00:00:02.75 Dave Hello, everybody. My name is Dave Jackson, and you're listening to Tales from the Backlog. And this is a video games review podcast where each week I'm joined by a guest to bring a game out of the backlog, play it, and discuss. I have two guests with me today. They are both friends of the show, both hosts of the Retro Spectives podcast, and they're gonna solve this case, aren't they, Zach? 00:00:31.76 Dave Wanna welcome to the show, James Tuerlings and Patrick Arthur. Welcome, guys. 00:00:36.13 James How you doing? 00:00:37.27 Patrick Hey, thanks so much for having us on Dave. 00:00:39.59 Dave Of course, returning the favor, of course, for you two having me on your show to talk about Killer7, which was a really fun conversation. We have another equally weird game to talk about today. I think we picked good ones, right? 00:00:53.50 James Yeah, I was thinking about that. Like we picked a very bizarre game when you guessed it on our show and yeah, this one might just be even weirder funnily enough. 00:01:03.67 Patrick I would say equally weird, but yeah, we can't possibly be doing a normal game, Dave. That'd be far too mainstream. 00:01:10.34 Dave Exactly, yeah. Today, we're gonna talk about Deadly Premonition, which is an open world survival horror game developed by Access Games and published by several publishers, depending on the region. In North America, it was Ignition Entertainment, and this came out on the Xbox 360, PS3, and PC in 2010, and there's also a version on Switch, if that is the only way you can play it. 00:01:37.05 Dave This was the winner of a poll on Patreon for the October Horror Games. 00:01:37.40 Patrick Mm hmm. 00:01:42.89 Dave So thank you to the patrons for voting and getting this game onto the show. ah And if this is your first time listening to the show, first of all, thanks for stopping by. Here's how the spoiler policy works. 00:01:55.34 Dave It is the same as every episode of the show. We're not gonna spoil what happens in the story for a while. We're gonna discuss basically everything else that we can discuss, and then we'll put up that spoiler wall that will tell you when those spoilers are going to come out so you can jump out if you don't want to know what happens here. There's also a timestamp down in the episode description so you can jump out anytime. So what is Deadly Premonition? We have some quick elevator pitches for you and because I'm the host, I'm going to steal the easy pitch. I say the elevator pitch for Deadly Premonition is this is Twin Peaks, the video game. Guys, what would you say? 00:02:33.01 James Yeah, as somebody who hasn't actually watched much of Twin Peaks, I gave it a quick watch and yeah, I think it's pretty damn accurate. um The way I'd sum up this game is either the best awful game I've ever played, or, you know, a big city FBI agent goes to a small rural town and finds some weird shit. 00:02:54.91 Patrick Yeah, so I'm a bit more familiar with Twin Peaks. I've seen the first two seasons, but it was quite a while ago and I didn't watch it at the time when it was released. so I'm no expert, but I can definitely say the Twin Peaks influence here is enormous. 00:03:08.38 Patrick ah Specifically, my elevator pitch is Twin Peaks meets Shenmue because I think that ah while Twin Peaks is definitely the main aesthetic influence, Shenmue 00:03:13.96 Dave Yeah. 00:03:20.18 Patrick A game I haven't even played, but a game that I'm very familiar with. i Mechanically, it feels very inspired by Shenmue. 00:03:28.17 Dave Yeah, absolutely. I agree with that. And I haven't played Shenmue either, but you can absolutely see that. I played this for the show on my Xbox 360. I went out and got a physical copy of the game. 00:03:40.54 Dave I own it on Steam. And ah when I went to boot it up, I thought, ah hey, let me just check on the reviews and see what people are saying. And most of the reviews are like, this game doesn't even fucking run on Steam. 00:03:51.97 Patrick Thank you. 00:03:52.14 Dave So play it elsewhere. 00:03:53.17 James Yeah. 00:03:54.45 Dave So I went and bought an Xbox 360 copy. 00:03:57.71 Dave I played it all there, it took me 18 hours to play. ah How did you guys play this? 00:04:03.18 James Yeah, so I kind of went down the route you did initially with the Steam version and much, you know, similarly to you, it just would not run on my computer. Eventually gave up and looked for a physical copy but In Australia, you're pretty out of luck when looking for older titles like this, so ended up emulating the PS3 version of the game. 00:04:24.89 James um And, you know, even with following every guide in the book, this game still ran like crap. 00:04:25.38 Dave Mm hmm. 00:04:32.47 James And I don't think that that's a problem with the emulator. I think this game's just kind of poorly made, to be honest. 00:04:40.23 Patrick Yeah, I also emulated the PS3 version. It was a bit finicky to set up, a bit more involved than most emulation stuff that I've done. You know you have to get the BIOS and a couple of other steps. 00:04:51.90 Patrick But for me, it ran you know reasonably well. The main graphical glitch I had was some serious texture flickering, ah but it kind of solved itself over time. 00:04:58.65 Dave Oh, yeah. 00:05:01.24 Patrick It was never a super consistent issue. It kind of felt like the longer the game ran, the worse the texture flickering got. But I could just reset the emulator and we were back to normal, but it' still functional and I think that the PS3 version is generally regarded as the best if you have a way to access it. 00:05:19.72 Dave Yeah, the Xbox 360 version did have some of that ah that flickering like you talked about too. It ran fine. It didn't crash or anything like that. So like you know again, compared to what I was probably in for with the Steam version, 00:05:34.60 Dave um It ran fine. There was, the only thing was, and I was kind of following a game facts guide as I was playing, there were some people saying like, you know, there's this bug. If you pick up a key, do not save and quit the game because the key will disappear and you'll soft lock yourself. 00:05:50.61 Patrick Hehehe. 00:05:50.89 James ah Yeah. 00:05:51.16 Dave So other than that, ah you know, I made sure to not do that and it was fine, but it kind of does feel like the game's held together with, you know, bubblegum and duct tape and stuff like that. 00:06:01.74 Dave But it was okay. 00:06:03.50 James Yeah, absolutely. Even watching like when ah yesterday, because I missed some of the side quests, I thought I'd you know refresh myself and just watch some guy play through all of them. Even in the native PS3 port, you saw a lot of problems with the shadows and the textures and a bit of stutter occasionally. I don't think you're going to get this game to run perfectly no matter what you do. 00:06:25.50 Dave Right, so ah let's ah let's start, as always, with our histories with this game in particular. And I had given you guys a list of games that, um you know, we're gonna be in that poll on Patreon. We basically just picked four games that you guys thought would be cool. And then ah this was the winner, so this is what we're doing. But obviously you had both heard of this game before. So tell me about your personal histories with Deadly Premonition. ah were you? Did you actually want to play it before I asked you to do it for the show? Stuff like that. 00:06:58.62 James My only experience with this game was seeing it on the store shelves the week it came out and thinking, holy shit, this game looks edgy and then never looked into it further until the last few weeks. 00:07:14.46 Dave that That cover is ah ah definitely of the time for sure. 00:07:19.08 James Yeah. 00:07:20.02 Patrick Yeah, for me, I've heard of this game vaguely, but I didn't really know anything about it. Based on what I initially read, it sounded really intriguing. um James and I really liked this kind of thing more than I don't, indie is the wrong word, but but niche cult classics. 00:07:37.84 Patrick One of the best ones we played was a Slavic game called Gorky 17, which I think you know is the kind of game that got a lot of seven out of ten. But to our delight, when we played it, it was absolutely incredible. 00:07:49.10 Dave Mm hmm. 00:07:49.03 Patrick So I was really looking forward to seeing exactly what made this game tick, to find out why it had such a large cult following, even if it received a lot of middling reviews by the press. 00:08:01.01 Dave Yeah, for sure. This is one of those seven out of 10 games as ah it's become more more popular for people to kind of seek these out, which I think is a good thing that people are, you know, obviously you want to play the best of the best, but people have seemingly been more and more interested in these ah flawed, but ultimately like pretty good for in a lot of cases games that you know have a lot of heart and character and stuff like that that really stick out so that was what made me want to play Deadly Premonition like I knew of its reputation as a game like this that a lot of people think this game is terrible a lot of people love it with their whole heart and it just kind of ends up being one of those games that like 00:08:45.68 Dave People say it's got a lot of cool stuff about it. It's got a lot of bad stuff about it too. And it just kind of falls in that range where it's like, you know, check this out, but know that it's not going to be the best game that you ever played. So I'm into that kind of stuff too. 00:09:00.40 Patrick On that note, Dave, I think that there are actually two kinds of types of seven out of 10 games. They're the ones which are a little bit above average, and then they're the ones which are polarizing. 00:09:11.00 Patrick You have ones that receive a lot of seven and eights out of tens, and then you have the games that receive a lot of twos and a lot of tens. 00:09:11.52 Dave Yes. 00:09:17.08 Patrick And I think Deadly Premonition definitely falls into that latter camp. 00:09:17.28 Dave Yeah, I agree. I think another one this year on the podcast, I did God Hand, which is another one of those that's like, you know, the average might be at seven out of 10, but people either love or hate God Hand. 00:09:28.08 Patrick Hmm. 00:09:33.64 Dave There's really no in between. um 00:09:35.23 James I find that with those kinds of games, I normally fall into one of the camps, like I either agree with the 2 out of 10 people or the 10 out of 10 people wholeheartedly. If I was reading reviews for this game, I would agree with the people giving it 2s and 10s at the same time, right? 00:09:50.83 Dave Yeah, I was just going to say that like my kind of like big takeaway from this game is I would agree with both sides. 00:10:01.39 Dave Just like you said, if someone said this game is trash, I would be like, there's a lot of trash like stuff that you're doing in this game. 00:10:06.60 James Yeah. 00:10:08.27 Dave And if someone said this was like one of their favorite games, I'd be like, I can see why this would be one of your favorite games, like I think that there's a big chunk of what this game is. 00:10:19.56 Dave And I think like what the creator's main intention for this game is that Shenmue style is like a simulation of the town, going around talking to people, ah doing their side quests, getting to know them as you solve the case. 00:10:32.64 Dave And I think a lot of that stuff is really, really good. And then you just do a lot of some of the worst third person shooting I've ever done in this game. 00:10:41.51 James Yeah. 00:10:41.84 Dave So that's where I would agree with the two out of 10 crowd as well. And where I really landed on this is that I have a lot of these like really polarizing games that I i really enjoy and I make like a part of my gamer personality to be like, 00:10:56.88 Dave I fucking love God Hand. I love Rain World. I love these games. Deadly Premonition is not going to be in that category because you just do too much of the bad part for me personally. 00:11:07.50 Dave But I do like a lot of what this game is doing. 00:11:07.33 James yeah 00:11:13.90 Patrick ah So for me, Dave, I don't know if we're moving on to our overall impressions. um I'm definitely in the camp of hating this game. 00:11:18.41 Dave Yeah. 00:11:23.22 Patrick You guys talk about how there's upsides and downsides. Hell, even for me, a lot of what you're describing as the enjoyable parts of the game, I absolutely hated because of the I guess the time it took to do a lot of those actions, it's not a small town. I'm sure we'll get more into this later, but I definitely fall into the camp of this being one of the worst games I've ever played, and I'm very eager to discuss it further. 00:11:49.07 James Yeah. 00:11:49.25 Dave Absolutely 00:11:49.27 James and Yeah, and I'm definitely like, I agree with everything Patrick's gonna say about the gameplay and things like the driving and just the amount of time that the game wastes. But on the other hand, we have 10 out of 10 things like every time the main character says the word Zach after muttering to himself for like five minutes or or the fishing scene or just, it's just some truly incredible writing in this one. 00:12:20.03 Dave Yeah, I think that this game does span like the entire range of enjoyment. 00:12:24.75 James of emotion. 00:12:25.43 Dave And I streamed a lot of this on Twitch, so like if I remember to put this on the YouTube channel, people can see me go through like just the absolute pits of like another fucking combat section. 00:12:37.66 Dave like Are you kidding me right now? All the way up to you know when big story beats are going on, and there's like crazy cool stuff happening, and me just being like, this is awesome. 00:12:48.42 Dave I love this. and everything in between. ah So, yeah. 00:12:51.96 Patrick Honestly, streaming or playing with friends seems like the ideal way to engage with this game in the same way that watching a terrible horror movie with friends is enjoyable. 00:12:54.86 James ah best way. Yeah. 00:13:01.66 Patrick So I can see how that would make the experience more fun. 00:13:04.96 Dave For sure. There were a lot of people in the Twitch chat saying things like, saying things like, I wouldn't play this for myself, but I'm enjoying, you know, watching it with you. 00:13:14.98 Patrick Watching you so far. ah 00:13:16.39 Dave Yeah. Yeah. 00:13:17.23 James yeah normally when i'm playing one of the games for the show i'll like talk to my friends about you know uh what's been happening in the game and you know depending on the game they'll show different levels of interest for this game every single time i had a funny story about the game to tell people they they listened the entire time it was very entertaining i it was probably like more confusing from a secondhand point of view listening to 00:13:36.87 Dave Yeah. 00:13:44.39 James All of the, just just trying to explain the fishing section to three people who had no idea what was going on was incredible. 00:13:52.96 Dave Yeah, there is a lot to dig into. So let's put a pin in this. Let's listen to a bit of music from deadly premonition. And when we come back, we'll set up the story for everybody. We'll talk about what's going on around town. 00:14:07.95 Dave In Deadly Premonition, you play as FBI agent Francis York Morgan. Please call him York. That's what everybody calls him. And York goes to the small town of Greenvale, Washington to investigate the grisly murder of a young woman. And York takes special interest in this case because certain aspects of the murder follow a pattern set by other murders across the country. 00:14:32.84 Dave So this is what we're doing. We have a murder mystery. You play as an FBI agent and before, you know, getting into more nitty gritty things around town and stuff like that. I just want to say, uh, no spoilers about what happens in the case, but I thought the case itself, like at its core, this is a mystery that we're uncovering. I thought it was a lot of fun to go through the beats of the case. 00:14:58.59 James Yeah, I agree. And like a lot of mysteries, I think it's generally stronger at the start of the narrative. But I think they did a good job of presenting a lot of different possibilities for the answer. 00:15:11.10 James Like there are a lot of good red herrings in the game, like part way through the game, I was convinced it was the main character who was actually the murderer. 00:15:19.67 Dave Yeah. 00:15:19.92 James And then there was all sorts of stuff happening. So I thought they did a pretty good job of that. And the kind of like, this kind of mixture of Is it supernatural? Is the main character just crazy? Added a lot of depth to the mystery that I was, you know, um the resolution, you know, I'm generally of the opinion that most murder mysteries don't live up to the initial suspense, but ah they at least tied things off all right, I guess. 00:15:50.26 Dave Yeah. 00:15:51.34 Patrick Yeah, I found that the central mystery here and the way it unfolded to probably be the strongest part of the game. um There's a great sense of intrigue as it progresses. um Definitely every time I finished a scene, I was eager to see what was coming next. um So yeah, I can do this part of the game I agree with. I think that this is excellent. um I will say there is a very um personal connection that the detective or the main character has to the case, which I don't think worked super well in my opinion. 00:16:23.70 Dave Mm hmm. 00:16:28.33 Patrick It's not my favorite way for these mysteries to resolve themselves. So I thought that part of it was a little unsatisfying as it moved towards a resolution. But broadly speaking, I think the intrigue and setting and everything came together extremely well. 00:16:43.46 Dave Well, that's good. Like, I'm glad, like, even if, you know, the overall experience of playing the game was not your jam, I'm glad that like, at least following the mystery pulled you through decently well. 00:16:55.76 Patrick Absolutely. 00:16:55.98 James Yeah. 00:16:56.32 Patrick I think there's a mistake some people make when they're evaluating their experience with games where they're like saying, oh, so each you know story gets two points, gameplay gets two points, you know level design gets two points. 00:17:09.52 Patrick And then they say, okay, so I add all these numbers up and that means that this game is a six out of 10. 00:17:10.00 Dave Yeah. 00:17:14.74 Patrick I don't think that's a very Uh, it doesn't feel like a very accurate way to evaluate your sum total experience. So even if I hated this game, that doesn't mean there's nothing of value to take away from it in the exact same way that there are games that I'd give nine out of 10 and 10 out of 10. 00:17:28.28 Dave For sure. 00:17:32.64 Patrick And there'd be aspects of those games that I'd still loathe and hate to pieces. You know, I think it's, uh, you know, review scores are ultimately just, uh, It's a clumsy mechanism for summarizing how we feel about a game. It's ah it's very surface level. 00:17:49.06 Dave Yeah, a hundred percent. And like, that's the beauty of, you know, doing a podcast like this or like your podcast is that there are games that I hate that I spend, you know, a half hour heaping praise on because there are good things about it. 00:18:02.43 Patrick Hmm. 00:18:03.62 Dave But overall, like I can't stand them by the time people hear this, the Dave, the diver episode will have been released and you can hear all about that. 00:18:08.59 James and 00:18:10.68 Patrick I'm very much looking forward to that one. 00:18:11.32 Dave no 00:18:12.91 James man i was thinking about you the other like last night actually because one of my friends joined our discord and he said i've just been playing dave the diver for nine hours straight and i strongly remember hearing you say that you loathe that game 00:18:13.77 Dave Yeah. So. 00:18:28.14 Dave Yeah, so it's like that's the beauty of, you know, really unfolding the game and talking about all of its pieces is that, you know, you can talk about praise where praises do, even if it is something that you super dislike or vice versa. 00:18:42.36 Dave Like you said, even my favorite games, there's stuff that I don't like about them. So that's the way it is. 00:18:46.45 Patrick Mmm. 00:18:48.28 Dave um One thing that I like about Deadly Premonition kind of staying at this, you know, introductory level to the story is I really like York as a character and as a protagonist and a vehicle to take us along through the case. 00:18:57.61 James Yeah. 00:19:04.01 Dave He is a fucking weird guy and I really enjoyed basically every time he talked, like you never know what he's going to start talking about. um And it's, it's, 00:19:16.76 Dave He's just, he's a special boy, York is. 00:19:19.55 James I think they did a really good job with the main character for a few reasons. 00:19:20.08 Dave um Yep, that's ah that's Jeff Kramer doing the voice for York. 00:19:24.33 James Firstly, his voice actor did a really good job with the character from start to finish. yeah um Secondly, I think something for me, at least personally for mystery shows, I much prefer it when the main character is competent at their job, um is able to make reasonable or ridiculous, in this case, logical deductions, and generally have a sense of agency over the investigation. 00:19:41.31 Dave Mm. 00:19:51.95 James And York is coming into this a position of power as an FBI agent and b he's pretty good and knowledgeable you know in his field of study. like He's always talking about the experiences he's had as an FBI agent and that kind of thing. And then you know thirdly, I think it's pretty you know it's pretty clear that ah generally in writing characters with big flaws are just much more engaging and York has a lot of personality flaws like he's kind of crazy he's a bit of an asshole and he doesn't like really notice that he's been an asshole like half of the time so 00:20:20.24 Dave Yes. 00:20:27.36 Dave Yeah. 00:20:28.02 James And this is kind of a hard line to write for a main character, because you need to make them flawed, but in a way that's endearing, but not so endearing that it kind of invalidates the flaw. In this same game, they gave Emily this like you know this very common character flaw, being bad at cooking, that just makes me roll my eyes every time I see it. That's not a real flaw. York, however, there's a lot wrong with this guy. 00:20:56.18 Dave Yeah, York. 00:20:56.33 Patrick So part of the reason that this character feels so compelling is that of all the Twin Peaks influences, this is probably the most obvious one. 00:21:03.89 Dave Hmm. 00:21:05.28 Patrick um He's modeled very heavily after Agent Cooper from Twin Peaks, who is an FBI agent who comes to a town to investigate a murder. And even a lot of his idiosyncrasies are taken straight from the show. 00:21:18.22 Patrick like ah in In the show, Cooper is always narrating his thoughts to a tape recorder speaking to Diane. In this, he's speaking to, speaking to what's his name? 00:21:29.26 Dave to Zach. 00:21:30.17 Patrick Speaking to Zach all the time. I can't believe I forgot this. um the The delight that he takes from small and ordinary pleasures, like the way he loves his coffee, the way he loves you know the food people make directly from the show, his oddball nature, um his complete and utter confidence I guess it's arrogance but also just calm confidence directly from the show and I agree with you guys I think that he's an excellent character and I think that it is an interesting spin but it's hard for me to play this game and not think that they just wholesale ripped off the um character because that's absolutely what they did ah not not to the game's detriment but I yeah the influence here is very stark hmm 00:22:09.82 Dave I was gonna ask you because I didn't watch Twin Peaks and I knew that you had experience with it. So like when I was playing this on Twitch, ah some people in my chat ah were just being like, yep, that's Twin Peaks right there. 00:22:23.32 Dave I'm like, oh, inspired. They're like, no, that's literally exactly from Twin Peaks, just over and over again. 00:22:27.69 Patrick Yeah. 00:22:28.99 Dave But I can't really pick things out. I just know that Twin Peaks has this kind of uncanny thing about it. That's all I know though. So if you could elaborate a little bit more on how Twin Peaks is this. 00:22:37.69 Patrick Yeah. 00:22:42.98 Patrick Yeah, so I do want to start, like, specify that I'm not a Twin Peaks expert. There are people . This is the kind of show that has a cult following where people have studied it to death. 00:22:48.85 Dave Yeah. 00:22:56.65 Patrick So I don't want to go into this saying, I know Twin Peaks, I know everything about it. 00:23:00.41 Dave Right. 00:23:00.41 Patrick I'm more of a casual viewer. But I do i am a big fan of David Lynch. The thing about Twin Peaks is that it has a sinister and creepy and disturbing feeling to it that's always present but always around the edges. And there's a lot of goofy scenes in Twin Peaks, but they're more slightly off-kilter, I guess, as opposed to being purely comedic. 00:23:30.59 Patrick um This is very, very similar to Twin Peaks in most ways, except that the outright horror or Lovecraftian elements are far more in your face. And I would argue, and I will argue later on that that's ultimately to the game's detriment. So the sense of horror in Twin Peaks is a lot more Yeah, it's ah I don't want to say subtle because it's not like it's it's um it's super subtle. Like the weirdness is front and center. But the feeling of something being deeply and fundamentally wrong that truly suits those supernatural elements are far more in the background than they are in this game. 00:24:14.80 Dave Mm hmm. You can feel that when you're playing this game, like there is just something off about the town and stuff like that. But there is a lot of like really in your face horror, like there are these shifts to this dark world. 00:24:28.82 Dave um there This is a really gory game at times. I don't know if Twin Peaks is like that, but Uh, deadly, it's not so deadly premonition is very fucking gory in like three or four particular scenes. 00:24:35.01 Patrick No. 00:24:40.75 James Mm. 00:24:43.07 Dave Um, but so yeah, I think that you're definitely right. Like it sounds like this is much less subtle in those horror areas for sure. 00:24:51.31 Patrick Interestingly, I don't know if you guys are aware of this, but there was a demo or a showing of this game at one of those E3 kind of conventions. 00:25:00.02 Dave Mm-hmm. 00:25:00.33 Patrick And it was even more obviously Twin Peaks inspired to the point where they had to change things because of fear of being sued, basically. So where this game started was even closer to Twin Peaks and where it ended up. 00:25:15.27 Dave jeez it's uh it's really interesting so another thing about this game you know one of those things that i think sets like that that horror kind of on the the outside of like on the periphery i guess is there's this like I don't want to say like it's always there, but there is like this supernatural aspect to it and there's like a mythology and folklore that's important to the story of this game. And it's not like there's cryptids roaming about all the time or something like that, but there's, you know, 00:25:51.73 Dave feels like a classic horror thing. But there's these little kids who talk about like the girl who got killed. She's actually a goddess of the forest and stuff. So like they're attuned to, you know, those types of things. 00:26:02.38 James Hmm. 00:26:02.80 Dave There's a killer that's going around town that mirrors a killer from folklore in the town. So it's like a copycat or is it a type of situation? 00:26:14.69 Dave And we have this in the game opens, by the way, with um I can't, I don't remember if it like opens, opens or like, if it's after the first cutscene or something, but you're in this like otherworldly red room with like, you know, a TV and like a couple of chairs and a weird little kids in there. 00:26:34.20 Dave And there, there is this weird fantasy aspect to this game too, but it's not there all the time. 00:26:38.30 James Yeah. Yeah, and I generally think that the game's stronger when it's doing things in a more subtle and confusing way. I think the room sections were pretty effective in what they were trying to do. 00:26:52.55 James I think talking to the kids who are maybe not seeing things that other people can't see that kind of creepiness is so much better and more effective than getting dumped into the zombie world and fighting zombies for 40 minutes or something. 00:26:57.57 Dave Mm hmm. 00:27:08.94 James You know, when it's like in your face and particularly near the end of the game when they start like ripping the veil off, it starts to fall a bit like the um like the pull of the game started feeling a bit less to me. I was getting less invested the more they were showing explicitly. 00:27:29.89 Patrick Yeah, so the comparisons that come to mind, and I've got two because they're both crime shows and they're both set in Louisiana. And we talked about this. 00:27:40.22 Patrick Not too long ago, we did an episode on an old point and click adventure game, ah Gabriel Knight, Sins of the Fathers. Is that one you're familiar with at all, Dave? 00:27:47.82 Dave Mm hmm. Just by name. 00:27:51.27 Patrick Yeah, so that has voodoo as a strong element, but it's one that grows and becomes more insidious as the plot progresses. And then there's the more modern television show, one of my favorites of all time, True Detective, which has that same sort of like supernatural things hovering in the background and with it gradually becoming more, um you know coming into the foreground more as the show progresses. 00:28:05.37 Dave Yeah. 00:28:16.62 Patrick And I think that both of that old game and True Detective do a far better job of introducing their supernatural elements because yeah it's not as visible and it's gradually introduced and as a result you're a lot more creeped out by it than um than in these zombie shooting bits. 00:28:35.84 Dave Yeah, in Deadly Premonition, you are introduced to supernatural things pretty quickly as you do, like you said, those zombie shooting sections. You do one of those in like the you know the opening 30 minutes of the game. and you do a lot of those, as I said earlier. So you're always aware that there's something going on and you don't get a real explanation for it for a while. That's one of the mysteries of the game is why does York get transported or get, you know, why does the world change like this around him so often? um Besides, you know, gameplay thing, we'll talk about that later. Why is this happening? and You don't get an answer about that for a while, but it is very front and center the entire game. 00:29:25.10 Dave Another thing about the story that I think is really cool is a lot of the story a lot of the building up of the town will say of Greenvale. So like you're following the 00:29:43.73 Dave beats of the case as you go around, you interview people, you have different suspects throughout the course of the case. And throughout all of this, you'll meet the inhabitants of the town of Greenvale. And this game is open world. So for a lot of the time, you're pretty free to pursue leads when you want to, and then go talk to people around town as you please. There are a lot of side quests for the townsfolk and I didn't do a lot of the side quests, but I did think that basically all of the townsfolk were at least interesting. And like, let's say I was going someplace and I saw one of the townsfolk like in the diner or something like that. I would go talk with them because I thought that they were all charismatic and interesting characters in their own right. 00:30:32.89 James Hmm, I'd agree with that. I think this is like one of the game's strengths and weaknesses, actually, is that they did a really good job of interconnecting the histories of every single character in the town to the town itself. 00:30:46.50 James to each other character like you can talk to them and then they did this thing where you know they were going for the full open world Shenmue thing where every character has like a schedule that they follow and you can follow them around their day-to-day lives and talk to them and they'll have different things to say depending on where they are in the time of day and that kind of thing 00:30:58.95 Dave Mm hmm. 00:31:07.46 James And you can get a lot out of the game by doing that and following people around and doing side quests, of which there's quite a few actually. um Where I think this is kind of disappointing is that because the kind of the premise of the game is this mystery, you're a detective, you're trying to solve things, 00:31:26.07 James And the actual case follows a very linear progression, like these side quests ultimately can't really change the course of the game. And often, like lots of these, will give you hints as to the real, you know, the culprit of the murders and everything at the end of the game. But in these side quests, York, who is normally very, you know, in very clever, very logical, able to jump to crazy conclusions, 00:31:55.51 James his brain just kind of like falls out of his head and there'll be these super obvious clues for the player that he'll just completely ignore because he can't right that would change the way the game plays out so it kind of is a bit disappointing I think the structure of this detective story kind of mandates that these side quests are ultimately unrewarding but in terms of giving like a better perspective of the town itself I think they did a really good job 00:32:06.70 Dave Right. 00:32:24.37 Patrick It's actually that's a fascinating point that you brought up, James. So basically, I did basically none of these side quests just because I was not enjoying the game and I was trying to progress through it as fast as I could. 00:32:37.06 Dave Hmm. 00:32:37.23 Patrick I like the idea of these side quests or a story or ah I guess a story that's more presented as a web, you know, more vignette focused as opposed to being so focused on the main story. It's something that the anime monster does extremely well and a more recent game that kind of does something similar I think is Disco Elysium and it's a really excellent way to do storytelling. 00:32:59.90 Patrick um this this feels like a missed opportunity because we'll get into it more later of course but the essential gameplay on display here is not good uh whereas here was the potential to make something of the whole detective aesthetic of the game right and you can imagine a version of this game where the gameplay is more focused on solving the mystery and having that integrated into the plot with you gathering clues and evidence from 00:33:34.32 Patrick all these different sources. But unfortunately, back in this day and age, people hadn't really figured out how to turn detective-ing into gameplay like we see in more modern games like Obra Dinn, Case of the Golden Idol, or even something like Paradise Killer. 00:33:52.36 Dave Yeah, the big reason that I didn't do a lot of the side quests is like you just said, Patrick, the ah the side quests that I did pursue ended up being combat challenges when I like came down to it. 00:34:07.01 Patrick Haha. 00:34:08.48 Dave And the combat in this game is just the worst. So ah it that put me off of pursuing other side quests. And the other part of it is the characters all run on a schedule. 00:34:19.88 Dave And a lot of times, like if you're doing the main quest, Like you'll finish the main quest at like eight or 10 p.m. And if you can't go talk to a lot of these characters because they're in their house and the door is locked and you just can't, you gotta wait till tomorrow. 00:34:35.08 Dave I really don't want to phrase this. 00:34:39.65 James The schedule ends up being my least favorite part of the game. I'll just say it now, like the fact that some main quests end and you want to do the next one to see what will happen and you need to waste like, you know, 12 hours before you can do it and sleeping in your bed, you can skip ahead time, but the increments are so poor that a lot of the time you just end up sitting there for an hour anyway with the game open. 00:35:01.81 Patrick Do you know about cigarettes, smoking cigarettes but makes time pass faster? 00:35:07.46 Dave Yeah, that's the other thing. 00:35:07.56 James Uh, no. 00:35:10.00 Dave ah That's what cigarettes are for in the game is they will make 00:35:13.12 Patrick And in real life. 00:35:13.26 James Damn. 00:35:14.61 Dave That's true, yes. ah They will make time pass ah like hilariously fast. like The clock is going wild, and like there's a couple times I almost overshot the time I was trying to get to because the clock is going so fast ah when smoking. 00:35:22.60 James Right. 00:35:30.11 Dave But ah James, that was exactly what I was gonna say. like the fact that and this is like a really ironic, unintended consequence of this whole thing, but the fact that I was really invested in the case And every time I was set to like to do things on my own, it was like, do you want to follow the main story? 00:35:49.12 Dave Or do you want to go around town and talk to people and maybe do some side quests? I wanted to follow the main story, not because I didn't want to talk to the people, but because I liked the main story so much, that's what I wanted to do. 00:36:02.29 Dave And so it's partly because the side quests that I did actually do were not good. 00:36:02.90 James yeah i think 00:36:08.83 Dave um But it's mostly because I just wanted to do the main story. That was my primary reason for turning the game on. 00:36:17.58 James Yeah, I really wish they had integrated these with the main quest better. Like, if they had made all of these side folk missions, you know, part of getting the clues to solve the next part of the mystery, I would have, like, beelined those side quests, right, to get to the main story as quickly as possible. And then, like, some of the quests have this problem where it's like, 00:36:40.39 James you know why do i want like why is my fbi agent helping this lady clean the store room in the grocery store you know yeah 00:36:48.15 Dave Do you have pushing boxes back there? Yeah. Um, I completely forgot what I was going to say. 00:36:56.27 Patrick Yeah, it all feels like a consequence of them. Basically, with this game, they would have written the main story first, right? They would have written the main story and like, damn, we need to turn this into a video game. 00:37:05.19 Dave Yeah. 00:37:07.56 Patrick How are we going to do that? Well, we have to make this setting good and put all these characters in it. Oh, let's all give them, you know, let's give them personalities and they've got to interact with the detective in some ways. 00:37:17.94 Patrick So what would this lady do? Oh, she'd have a dirty store room. So now the detective can do that. Oh shit, we probably need to add some gameplay to this game as well. So it feels like these things cascaded in order, um as opposed to them coming up with a holistic identity from this game and building it all together. 00:37:35.92 Patrick At least that's the way it feels to me. And I think this is something that's actually common in a lot of games of this era. These heavy narrative driven experiences almost hate the idea that they're a video game or the video game aspect they really don't think is important so they marginalize it or don't pay much attention to it. 00:37:58.46 Patrick It's very frustrating to play these games as a consequence. One of the things that I think that modern games tend to do better is that they, or modern indie games specifically, have a holistic idea for the gameplay and story, or they have the confidence to not have gameplay at all, you know, what walking simulators have essentially become. 00:38:18.55 Dave Yeah. 00:38:18.50 Patrick um and And I wish that Deadly Premonition had come out in an era where the concept of a walking simulator was more widely acceptable because we might have got a much much better product as a consequence. 00:38:30.81 James I'm convinced that this game would be better as a telltale game or a visual novel or something more along those lines, right? 00:38:36.42 Patrick Yeah. 00:38:39.30 James I think that this game during development probably had a bit of a troubled planning process. I felt like they just had a lot of big ideas and they wanted to do all of them and as a result they tried to cram this game with as much stuff as possible ah you know So we have a lot of different interlinking systems that don't have a lot of depth to them, like things like collecting the points around the town, like those little badges that are you know behind this fence. like Did anybody really enjoy collecting those? I don't think so. 00:39:12.25 Dave Yeah, you go out of your way to pick up one of those and get, you know, $12 or something like that when you don't really have anything to buy for most of the game anyway. So um it's funny you guys mentioned the kind of putting the pieces together of, you know, we have this world, we're going to fill the world with these characters. And again, I think the characters are really fun and interesting to talk to. And I love how their histories all weave together like a small town would. 00:39:41.34 Dave um And then this game, I did read an interview with the the director where they did say combat was added very late in the process at the ah command of the publisher. 00:39:50.62 James Hmm. 00:39:53.67 Dave The publisher said, ah this game's not going to sell if it doesn't have a combat system. 00:39:54.62 James Right. 00:39:58.24 James Uhh... 00:39:59.84 Dave So they did it, and you know we'll get there. But like I 100% agree, this game would be way better if it had no combat whatsoever. 00:40:11.34 Dave ah If it was just driving around town, talking to people, doing some errands, side quests, you know, someone says they lost their thing or this person stole this thing from me. 00:40:21.75 Dave I need you to go get it back. Like this game would be much better with no combat or if combat was like in very specific places, then it would fit better. 00:40:33.22 Dave It's just there's way too much. And I think if you ask the director, they would probably agree with you. 00:40:38.77 James Man, you can just imagine the publisher saying it needs combat, it needs quick time events, it needs boss battles, you know. 00:40:45.30 Dave Yeah, it's 2010, so I agree. 00:40:50.10 James Yup. 00:40:51.33 Dave I think the one of the coolest things about newer games, and especially from the Indies, is the confidence to just not put combat in your games. 00:41:03.10 Dave If it's like in Disco Elysium or like in, what's another one? 00:41:03.00 Patrick Completely agree 00:41:08.76 Dave I can't remember. 00:41:09.58 Patrick and any Any walking sim like ah What Remains of Edith Finch or anything, like a lot of people panned Gone Home when it first released, which I thought was extremely a very disappointing response because Gone Home was a trailblazer in a lot of ways in having the confidence to tell a story ah in first person without having anything else. 00:41:11.71 Dave Yeah. 00:41:30.58 Patrick um and Since then, we've seen walking simulators really take off. So I think that either this game being a walking simulator or having a gameplay system that tied more into this concept of being a detective would have been ideal. 00:41:47.44 Dave Yeah. Well, we're on the subject of gameplay. So let's, uh, let's just get into what it's like to talk, to play this game in particular. So, uh, it's an open world game. Most of the time you get around by driving. 00:41:59.08 Dave York has a master key where he can get into any cop car in the city, which I think is pretty funny. Um, and there is a side quest you can do. So if anyone's listening to this and thinking that you want to try this, please do the side quest for George the sheriff so that you can fast travel around town. 00:42:15.37 James Uh. 00:42:15.94 Dave That is a. 00:42:16.85 James Uh. 00:42:17.06 Dave an absolute game changer because ah driving in this game is not good and the town is huge and this game has one of the worst maps I think I've ever experienced in a game so I probably spent I don't know eight of my 18 hours just very frustrated with navigating the town and then I finally Not that I like learned the town so much. 00:42:42.92 Dave I just figured it out. Okay. This is how this map works. Oh, it's not consistently like North is not always pointing up on the map. It changes depending on where you're facing, which is just, uh, navigating the town fucking sucks. 00:42:57.01 James But 90% of the problem is that the map screen doesn't let you zoom out far enough. 00:43:03.71 Dave No, it does not. It's terrible. 00:43:04.67 James And B, the markers aren't always on the map. This game needed A, like a GPS, B. One thing when I started playing was that the first time I got into a car, it presented me with a control scheme. 00:43:20.42 James And one of the things that the control scheme had was the indicators. You can turn your left and right indicator on in this car. 00:43:27.42 Dave Yeah. 00:43:27.99 James And the very first thing that George said to you when getting in the car was, you better drive carefully. So I don't know if you guys did this, but I legit drove very carefully, used my indicators, stopped at traffic lights, and then as the game went on was like, wait a second, if I plow through these barricades, they won't say anything. There's no dialogue for any of this. What? 00:43:50.42 Dave Yeah. 00:43:51.79 Patrick You are crazy, James. I don't know why anyone would do that. 00:43:55.94 James I was like, they went through the effort of putting these controls in. 00:43:57.14 Patrick it's like 00:43:59.99 James Like it must have a purpose, like literally worthless. Like they do nothing. 00:44:03.61 Dave I did that too at the beginning when it was like, you know, George and York are not on good terms because George, George is kind of protecting his turf. 00:44:08.78 James Yeah. 00:44:11.66 Dave York is a dickhead. Like I didn't want to, you know, I didn't know what would happen. So I drove carefully at the beginning too. The other reason I drove carefully is your car cannot go over like 50 miles an hour for a while until you upgrade the car. 00:44:27.06 Dave So like, You can't really speed. You can, you can mildly speed. Like you might not even get a ticket going at the max speed in this car. 00:44:32.37 James later on i really liked that in the cop cars like turning the police siren on like unlocked the speed limit but i spent like yeah 00:44:42.24 Dave Yeah. You could go like 10 miles an hour faster. 00:44:44.60 Patrick It was like five miles an hour fast. It was basically nothing. I was so frustrated at it. 00:44:50.78 Patrick The other reason I didn't bother trying to drive carefully is because obviously in Australia, we drive on the left-hand side of the road instead of the right-hand side. And I knew that I'd mess it up. 00:45:01.52 Patrick I knew that I'd get confused at one point with all of the you know lanes back to front. 00:45:05.11 James I did that like twice. 00:45:06.43 Patrick So I said, fuck this. I'm not going to learn how to drive in American lanes. 00:45:10.16 Dave Yeah, that's fair. 00:45:10.27 James There's also all of these shortcuts all over town that have these wooden barricades that you can just smash through and they'll be like 00:45:17.88 Patrick which are not marked on the map either. 00:45:19.72 James No, but there'll be lots of points like in those areas to reward you for, you know, breaking the law or whatever. I don't know. It's especially good because it's presented as agents on a FBI street cred for awful. 00:45:35.10 Dave Yeah. 00:45:36.95 Patrick The handling on the car is atrocious as well. like You can barely turn corners. 00:45:40.51 Dave yeah It is, yeah. 00:45:42.26 Patrick I don't know if there's a way to like brake or handbrake to take corners, but I was very, very bad at cornering when I was going at max speed. 00:45:51.07 Dave It's rough and like the thing about the car is ah you don't turn smoothly. So like whenever you press left or right on the stick when you're driving, it will jerk at 15 degree intervals instead of like you know a smooth turn like you know a lot of games do. 00:46:08.95 Patrick That's what it is. 00:46:09.47 James Yeah. 00:46:11.58 Dave So it's, it's really frustrating to just drive in a straight line a lot of times in this game, uh, because you'll like, you'll, you know, you don't want to run face first into another car or like run off the road or something. So you want to try and stay in your lane, but the roads are, they're weaving, you know, country roads and stuff. It's, it's, uh, it's annoying. 00:46:30.64 Patrick I think part of the problem is that James and I just recently have come off playing Gran Turismo 4, which has slightly better driving physics than this game. 00:46:36.67 Dave Yeah. Slightly. 00:46:40.78 James Slightly. 00:46:41.19 Patrick So to go from that game to this one, I felt especially bad. 00:46:45.85 Patrick It felt like a punch in the gut. I'm like, what are we even doing here? 00:46:49.27 Dave Yeah. 00:46:49.40 James Yeah, I ran out of fuel a few times too, but ah luckily the game gives you these flares which you can just fire off to have a brand new car with a full fuel tank delivered to you anywhere in the town. 00:47:01.07 Dave Yeah. So eventually, the other thing about driving, I wanted to mention, cause it's weird. It kind of adds to that, that weird. feeling about the town in general, but it makes it really fucking frustrating when you're trying to navigate is the streets change every single time there's an intersection. 00:47:18.21 Dave The names change. So one block you'll be driving on Donovan street. You don't make any turns. Next block you're on Batman street or whatever. Then the next block you're on like Bachman road or whatever. 00:47:27.78 Patrick Oh. 00:47:31.70 Dave And 00:47:31.65 Patrick I didn't even notice that. I wonder if that's like a specific regional thing for where this game is set. 00:47:36.46 Dave It can't be there. That's, it's just not how streets work like anywhere. 00:47:39.60 James It's just ridiculous. yeah 00:47:42.77 Patrick Yeah, I know, but you guys, the United States, don't don't the individual states have their own, I guess, local laws and weird things? 00:47:49.97 Dave They do, but I can't, I can't imagine why. 00:47:51.51 James Yeah, but which one would like to do this? It's just silly. 00:47:55.20 Patrick I don't know, I'm just thinking that with a small town of this size, you might have a local city council do something weird, but I don't really know. 00:47:56.64 Dave Yeah. 00:48:02.64 Dave Yeah, i if it is, it would be like the local city council, you know, just being like, look how fucking wacky we are with our street names. But it's very frustrating to be like, I need to drive on this road, turn left on, you know, whatever, like White Dove Road, and then you turn left and then you look at the map and you're not on White Dove Road anymore. 00:48:26.24 Dave but you made the right turn, the street just changed names two times since you turned. It's very strange. 00:49:07.69 James In my opinion, just while we're on the topic, the absolute worst thing, like I hate the fact that you can't zoom out on the map, but the thing that really grinds my gears is that like the rest of this game, the worst part of it is the gameplay of driving. 00:49:21.73 James The best part about it is every time York decides to go on a tangent about his favorite movies, 00:49:26.32 Dave Yes. 00:49:27.72 James which makes the worst thing every time you check the map it just skips the current conversation that you're listening to so half the time they'd be talking and I'd just sit there at the side of the road because I didn't know where to go but I didn't want to cancel the dialogue so you know what do you do 00:49:32.47 Dave Hmm. 00:49:45.78 Patrick Well, you need an auto drive button, right? 00:49:46.07 Dave Yeah. 00:49:47.56 Patrick You need a button, you press X and he drives and you can sit back and listen to the conversation and kind of let the vibes go over you instead of making the navigating a complete nightmare. 00:49:58.54 Patrick And with that simple change, the experience would have been much, much better. 00:50:03.44 Dave Yeah, like the Final Fantasy 15 auto drive would have been helpful because I used fast travel a lot later in the game and it's really funny if you don't know. ah You get a radio from George and you call what it is in game. You call George on the radio and he comes to pick you up and he drives you to the place. 00:50:25.53 Dave That's the lore explanation for how fast travel works, but you miss those, you know, York talking to Zach conversations and they're all great. 00:50:36.59 Dave Like I love every one of those. 00:50:36.72 James Yeah Even the ones with the other characters are great because it's just like a whole car ride of the other characters like Reacting wildly to Zach Saint or York Saint the most like outlandish bullshit you've ever heard Here's no filter whatsoever 00:50:52.37 Dave Yeah. York just like has no, he has no filter and no, like he, he has never read a room once in his life. 00:51:03.35 Patrick It's more that he doesn't care, right? I think that's kind of what makes him so compelling. It's not that he, you know, is trying to... He's not trying to keep the social peace. who He is who he is. And if he offends someone, he does apologize. he you know He'll be like, I understand you're offended, but this is just how I do things. 00:51:25.20 Dave Yeah. When it comes to police matters. Yeah. There's some like more personal moments later in the game where you're just watching. You're like, you're dude fucking just like read the room, man. 00:51:36.50 Dave Like this is not the time for you to, to trauma dump or something like that. 00:51:37.94 James Did you guys... 00:51:39.02 Patrick Alright, I need you guys to take off your shirts. 00:51:42.06 Dave Yeah. ah Yeah. So I think that's the main quest. 00:51:44.60 James Did you guys do that section where you had dinner with all the other police at the diner? 00:51:51.27 Dave Yeah. Or it's optional, but yeah. 00:51:51.77 James Yeah. Yeah, and you just go there and he just lists off the most horrific things that he's seen, you know, as an FBI investigator. 00:52:00.30 Dave Yeah. 00:52:00.46 James And just the entire time everyone is just getting less and less comfortable eating their dinner. 00:52:06.78 Dave Yeah, it's very good. So the other part of like gameplay here is At certain points in the main quest, the town will shift or like the environment will shift into like this dark world type thing. And these are more traditional like survival horror style dungeon sections with a lot of combat and It's from the Resident Evil 4 third-person perspective. It has tank controls during this. And I just want to go on record as saying, I don't mind tank controls when you have the RE4 behind the character perspective. um So in this, of all the things about the gameplay that I think are absolute dog shit, the tank controls, not one of them, are surprisingly fine with them in here. 00:53:02.53 James I actually didn't notice, it just felt pretty normal to me. I guess I've played a lot of third-person shooters that control like this. um But I have to say, like this is easily the worst third-person shooter I've ever played. 00:53:10.05 Dave Yeah. 00:53:13.54 Dave A hundred percent. 00:53:15.98 James like It is awful. like Calling it survival horror is being generous. I don't think the word survival comes into this in any stretch. like I had so many healing items that I couldn't pick any up for like the entire game. 00:53:32.84 Dave Yeah. 00:53:33.65 James and you kill basically every single enemy in a single hit the hitboxes are like they're extremely inaccurate but in the favor of the player like you can be like a mile away from a zombie and a melee hit will kill them is crazy pretty bad 00:53:50.38 Dave Okay. With the melee weapons, those are super powerful. Uh, the guns are at least your starter pistol. Um, pretty, pretty weak. And, uh, you have to hit headshots, but you have to hit like eight to nine headshots. 00:54:00.33 Patrick You gotta hit headshots, that's what it boils down to. 00:54:06.85 Dave Like it's kind of ridiculous. 00:54:07.83 Patrick Ah, what? 00:54:08.93 Dave There's a, yeah. 00:54:08.93 Patrick What, really? 00:54:10.58 James did you guys get the magnum later on that thing 00:54:12.55 Patrick it should just be, um generally it's two to three headshots because if you you basically need to stun them because a lot of them are blocking and then the headshot will finish them off. 00:54:22.60 Dave interesting. Not my experience, but it's possible that I'm just not good at aiming. 00:54:23.54 Patrick Yeah. i 00:54:26.67 Patrick I wasn't using lock-on at all, which might have affected it, because I know that you mentioned that you were using the lock-on function. 00:54:33.55 Dave So there is a lock-on function, and the issue with the lock-on is that it does not lock on to the zombie's head. 00:54:40.53 James That thing 00:54:40.82 Dave It locks on on their crotch a lot of times, which is not the best place to shoot ah for, you know, ethical and for damage, you know, efficiency reasons. 00:54:43.56 Patrick Right. 00:54:52.52 Dave So, like, the lock-on for some Enemies later is good, but for the standard zombies is terrible. And so you want to aim for headshots. 00:55:04.91 Dave And the reason, in my opinion, the reason this is the worst third person shooter I've ever played is the aiming is incredibly fiddly and imprecise. It's a nightmare to try and get a headshot. 00:55:15.12 James Yeah. I also just think that like the main character in general, not just in the third person scenes, but when you're just walking about in the overworld, it just doesn't feel very good to control. Running is slow and jerky. Movement is slow and jerky. 00:55:34.18 James transitioning between rooms is slow and jerky even if you sprint when you open doors to do the quick animation. um The attacks like the animations in this game do not flow smoothly from one into the other they kind of go the entire way stop and very awkwardly begin the next one it just it doesn't feel good like stuff like there's this tiny little ledge you need to walk up to it and press a button and watch an animation play of him take a second to step up onto the ledge whereas like in most games he'd just run over it by holding forward or something like ah just the worst 00:55:55.32 Dave Mm. 00:56:12.39 Dave Yeah. 00:56:13.12 Patrick you need to press it again to get off the ledge as well. 00:56:15.99 Dave Yes, you do. Which is exacerbated when you're doing one of the many QTE sequences in this game. um Especially when you're doing, there are chase sections where what you're doing is you have a constant QTE to wiggle the joystick back and forth to run ah during the chase sequences. 00:56:24.87 James Oh the runaway sections. 00:56:38.26 Dave And then you'll have other QTEs that come up to step over a five inch tall ledge. and then step down from the five inch tall ledge or push a box or duck or something like that. Those are bad, but they're not the worst QTEs in the game. The worst ones are the ones when an enemy will pop out and you have literally a split second to react to any one of the buttons on the controller. It's not consistent. So if you die, because again, the timer is one second. 00:57:14.68 James way less, like half a second. 00:57:15.08 Dave And if it does it feels less generous than that, too. 00:57:18.18 James Yeah. 00:57:18.48 Dave um If you die and you have to go redo that QTE section, the button is going to be different the next time you do it. So those are fucking awful. 00:57:28.33 James Yeah. 00:57:28.77 Patrick Yeah, the one that killed me the most was the one early on in the lumber mill when you're in the elevator. 00:57:34.36 James Yeah. 00:57:34.39 Patrick um i died I legitimately died three times to that same one. 00:57:34.55 Dave Mm hmm. 00:57:38.24 Patrick And every single time I got to a new part of the QTE sequence, I failed it. I was like, man, I'm bad at video games. 00:57:43.02 Dave Yep. 00:57:44.91 James The worst bits for me in the chase sections were pushing the boxes, because half the time you would move the box well out of the way, but then York wouldn't like to step sideways and keep running. 00:57:56.65 James You'd need to push the box the entire way until it broke for some reason. 00:58:01.09 Dave Yes. 00:58:02.52 James Just complete. 00:58:05.49 Dave And in the final boss, there is a chase QTE sequence that's legitimately one of the worst things I've ever done in a video game. 00:58:10.13 James Oh my God. 00:58:13.68 James It lasts for so long. 00:58:13.94 Dave It's so bad. 00:58:15.04 James It keeps going. 00:58:15.73 Dave Yeah. 00:58:16.20 James like i was I thought I was like not doing something correctly, but it's just legitimately that long and repetitive. 00:58:23.22 Dave Yeah, now there's another type of sequence like this, where an enemy will be chasing you and will come into a room and you have to pick a place to hide. And you have to hide in there while they kind of search the room. There's certain places where they'll get up close. So you have to do a QTE to hold your breath, ah kind of like until dawn or something if you played that much simpler than until dawn even, but um This seemed like it was something that they wanted to do something cool with. 00:58:55.70 Dave But I didn't . I couldn't pick up on any strategy in these like if I passed every single one. I don't know if it's literally just like hiding anywhere or if there are good and bad hiding places. 00:59:07.18 Dave Did you guys like to figure anything else about these? 00:59:08.15 James I legitimately think it's hidden anywhere and just hit the QTE button when it pops up. 00:59:13.27 Patrick Yep. 00:59:15.87 James They take forever. 00:59:16.06 Patrick I mean, ah thing the thing that's annoying about these is that the presentation of it is quite cool. Like you get like this split camera thing where you get to see the um you know the raincoat killer smashing down the door from their perspective at the same time as you're trying to hide. 00:59:22.99 Dave Mm hmm. 00:59:31.75 Patrick But once again, the gameplay here is almost non-gameplay. It's just you press the button as they're walking around the room and there's no escalating tension or anything like that. It's just they wander around the room and you press the button. 00:59:44.43 James I think the biggest misstep here is that they showed the character chasing you up close too often during these sections. 00:59:44.53 Patrick ultimately extremely disappointing. 00:59:55.17 James Like if you had to hide and like you were in a locker and you could only look through these little slits and you could barely see the monster that was trying to kill you, I think that would have been way more tense than the camera focuses on his face the entire time. 01:00:10.39 James like kind of you know most good horror shows that have like a spooky killer or monster do a good job of not showing them for the majority of the runtime yeah yeah 01:00:21.74 Patrick I have to say on that note, I don't know if you guys felt similar. 01:00:22.09 Dave Yeah. 01:00:24.74 Patrick I didn't find the raincoat killer like even the slightest bit intimidating. When I first saw him, I was like, oh, this must be the mini boss of the area. 01:00:35.84 Patrick And then as the game progressed and it was like the main antagonist, I was like, what is even going on? Like this is not this. This isn't a scary thing for an FBI agent to deal with. 01:00:46.57 Patrick This is the kind of thing that is a thing that would be scary for a 16-year-old girl in a slasher film to deal with. 01:00:54.33 James This is, like yeah. 01:00:54.79 Dave Yeah. 01:00:55.53 Patrick This shouldn't be scary from the perspective of an FBI agent. You should have a threat that matches the fact that you have a gun and that you're a you know ah professional duder, and you need something, I think, 01:01:08.23 Patrick far more substantive than than a slash ah ah slasher villain, in my opinion. You need something like the Predator to match up to this, not a person with an axe and a raincoat. 01:01:20.17 Dave Yeah, I mean, I think that they kind of did realize that because you don't, you know, you don't get in boss fights with this thing. Most of the time, it's, it's kind of, they put you in these chase or hide sequences with it. 01:01:32.31 Dave And then, you know, if you pass the QTE, it does like the Dikembe Mutombo finger wag at you and then runs away and disappears. So like, yeah, there is always that, but that's, I mean, that's throughout a ton of works of fiction. 01:01:40.19 Patrick It's like, why not try to shoot this guy? It's confusing. 01:01:43.41 James Yeah. 01:01:49.55 Patrick ah It's more like, you know, the game that comes to mind is, you know, the stealth horror alien game. 01:01:56.77 Dave Hmm. 01:01:57.34 Patrick Like the alien is a thing that you can't just shoot a bullet at and kill, right? 01:02:01.77 Dave Right. 01:02:03.12 Patrick But a guy in a raincoat, like you think you'd at least you think you'd at least try it, you know? And that was my problem with this. It didn't feel anywhere near as threatening as it seemed to be, posing a problem for you all. 01:02:17.85 Dave Yeah, and like. 01:02:17.72 James I basically just think they should have never shown him at all until the end. 01:02:22.76 Dave Yeah, that might have done it. the I guess like the other the other thing about this is um this game is not scary, like in the slightest, even though this is a it is a horror game, and we're talking about it in an October episode, but this is one of the least scary horror games I think I've ever played. It's partly because like the the monster or the villain is not scary, but the rest of the vibe is more just kind of like uncanny than 01:02:49.83 James and creepy. 01:02:50.44 Dave horror and it goes back to, you know, the killer too. 01:02:51.42 James Yeah. 01:02:54.08 Patrick So I will say I broadly agree, but there are specific parts of this game that I did find scary. And those were the bits which lent more into the, I guess, the criminal violence that was occurring. 01:03:09.18 Dave Mm hmm. 01:03:09.19 Patrick So the points where I was feeling like actually disturbed are the ones that come to mind are the morgue scene where they're you know going over what's actually happened to this young girl and the profiling scenes where you get to see like a blurred recreation of the 01:03:20.57 Dave yeah 01:03:28.23 Patrick of the killing and how it happened. And I think that in both those instances, maybe like horror scary isn't the isn't the right word. 01:03:36.15 James It was uncomfortable. 01:03:36.44 Patrick But I did find it deeply disturbing. And I thought it was effective in, I guess, portraying how disturbing serial killings and the kind of violence that was happening actually was. 01:03:47.23 Patrick Like it felt real to me. um The rest of the time, no. 01:03:49.65 Dave Yeah. 01:03:51.22 Patrick But in those specific instances, it' It's so real that it's the kind of game that, while for the most part it has a goofy and light atmosphere, I don't think people under 18 should really play these games just because of how horrific those specific sequences are. 01:04:09.20 Dave Yeah, those sequences are a lot like the profiling sequences in particular, the way they're presented where you have a voiceover and then you have like some, you know, it moves from just like still frame to still frame, but it's never like showing you the action really. 01:04:26.62 Dave I think the voice acting does a lot of really good work in those parts. 01:04:28.49 James Really good. 01:04:33.85 Dave Um, the other thing about the presentation of it, I think I talked about it earlier, but there are some, uh, some really gory sections in here. 01:04:33.98 James Yeah. 01:04:38.47 James Hmm. 01:04:41.64 Dave There's, uh, two in particular that kind of reminded me of like saw type situations. 01:04:47.31 Patrick Hmm. Hmm. 01:04:49.53 Dave where, you know, you have ah characters in like this very elaborate horror trap, and ah you're going to go try and help them out in there. And spoiler alert, you don't, ah it ends very poorly for them. 01:05:00.95 Patrick Hm. 01:05:01.66 James Yeah. 01:05:03.32 Dave And they're not really shy about showing somebody getting ripped apart or something like that. They really pick their spots with it. But they do present these things front and center. 01:05:16.86 James The one you're talking about that scene in the shower is like one of the most like it's burnt into my mind kind of moments in the game. The game has in general a sense of dramatic flair to it when it's not in these shitty I guess publisher enforced sections like the opening cutscene with the kids in the tree I thought was very you know 01:05:25.27 Dave yeah 01:05:34.99 Dave Yeah. Mhm. 01:05:37.89 James visually compelling, the same with that bathroom scene. They do a really good job of presenting scenes in this artful way sometimes that I think kind of makes these other more mundane generic like long and generic sections ah even more frustrating by comparison because the people making this game really do have you know the capacity to make these you know jaw-dropping eye-catching scenes and it's just not consistent through the runtime of the game. 01:06:07.92 Patrick I think it really does um stand out in contrast to those gameplay sections in particular, because the level design is extremely bland and uninteresting. 01:06:08.21 Dave Yeah. 01:06:19.06 Patrick It is a series of corridors and small rooms, and that's all it is. the you know It doesn't really matter whether you're in an evil hospital or an evil lumber mill or whatever it is, it always boils down to a series of corridors and rooms with grimy walls. 01:06:37.10 Patrick And it's very linear in how it pushes you down it. 01:06:41.30 Patrick And it keeps cutting to, I guess you'd call them fake cutscenes. And we kind of mentioned them before, the opening of the doors, or you're getting up on a ledge, or you're pushing a box. In addition to that, every time you open a new room, it goes to a cutscene again. 01:06:55.57 Patrick And it just is constantly interrupting any kind of potential flow you could get into to zoom through these levels. um 01:07:03.56 Dave Mm hmm. 01:07:04.79 Patrick I hate I hate it so much guys like I oh it makes me so angry every time I got into one of these and then 01:07:07.22 James i i was um I was really wondering about this and it makes so much sense now that you've pointed out that the publisher mandated these be added to the game because during the majority of these, the most like The thing that was most confusing to me was that the main character doesn't talk at all, um outside of when you find the clues and at the very end, and I reckon it's because they had already done all the voice recording and then they added these in afterwards. 01:07:42.87 Dave Could be it. There's another thing that I think they like, it's kind of like a nod to how late this was added in and that's like how survival horror mechanics are handled. 01:07:56.16 Dave And I think like. This game does model these sections after survival horror games ah in the way that you're going around. 01:08:03.02 James Yeah. 01:08:05.09 Dave You're solving some light puzzles. You're, you know, doing some stuff to pick up keys to get into new places of the levels. And they have kind of survival horror mechanics with resource scarcity in the way that like melee weapons are super strong, but they break pretty quickly. 01:08:23.92 Dave So like, if you want to use them, you got to pick your spots with them. but your pistol has infinite ammo, like literally infinite ammo. You don't pick up ammo for it, it's just infinite. 01:08:33.98 James Yeah. 01:08:36.71 Dave The other guns have limited ammo, but you pick up a lot of ammo for it. So like, you can just use the shotgun for the whole game after you pick it up, you'll be fine. ah event You might have to switch guns a couple times, but like, 01:08:51.25 Dave I think the fact that the pistol has infinite ammo is like the the developer being like, yeah, this, you know, this just fucking get infinite ammo, get through this and get to the part that we want you to do, you know. 01:09:03.64 James Yeah, it's very like anathema to the concept of survival horror like it just reduces all the tension when your resources are just so plentiful and later on you get the magnum which legitimately one shots all enemies with a body shot and then you know those ones that crawl out of the vents and you kind of have to play the minigame of shooting them off the wall it'll kill those in three shots as well as opposed to like 01:09:09.82 Dave Yeah. 01:09:31.90 James I don't know like 40 with the pistol or something. 01:09:34.53 Dave Yeah. Uh, yeah. 01:09:37.20 Patrick How did you guys feel about York saying things like, excellent and great shot when he killed zombies? 01:09:37.42 Dave The first Oh, love it. A hundred percent. 01:09:45.62 Patrick I was immediately reminded of Killer7. I'm like, ah. 01:09:48.24 Dave Yeah. 01:09:48.33 James Nice, nice shot. 01:09:48.38 Patrick so These guys are clearly big fans of Killer7. 01:09:52.66 Dave Yeah. 01:09:52.85 Patrick And the one thing they took away from that game is that when you kill enemies with headshots, your protagonist needs to say something, right? 01:10:01.01 Dave yeah York needs to say you’re fucked. 01:10:06.66 Dave Uh, yeah, these, uh, this is just a really weird way to set up a, you know, survival horror type situation. It led to me doing really weird stuff like shooting boxes with the gun to break them open so that I wouldn't hurt my melee weapons, which was what you would normally do. 01:10:19.16 Patrick Hmm. 01:10:24.24 Dave Uh, or God forbid pushing them for 15 seconds until they break on their own. 01:10:29.70 James yeah 01:10:30.06 Dave Um, yeah, just. 01:10:31.29 Patrick It's like someone's read about survival horror mechanics without actually understanding how they work. 01:10:37.60 Dave I think it's, it's probably as simple as, you know, this is, this is so late. 01:10:37.66 James What makes it fun? 01:10:43.18 Dave They're scrambling to put it together. They probably tested it out. They're like, this doesn't work. Just make the pistol have infinite ammo so they can get through these sections. Get back to the case. 01:10:53.26 James yeah yeah For me, i ultimately, I think the problem is the lack of escalation. 01:10:54.28 Dave Yeah. Um, yeah. So yeah. 01:11:01.29 James like When I did the first one, I was like, this is fine for a tutorial, but they literally do not change. Like the entire game, they play out exactly the same. 01:11:12.01 James They don't introduce new mechanics, really. 01:11:15.14 Dave or new enemies. 01:11:15.24 James Yeah. 01:11:16.19 Patrick the second place, guys. get those enemies that have guns. That was the only thing I can really think of where... 01:11:22.97 Dave That's, yeah. 01:11:22.97 Patrick if and But they it's not like after they appear, you're always facing the enemy with guns. That's still quite rare as you progress through the game. 01:11:31.84 Dave Yeah. It's odd. So like, we've we've gone through, you know, a lot of good story stuff and then I think like, I don't want to say like the whole act of playing the game was a chore for me personally because I liked going around and talking to people like if I was driving to a mission and on the way there was some NPC houses I would like try and stop or I would stop at the diner or I would stop at the gas station because the people who run the gas station are fucking wacko. 01:12:02.89 James Mm. 01:12:04.10 Dave and stuff like that. So I enjoyed that stuff. But that stuff, if you were to make a pie chart of what I spent time doing in Deadly Premonition, that stuff is overshadowed a lot by these dungeon combat sections. 01:12:18.70 Dave And these are just awful. like I think the tutorial one, I was like, this doesn't feel great, but it's fine, I guess. 01:12:21.35 James Yeah. 01:12:28.55 Dave And then you know by the time you get to like the later ones, it's just more enemies, longer dungeons, instead of having any interesting wrinkles to them. And it's a good point. One of you said, I don't remember, there's no like, you know, like, if you're playing a Resident Evil game and going through a police station, it looks like a police station. You go in places that like, you know, oh, it's the evidence room and stuff like that. Deadly Premonition doesn't have that. It's just going through hallways and then like, 01:12:58.71 Dave You might get to some rooms, you know, transitional rooms that have a safe point and a bed or like a dirty ass couch because York can sleep anywhere, which is funny. But ah the like these could have been better if the level design was better to like better replicate. Like I'm going through a dark world hospital, creepy hospital. Like I just played Silent Hill one. Silent Hill does this, but their dark hospital section feels like an evil hospital. 01:13:28.93 Dave This doesn't, it just, it's just hallways. 01:13:30.39 James Yeah. 01:13:31.45 Patrick Silent Hill is the perfect comparison because I think that Silent Hill generally has quite poor level design, um particularly compared to Resident Evil, right? Like it's a lot of corridors and rooms splitting off those corridors. We've played Silent Hill too and it was one of my frustrations with that game. 01:13:50.03 Patrick However, Silent Hill 2 does a much better job selling the aesthetic of the place, even if the physical layout of the levels is far less interesting than something like Rezzy. 01:13:56.78 Dave Yeah. 01:13:57.41 James Yeah. 01:14:01.89 Patrick Deadly Premonition can't even get that right. So it's like in a clear tier below even Silent Hill that Silent Hill games levels design. 01:14:04.29 Dave Yeah. 01:14:12.35 James Yeah, I've seen it's interesting. I've um I've seen this come up a few times when I'm playing the show where I know that in about a year I will have memory wiped all of these sections from my brain and I will only remember the good parts of this game. I also had this with another game that we played on our show, Pathologic 1, 01:14:36.17 James which had amazing writing and characters but equally horrific gameplay as this game. And it's one of my favorite games of all time because I purposely mind wiped all of the bad out of my brain because you know it's so dull and repetitive and unmemorable that I'm not going to remember it in like six months. 01:14:43.18 Patrick Yeah. 01:15:00.68 Dave Yeah, I just had a game like that on the show too with A Space for the Unbound where I think the gameplay in that game is not great and in some places is legitimately distracting from the story they're trying to tell and it harms the product as a whole experience. 01:15:18.72 Dave But when you have separation from it, you will look back and be like, in the case of A Space for the Unbound, I'll remember the story and how it ended and how amazing it was. And this game will probably have that too, where I'll look back and I'll remember all the times that York is talking to himself or talking to Zack or being weird around the other characters. And I'll remember like, 01:15:42.40 Dave how the case progresses and all the fun twists and turns that it takes. And I will probably have that thing where it's like, oh yeah, remember those combat sections sucked, but it won't be like in the proportion that you spend time doing combat in dungeon sections when you're playing the game. 01:15:57.22 James Yeah. 01:16:00.22 Patrick Mm. 01:16:03.39 Patrick Yeah, broadly speaking, I feel like what this game wants you to do is it wants you to immerse yourself in the town, right? It wants you to walk around, casually go speak to everyone, go fishing, kind of chill out and enjoy the world, enjoy the slow pace driving throughout the world and kind of, yeah, become one with this world while also gradually progressing this kind of dark, 01:16:30.47 Patrick and a horrible criminal plot. But the experience I don't think really lines up that way. And I don't think it will line up that way for most people. 01:16:40.88 Dave Yeah, there's a couple other things I want to just mention i'm that kind of bring kind of enhance the aesthetic out we'll say of of playing the the experience of playing the game, which is um first of all, I think the music is interesting and good in the game, but its utilization is really weird. 01:16:59.15 James hmm yeah it's like i was convinced that this game had like eight songs and then i went and looked at the soundtrack and was like oh it has like 30 or 40 and i remember all of these it's just the way i like the thing that it does where it changes the soundtrack quite dynamically during conversations to match what's going on but there are a lot of instances in this game where the soundtrack is played at really inopportune moments like I remember when probably the third character gets murdered right after that 01:17:09.20 Dave Yeah. 01:17:38.51 James It is super depressing, and they just played one of the, like, the happy-go-lucky themes when characters were, like, miserable. Like, it wasn't that there was tonal whiplash, the characters started making jokes, and there's a lot of that too, but Leela legitimately played the wrong songs sometimes, not just once or twice either. though 01:17:59.90 Dave Yeah. 01:18:00.06 Patrick Yeah, for me, the music is just absolutely stunning at times. The two that stand out to me are the Woods and the Goddess, which is an acoustic theme that is absolutely beautiful from start to finish. 01:18:14.74 Dave That's the one that plays at the main menu. 01:18:14.62 Patrick and 01:18:18.46 Patrick ah Yes, I think so. 01:18:19.04 James Yeah. 01:18:19.58 Patrick It also plays in the opening cutscene where the boys discover the... 01:18:23.48 Dave Yeah. 01:18:25.14 Patrick It plays her a few other times as well, but just absolutely incredible. And Underground is the other one which I really like, which is kind of like a... off-kilter jazzy piece which I think is really good because it captures the atmosphere of Twin Peaks in a way and I think that is what this game is going for. 01:18:35.95 Dave Mm hmm. 01:18:44.10 Patrick The ones which I was less high on not because they're bad pieces but because they play so often are FBI special agent life is beautiful and comic relief which are a set of those three kind of Lighter, I guess I'd call them this slice of life tracks of deadly premonition which play very frequently um Whenever you're not dealing with something obviously horrific or they're trying to make the tone a bit lighter and Once again, these tracks aren't bad. 01:18:59.83 James Yeah. 01:19:11.27 James um those three are actually some of my favorites, but just because they always play during the sections that I enjoy the most about the game, the bits where the characters are talking to each other, right? 01:19:14.32 Patrick It's just they feel way overused to the point where they sound silly and 01:19:29.80 James like ah Whenever those themes are playing, I'm not engaging with the gameplay, which is always a good thing when it comes to this title. 01:19:30.44 Dave Mm-hmm. 01:19:38.60 Dave Yeah, the thing with those is they do change during conversation, but they change so quickly. So I understand having dynamic soundtracks matching the situation. 01:19:45.96 James Yeah. 01:19:51.81 Dave It's something I like about you know Final Fantasy games, for example. We'll do a lot of this. 01:19:55.87 Patrick Mm-mm. Hmm. 01:19:57.22 Dave ah But in Deadly Premonition, you'll get 10 seconds of one song, then 20 seconds of the next song, then 10 seconds of another song, and then the conversation will be over. 01:20:02.55 James Yeah. 01:20:09.63 Dave And I just don't think that, I don't think it should be switching that often. It's distracting when that happens. And like, I like the songs a lot individually, but their use in cutscenes is really weird and really stands out in a bad way, I think. 01:20:26.77 Patrick This game suffers from tonal whiplash. 01:20:26.90 James Yeah. 01:20:31.29 Patrick It will shift tones at the drop of a hat from something awful to something slice of lifey and positive, and it does it all the time. In fact, it does it so much to the point where it kind of becomes part of the aesthetic and identity of this game, I think. 01:20:49.24 James I agree. 01:20:50.37 Dave Mm hmm. 01:20:50.28 Patrick Yeah, and I think that this is a part of the game that I didn't really like because I tend to prefer media that have a more consistent tone. 01:20:51.01 James Yeah. 01:21:00.90 Patrick ah One of the reasons I had a lot of anime out there is that I feel like they employ something similar here. But I can see this being part of the reason people love this game because it really does embrace this ability to change tone completely at the drop of a hat. 01:21:16.71 James Yeah, we've discussed this a few times. See, I'm in the opposite camp to you, like, the polar opposite camp to you. I love this kind of thing, but I can absolutely see that this game in particular probably goes too far. Like, sometimes it was too much for me as well. But when they got it right, I think that it generally adds to this charm that the game has, where it's like, 01:21:39.97 James equal parts creepy and unsettling and equal parts like slice of fo lot slice of life following the characters around the fun town and i generally find that uh games or media in general that have these darker tones to them i find the darker themes to be more impactful when they're contrasted with these more light-hearted sections but i generally even have to yeah agree with you that they do it too much here 01:21:47.94 Dave Mm hmm. 01:22:10.25 Dave It's just like, I get, you know, you do, you do want to have both, right? Like I think that a lot of the darker things that would happen in something like the last of us have a little bit more impact because it's not like that all the time. Like they do have. 01:22:26.24 Dave you know, comedic moments and stuff in those games too. So then once something horrific happens, you care a little bit more about whoever's involved in that. 01:22:29.26 Patrick Mm. 01:22:34.47 Dave But this game will go through that range of things all in the span of the same conversation, which I just think is a little bit too much. It might mirror, it might mirror York in his personality a little bit where he's, you know, we have a grave situation, but York seems pretty detached from, 01:22:52.92 Dave what's going on for a lot of the game. ah He doesn't seem too emotionally involved, we'll say. So. 01:22:59.10 James I think I think that helps a lot is just his deadpan attitude or his calmness towards every possible situation. And it's one of the reasons I ended up liking the character a lot, like just the way he takes everything at face value, even if it's completely ridiculous. 01:23:14.81 Dave Yeah. 01:23:15.64 James And the way that, you know, his companions just completely contrast him and because it's effectively like them playing the straight man while he just says the most ridiculous things like left, right and center. 01:23:16.51 Dave yeah 01:23:29.26 Dave Mm hmm. Real quick, wanted to shout out the people who did the soundtrack, because again, I do think the music is quite good. Ryo Keanu Gasa, Takuya Kobayashi, and Hiromi Mizutani. So good music from them. Special shout out to I love the song When You're Driving. I don't like driving, but I like the song that plays When You're Driving a lot. 01:23:52.64 Dave So that song is quite good. And then the one from the opening cutscene, uh, the forest and the goddess, the woods and the goddess. 01:23:57.42 Patrick The woods in the goddess, yeah. 01:23:59.56 Dave Yeah. That one is really, really good. And I think that even in the, you know, I think the only soundtrack stuff that I don't really like is just whatever's going on when you're in those, uh, those dungeon sections, but it might just be by association more than anything else. 01:24:18.43 James um 01:24:19.11 Dave Not sure. 01:24:19.38 James I want to. 01:24:19.52 Patrick Yeah, I think the music is all good, like the chase sequences and everything. They're filled with tension and everything. 01:24:24.49 Dave Yeah, those are good. 01:24:27.12 Patrick I do really think the soundtrack here is excellent. It's just that the way it's used is perhaps the problem for me. But the songs in isolation are really good. 01:24:38.69 Patrick And you know this is the kind of soundtrack I could listen to by itself, which you definitely can't say of every OST. 01:24:45.73 James I agree with that. I want to give a special shout out or, you know, downvote to that song that plays when you're playing as Emily with Cason chasing the dog. 01:24:58.14 Dave ah That song is so weird and out of place. 01:25:00.06 James It's so out of place. It just makes no sense. 01:25:02.01 Patrick It's funny because that whole fucking scene is out of place. 01:25:04.97 James And it lasts for like 20 minutes or something. 01:25:05.15 Dave Yeah. 01:25:07.29 James It's crazy. 01:25:08.70 Dave Yeah, it's ridiculous. ah But yeah, good, ah good soundtrack. Overall, I like it a lot. um Yeah, we already talked about some aesthetic things about it. 01:25:19.51 Dave I don't think it's a particularly good looking game, even by Xbox 360 standards, which is, you know, as we get further and further away, often not a very good looking generation of games, in my opinion. 01:25:32.08 Dave But ah even by those standards, this game doesn't look great. um I do think the 01:25:36.22 James It's not helped by the technical issues either, right? 01:25:38.95 Dave That's part of it is the technical issues part of it is I think part of it is budgetary like they don't have the best facial animations for even when people are talking and stuff like that. um The one thing I do think is really good about this is ah the town looks pretty good and um characters are memorable in the way that they look. So I don't really think aside from a couple of the unfortunately, a couple of the main ladies who are involved in the case. um Everyone looks pretty distinct. So it's like, you know, they're saying like, Oh, we got to go talk to Nick, or this is something going on with Keith. I remember who those people are. I remember what they look like, which is good, because there are, ah you know, a good number of people around the town. and 01:26:28.44 James They were very human, weirdly. Like, I know, you know, around this generation, Pete, we got a lot better at modeling humans in video games, but I think this game in particular actually, like, for the facial textures and modeling is actually really good. 01:26:44.64 James It's when they start animating that it starts getting a bit uncanny, particularly york when he smiles, looks a bit strange. 01:26:50.96 Dave Oh, his smile is so weird. 01:26:51.85 James It's horrific, yeah, stuff like that. But the actual, like, 01:26:55.43 Patrick Yeah, it looks like Gary's mod smiles, you know. 01:26:57.89 James Yeah, but the actual, like, models are totally fine and I think I actually agree with you. A couple of the female characters involved in the case look very similar and I had a hard time remembering who they were, but most of the main players were very distinct. 01:27:15.34 Dave Yeah. 01:27:15.32 Patrick um The other thing, you said that the town looks pretty good. I actually agree with this. As frustrating it is from a mechanical point of view to get around the town, I actually think the town is very logical and well laid out and is probably very close to what a town like this would actually look like with you know the industrial sectors being different from the section the kind of more suburban area where everyone lives and so on and so forth. So I think that this ah this level design and I guess sense of place. 01:27:46.49 Patrick This is a pretty immersive world when you look at how it's designed and what it looks like. 01:27:52.35 Dave Yeah. 01:27:52.26 Patrick It's just a pity about the way that they've, you know, presented this world to you mechanically. 01:27:59.38 Dave Yeah, I was just going to say like this would be a game where I would just drive everywhere ah and not fast travel if driving wasn't such a chore to do. 01:27:59.28 James One second. 01:28:09.42 Dave ah But it's not the fault of the world itself that I didn't do that. It's a mechanical thing, like you said. 01:28:14.71 Patrick Mm hmm. Agreed. If you could drive twice as fast and you had a minimap that was more zoomed out, like most of my problems with the drive, I mean, most of my problems with the drive would go away, like it would still suck to control. But if they just fix that, I don't think I'd even mind too much because just the experience of driving through the world would be enough. 01:28:36.14 Dave Yep. We'll take a break here. So music. 01:28:43.59 Dave All right, so we are at the end of the non-spoiler section here. And before we get into housekeeping and stuff like that, we want to get into something I think might be a little bit interesting with this game, which is what kind of person we would recommend to play Deadly Premonition. So ah the guests always start. So ah guys, whoever wants to go first, what type of gamer, I suppose, would you recommend play this game? 01:29:10.96 James I would probably recommend this game to people who don't play a lot of video games more than I would recommend a lot of the core gaming audience because I think a lot of the problems are to do with the gameplay like the kinds of people who are going to enjoy this are going to be the kinds of people who you know have lower standards for gameplay, right? like They can look past those things and just enjoy the good bits. um I was able to enjoy the game overall, I think, maybe, um but it's definitely a difficult one to recommend. like I don't at all regret playing this game, like not one bit, but 01:29:52.49 James You know, I would definitely not recommend it to everyone. You'd have to be the kind of person that engages primarily with the narratives in your video games. um People who are very gameplay focused are really going to struggle with this one, I think. 01:30:08.58 Patrick Yeah, so I'd recommend Twin Peaks to two specific kinds of people. The first is people who are 01:30:15.67 Patrick Big fans of Twin Peaks. Yeah, if you're ah if you're a Twin Peaks die hard, you will find a lot to get out of this game because the inspirations are not just surface level. 01:30:26.49 Patrick They're literally everywhere from the character designs to aesthetics to the specifics of the murder case and even specific details that I won't go into here, but there are very much Easter egg kind of references all over. 01:30:40.05 Dave Twin Peaks. 01:30:40.78 Patrick So I think that if you love Twin Peaks to Death, if it's one of your favorite shows ever, then you will be able to push through all of the bad and just really enjoy um something that is very much trying to recreate that feeling you had watching this show. 01:30:55.53 Patrick The other kind of person is the person who can persist through awful gameplay to get to an enjoyable story. um I am not one of these people. For me, if I was not doing this for the show, I wouldn't have lasted 20 minutes with this game. I would have turned it off after the first sequence, because it's so it's that horrifically bad, and it only gets worse from there. But there are a lot of people out there, and you know I don't know who these people are, if you can call them people. 01:31:25.06 Patrick who don't have a problem with poor gameplay and are very happy to persist through it for a narrative experience. um I call these specimens JRPG fans. 01:31:36.11 James Hehehe. 01:31:36.26 Patrick So for those people out there, there is something to enjoy here. 01:31:40.34 Patrick And if the story and the kinds of things we've talked about sound intriguing, and you feel you can ignore a poor gameplay experience, there is something worthwhile and valuable for you here. 01:31:52.02 Patrick I wouldn't recommend it to myself in a million years. 01:31:56.49 Dave ah very on brand to get in a dig on JRPGs there. 01:32:01.71 Patrick I'm sure your core audience will love that, Dave. 01:32:04.11 Dave Yeah, I personally loved it too as a person who loves JRPGs, but um i I think there's like there's a line, right? So like i'm I'm a person who can definitely get through mediocre gameplay if the story is really good. So like even in a lot of my favorite games, the gameplay is fine, not great. ah Not you know tickling my strategy brain, thinking of something like, you know I love Final Fantasy VI, but that's not a great gameplay experience. 01:32:35.96 Dave but it's not like a bad gameplay experience there. Deadly Premonition is a bad gameplay experience. 01:32:43.69 Dave So I will kind of echo that. I do recommend that people play this simply because there's nothing like it. like that This is a wholly unique experience. 01:32:56.05 Dave The story is really fun. The protagonist, York, is really good. A lot of the other characters that you meet are compelling and fun to be around as well. 01:33:03.11 James know? 01:33:04.96 Dave ah It's just like you have to really put up with just some awful, awful gameplay. And it's a real shame to you know go, I read an article, ah you know an interview with the developer from, where was that from? It was in Polygon. ah So shout out to that article. I'll link it down in the show notes if I remember to, but ah where they basically said like, yeah, this was, you know forced on us added really late in development. And it's just one of those times where you're like, man, publishers just fucking trust the creators and trust the thing they're making. Like, this game is demonstrably worse because of the amount of combat and gameplay in it. um 01:33:50.17 Dave yeah had it just been gameplay driving around and talking to people and maybe doing like the light you know puzzle boss fight every now and then I think it would have been a much better game ah so as far as recommending it goes you have to be able to get through that and whether it takes like you know playing it with a friend or you know a significant other or something, you know and laughing at how bad it is at times, or streaming it on Twitch, or something like that, or watching a Let's Play. because i mean I'm not a person who can like get the same experience out of watching a Let's Play as I would playing it, but I know some people do enjoy that. So if that's you, maybe consider doing that instead of playing this. But I do think the game is worth experiencing in some way. 01:34:40.67 Dave just because of how weird and fun and unique it is. And you can tell how much heart is in like the parts of the game that the developers wanted to be the game. 01:34:51.64 James Yeah Yeah, it's a real shame I can imagine a version of this game that's just utterly incredible but it is Yeah, one that has almost no gameplay 01:34:52.23 Patrick Mm. 01:34:52.46 Dave There's a lot of heart in there. 01:35:04.67 Patrick Yeah, Dave, I love how you say that because this is a work of passion when you see the parts of the game that the developers care about. And I think that's really important to highlight. There's a lot of games from this era which don't have any soul to them. And say what you like about this game, but it is not a run of the mill game that they've pushed out to make money. 01:35:29.83 Patrick The developers here had a very specific vision that they wanted to bring to life. 01:35:34.18 Dave Yeah. 01:35:34.32 Patrick And as a consequence, it's meaningful and interesting because of that. 01:35:39.12 Dave Absolutely. Yeah. um I mean, there's a lot of games coming out today, coming out this fall, as we're you know as this episode's coming out, that are arguably ah soulless in some way. And they're you know as people look toward video games as an investment more than a creative outlet, some people do. 01:36:00.40 Dave um And if those more money focused things are forced on the people making the games, like in Deadly Premonition, ah we end up with tarnished works of art, which I think is what Deadly Premonition ends up being for me. It's it's really weird like, 01:36:20.22 Dave There's a lot of this game that I really like and when we get to the spoiler section we'll just talk about the story where a lot of the stuff that I like lives, but the act of playing the game was not enjoyable for a lot of it just because of how bad the combat is. 01:36:35.50 Dave so It's one that when I, if you ask me, do you like deadly premonition? The answer is definitely yes. I like this game a lot, but did I like playing it for a long time? Absolutely not. So it's a really qualified recommendation. If you are trying to get people to play this, there's a lot of asterisks on there to just be like, Oh yeah, by the way, this is, this is weird. This is terrible. This is odd. Just, you know, if you can push through it, I think it's worth it. So. 01:37:06.38 James Yeah. 01:37:07.81 Dave All right, so a little bit of housekeeping before we get into the spoiler section in the episode here. First things first, I wanna talk about retrospectives. So as always, I'll turn the floor over to the guests to talk about the ah the thing that they make. And retrospectives happens to be a podcast that I really enjoy. So tell people about it, please. 01:37:28.17 Patrick Thanks, Dave. So basically, James and I are the host of the Retro Spectives podcast. And what we do each and every episode is that we review classic games that are at least 15 years old from a modern perspective. ah What that means is that we're seeking to review and understand and discuss these games without any nostalgia or without taking into context the times in which it was created. 01:37:56.07 Patrick This is a very harsh standard of criticism and we acknowledge that because it doesn't take into account, you know, technological developments or the restrictions the developers are working under or even improved understandings of design principles. But what we have discovered over the five years or so of doing the show is that Just because a video game is old doesn't mean that it's bad or lesser than its contemporaries. And just because it's old, it doesn't mean that it's better. i In most cases, video games are art, and we should be able to evaluate art side by side by other games. 01:38:37.40 Patrick So a lot of the time we play these old games and we absolutely trash them and have a horrible time. But we have discovered that in a lot of instances what people might think of as outdated design principles are not outdated at all and in many ways are actually superior or produce a superior experience to games that come out today. um An example of that that I would give is the old stealth games like Thief 1 and Thief 2. These are games that don't have markers telling you where to go. They're games where the maps you have are often incomplete because they're hand drawn and you have to take your own notes. There are no objective logs. 01:39:24.68 Patrick i However, the experience of exploring a level and thief as an underpowered thief with no easy way to kill people with the world against you and with limited tools to go through them is not a game that is worse than Dishonored or a game that is worse than Prey or Deus Ex, the modern Deus Ex games. It's simply a very different and interesting kind of experience in its own right. 01:39:51.33 Patrick so Yeah, it's a game where we explore old games for better or worse and have a discussion on whether they're still worth playing today. And that's how I'd sum up our show. 01:40:03.74 Patrick Anything to add James? Or did I nail it? 01:40:06.61 James No, I think that's pretty accurate. One thing that I've enjoyed about our show consistently over the years is that we tend to have very different opinions on the same game, and even when we like the same game it'll often be for very different reasons. So I think our ability to approach a review from two completely different angles lets us land in the middle more often than not, where I think If you listen to some shows that have a few hosts with similar viewpoints, you kind of end up with more skewed reviews, whereas I think attacking it from different angles gives you a better holistic, you know, understanding of the game that's been reviewed. 01:40:49.15 Patrick Yeah, that's a great point. Like, for example, James is a JRPG fan, and I absolutely loathe them. But that just means that when we tackle games of that genre, it's all the more interesting because you get those conflicting perspectives. 01:41:02.38 Patrick And the different things that we appreciate about games makes the discussion all the richer, in my opinion. 01:41:07.05 Dave Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And it's a really good show. I listen to it every time one pops up on there and listening to you guys talk about some games has inspired me to play ah some things like the Pathologic 2 in particular is one I'm currently playing as we're recording. 01:41:27.00 Dave So I look forward to that in the future. 01:41:27.91 James hmm that game's amazing 01:41:28.11 Patrick ah You have no idea how excited I am for that episode, man. Pathologic 2 is truly an incredible game. I have not ever really played a game that pushes resource management to its limits in the way that Pathologic 2 does. 01:41:46.44 Patrick And every time I play another game with resource management, I yeah, it always feels like it comes up short. And yeah, that game actually... 01:41:54.49 James and opportunity cost as well and just the amount of opportunity cost decisions you have to make like the map is so open and you could have so many different you know approaches to getting through the week or or whatever I just as amazing 01:41:57.22 Patrick Sorry, James, go ahead. 01:41:57.40 Dave Yeah. 01:42:02.60 Patrick Hmm. 01:42:09.78 Dave yeah Yeah, so um spoiler alert, I'm enjoying it. I'm pretty early on, but I'm enjoying it so far. um But it's ah all this to say, I really enjoy what you guys do on the show. And the standard that you guys put on it is really interesting because most retro focused podcasts do try to get into the context of the time. And I'm not one of the people who does that. I'm not really able to. 01:42:37.35 Dave I either enjoy my experience with something or I don't. I can't adjust it based on context that is not here in 2024 anymore. But I've arrived at the same conclusion, and this is something that I might like get a discussion episode on sometime in the future, which is that same idea that you talked about where it's like, 01:43:00.15 Dave i I really do think that games don't necessarily age well or age poorly. It's just the really good stuff has always been good. And it's just different from the way things are done right now. 01:43:13.83 Dave Stuff from, you know, the late 80s or early 90s with really great game design is still going to have really great game design today. It's just maybe that's not how we're doing it today. 01:43:24.40 Dave So that 01:43:25.01 James Yeah, the thing that I think we've gotten a lot better on over years is quality of life inclusions, um accessibility controls, that kind of thing. 01:43:31.41 Dave Mm-hmm. 100%, yeah. 01:43:34.76 James And yeah, ah things like yeah and technical visuals, like we mentioned, you know, this PS3 generation maybe hasn't, has probably aged the poorest, in my opinion, in terms of visuals. 01:43:46.45 James I still think Metal Gear Solid 1 looks pretty cool in games like that, whereas I don't think that anything from the PS3 generation really holds up other than something like Shadow of the Colossus, for example, that has great art direction. 01:44:04.21 Patrick I think one of the coolest things about the indie scene, and I absolutely adore indie gaming, is that I think that it understands this principle with all the spiritual successes that have come out to these ah those old old games. 01:44:20.44 Dave Mhm. 01:44:20.33 Patrick Example of that would be Signalis. Signalis is a game that is heavily inspired, I think more specifically by Silent Hill, but with a good dose of Rezzy thrown in there. 01:44:30.23 Dave Mhm. 01:44:30.92 Patrick And that's a game that understands that the limited resources and tone of the Silent Hill series is something worth preserving and continuing to explore. Whereas if you look at what horror games were doing throughout the early to late 2000s and early 2010s, we weren't really seeing games in that vein anymore. So I always also like to shout out the indie scene because in the indie scene you kind of get recreations or or versions of appreciation of classic game design. 01:45:05.46 Dave Yeah. Signalis was a favorite of mine. It was a really fun podcast to record in October of 2023. 01:45:14.18 Patrick Hmm. 01:45:14.36 Dave So if anyone out there hasn't listened to that one, that was a fun one, a real fun one to get in the spoiler section and just kind of like unload all of our theories about what the fuck's going on in that game, but good times. 01:45:25.41 Patrick The number of video essays I've seen are sleeveless, man. It's outrageous. 01:45:29.22 Dave yeah Absolutely. Yeah. So I will put a link to retrospectives down in the show notes so everyone can come check it out. ah It's a really good show, my recommendation. And again, I do appreciate the unique approach to how you view the games and how you critique them. 01:45:47.88 Dave And it's always intelligent conversations. And even the episodes where you're like really negative about a game, I don't come out of it feeling like if it's a game that I like in particular, I don't come out of it feeling like my intelligence is insulted for liking the game or something. 01:46:05.30 Dave It's just very well explained perspectives here. So good stuff. 01:46:10.49 Patrick Well, thanks Dave. Very kind of you to say, Simon. 01:46:13.05 Dave Yeah, absolutely. 01:46:13.01 James Cheers. 01:46:14.53 Dave So again, uh, down in the show notes, people can go look out for retrospectives for this podcast. You can support the show the same ways as always, patreon dot.com slash real Dave Jackson. 01:46:26.51 Dave If you want to give a little bit of money each month, you can participate in polls like the one that, uh, deadly premonition one, again, that's why it's on the podcast. Is it one, one of those polls? 01:46:38.67 Dave So that's patreon, uh, non money ways to support the show. ratings and reviews are super helpful that will help people find this episode. You can join the Discord server and join the conversation about York and Zach and the mystery this week, as well as just a fun community of people to chat up with. Always good to have good places on the internet to hang out. I think our Discord server is one of those. And last but not least, I do another podcast called a top three podcast. 01:47:10.65 Dave Where if you like, you can go listen to top three lists, draft episodes. It's a comedy show. It's much different from this show. Uh, so if you think I have the capacity to be funny or surround myself with funny people, uh, that's another podcast to check out. 01:47:25.89 Dave So we're going to take a break. And when we come back, it is full spoiler time for deadly premonition. 01:50:50.74 Dave All right, we're back and it's full spoiler time for Deadly Premonition. And as always, it's not a beat by beat plot walkthrough. So we're going to spoil things that happen late in the game very soon. 01:51:01.63 Dave So again, if you don't want to be spoiled on who the killer is in Deadly Premonition and things like that, please jump out. play the game or, well, I guess if you're you don't wanna be spoiled, you do wanna play the game. So yeah, go do that. ah Okay, so let's talk about the case and just broadly our experience going through the story, who we thought was the killer, stuff like that. I'll say for me personally, ah there are a couple of big things that I caught 01:51:34.51 Dave Well, a little ways into the game and that kind of gave away where the story was going, not necessarily who the killer was, although they do kind of tell you who the killer was very early in the game. If you put all your stock into what York's coffee is doing, right? 01:51:53.79 James Yeah, it's interesting. I, for me, think they did a reasonable job of throwing red herrings into the mix. Like, I think the take off your shirt section was good. 01:52:00.77 Dave Yeah. 01:52:04.48 James I thought that the coffee thing, the fact that there ends up being sort of multiple, um you know, perpetrators here in a sense, kind of 01:52:05.78 Dave Mm. 01:52:17.15 James distracts your attention a little bit. I was convinced after Becky got murdered that York or Zack was the killer um because you go through that really long section that at the time you think is probably happening in York's head to some degree and it would conceivably be him doing the murder while tripping out and not knowing about it, stuff like that. 01:52:39.38 Dave Yeah. 01:52:40.34 James um For me, I think after Diane is killed, it became very obvious who the raincoat killer was because there was only one other person there who could have done it. um so But up until that point, I thought they were doing a reasonably good job of smoke and mirrors. 01:53:01.35 Patrick I think um I must be thicker than both of you because I didn't really catch on to who it was until the game told me. 01:53:08.05 Dave Well, yeah, so. 01:53:09.06 Patrick Maybe that's one of the reasons I enjoy these crime shows so much. I'm the kind of person who does just get pulled along with the thread of the story and when the reveals come I'm always shocked. 01:53:19.18 Dave Yeah, so I caught on to one particular thing, which is that basically the biggest players in the story with one notable exception are all at the top of the alphabet. 01:53:31.56 Dave So Anna, Becky, Carol, Diane and Emily all get killed. 01:53:32.19 James yeah 01:53:36.89 James Yeah. 01:53:37.63 Dave abc de forest is the killer mastermind behind it all and George is the raincoat killer. So that's all in a row. 01:53:48.19 Dave ah And I did catch on. 01:53:48.65 James And then York and Zach at the end. 01:53:51.34 Dave What's up? 01:53:51.88 James And then York and Zach are at the end of the alphabet. 01:53:54.58 Dave That's right, yeah. So if you look at the credits of the game, there is one character for every letter. And so at the end is York Morgan and Zach Morgan. um So what kind of keyed me into that, like I noticed the names and that kind of led me to the belief that Emily's in trouble before the story started to put Emily in danger. 01:54:18.70 Dave which I thought was really good if you catch on to that, because that's about the time that York and Emily are starting to get closer to each other. So I thought that was really good. But to kind of be on your side here, Patrick, I did not know that George was going to be the raincoat killer. 01:54:38.04 Dave um Because I think that, like, looking back, they have that scene where they have to take their shirts off and show York their back. 01:54:45.69 James Yeah. 01:54:45.90 Dave And George's back is all fucked up. But then I forgot about it because, you know, someone died in a horrific manner pretty soon after that. So and George was like, 01:54:54.01 Patrick Hmm. 01:54:57.14 Dave Obviously George did it, but George had a better alibi or something at that time. So I was really along for the ride here. Um, and I had kind of not disregarded, but forgotten until York brings it up later that his coffee had the initial F K earlier. 01:55:19.26 Dave And there's just too much going on with plants to not implicate casein. 01:55:22.98 James Yeah, okay. 01:55:24.21 Patrick Well, that's one of the weird things, right? 01:55:24.66 James Case I'm holding the plants. 01:55:26.26 Patrick Like, Kazen has that little red sapling with him all the time and York doesn't comment on it at all. 01:55:33.75 Dave Yeah. 01:55:33.64 James Yeah. 01:55:33.77 Patrick And it's very bizarre that York doesn't, you know, bring any attention to that whatsoever to the point that it doesn't make any sense. So that really confused me. 01:55:43.31 Dave Yeah. 01:55:45.48 Patrick I'm like, oh, it must be nothing, but. 01:55:47.42 Dave With the, with the prime thing in the story, like the prime piece of evidence being the red seeds from these, you know, bright fucking red trees. 01:55:53.61 Patrick Yeah. 01:55:55.80 Dave Then, he goes to the graveyard and finds the trees that the seeds come from. And case it is carrying around this red sapling all the time. Like, I think it's part of his character model, even like maybe one time you see him without it, which is goofy, but, uh, that is kind of an oversight. 01:56:13.63 Dave I agree. 01:56:15.57 James Yeah, I think this game suffers from the same thing a lot of mysteries do, is that if you are well familiar with the genre, you know that like the writers have to follow a pretty strict set of rules in order to write a good story, which is the killer effectively has to be someone that you interact with a lot, 01:56:37.44 James If it's somebody you've never seen before or never heard of before, that's not a good story. So it has to be someone close to the main character, um always. And there's really not a lot of people here that it could be. Like, basically, in my head, it was either gonna be Emily, George, or Thomas from the very beginning. 01:56:59.12 James And I was even kind of suspicious of the old lady at the diner, uh, at the hotel. 01:56:59.44 Dave Mm hmm. 01:57:04.11 James Um, but it had to be one of those characters, like, guaranteed, so... And I don't really think that you can get away with not having it be a character like that. 01:57:15.59 James The only way you can do this is to make it so that there is a huge number of characters, like, closely involved with the player at all times. 01:57:26.07 Dave But the the close 01:57:26.21 Patrick I thought it might. Sorry, go on, Dave. 01:57:29.73 Dave Yeah, but the close cast in this game is too tight. You're right, there are way too many people for that. 01:57:36.61 James Yeah. 01:57:38.34 Patrick I had a feeling it might be some kind of conspiracy thing. um I thought it might have been, you know, I thought that it might have been working on the assumption that you just assumed that the raincoat killer was a man. So I'm like, maybe it's Diane or maybe it's one of these other female characters, or maybe there's multiple people who don the identity of the raincoat killer because, you know, it's just a costume at the end of the day. 01:58:01.01 Patrick um In the end, it ended up being something a bit more mundane, I guess. not Not uninteresting, but I thought there might have been something more complex going on. Instead, as you guys said, it ends up revolving a lot more personally around York and the cast of characters he's interacting with the most. 01:58:21.17 Dave Yeah, it gets complicated and weird and like really into supernatural territory, but that's super late and really only involves a couple of characters when it all comes down to it. So it's not like this big conspiracy. um I wanna go back to something James had said, which is that you thought York was the killer for part of it. And I thought that too for a little bit because I wondered where all these zombies were coming from in those combat sections. 01:58:50.68 James Yeah. 01:58:52.25 Dave So I was starting to think, like, is York having some weird mental thing where he perceives the world like this and he's actually killing these people? 01:58:52.68 Patrick Hmm. 01:59:01.57 James yeah 01:59:01.99 Dave But that kind of went away partly because you come too out of these and there are not dozens of dead townsfolk around, but ah also, you know, 01:59:14.84 Dave I think the story started to really push in those other directions. And by the time, like by the time Thomas goes off the deep end, uh, you kind of really get the sense like, okay, it's not, it's definitely not me. 01:59:26.98 Dave It's one of these other people, but yeah. 01:59:28.23 James Did you get it? Did you guys have that moment when you were controlling Emily and she entered that world? It's like, when she enters that world, it's like, holy shit, and this is all real, actually. 01:59:39.01 James Like, because up until that point, it's like, it's not very, like, clear what's going on with that world at all. 01:59:40.05 Dave Yeah. 01:59:46.15 James But the second she sees one, it's like, oh, okay, something is actually happening here. 01:59:52.02 Dave But it's really weird because like if it's real, and it is real because multiple characters experience it, nobody talks about it really except for when you go talk to Harry and he tells you that story of what happened you know with the army and the poison gas however many years ago. 02:00:13.29 Dave But like if this is happening with the regularity for, like I'll just say it this way, if it's happening for everybody, then you would think that people would talk about it unless it happens so often that people are like, yeah, we just hunker down in our houses. It's kind of like tornadoes in Ohio. like We don't talk about every tornado watch that happens because they happen often enough. It might be like that, but it did feel weird to me that like once I realized this is real, 02:00:42.00 Dave Why is nobody commenting on this? 02:00:44.63 James well 02:00:44.65 Patrick because gameplay contrivance is why. 02:00:46.73 Dave Yeah. 02:00:46.62 James Well, the thing is, I think what it's implying is basically Cason and whatever is controlling him comes from that red world. 02:00:58.21 James And effectively, when the characters are getting closer to discovering the truth, they kind of get thrown in there as a way of trying to kill them off. 02:00:58.77 Dave Yeah. 02:01:07.81 James So I don't think that anybody other than York is going there for, you know, the vast majority of the game. until right at the end when Emily is getting close to to the capturing Thomas, she gets sent in there, so yeah, that, I don't think that it's too much of a problem in that sense, and I would understand why, like, York already doesn't like talking about Zach to people, I could completely understand him not wanting to explain this thing in particular to others. 02:01:21.57 Dave i see 02:01:42.08 Patrick You'd have to explain to his bosses why he expended 300 rounds of submachine gum and I'm like, oh, right. 02:01:47.55 James that's true yeah 02:01:47.73 Dave Yeah. 02:01:49.30 Patrick To me, this isn't actually that deep. It's just a stupid gameplay contrivance that doesn't make any sense. 02:01:54.56 Dave Yeah, probably probably like you like ah like one of you said, like if you know if the truth of the development of this game is that this combat stuff was added really late and maybe the voice acting was all wrapped up, they couldn't have a conversation about it unless they did it with all text or something. 02:01:55.60 James yeah 02:01:55.92 Patrick That's that's where I land on this. 02:02:13.31 James That's true, yeah. I do think that conceptually without the publisher meddling the concept of the red and the white rooms probably existed um during development at least because those sections at the like when you go to sleep and you play ah you know eventually you realize you're playing as Zach who's trapped in those rooms the whole time um yeah I think that existed before 02:02:17.10 Dave And maybe they didn't have time to animate more conversations, who knows? 02:02:30.35 Dave Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's it. 02:02:43.13 Patrick This is, um, this is something that's also taken from Twin Peaks, by the way, this concept. 02:02:47.22 Dave Yeah. 02:02:48.25 Patrick I mean, I don't, you guys are probably familiar with the famous red room scene in Twin Peaks with the dwarf dancing and speaking in reverse. 02:02:54.93 James no no idea oh yeah i had no idea 02:02:59.59 Patrick Or maybe you've seen the Simpsons episode, the who shot Mr. 02:02:59.75 Dave Nope. 02:03:02.39 Patrick Burns episode that riffs off. 02:03:06.85 Dave Yeah, I have not, but, um, I did hear, uh, someone in the Twitch chat did say when one of these red room things came up, they're like, Oh, yep, this is twin peaks too. 02:03:07.22 Patrick Yeah. Okay. Yeah. 02:03:16.98 Dave So yeah. 02:03:17.40 Patrick Yeah. Yeah. He shot Mr. Burns. I'll teach you everything you need to know. 02:03:22.36 Dave So I did not understand what these red and white rooms were all about. So do either of you know. 02:03:31.80 James So the Red Room seems to be, so they but they both seem to be some kind of alternate, like, overlapping reality with our own. I believe whatever monster is possessing or using Kacen comes from there and is trying to manipulate our world, that's how it felt to me. I read some developer interviews, apparently Kacen's dog is like the mastermind behind everything, and One of the the reason I bring this up is because earlier we mentioned how annoying it is that you can't zoom the map out. Did you guys notice that if you look at the map, it looks like a dog? 02:04:13.25 Patrick I did see someone mention that, but I didn't notice it myself. 02:04:15.51 Dave Oh, weird. 02:04:16.63 James Yeah, so I think they intentionally stopped you zooming out to For this like for the spoiler, you know what I mean, which results in an absolutely horrific gameplay experience, but yeah Just completely ridiculous Yeah 02:04:25.66 Dave Yeah. 02:04:32.72 Dave Oh my God, it does look like a dog. Look at that. 02:04:37.74 Dave Okay, that's weird. 02:04:39.60 James I actually made- when I read that I got kind of mad because I was like, you're telling me that you made my life hell just so you could have this stupid dog picture on the map. 02:04:39.97 Dave So 02:04:51.18 Dave I actually like this a lot. I like the idea of the mastermind behind Kacen a lot less now than I did when I thought this is something that's completely out of the picture. like it's It's on a scale much bigger than this, so it's just doing this through Kacen. 02:05:12.49 James Yeah, because if you go around the town, like one of the last scenes of the game has the dog following you with that little caisson doll in its mouth, and those dolls are like everywhere throughout the town if you're looking for them. 02:05:21.08 Dave Mm hmm. 02:05:25.50 James um And I think it's heavily implied through the historical pictures that there's like multiple caissons throughout the world, like enacting the like the will of that thing that you shoot at the end. 02:05:39.01 Dave Oh, interesting. 02:05:39.95 Patrick I thought it was I thought it was the one case and then he just traveled around 02:05:44.20 Dave Yeah, I thought that um it was just, you know, this case and is immortal or something and this case has always been here, that kind of thing. 02:05:52.82 James Yeah, I think it's supposed to be that thing where there's this, like, otherworldly entity, you know, it's like four-dimensional and it's intersecting the world at different points at the same time. um But yeah, it kind of didn't work out to me very well in the end. I didn't find the masterminds like, he's basically, I'm doing it for the Lulls tier villain. It's very not compelling in my opinion. 02:06:22.86 Patrick Well, there's a um there's a sadism to them, right? And I think that this is something we kind of mentioned in our Eternal Darkness episode. The thing that stops this game truly becoming Lovecraftian is the, I guess, sadism of these villains, the fact that they seem to delight in human suffering. 02:06:41.08 Patrick Whereas I think with Lovecraftian horror, there's no delighting in human suffering. It's kind of like an indifference to human suffering. 02:06:48.85 Dave Mm hmm. 02:06:49.35 James Yeah. 02:06:49.78 Patrick or any difference to humanity and our understanding of concepts in general. so I've always found that this expression of Lovecraftian horror is less interesting than when it is, I guess, power and concepts beyond our human frail human understanding. 02:07:07.05 Dave Yeah, so this is a good point just for anyone who's listening who did not play the game. ah What you learn is we've already said the case is the killer. 02:07:18.42 Dave He's the big guy who's kind of following you around helping out from time to time. He's a traveling tree salesman. He goes around 02:07:27.02 Patrick And he's paid for comic relief mostly in this novel. 02:07:29.57 Dave Yeah, he's ah a friendly guy. He's got a He's got a dalmatian that goes around with him. um And he kind of helps out. He helps you know to babysit the kids when their parents are working, ah the twins. And so you eventually learn he is not the raincoat killer. That's George, the sheriff. But Cason is the one masterminding the whole thing. And those other murders across the country with those red seeds, that was also Kaisen's doing, whether it's indirectly or directly, who knows. um So you find out that Kaisen has kind of always been in the town. He was there on this night when the army was spraying this hallucinogenic gas around town that made everyone kind of go crazy and that birthed the 02:08:21.43 Dave ah folklore of the raincoat killer on uh on rainy nights and just want to point out there's that section late in the game when you play as the raincoat killer uh going through the town trying to get to the clock tower that is just dog shit it's so bad it's like 02:08:35.22 James not good yeah bad yeah not as bad as the final boss fight but it's pretty bad in you know um 02:08:42.69 Dave Yeah, it's just like, so you're you finally you're playing as the raincoat killer, you have an ax. What is the least interesting thing we could have you do? Go through a maze on a time limit. 02:08:53.75 Patrick Hahaha. 02:08:53.92 Dave That's what this is. so 02:08:57.52 James Talking about the boss fights, I actually thought that Thomas' boss fight was okay. Like it wasn't, I wouldn't call it good, but it was fine, where the rest of the gameplay is atrocious. um George's was awful, I thought, and Cason, actually, Cason's first phase was good, I thought. The rest of it was atrocious. 02:09:20.76 Dave Yeah. Um, let's talk about the Thomas one. So Thomas is in the clock tower like the giant gears kind of going around. and You're playing as Emily during this part. 02:09:33.29 Dave Um, I thought, I thought that one was fine. 02:09:33.16 James yeah 02:09:36.48 Dave It was like, again, this is a terrible third person combat system. 02:09:38.72 James Yeah. 02:09:41.13 Dave So this fight is as good as this combat system would ever allow a boss fight to be, I think, but I didn't hate it. 02:09:44.62 James Hmm. 02:09:49.54 James It's also visually interesting. 02:09:50.01 Patrick My problem is that I don't really think that a game like this should really have boss fights. 02:09:55.38 James Yeah. 02:09:55.72 Patrick ah And this is once again, it feels very gamey that we have the sequence of big boss fights at the end of the game. It's like, ah why do we have boss fights? 02:10:07.32 Patrick Because it's a video game and it needs boss fights. 02:10:10.50 Dave Yeah. 02:10:10.63 Patrick I found them unsatisfying, not just mechanically, but just because I don't really, this isn't the part of the game I enjoy and shooting an enemy enemy's weak spot X times while pressing a quick time event to dodge an attack isn't it isn't enjoyable in and of itself. 02:10:29.65 Patrick And thematically, I don't think it ties in with the rest of the feeling that the game is going for. So I'm very low on these. 02:10:35.03 James Yeah. 02:10:37.43 Patrick I think that the game would be better without boss fights altogether. 02:10:41.94 Dave Yeah, I don't, I don't disagree for sure. It's just on the spectrum of this game's boss fights. Thomas' was at least somewhat interesting. 02:10:52.75 Dave The arena that you're in is fun. And ah same with the final boss fight, where in phase one he's kind of swinging around in that theater. Um, I thought that was, you know, again, like on the deadly premonition curve, it was okay. 02:11:08.14 Patrick Hmm. 02:11:09.89 Dave Um, it takes too long, but it was okay. 02:11:10.00 Patrick Hehehe. 02:11:13.71 Dave And it's like really easy, uh, from that, uh, George's boss fight is horrifically bad. 02:11:20.27 James Yeah, awful. Really, really terrible. 02:11:23.60 Dave Yeah. 02:11:23.69 James I had to look, I could, I didn't understand what I was supposed to do in the last phase. Like, he healed himself like six times before I gave up and looked up what I had to do, which was shoot the ax that he throws at you. 02:11:37.60 Dave Mm hmm. 02:11:37.46 James I was just dodging out of the way like I had been for the first two phases. 02:11:41.96 Dave Yeah, for the end the entire game before that too. 02:11:41.96 James Had no idea. 02:11:42.44 Patrick Hmm. 02:11:45.01 James Yeah. And they don't indicate at all that you need to shoot it. 02:11:46.43 Dave So. 02:11:49.24 James I don't know. 02:11:49.83 Dave Yeah. That, uh, that boss fight was only like the only percentage points of enjoyment I got from that boss fight is that George turns into this weird, like anime villain, basically for lack of a better descriptor in there with his visual design. 02:12:04.31 James yeah basically yeah 02:12:08.25 Dave Like he gets this long flowing white hair and like the facial hair gets like that too. It's pretty ridiculous. 02:12:17.29 Patrick Can I ask you guys, how did you feel, and this is kind of dovetailing the story a bit, but how did you feel about George as a character in general? Because I have to say I found that his performance was a little underwhelming, a little understated. 02:12:33.63 Patrick I guess what I was hoping for was like more of a Tommy Lee Jones kind of character, but instead he's a bit too 02:12:39.55 Dave Hmm. 02:12:42.12 Patrick monotone and passive for what he ends up becoming. I don't know if you guys felt similar but for me I could see what they're trying to go for with George but in the end I didn't find him to be a very compelling character. 02:12:56.57 James I tend to agree. I think they did some good things with him, like one of my favorite moments in the entire game is when York suggests that they should go fishing to get the next clue, and Emily just thinks that's completely ridiculous. And up until this point, George has also sided with Emily for every single time York has been ridiculous, but this one time he's like, you know what? We're just doing it. No questions. So good. 02:13:29.51 Dave That was funny. 02:13:29.57 James um 02:13:30.02 Dave Yeah, George's. 02:13:30.50 Patrick He says something like waterfalls are a great source of Zen energy as well, like some completely off-kilter spiritual reason. 02:13:35.76 James perfect 02:13:39.79 Dave That seemed like just weird , like, you know, we have this tone in this game, characters say weird things and it's George's turn to see something weird. um There we go. 02:13:48.75 Patrick That's now Twin Peaks. like that. That is like bang on so what a character would say in Twin Peaks. like One of the most famous scenes in Twin Peaks is um Cooper explaining their methodology for how they're going to find the killer. And then he turns this whiteboard around. He says, but before we do that, we need to talk about Tibet. 02:14:13.00 Patrick And then he goes into a two minute explanation of Tibet and their spirituality and so on and so forth. 02:14:20.17 Dave Yeah, there we go. um I like George as a character. I thought like you know now looking back on it, I think that George is not making decisions for himself. 02:14:37.02 Dave so I think that he pushes back like when he can push back, um but he does have to play the sheriff like and see jurisdiction to the FBI when it's time. So like I think that's why he doesn't really fight back as much as you would think he would if he's trying to cover up his identity. I think he just kind of likes to let York go because he figures at some point they're gonna take him out because that's what they do. 02:15:08.40 Dave um the revelation that he was the raincoat killer. Uh, I, I didn't expect it until it became clear that he was the only person that really could be doing it. 02:15:21.75 Dave Uh, and then the way that his story ties in with what Kacen is doing, uh, I thought was pretty interesting too. Uh, but I liked the performance for George and I liked, uh, just how just grumpy he is most of the time. 02:15:36.69 James yeah i enjoyed him a lot i really liked that scene in the bar where he opens up to you a little bit and i thought that it actually kind of 02:15:37.89 Dave You know, I enjoyed it. 02:15:44.31 Dave Mm hmm. 02:15:46.69 James It sort of felt like it took away from his character a little when they, like, I wish he wasn't the raincoat killer. Like, I wish it had been a different character because, like, that whole time where he transformed into that ridiculous monster and explained everything, it just, I don't know, something about it didn't sit right with me. It didn't feel real. It felt like they had ah had made a new character out of this other character who would, up until this point, 02:16:15.31 James You know, it's been pretty enjoyable and it's like less me feeling shocked that a character I like was the killer and less that it just didn't really click for me when they did the reveal. 02:16:28.53 Dave yeah 02:16:28.77 Patrick See, I can't help but compare it like that monologue to monologues from No Country for Old Men or the monologue from Jaws or you know, these other TV shows, monologues from Westworld, these 10 out of 10 TV shows where someone kind of like explains themselves some part, dark part of their history. 02:16:50.97 Dave Yeah. 02:16:51.25 Patrick And I feel like George's just comes up a bit short. 02:16:51.85 Dave Mhm. 02:16:54.54 Patrick And I understand that's like an insanely high standard to compare it to. But this, like the storytelling in this and the way it's presenting itself, it's almost like a TV show to me. 02:17:07.91 Patrick So yeah, a high standard of comparison, but to me, it just all fell a little bit short. 02:17:12.98 Dave Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of this other stuff with George's character is really interesting. um But that monologue where, correct me if I'm wrong, but he basically just says like these red seeds are going to turn me into a god, and I'm going to have unlimited power, which 02:17:18.36 Patrick Mm. 02:17:29.79 Dave When you learn about his backstory and stuff, you can understand why he would want to be more powerful. But at the end of the day, a character who wants to become a God is just not interesting to me anymore as a motivation. um Even putting aside things like once you learn what happened to his mom and why he wouldn't let you come in the house earlier and stuff like that, like that stuff is all interesting. And George is even mentioned George's sex club with the the people around town like 02:17:59.35 James Yeah. 02:18:00.14 Dave That stuff is interesting like, you know, parts of his character. It's just where his arc ends is the least interesting way it could have ended, I think. 02:18:08.34 James See, I would have much preferred if the reason he was killing people was because he had this misplaced sense of justice or something, like he was trying to protect the town from these people who were, you know, planning to do awful things, that kind of thing. 02:18:25.43 James like if he thought he was in the right, but he's not really like that. He's like very hard to sympathize with at all once he does the reveal. 02:18:35.67 James Like, you can kind of feel bad for him for his upbringing and that kind of thing, but the way, like, the hard U-turn he takes, ah you know, because of a thing's case and told him are kind of ridiculous. 02:18:36.79 Dave Yeah. 02:18:49.59 Patrick He doesn't fit the um serial killer mold, right? Like, I can't remember the name of the show, but there's a show not too long ago, which was like, it was an investigation into the formation of the FBI um and how they stop, you know, the serial killer. You know, I don't know if you guys know what I'm talking about. 02:19:08.21 James No idea. 02:19:09.18 Patrick Anyway, it was like a recreation of the formation of psychological profiling of serial killers. It's very good. But serial killers basically follow a particular mold in most cases. And him wanting to be a god is not what serial killers are about ever really. They have much deeper issues. And we thought that aspect was just missing from this criminal investigation. 02:19:38.08 Dave I think that those like, there could have been deeper issues explored with George with how, you know, just case and ruined his life in a lot of ways and how he he's clearly like had this unrequited love for Emily and you know, we get into more, I think, traditional 02:19:49.91 James Yeah. 02:19:58.58 Dave psychological things about serial killers and their quest for, you know, control and power over people. But like on a smaller scale, then I'm going to eat these seeds and become a god. 02:20:10.92 Dave Like, I think I ultimately think that the supernatural turn in this game is fun and interesting. It's just not really interesting with George in particular, in my opinion. 02:20:21.36 Patrick Mmm. 02:20:22.44 James yeah like i could get behind like i actually think i would have preferred it if they had never explained the supernatural stuff and like the like the raincoat killer had sort of figured something out about it in order to use it for his own personal gain i could have gotten behind that i think like the combination of having Cason being doing it for the, like, sadistic lols or whatever, plus a character I really liked, kind of U-turning. It kind of made the ending, like, not very enjoyable to me compared to the start of the game. Like, I thought they did an amazing job, like, start, like, hyping up the mystery and confusing you and having weird events happen. And then the way it ties together, it just fell a little flat to me. 02:21:17.66 Dave I think before we talk about the end and how everything ties together, I want to kind of go back and talk about what Kacen's doing and then talk about York and Zach a little bit and then we'll tie it all together with how the story finishes. um So Kacen is just kind of like going through time with these saplings and what he's doing, what you get the sense that he's doing through a lot of these is some kind of like ritual thing where, so what I didn't quite understand is like he did this ritual thing with George's mom, with York's mom and with Emily, where he like implants the trees like in their womb or in their stomach or something like that. And we talked about horror earlier. There's some pretty intense body horror with this stuff, which I think is really ah freaky. 02:22:14.66 Dave ah plant and human body horror is ah it is especially creepy to me personally. So this is one of those for sure. um I didn't quite understand the, or unless that's George's like doing ritual killings to try and make Kacen or this like God happy or something like that. 02:22:34.18 Dave The other four murders were very ritualistic with these seeds and cutting the tongues out and stuff like that. 02:22:36.02 Patrick Mm hmm. 02:22:40.55 Dave I didn't quite get what was going on with those. um 02:22:43.96 Patrick What I think's happened is that Casein has told George he needs to do this in order to get power. 02:22:50.26 Dave In this way. 02:22:50.46 Patrick Whereas for Casein, the rituals he are performing he's performing are about spreading his influence throughout the world. 02:22:50.86 Dave Yeah. 02:22:57.45 Patrick Because I think that each time he does one of these rituals, a new one of these trees has come into existence. And the more trees that exist throughout the world, the more he is exuding his influence on the world. 02:23:10.62 James My understanding is that the very but that there is a progenitor red tree like that's the source of all this um that's basically trying to spread itself through our world as well. 02:23:11.12 Dave Gotcha. 02:23:23.79 James um To me the villains actually seems more like a metaphor for male sexual violence more than anything like We have a lot of them hyper focusing on Emily in particular. 02:23:31.82 Dave Hmm. 02:23:36.27 James A lot of the murders are against women and the trees get planted in pretty private places, that kind of thing. And it all, you know, there's a lot of sexual undertones with the dungeons and that kind of thing. 02:23:50.74 James It seems pretty clear, like metaphorically, that that's what the developers were going for with this sort of thing. I don't know if it tied 02:23:57.84 Dave Yeah, that's all the profiling scenes are, you know, sexual before the murders start happening. They start as a sexual encounter, right? 02:24:06.23 James yeah basically yeah so um so you know if it made me some of those scenes made me feel pretty damn uncomfortable uh particularly the one with uh case and emily at the end that was it probably the most uncomfortable i felt in the entire game 02:24:06.92 Patrick Pretty much all of them, yes. 02:24:10.02 Dave Yeah, so that makes sense. 02:24:28.21 Dave Yeah. 02:24:28.35 Patrick Honestly, it almost felt unnecessary to me. It felt a bit gratuitous, actually. That's the only part where I felt it went over the top a little bit. 02:24:37.07 Dave Interesting, so it is gratuitous, especially when like, you know, if you do it, you rip the tree out of Emily, um or she rips it out of herself, sorry. 02:24:48.78 Dave ah But I think that that scene serves the other purpose, which is to put York in the situation to make the choice that his father couldn't make earlier. 02:24:59.76 Dave That's why they set that situation up with Emily. 02:25:01.79 James ah that was so annoying I like intentionally made the wrong choice to see what would happen and it just like plays a game over and then reloads you to that point even though the game specifically says it's your choice they're all correct and then there's a wrong choice yeah 02:25:12.09 Dave Yeah. 02:25:19.93 Patrick I think yorkers are worse than you should have shot her in the head immediately. If it was me, I would have just been banged, done and dusted. 02:25:25.88 Dave So that's kind of an option, but that's not how it plays out. So a little bit of backstory here. um We learn that when York was a kid, his dad killed his mom and then killed himself. And this was a really traumatic event and it ended up causing the split in personalities between York and Zach. They're the same person. 02:25:53.79 Dave um And ah real quick, before I go any further, I thought for the longest time, and I still kind of think that Zach is me, the person playing the game. Did you guys get that sense? 02:26:02.93 James Yeah. 02:26:04.18 James Yeah, I felt that too. 02:26:04.71 Patrick Yes. 02:26:05.57 Dave Okay, cool. 02:26:05.99 Patrick Absolutely. 02:26:07.37 Dave So even when it is, it's revealed later that Zach is another part of York's personality, or Zach is the original one. York is the kind of stand-in that's like facing the world so Zach doesn't have to or something like that. 02:26:22.39 Dave um I still got the sense that like I am controlling whatever the personality and the background is, basically. 02:26:27.96 Patrick Hmm. 02:26:29.49 James Yeah. 02:26:29.77 Dave ah So when they switch and York switches to his brilliant white hair at the end of the game, I am now controlling York and Zack is the character that I'm controlling. So um this scene here It's revealed later on that Cason was there and Cason had done the same kind of tree impregnation on York's mother and his father could not shoot her in time for like the horrific death. 02:27:03.79 Dave where like the tree grows out, the body shrivels up and stuff. The same thing happened to George's mom ah when you go in his basement. And then at the end, Kacen does this to Emily and she's still alive and York has the chance and you like the flashback plays and this is where you learn about all of this. York, Zach, has the chance to do what his father could not. 02:27:26.29 Dave And the thing that you should do is I think you should point the gun at Emily, right? 02:27:34.03 James Yep, absolutely. 02:27:35.05 Dave Yeah, ah if you try to point the gun at Kacen, you get a game over. 02:27:35.12 Patrick Yep. 02:27:41.98 Dave If you point the gun at yourself, you also get a game over. And in both cases, they say, and I forget if it's Jork or Zach at this point, but they say something like, we can do better. 02:27:55.15 Dave We can make a better choice. Let's try that again, right? 02:27:57.17 James Yep. 02:27:58.38 Dave So. 02:27:59.82 James Yeah, that, sorry, go on. 02:28:00.36 Dave um 02:28:03.06 Dave Uh, you point the gun at Emily, she rips the sapling out and she dies. So, you know, you were not able to save her. And I thought it was a, you know, interesting choice to have Emily die here as part of the end of the game. I really thought we were working toward like York makes the right choice or York is able to find a way to, um, you know, save her in some way, but no. 02:28:31.50 James I saw a lot of people talking about this online after I finished the game, but you effectively lose everything at the end of the game. Like you lose what makes Greenvale Greenvale, like all of the characters who were important to Zach basically die, including York himself. 02:28:50.74 Dave Mm hmm. 02:28:50.75 James And then even in the very end, we lose Zach, like to old age. Like, once the game ends, basically everything that I liked about the game was gone, you know? um And I read another interview by the developer seeing that this was intentional, that they wanted to have an ending that made people feel a sense of loss, not just for a particular character, but for the game itself. And while I think they were successful, I don't know, like, 02:29:25.74 James how much better that actually makes it as a title. 02:29:30.80 Dave It's interesting you say that because I felt that when it was over. Like after you finish the game, you can keep playing and go do side quests. But kind of like you said, all my favorite characters were dead. 02:29:37.99 James It feels so hollow. 02:29:41.77 Dave So except for Keith, I could go talk to Keith, hear more ghost stories from him. 02:29:45.14 James and that And the guy that talks in rhyme. 02:29:49.21 Dave Yeah. 02:29:52.20 Patrick Yeah, for me, I quite liked the ending with everyone dying. 02:29:56.31 Patrick I like the idea of like this epilogue, you know, you think that you've saved the day and then there's, well, actually you haven't. It's a common trope, but it's one that I always enjoy. And I liked the, I guess, the nihilism of everyone dying. 02:30:09.38 Patrick I kind of like depressing tragic endings like that. But I wasn't as invested in the world and characters as you guys were because the whole thing just didn't speak to me on such a deep level because it was so fundamentally silly. 02:30:25.45 Patrick And I think that wrapping everything up with these stupid boss fights made me even less engaged with the world and characters than was possible previously. 02:30:30.34 James yeah 02:30:34.99 Patrick So I like the ending, but I can understand the sense of loss that you guys felt. 02:30:40.66 Dave Let's uh, so I wasn't emotionally affected. It was more like reacting to body horror. And then especially when she rips the sapling out, I was like, Jesus fucking Christ. 02:30:48.49 James Yeah. Cool. 02:30:51.99 Dave That's how Emily goes out. Okay. 02:30:54.32 James Honestly Emily gains points have been pretty badass for me like being able to beat one of the bosses and doing that was pretty good for a character. 02:30:58.45 Dave Yeah. Yeah, for sure. 02:31:04.19 Dave Yeah, let's ah let's let's I want to go back to talking about the final boss with Kacen for a couple reasons. um First of all, I already said that the part where you're fighting Kacen in the theater is goofy, but as far as boss fights and deadly premonitions go, I didn't mind it. 02:31:12.15 Patrick you 02:31:25.54 Dave The chase down the stairs is, like I said earlier, one of the worst things I've ever had to do in a video game. 02:31:28.46 James so bad yep 02:31:30.89 Patrick Hahaha! Hahaha! 02:31:33.67 Dave Um, it's, it's so bad that at some, you know, you know, these sections are bad when like, I'm not holding the controller the regular way. I like wiggling the stick as fast as I can with my right hand, like over the stick. 02:31:47.64 Dave And then like, if I have to press a button, I'll get over it and try to press it really fast. Like if you have people doing that, don't fucking do this. And then. 02:31:55.34 Patrick Yeah, I was doing the same thing. I don't know how you're meant to use your left thumb to actually be regular. It doesn't make any sense to me. I was using it like the heel of my right hand. 02:32:01.67 Dave Yeah. Exactly, yeah. 02:32:04.34 James Yep. 02:32:05.34 Dave ah And then the third phase where Kacen is this giant monster. um The first part of it I didn't mind. I thought it was just you know like cool visually Kacen's giant you're fighting him. 02:32:19.80 Dave The second phase is again the worst. 02:32:23.35 James just 02:32:24.56 Dave For those who didn't play it, Kacen in the first phase is holding this doll of himself, and that's the only thing that can take damage. So you have to shoot the doll. It kind of sucks because aiming sucks, and the lock-on does not work in this part. ah You have to manually aim it, unless you're really close, I don't know. But anyway, in the second phase, he puts the doll in his overall pouch, and so you can't shoot it. And so you have to bait out an arm slam jump on his arm, climb up on his shoulders, and shoot the doll from his shoulders down into the overalls pouch, which sounds cool, and it like kind of is visually, but you get a short time to shoot it, and if you miss, he throws you down, fully heals, and then you have to do the first phase all over again, and it's absolute dog shit. 02:33:11.83 Patrick And it's a super awkward angle isn't it? It's not like an easy shot and he's kind of moving a bit so you don't always have a clear shot. 02:33:13.91 Dave Yep. 02:33:18.86 Dave And even if he wasn't aiming in deadly premonition, his dog shit. So I got so mad when he threw me down and healed fully. 02:33:22.35 James Yeah. Yeah. 02:33:28.43 Dave And I was like, okay, here's another five minutes of my life doing the first phase of this boss fight. I was legitimately angry. 02:33:35.43 James I failed twice. Both times I ran up his shoulder and then aimed at the doll like I was supposed to. And just he moved in such a way that his chin covered it every time I shot multiple times and then had to do the whole thing, and it's so slow. 02:33:47.09 Dave Hmm. 02:33:51.96 James I like if i If the game lets me do it quickly, if I was more skilled, that would be fine, but it's just a lot like standing still doing nothing while he doesn't actually do any attacks until finally like he'll slam his fist on the ground and then he can finally try again. It's just such a waste of time. 02:34:13.83 Dave Yep. 02:34:15.61 Patrick Yeah, I hate it. 02:34:18.22 Dave It's dog shit. And then it's followed up by something that I will always like, I will always like this, but it's really weird. So after you shoot it, Kaysen is like going through the death throws and stuff like that. 02:34:31.98 Dave And he yells, why do you cause me pain? And York does the action movie dramatic one-liner camera zooming in on his face as he points the gun. And he says, because you don't understand humans and then shoots him. 02:34:44.68 Dave And I was, that made me laugh. 02:34:45.32 Patrick and then he turns around and walks towards the camera as he's exploding. 02:34:48.23 James Yeah. 02:34:48.95 Dave Yeah. 02:34:50.84 Patrick it's so if I could not believe that when I saw it. 02:34:51.52 Dave but You're in this, you're in this supernatural void. Like, where is he walking? 02:34:57.73 Patrick I'm like, what is even happening right now? What tone are you going for? 02:35:01.31 Dave You knew when they were storyboarding this, this was how it was going to end. It did not matter what the setting was, what the boss fight arena looks like. York was going to turn around and walk toward the camera at the end of it. 02:35:13.39 Patrick Yeah, cool guys, don't look at explosions. 02:35:15.49 Dave Exactly. Yeah. Uh, but that, that, that final phase of that boss fight, it made me so mad. The chase sequence, it made me so mad. 02:35:27.89 Dave It's just like, it's one of those were like, 02:35:29.87 James See 02:35:33.23 Dave I don't know if you guys ever had this experience. This happened to me in Outer Wilds, which is a wonderful, amazing game. And I was so tilted by the act of getting to the ending that while the ending was happening, I was still mad and I couldn't focus. 02:35:45.75 James ya. 02:35:51.24 Dave Like this happened in this game where like the ending of this game is really interesting I think and like what happens but I was still like my blood pressure was still up from that final boss fight because I hated it so much That like these things played out in front of my eyes and I wrote them in my notes like I don't feel like I could feel The resolution the way they wanted me to which is I always hate it when this happens and it's a video game thing like unique to video games and 02:36:21.39 Patrick Yeah, I definitely know that feeling. 02:36:21.42 James Yeah. 02:36:23.27 Patrick I'm very interested to hear more about that Outer Wilds experience because that is my favorite game of all time. ah But maybe we shouldn't because of spoilers. 02:36:33.35 Patrick But I know I know yeah I know exactly how you feel, that feeling of being tilted off the face of the earth and as a result, not being able to actually enjoy the catharsis of actually finishing it. 02:36:33.59 Dave Yeah, remind me after we're done, yeah. 02:36:45.04 Dave Yeah. 02:36:47.36 Dave So, uh, the end here, uh, you have a cut scene where, uh, Zach is getting ready to leave town. And like, again, you can go back out into the town and do more side quests. 02:36:58.12 Dave You can go fishing. You can hang out with Polly in the hotel, uh, whatever you want to do. But eventually if you drive to the edge of, and no, I think it's, if you get in the car, um, they'll ask you, do you want to leave or something like that? 02:37:12.40 Dave It's a ring in the parking lot, I think. Anyway, um, if you choose to leave. 02:37:14.90 James Yeah. 02:37:17.96 Dave you get a cutscene where Zach is leaving town and he looks out in the forest and he sees Emily out there so he follows her into the forest and ah the twins are out there they give Zach a gift from Emily and they say that she and Zach's twin are out in the forest and then you see I think you see all the dead women and York out in the forest, you know, their spirits or whatever are living out there. um This is really weird for me because I thought it was kind of, you know, romantic in a way that everyone continues their life in the spiritual way at the end of the game. But then it makes me wonder, like, 02:38:00.23 Dave What does this mean for Zach? Like, is it just that Zach is back and Zach can experience the world? ah Because everyone that he grew to care about died in this story. 02:38:08.40 James Yeah. 02:38:10.04 Patrick But that's the idea, right? It was York who was having all those interactions and York has passed on with everyone else. So the whole idea is that it was York who sacrificed himself and is dead with all the other characters. 02:38:17.17 Dave Yeah. Hmm. 02:38:24.47 Patrick Zack is now alive and in the real world and can live his own life. That's the way I saw it anyway. 02:38:30.38 Dave Yeah, but ah the only thing there is that Zach, Zach and York seem to share memories or share experiences. 02:38:30.41 James yeah 02:38:38.19 Dave So, because Zach knows who Emily is, despite York spending all the time with Emily, they might see it as the other person interacting with this person. 02:38:41.78 Patrick Yeah. 02:38:49.34 Dave But it's not like Zach wakes up and he's like, who are all these people? So it's not like that. 02:38:54.08 Patrick Well, there's a bit where um where, you know, York is kind of coming to terms with his feelings about Emily and he's talking to Zach and they're talking about competing for her. 02:39:05.74 James That was great. 02:39:05.98 Dave Mm-hmm Yeah 02:39:06.16 Patrick So I do think that they are two distinct personalities, or at least that's how the game's trying to present it. I agree with you that it doesn't actually make that much sense, but I think that's what they were going for. 02:39:20.21 Dave Yeah, for sure. They're definitely two separate parts of the same thing or inhabiting the same body or something like that. 02:39:26.28 Patrick psyche or soul yeah 02:39:30.52 Dave Yeah. And then yeah they're really driving this home with the post-credits scene too, where York and Emily are in a diner. Anna's there. The other murder victims are there. Thomas is there. 02:39:42.04 Dave York and Emily kiss. So it's like you might get the, I don't know the happy ending for them, but again, they're all dead. This is a spirit world. Zach is, what is that going to do? Just go back to work. Is he even going to be a cop? 02:39:58.67 James yeah it can even solve mysteries on his own like oh is that all york yeah i mean that kind yeah um apparently it's not very good but i mean this game wasn't very good so 02:40:02.23 Dave Yeah. That would be interesting if, if Zach causes that, uh, well might be answered in the sequel cause Zach's in the sequel. 02:40:17.60 Dave Hahaha. 02:40:19.11 James maybe 02:40:19.36 Patrick Exactly what standard of not very good are we going by here? 02:40:22.56 James yeah like 02:40:23.05 Dave What I've heard is that the sequel has a lot of the charm that the first game has. So like you know characters and stuff like that. Gameplay is still dog shit from what I heard. 02:40:35.51 Dave And ah the there's an interesting thing people have said where they don't like the way that the game treats the characters in the second game. And I don't know exactly what they mean, but that's not something I got from the first game here. 02:40:50.20 Dave Uh, so interesting. I don't think I'll play the sequel, but who knows. 02:40:56.74 James i kind of want to play it just to see how bad it is but like at the same time i think i might just watch a playthrough it's hard oh 02:41:05.36 Dave Part of it too is I think the sequels only on switch, which is really weird. 02:41:09.65 James no it must be terrible it probably runs like even worse 02:41:11.05 Patrick That is bizarre. 02:41:13.60 Dave Like not even on PC. Yeah, so um ah there's one other thing. Yeah, it left me anyway. ah Yeah, anything else about the plot or like memorable moments in Deadly Premonition? 02:41:30.11 Patrick I guess it's worth bringing up, we've kind of done it, but it's worth bringing up the parts of this game that feel like shitposting. Because it's very , very strange, you're playing through this game and then every now and then you get this sequence or cutscene where you're like, is this game secretly just a comedy and it's having a joke at my expense? 02:41:40.41 James It's like half the game. 02:41:52.63 James I think so. 02:41:52.84 Dave Mm-hmm. 02:41:53.20 Patrick And there's one of these very early on where you're sitting at a table with the hotel owner and the table is like 40 meters long and you're sitting at opposite ends of the table. 02:41:56.81 James first 02:41:57.08 Dave Oh, yeah. 02:42:02.06 James Yeah, yeah. 02:42:04.80 Patrick And I'm like, what is even happening with this game anymore? 02:42:07.80 James I really like this game's, like, stupid sense of humor. The next thing that happened after that was that you go to the police station for the first time and Thomas says, I've lost my keys. 02:42:19.93 James Can you find my key? And you're like, okay. 02:42:21.88 Dave oh yeah 02:42:22.91 James And you walk into, he's like, the key has a key ring of a squirrel on it. 02:42:25.94 Dave And it's like, uh, it's like a set, the keys that you find, you find these like very, uh, very similar keys of all these different species of squirrels. 02:42:37.37 Dave And you take it back and Thomas is like, no, this is an Eastern striped squirrel. I'm not looking for this. I needed, you know, the Western black squirrel or whatever. 02:42:45.73 James she she yeah you go through like eight keys or something yeah and they play these sit the way like i think they're the way that it sells like it sells itself so well to me because they play most of these scenes like completely straight for like the majority of them like york is just so confused while he's grabbing those keys and at that dinner table and every other character is just like 02:42:46.78 Dave And so you need to, yeah, it's ridiculous. Yeah. I love that though. 02:43:11.88 James acting completely naturally 02:43:14.34 Dave Yeah. Uh, one scene I just wanted to shout out cause I thought it was really funny is when, uh, I think it's, is it Diane that's hanging from the ceiling above the statue in the museum? 02:43:28.38 Dave Or is that? 02:43:28.59 Patrick Yeah, that part was hilarious. 02:43:30.01 Dave Yeah. When, uh, when York jumps off the balcony railing to like, to grab her as she's falling. 02:43:33.71 James uh so ridiculous it's 02:43:36.66 Dave I love that so much. 02:43:38.58 James like what is going on right now 02:43:43.39 Patrick Yeah, so I think that it's funny. These absolutely ludicrous comedy scenes do succeed in the sense that they add to the weirdness of the thing. 02:43:54.94 Patrick But it is another culprit of creating this tonal whiplash. And I guess at the end of the day, if you're in for this, you're in for it in a big way. And you'll absolutely adore and love this part of the game. 02:44:07.63 Dave Yeah. 02:44:08.21 James oh yeah it was it was like almost my favorite part of the game was this kind of stuff like um but it's very odd 02:44:09.45 Patrick Yeah. 02:44:12.29 Patrick yeah 02:44:19.57 Dave Or like when, uh, when York goes fishing for evidence and you know, you, you catch some fish or whatever, and then eventually you do pull it out and he, and everyone's like, just. 02:44:30.25 James ah I was legitimately like in tears laughing at that sequence from start to finish. like The whole thing starts off with the stupid coffee thing and then him being like, there's an ad for this fishing spot on this coffee mug. 02:44:46.30 James Let's go to this watering hole and go fishing because the evidence will be in there. 02:44:48.50 Dave Yeah. 02:44:51.88 James It's like, and then like you play the fishing minigame and it's like this game of like Slots basically with the most ridiculous character expressions as the slot reels And then it just works out and nobody like says anything they just go along with it Yeah 02:45:04.43 Dave Yeah. Yeah, they just kind of like it's one of those, oh, York type of moments. 02:45:16.80 James or like things like you can shave anywhere and york's facial hair will grow but like you can shave anywhere there's a tap and water like you'll be in one of those other world horror dimensions and there'll be this fucked up sink filled with nasty shit and there'll be this like razor icon there and you can just walk up and shave at this like filth encrusted sink and he won't even say anything he'll just do it 02:45:21.97 Dave Mm hmm. 02:45:30.50 Dave yeah 02:45:44.70 Dave Oh, that reminds me, I spent probably an hour or so with bugs flying around me early in the game without realizing why. 02:45:52.77 James Oh me too. 02:45:56.68 Dave and just Because it it happened in one of the horror levels and I was like, okay, fine. Like this, this is a dirty fucking place. There's bugs flying around. And then like, York wakes up the next morning in the hotel and it's still happening. 02:46:07.52 Dave And I was like, what is this a bug you know a bug uh and then i had to go look that up and i was like no you have to change your suit that's something you do in this game you change your suits you get them dry cleaned yeah 02:46:19.59 James and you have to get it dry cleaned. 02:46:22.52 Patrick Heh heh. 02:46:23.03 James It happened to me because I was just changing clothes for the sake of it for the first half of the game. So the first time I noticed the bugs was in that conversation with George about his backstory when Emily rocks up in the dress. 02:46:40.13 James And he just ruined the whole scene because of the bug thing. 02:46:40.49 Dave Hmm. 02:46:44.13 James It was so distracting. 02:46:47.45 Patrick Oh, on that note, how funny is it when Emily shows up at his hotel room and he just starts telling her about his mother instead of hooking up with her? 02:46:57.51 Dave Yeah. 02:46:57.62 Patrick I was like, what are you doing? What are you doing? 02:47:01.29 Dave That's it. 02:47:01.40 Patrick She's turned up at your hotel room late at night. Why do you think she's doing that? 02:47:06.78 Dave Yeah, that's, that's the part where I was like earlier where I was like, I think part of, you know, York, it's not that York doesn't care about what people around think about what he's saying. He obviously can't read the room either because of that scene with Emily showing up where he's like, this is the time to tell about how my mother and father brutally died when I was a little kid. This is the moment. 02:47:34.96 Dave So ah goofy ass game. I think this is a good place to call this one. um what a ah What a ride playing the game and then a lot to discuss obviously with this one too. I thank you both for taking about three hours to talk about it with me. 02:47:52.36 James That's all right. 02:47:52.62 Patrick Thank you so much for giving up your Saturday night. We really do appreciate it. I know it's awkward recording with us all the way in Australia, so thank you. 02:48:01.66 Dave It's no problem. 02:48:02.51 James I'd like to think like this game has a lot of shitposts, but I think the biggest shitpost of all was your Patreon users voting for this game. 02:48:11.76 Dave Exactly. 02:48:13.68 Patrick I wanted to mention that as well. like I looked at the list of the other games, I'm like, oh this these are some high quality games, but no, your patrons went with Deadly Premonition because they're a bunch of trolls. 02:48:22.96 Dave It was 02:48:23.54 James great choice um honestly great choice 10 out of 10 02:48:27.02 Dave It was ah yeah so for anyone listening it was it was this it was legacy of cane soul reaver system shock two and then a Castlevania order of ecclesia I think it was and yeah this is it's one of those moments like I do the polls and every now and then like the poll results will be like oh my patrons are not picking for the most popular game They are some real ones. 02:48:51.49 Dave They want a fun podcast episode and a fun experience. And I think, you know, this is one of those where it won pretty convincingly too, as far as I remember. 02:49:00.59 James yeah 02:49:01.46 Dave So, uh, yeah, they knew what they wanted. So shout out to everybody who votes and, uh, supports Patreon one more time. 02:49:07.33 James Yeah. 02:49:10.97 Patrick In some way, I was grateful because we've literally just played through System Shock 2, so it was fun getting to play a fresh game and have a fresh experience. 02:49:15.79 Dave Yeah. 02:49:19.25 James Well, I don't know about fun, but it was interesting. 02:49:19.84 Dave for sure 02:49:23.00 Dave ah Well, interesting for sure. 02:49:24.21 Patrick Interesting. 02:49:26.59 Dave Yeah. So ah that is the end of the episode. Again, thank you to James and Patrick for joining today. And for everyone listening, a reminder that down in the show notes, you'll find a link to retrospectives. 02:49:40.05 Dave And again, it's a podcast that I think is worth your time. And for me, that is all ah to say that I haven't recorded in a couple of weeks. I forget how to end the episodes. 02:49:50.65 Dave So. Yeah, thank you for listening all the way to the end at about three hours. As always, you're my hero and tune in next week for the next game to come out of the backlog.