leader of an ancient religious order, and the lead singer of the band The Dreamers, whose concerts (shown in the video above) the player can view here and there around the dystopian cyberpunk city of Omikron."
The naming of the Omicron SARS‑CoV‑2 variant recalled the late‑1990s game Omikron: The Nomad Soul. The game launched on Windows in 1999 and on the Sega Dreamcast in 2000. The project served as an early title from designer David Cage and his studio Quantic Dream, known for cinematic, emotionally ambitious games. The game reached broader cultural attention through David Bowie’s involvement, in which he performed multiple roles via motion capture. Bowie played both a digital religious leader and the lead singer of an in‑game band, and he recorded original songs associated with the project and the album Hours....
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