Deadly Premonition: Shovelware or Game of the Year? We're pretty enamored with it, and we spend the entire show telling you why. We discuss its critical response, its connection to Twin Peaks, the mystique of Francis York Morgan, and why it may feature the best storytelling in the history of games. A NOTE ABOUT SPOILERS: The first half of the show is spoiler-free; the second half is spoiler-packed. We tell you when to stop listening if you want to experience the ending yourself (which you absolutely should). Featuring Brad Gallaway, Dan Weissenberger, Richard Naik, and Tim "Call Me Tim" Spaeth.
Tim Spaeth: Is Deadly Premonition the worst game or best game of 2010? We deconstruct one of the most divisive games of all time. Plus, for the first time in the history of this podcast, I'm sitting in the same room as one of my co-hosts. I'm staring at him right now, and it's not awkward in the slightest. The GameCritics.com podcast starts right now.
[Music]
Here we go, folks. GameCritics.com podcast episode 42. I promise no lame Douglas Adams jokes, except for that one. I'm Tim Spaeth, but call me Tim. Everybody does. That's the first of many lame Deadly Premonition jokes, because that game is our topic this week. Bringing it to you, a very special cast. We lead off with Brad Gallaway. Hey, Braaad.
Brad Gallaway: Hey, Tim.
Tim Spaeth: I can't remember the last time I introduced you first. How does it feel?
Brad Gallaway: It feels oddly empowering. I think I would like this to be a tradition.
Tim Spaeth: You'll have to discuss that with Mr. Chi Kong Lui, who is on assignment this week. But you know what? We could just decide to do it. Done.
Brad Gallaway: I think we just did; yeah. I think we're done.
Tim Spaeth: Rock and roll. Well, also joining us—oh! It's been too long! It's Canadian folk hero, Daniel Weissenberger. Hello, Daniel.
Dan Weissenberger: Great to be here, Tim.
Tim Spaeth: Dan, you haven't been on in a while. I wanted to ask you…your Halo 3 review, or, more to the point, the reaction to you Halo 3 review, is legendary. I wonder: What has the reaction been to your Halo: Reach review?
Dan Weissenberger: Honestly, I have no idea. After all the death threats last time, I said if I ever reviewed another Halo game, I was not going to read the reaction to it. So maybe people love it; maybe people hate it. I haven't looked at it.
Tim Spaeth: Brad, do you know? Do you know what the reaction has been? Have you been keeping tabs?
Brad Gallaway: I've been peeking at it now and then, because I was really curious. I actually liked Dan's review a lot, and I figured that a lot of people wouldn't like it. But actually, it has not even been a fraction of what the hate was for Halo 3. It's been a couple of "I totally agree"s and there's a couple "You're wrong"s, but in general, the reaction has been muted. Maybe there isn't as much love for Reach as people thought there was going to be.
Dan Weissenberger: Or Bungie isn't paying people as much to love Reach as they used to.
Tim Spaeth: [Chuckles]
Brad Gallaway: Ohhh.
Tim Spaeth: That Dan Weissenberger cynicism, I have missed it so. Welcome back, sir.
Dan Weissenberger: Thanks.
Tim Spaeth: Now, as I mentioned at the top, the final member of our quartet sitting across the table from me. It's a first for this podcast. We've never done this before. I am waving right now at Richard Naik. Hello, Richard.
Richard Naik: Buenos noches, Tim. I am waving back to you right now.
Tim Spaeth: Is this weird for you? It's a little weird for me.
Richard Naik: Uh, no. Not really.
Tim Spaeth: [Laughter] We should tell the audience, just to put this into some sort of perspective: this is actually the second time this week that we've gotten together.
Richard Naik: Yes. We have done battle twice this week. I hope I have more hit points and have a better strategy this time around for the second fight.
Tim Spaeth: [Laughter] People should know we don't live in the same city. You live in St. Louis, I live in Chicago. I just coincidentally happened to be in St. Louis on business this week, so we got together for a beer on Tuesday.
Richard Naik: True.
Tim Spaeth: And then you had already planned a trip here to Chicago for this weekend, and we decided to schedule the podcast. So here we are a second time.
Richard Naik: One thing I do want to point out is, above anything else, Tim is a very large man. I am five-eight, and he is at least a foot taller than me. He has been blocking my three-point shots since the day I met him. It's really annoying.
Tim Spaeth: [Chuckles] I don't think I'm six-foot-eight, but I appreciate you saying so.
Richard Naik: Are you sure you're not six-foot-eight?
Tim Spaeth: I'm nearly certain. So, anyway, Richard, it's been an absolute pleasure to enjoy your company this week, and it should make the podcast very interesting. Now, normally, at this point in our podcast, Filipe brings in the Quote of the Week. But because we are downtown—we're actually at my office in a conference room, and Filipe, by court decree, is not permitted in th Chicago city limits—we will not be able to do the Quote of the Week this week. Richard, would you say it's your greatest disappointment not to be able to meet Filipe?
Richard Naik: Well, you did show me a couple of pictures of Filipe, and, man. That guy can rock a mohawk.
Tim Spaeth: He can.
Richard Naik: I wasn't expecting that.
Tim Spaeth: Yeah. He's an unusual cat. Maybe next time, if you come out to the house, we'll let him out of the cage. But we'll just have to get right into our main topic, and that topic is Deadly Premonition. We are devoting the entire show to discussion of this game. Let me first address spoilers. We're going to do the show kind of in two parts. The first part, mild spoilers. Nothing that would come close to ruining the game for you. More of a general discussion about the game, and…I don't want to say "controversy," but let's say "controversy" that surrounds this game and the critics' perception of it.
The last part of the show, and we will provide you ample warning, will be a spoiler-packed discussion. That's where we're going to talk about the ending, what we think it all means. Again, we will let you know when the spoiler section starts, so if you're worried about that, don't be. But we do want to be sensitive and give some of you folks who are planning to play the game something to chew on here, and that's how we will start.
So. Why don't we start with a quick description of the game? I'd like to do somehting different here. And, Dan, I'm going to put you on the spot, because I know you can handle it. I'm going to read the game description, as posted on the Deadly Premonition website. All right. This is the dry publisher description of the game. And then, Dan, I want you to describe the game when I'm finished, with your unique panache, okay?
Dan Weissenberger: I'll do my best.
Tim Spaeth: As if you were describing it to someone who's never heard of it. I don't want you cutting corners: I want full Weissenberger, all right?
Dan Weissenberger: Absotively.
Tim Spaeth: All right. So here is the company line on Deadly Premonition:
"Deadly Premonition is a new suspense horror 3D action adventure for Xbox 360. As Special Agent Francis Morgan, the game sends players to investigate the brutal murder of a young local beauty. Amidst the backdrop of soaring mountains and a town filled with ecentric natives, Agent Morgan must solve the mystery of the Red Seed Murders and stay alive in a place where supernatural creatures and a folklore killer seek to end his investigation permanently."
Sounds gripping.
Dan Weissenberger: It really does.
Tim Spaeth: Let's hear the tale as Dan tells it.
Dan Weissenberger: Deadly Premonition is not just the Game of the Year. It's not just possibly the most interesting video game ever released on the Xbox 360. It has what I will argue—and can easily be argued—the best video game story of this generation. It is, from beginning to end, a gripping thrill ride with the most fully realized main character to have ever appeared in a video game. It has combat that is so bad that it doesn't belong in a Commodore 64 game. But at the same time, it is a game that I recommend that everyone play. It is an unbelievably blatant rip-off of the TV show Twin Peaks, while at the same time managing to tell a more complete—and I would argue satisfying—story than that show ever managed. Deadly Premonition is, for the Xbox 360, I would argue, the only video game that you absolutely must play if you own the system.
Tim Spaeth: That, sir, was full Weissenberger.
Dan Weissenberger: Thank you.
Tim Spaeth: Thank you for that. So here's the thing: this is a game that has received abysmal review scores. It has received extraordinary review scores. It is, as I described it at the top, divisive. In fact, our own website has two reviews. Sparky Clarkson gave this a 4; Brad, your own review, a 7.5 Let's start with what makes it so divisive. And Brad, I guess I turn to you, sir. Do you feel that this game has been misunderstood by most critics who've reviewed it?
Brad Gallaway: Yeah. I think it's fair to say that I think a lot of them have certainly misunderstood it. At the same time, I don't mean to say that I understand it when no one else does. I'm certainly not that egotistical—at least I'm not tonight. I can sometimes be. But I think you have to really look at it as…The reviewing community breaks down into two camps: there's the one camp which I am in, which is the "I really am interested in alternative-type games; I'm interested in fringe games; I'm really willing to put up with a lot of warts an wrinkles and problems, as long as there's something fresh and interesting going on," which this game has in spades. And then there's the other camp, which is: "I don't care about the story. I care about gameplay. I want explosions, I want exciting things happening 24/7. I want save points every two seconds; I want to have action, action, action."
Dan Weissenberger: The Uncharted camp.
Brad Gallaway: [Chuckles] "The Uncharted camp," yeah. Yeah, yeah. Well, I wasn't going to say that, but I think that's kind of fair to say. So that's definitely a gross generalization, but I think that really explains why there's this giant chasm between people like me who think it's awesome and love it, and people who are at the bottom of the Metacritics score who think it's just this abysmal crap.
I think, more than anything else, if you're a player who really values actual, tactile, real-time gameplay more than intellectual stimulation or more than story and character, then this is the kind of game that will make you want to bust the disc in half and flush it down the toilet and you'll hate it. There's nothing I can say that will sell this game to you. In fact, you probably shouldn't even play it, because, like Dan said, the combat is terrible; the graphics are embarrassing. The game is just a bunch of rough edges taped together with Scotch tape.
So if you can't get past that, it's a big barrier. It's a big barrier for a lot of people—especially people who have been weaned on this current generation. They don't really have the background of what games used to be like that enables you to power through some of the more ugly sections. But if you're interested in really interesting stories, like Dan said, like extremely, just amazing characterization, gripping writing, a really mature storyline, then this game is absolutely for you.
Tim Spaeth: Now, I look at Richard across the table from me. Richard, I know you bailed on this game. You got off the train.
Richard Naik: I did. I bailed after finishing the second episode and just watched the rest of it on YouTube.
Tim Spaeth: Why did you quit?
Richard Naik: Well, first thing let me say is that I totally agree with what Dan and Brad are saying about the story. It is great. It is very good; it is one of the best examples of game writing that I've ever seen. I've never seen Twin Peaks, but to me, I would characterize it as more of an X-Files type of scenario, where it starts off this very normal investigation scenario that just gets totally ridiculous and totally supernatural as it goes on, and it works. You don't know how it works, but it just works.
That said, I am more than willing to put up with bad mechanics or warts and pimples and stuff like that, like Brad was saying, for some sort of intellectual stimulation. I put up with that through Mass Effect, because Mass Effect, to me, had all kinds of mechanical problems but the story and the story and the conversation system were so good that most of it didn't matter. This falls below that, to me, even. Not only are there just…and when I say "presentation," I don't just mean graphical quality. I mean the controls, the animations—just the general way you interact with the game world is just crap. It's crap.
And the fact that I was able to get at least what I think an equivalent experience watching the cut-scenes on YouTube, and watching some of the playthroughs than if I had actually played the game says something about the mechanics of this game in relation to how good its story is. I bailed on it just because the combat segments just got way too tedious and it just wasn't fun to play. I just bailed on it, watched it on YouTube, and I think I got the full experience.
Tim Spaeth: Dan, what would you say Richard is missing by having quit early?
Dan Weissenberger: Simply taking the time to explore just how…and to be fair, I've watched the playthroughs on YouTube. I don't know how complete they are.
Richard Naik: They are. They are complete. They are complete. You probably can't see every single nook and cranny, but you see everything that is relevant to the story.
Dan Weissenberger: Oh, no. That's what I'm saying. There's plenty of stuff that's not relevant to the story that I think had a great job of building the character of the town that you're probably missing out on. But how do I put this? I think what you missed—and this is something I argued in one of my articles about Deadly Premonition early on—is that it makes you feel like you're playing as Zach Morgan in a way that when you watch it as a movie you don't get. I've been maybe the term is "vitriolic," if [unknown] to be as negative as possible with how brilliant I consider the conceit that you're not playing as York Morgan, but rather the multiple personality that is advising him.
Which is why you don't have control over the conversation, but you do have control over if he wants to take a detour or have a fight. It really puts you in his skin. Driving around the town, physically driving around the town and having York chat with you about his memories from high school.
Richard Naik: Yeah. When he's driving around in the car and he just starts talking to himself? Yeah.
Dan Weissenberger: Exactly. Well, no, but he's not talking to himself.
Richard Naik: Well, talking to Zach.
Dan Weissenberger: He's talking to you the player in a way that I've never seen as effectively done in a game. And it's completely different when you're watching it passively on a YouTube video than when you're the one actually feeling like you're hanging out with this guy.
Richard Naik: I agree with that, to a point. Like I said, I did really enjoy those introspective moments when he's talking to himself or the player, whoever, when he's just talking and no one else is in the car with him.
Dan Weissenberger: Yeah.
Richard Naik: But the parts where he's not doing that, like the parts where you're in that dark world, were just so long and tedious and the whole time I was just like: "Man! When the hell am I going to get out of this and see some more talking and interaction?" It got to the point where I finished the second episode and I didn't know how long the game was. I looked up the average length. It's 22 hours—20 to 24 hours. That's about twice as long as this game has any right to be. Would you say that you could probably tell this story and all of its little quirks and everything that you would say goes into it in about half that? Would you say that's accurate?
Dan Weissenberger: Um, not all of it, obviously. You would just be getting the cut-scenes; you would lose almost all of the town flavor.
Richard Naik: So maybe 12 to 14? Something like that?
Dan Weissenberger: Honestly, I think if you stripped out all the combat—and, to be fair, your mileage may vary—I have spent 150 hours with this game.
Richard Naik: Really?
Brad Gallaway: [Chuckles]
Dan Weissenberger: I played it once; I played through it once. Then I played through it a second time to find out what I had missed; I made the horrible mistake of playing it on Hard the first time, [Laughter] because I always play video games on Hard, and, oh, wow, did that make the combat…So the combat was 1000 times worse for me than it was for most people who played the game, and it's still my favorite game of the year.
But anyway, it took me about 50 hours just playing it the first time, because the combat is that bad. Then I played through it on Easy, trying to get all of the substories and see the whole plot, which I did. It's fantastic. And then, because I started writing these articles, I played through it a third time on Normal to capture all of the videos I would need to tell the story of Deadly Premonition.
Brad Gallaway: If I could just jump in for a second to kind of give a middle of the road take on it—
Richard Naik: No, no. No, you may not jump in.
[Laughter]
Brad Gallaway: I'm going to do it anyway, just to give a middle of the road take. I played through the game, finished it, and it took me, total, about 16 hours. Now, I did some of the sidequests; I didn't do all the sidequests. I did a couple of the important ones that Dan had clued me into, and I did a couple other ones that I thought were just personally interesting, and then I just focused on the story. So I think the entire game, if you didn't do any of the sidequests, which I wouldn't really recommend, but you could, that's probably an eight or a ten-hour game. So I think that's pretty reasonable, and honestly, I think that that is justified.
To get back to what you guys were originally talking about, about the difference between watching and playing it, I certainly agree with Dan that there is this indefinable quality to simply playing the game. I think that it's important to note that it's not entirely pleasant. It's not fun, and I don't think it's supposed to be fun. I think it's supposed to make you a little bit frustrated, a little bit uncomfortable, a little bit bored, even. I think that's all by design.
I read a few interviews with SWERY, where they asked him—SWERY's the director of the game, SWERY65—and they've asked him about that. And he said: "Yes, I wanted you to feel those things." So he has confirmed multiple times that that is his intent, and I have to agree that I think that it's worthwhile to sit through those segments, like the long drives back and forth, which are never really longer than three minutes, five minutes. That's tops.
Dan Weissenberger: You're never more than five minutes away from anything else in this game. It's not like Grand Theft Auto.
Brad Gallaway: Yeah. When you look at people who grind their Final Fantasy characters to level 99, and you're telling me you can't spend three minutes to drive from one part of town to the other, I have to call bullshit on that. I think that feeling of just being there and being frustrated and being bored sometimes really helps to cement the fact that you're supposed to be playing the role of Zach, the alternate personality. You really are in this guy's shoes, and that, to me, is something that you can't get on YouTube.
Richard Naik: Well, see, I agree about the…I didn't mind so much the driving portions, or having to run around the town. To me, that was actually a positive, because it actually felt like I was investigating this town or trying to get familiar with it and things like that. What bugged me, what just ruined the game for me, were the combat segments.
Brad Gallaway: Right.
Richard Naik: It's not even that it's clunkly; it's not even that it's frustrating. It's just that they're so long.
Dan Weissenberger: Yeah.
Richard Naik: The gameplay time is just so artificially inflated by you just running through and killing these bullet-sponge zombies, and I hated that. I hate it when games do this: when they artificially inflate time with stupid fetch quests or just shit like that. And I can't remember when those zombies start coming out of the wall.
Dan Weissenberger: The whip-zombies, yeah.
Brad Gallaway: Those are the worst, yeah.
Richard Naik: Yeah. Yeah. Those were the absolute worst. So it was at that point…I got to the end of the episode. It was when the second victim dies, when she's crushed under the statue, it's like; "Okay. I'm done. I want to experience the story."
Brad Gallaway: Yeah. So, Richard, you played on Normal. Is that correct?
Richard Naik: Correct.
Brad Gallaway: I would say—and I think that Dan would probably agree—to anybody listening who hasn't played the game: Do yourself a favor; play on Easy. It's not a hit to your manhood. Your sack is not going to shrivel up and you won't be any kind of eunuch afterwards.
Dan Weissenberger: [Laughter]
Brad Gallaway: Just play on Easy, because the combat is genuinely terrible. I think every single person on this podcast will agree: the combat is terrible. Combat does not belong in this game. There are counter-measures that you can take to make it easier on yourself, but in general, just do yourself a favor. Play it on Easy, and just don't worry about the combat too much. Don't play it on Normal; don't play it on Hard, and just get through those segments. So I think it's unfortunate you played it on Normal, because even on Easy, I felt like it was too much.
Dan Weissenberger: I'm telling you, just quickly. I wrote a couple of articles about this so far. The first one's up today, and the second one should be up, well, again, when I can capture the footage for it. But the quick tip is, there are a couple of missions you can do, and their listed all over on GameCritics.com. I believe it's chapter eight: The Manner in which Unforgivable Design Mistakes can be Overlooked. I tell you where to go to get the missions so you will get the best weapon in the game. Basically, when you have this one weapon, any monster in the game, you can just skip. Most of them you can run past, and the ones that are literally blocking the hallway, you can kill in about two seconds with this weapon. It's a joke. Now, there are the crawling zombies, and those things are godawful. I don't deny that in the least. But there's only about 12 of them in the entire game.
Richard Naik: Really?
Dan Weissenberger: Oh, yeah.
Brad Gallaway: Yeah. There's not that many.
Dan Weissenberger: The thing is, Richard's absolutely right. Remember, I played this thing on Hard, and when I got to that goddamn lumbermill, it took me an hour and a half to get through what should've been a very brief…
Richard Naik: Yeah.
Brad Gallaway: Yeah, totally. Totally.
Dan Weissenberger: Knowing what to do, my second and third times through it, knowing what to do, took me about ten, 12 minues. You can actually zip through if you know the tricks. One of the reasons I'm writing the article is to let people know the tricks, so they can experience the game as it should be so they don't pull out their hair and give up the way Richard did. No offense—again, it's not an attack on you. I just think people will have a better experience if they flick it to Easy, learn the tricks and just enjoy the whole game.
Brad Gallaway: Totally, totally. Richard is exactly right. Everything he says is true.
Dan Weissenberger: Yeah.
Brad Gallaway: And Dan is also exactly right: that if you know the tricks, you can make it easier on yourself and you can get through those hard parts a lot simpler, a lot quicker. That's for sure.
Richard Naik: Yeah. I play it on Normal not to just make it hard on myself, [but] because I want the intended, baseline experience. I don't necessarily want to have my hand held throughout the game. It's not necessarily that I'm afraid of it being easy, but I just don't want the game to just give me the solution outright. Without knowing that this combat was awful and Easy is really the only way to play, I'm like: "Oh, okay. I'll play it on Normal," and Normal turned out to be a vast mistake. So, yes, I totally agree. If you are planning on picking up this game and playing it, for the love of God, play it on—
Brad Gallaway: Play it on Easy, yeah.
Richard Naik: For the love of whatever deity you may profess yourself to, play it on Easy.
Dan Weissenberger: Oh, and I just want to stress that you got to remember that I haven't read any interviews with Swery. In fact, I've read no supplemental material. Until I'm done [with] these articles, although I may get a chance to interview him—I'm nuts—I want to make my articles about the game itself.
I can't wait to delve into all of that subsequent material, but there's a level of ineptitude in this game design that I find startling: that the combat is in there at all. You could not tell me that the combat is intentionally this bad. It has to be a horrible error. When I look at how inept so much of the game is, it seems like stuff was thrown in at the last minute because they just had to throw it in there. For example, the leaderboards of the game.
[Laughter]
It's insane. So I'd never done it, but Brad asked me: "Hey! What's your rank?" I'm like: "I don't know; I never bothered loading it up." So I load up the leaderboards, and apparently, I'm 18th of the 50 people who have bothered to upload to the leaderboards or whatever. [Laughter]
Brad Gallaway: No, no. There's at least 100, because I was number 94. So there's got to be at least that many people.
Dan Weissenberger: Here's how inept this thing is. The way they determine your position in the leaderboard is literally, they set up a bunch of categories and whoever has the highest number in those categories wins. Except some of the categories of "How much time did you skip by smoking cigarettes?" which, you'd think would lower your score. Or: "How many times did you die and get taken to the hospital?" High number wins.
[Laughter]
Dan Weissenberger: I played through the game without getting killed once when I was taking the videos, so I have the worst possible ranking in the "Taken to the hospital" category, which brought down my average.
[Laughter]
Richard Naik: So this actually brings up one specific question that I wanted to ask. All three of us are in agreement that, mechanically, it's pretty bad, right?
Brad Gallaway: Yeah.
Dan Weissenberger: Just the combat.
Richard Naik: Yeah, just the combat.
Brad Gallaway: Yeah, the combat. Sure.
Richard Naik: So do you guys believe that this game could've been as successful or as good as it is or even better if it had been a totally different genre? Had this been a point-and-click adventure game, would this be that much better for it?
Dan Weissenberger: No.
Richard Naik: No?
Dan Weissenberger: No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. My ideal Deadly Premonition is the exact same game without the combat. I don't think a point-and-click adventure would put you in the situation the way this game does.
Brad Gallaway: I would agree with that. I think the combat should be taken out. If there needs to be certain segments of combat, like a quck time event or something like that. Because there's already a few of them in there. They need polish, for sure, but I'm going to agree with Dan. You need to be in this character's shoes; you need to be the one that's in control. You need to be walking the walk and just going through the town.
So the way that it is is correct. It just needs three million more dollars for the budget, and 20 more people polisihing the bugs out and then getting rid of the combat. But I think that they're essentially on the right track. Interestingly…It's too bad you didn't read any of the other supplemental stuff, Dan, because I was actually going to ask you: Apparently, I just learned recently that this game first surfaced, I think, three years ago. It was called something different. I think it was called Rainy Woods, if I'm not mistaken.
Richard Naik: Wasn't it called Red Sea Chronicles or something like that?
Dan Weissenberger: Red Seeds Profile is its Japanese name.
Richard Naik: Yeah, because the Japanese title was different. I know that.
Dan Weissenberger: Yeah.
Brad Gallaway: Yeah. It was something else, and I believe it was originally on a different system. It's been through I don't know how many iterations or something, so I think that probably a lot of this is holdover from a much, much earlier time in the development. Who knows how much budget they had to work with and what the true situation was? But it looks like a souped-up PS2 game, honestly.
Dan Weissenberger: Yeah.
Brad Gallaway: I could easily imagine this game running on the PS2, no problem.
Dan Weissenberger: And Access Games's last game—that game I actually kind of liked, Spy Fiction, was a PS2 game. So it wouldn't surprise me if they just [unknown] that and started re-editing it for this.
Brad Gallaway: Totally. Some of the textures, they look like they're ripped out of the earliest PS2 dev libraries.
Dan Weissenberger: Yeah. And I do have to point out that whenever you're taking my opinion about something, and I know this isn't a popular opinion, but I care literally nothing about graphics. Unless something about the graphics is so bad that it's impacting the gameplay, I don't care at all. If the game looks terrible, I do not weigh that in my opinion of the game. I know that's not a popular opinion; I know that's not the usual opnion, but when you're reading my reviews, chances are the graphics don't get mentioned for a reason. That's because I don't care.
Richard Naik: Mmm. I don't think I care. I wouldn't say I care a lot about graphics, but I do care about the artistic style—
Dan Weissenberger: Right. Absolutely.
Richard Naik: —that a particular game might be going for. Say, something like, shit, I can't think of a good example. But the artistic style of the town of Greenvale just wasn't really that good. It was very green—actually green. It was very green, very drab, and just not….
Brad Gallaway: Oh, my God, dude. I'm so glad you brought that up. I am so glad you brought that up. Okay, so I know you didn't see this, but you don't live in Washington, do you, right? You've never been to Washington?
Richard Naik: Uh, no. I will be to Washington next year, but no.
Brad Gallaway: Oh, okay. We'll hook up, then. But I live in Washington, and in fact, I've lived in places that are almost exactly the same as what Greenvale is. As I was playing the game, I was like: "Wow, they did a really good job of capturing what this place actually looks like."
Richard Naik: Really?
Brad Gallaway: If you play the game and finish the game, there's actually a photo album that the developers took when they actually flew to Washington and took pictures of them being here and looking at locations. When you see the actual pictures of the town, you're like: "Holy shit! That's exactly what that is."
Dan Weissenberger: It's identical, yeah.
Brad Gallaway: It's identical. It's totally identical. So even though I hear what you're saying, at the same time, they totally captured what that crappy, way out in the boondocks town in Washington looks like. It's correct. It is totally on the mark.
Richard Naik: Hm.
Dan Weissenberger: Yeah. I thought it looked fantastic, because I've spent a lot of time in northern Ontario and it's full of towns just out in the woods that look just like that. [Laughter] Any town really deep in the woods has that vibe.
Brad Gallaway: Oh, yeah. Totally.
Dan Weissenberger: They totally captured it really well in the game. No, but I didn't want to say…But, for my money, and yes, the artistic bit and how well you realize it is an important question. But what it comes down to is I feel graphics are always a factor of the game's budget, and a low-budget game is going to have worse graphics than a high-budget game. And I don't think it deserves to be criticised for that.
Richard Naik: Yeah.
Dan Weissenberger: And this one, I have no idea how much money they spent on Deadly Premonition, but if it was more than $250, someone was stealing from them.
[Laughter]
Richard Naik: They did have to buy the cases and distribute the discs, so there was that.
Dan Weissenberger: [Laughter]
Richard Naik: I imagine that's more than $250.
Dan Weissenberger: Well, that's not development; that's distribution. That's publishing.
Richard Naik: Oh, okay.
Tim Spaeth: Let's shift gears a bit here. Let's talk about the Twin Peaks connection. I personally didn't watch the show; I'm certainly cognizant of the elements that bled into pop culture: the coffee, the murder of the girl, the quirky townspeople. There is a fine line, I think, between an homage and a rip-off. So I'll turn to you, Brad, because you call out Twin Peaks in your review. Which is Deadly Premonition? Is it an homage? Is it a rip-off? Or something in between?
Brad Gallaway: To me, it is like the most heartfelt, most deeply appreciative homage that could ever exist. To me, it's not a rip-off at all. I think it takes the same ideas, the same themes, the same flavor of the show, but like Dan says, it gives a better experience than the show ever provided. I was a huge Twin Peaks fan when that show was on, and I thought it was fantastic.
So when I started playing Deadly Premonition, I'm like: "Oh, my fucking God! This is Twin Peaks in a video game!" And it's better than any licensed property could've ever been, because the director really took the elements that worked and he just ran with them—he expanded them, he made them deeper. If this had been labeled Twin Peaks 2 or something, I would totally get it, and I would be okay with that, and I think it would be fine.
I think that he shows a great respect for the original material. There's obviously a million callouts to the TV show, and if you're not a Twin Peaka fan, I would certainly suggest watching that show, at least the first season, and then playing the game. You'll clearly see all the connections. It's pretty obvious. But I would say that it was respectful; it was really well-done, and it was like a love letter. It was pretty obvious that Swery really was in love with what Mark Frost and David Lynch did, and for good reason—it's a great show.
But, like Dan said, it gave such a deep experience by actually letting you play through it, and I think the writing was actually better, honestly. Twin Peaks was famous for having a stellar first season and a second season that really disappointed. I agree with that—I think the second season, the story just didn't wrap up in a good way.
Dan Weissenberger: Yeah.
Brad Gallaway: In Deadly Premonition, I think, it was almost like a spiritual do-over. I think maybe Swery was one of those lucky people who got to take a property he loved but maybe didn't care for the ending, and actually got to create something that rewrote the ending and actually was better than what the writers came up with the first time. So, honestly, I was in love with it. From the Deadly Premonition-cum-Twin Peaks perspective, I thought it was aces all around.
Dan Weissenberger: Honestly, I wish I could debate that, but Brad's completely right. [Laughter] I don't even have a lot to add. A lot of people I've recommended the game to are people who I know who are Twin Peaks super fans, as well. I think the game will play just as well to someone who isn't a big fan of Twin Peaks, but I think there's more glee, in the same way that someone who really likes Batman gets a lot out of Arkham Asylum, just seeing Batman done right. But I think it's also a great experience. In the same way, I think someone who loves Twin Peaks, there's so many nods and so many thematic similarities that someone who's a big fan of Twin Peaks is just going to have a better experience with the game and that's all there is to it. Oh, one great thing is, you can watch Twin Peaks, too. It does not spoil the plot of Deadly Premonition; it's not that much of a rip-off. You do not know where Deadly Premonition is going just because you've seen Twin Peaks. But, yeah. I think you're going to have a better experience, but I still think it's playable. I still think it works as a story on its own. It is not overly reliant on the player's knowledge of the originial subject matter.
Brad Gallaway: Oh, absolutely. I agree with that. As a Twin Peaks fan, I certainly got more out of it than the average person. But I do think that it is a really well-crafted story, and anybody who doesn't have Twin Peaks knowledge…Clearly I must be a lot older than a lof of the people who reviewed this game, because most of the people I read had no experience with Twin Peaks at all, which kind of surprised me.
It's a great story, but you do have to have an appreciation for quirky and absurd. And I don't mean "absurd" as in "stupid" or "ridiculous." I mean it as in "outside the norm," "bizarre."
Dan Weissenberger: Seemingly disconnected things happen, yeah.
Brad Gallaway: Exactly, exactly. It's like I say in my review: If you are a fan of David Lynch films, from which this game takes a lot of cues, then you're going to get this game. You're going to understand what the director of the game is trying to say. But then again, there's a lot of people who don't like David Lynch films, and for good reason. They're eccentric, they're odd, they don't explain a lot of things, they're mostly about mood sometimes. So if you don't like that kind of film, you're not going to get this kind of game. But if you're okay to that experience, if you're open to that experience, then you're going to understand what the director's trying to say to you and you will get something out of it.
Dan Weissenberger: And weirdly, I would make the argument that this is actually better than watching a David Lynch movie—
Brad Gallaway: I agree. Yes.
Dan Weissenberger: —if you're not a fan. [Laughter] If you're not a fan. Because the very nature that it is a video game that gradually worms you into the story, it does a better job of preparing you for the alienating subject matter and making you feel like you have a stake in seeing it through in a way that you don't when, in Lost Highway, he suddenly transforms into a different person. I know people who are just like: "Ah, what the hell?" and flip it off.
[Laughter]
But there's nothing like that in here, but here there's some screwed up stuff that happens, but you have an investment both in time and, hopefully, emotionally that I don't think you can have with a movie. I think video games can have a deeper investment, and this is one of the few that actually creates it.
Brad Gallaway: Yes. If you're a big reader and you like the urban fantasy genre, then you probably will like this game—
Dan Weissenberger: Totally.
Brad Gallaway: —because it has a lot of that same "real world with a touch of supernatural" in it. So if your brain is wired to like that kind of story that's typical in urban fantasy novels, then this is up your alley. But if you don't like urban fantasy, then obviously, stay away.
Tim Spaeth: Well, let's finish up the Twin Peaks talk by asking Richard: What's your perspective on the game, as somebody who never saw that show?
Richard Naik: Well, like I said, the only thing I've ever seen of Twin Peaks was a Saturday Night Live sketch parodying it, which I'm pretty sure aired in 1993 or 1994 or something like that. So I didn't know any of that. Honestly, when you guys said Twin Peaks, I had no clue what you guys were even talking about, because I didn't remember at first.
Brad Gallaway: Oh, God. Dude. [Chuckles] I'm not that old, Richard. I'm really not that old, seriously. [Chuckles]
Richard Naik: I'm not saying it's bad or anything. I just literally didn't know anything about it.
Tim Spaeth: I can walk across the room and punch him in the face, Brad. You say the word, and I'll do it.
[Laughter]
Richard Naik: It's okay. I…All right. Whatever.
[Laughter]
So as I was playing the game, I was getting—and tell me if this sounds crazy or not. I was getting, like I was saying before, just a huge X-Files vibe about just mainly the way that York was acting, the track the story was taking. He's going to some town to investigate a murder, which seems normal enough, but then it just gets progressively weirder and more supernatural to at the end, where it's just…The ending is just like…I mean, we're not in the spoiler segment yet, but the ending is just like: "Oh my God. Just what the fuck happened?" So that part actually worked for me. I appreciated it as an X-Filesy-ish thing.
Tim Spaeth: Hm.
Dan Weissenberger: And interestingly, the tone you're talking about there is the tone that The X-Files largely ripped off of Twin Peaks.
Brad Gallaway: Yeah, I was going to say that exact thing. [Chuckles]
Richard Naik: Did it?
Dan Weissenberger: Oh, completely, yeah.
Brad Gallaway: Totally.
Dan Weissenberger: Twin Peaks was a big piece of inspiration for The X-Files. I encourage you to pick up the first season.
Richard Naik: Then I guess you could say we agree, then.
[Laughter]
Dan Weissenberger: [Unknown]
Brad Gallaway: We agree by proxy, yes. [Laughter]
Richard Naik: By the transitive property of Twin Peaks, we agree.
Dan Weissenberger: [Laughter]
Tim Spaeth: I feel bad; I've never seen an episode of The X-Files or Twin Peaks.
Dan Weissenberger: [Laughter]
Brad Gallaway: Seriously?
Tim Spaeth: Yeah. You guys want to talk about Star Trek or something?
Dan Weissenberger: That'd be excellent.
Tim Spaeth: [Laughter] So, Dan, you have written thousands of words about Deadly Premonition. I want to know at what point on your first playthrough did you realize this game was special?
Dan Weissenberger: Oh, God. Almost right away. It's weird. I watched the whole opening movie, and I don't think I've ever seen a video game that tries to, in the way you so often see in film, really artistically depict themes within a murder victim. [Chuckles] So that alone hooked me. Then I got into the opening movie, the introduction of York Morgan. First off, just the nerd in me…By the way, sitting here right in front of me as I record is my own York Morgan lighter. I went out and had one made. [Chuckles]
I saw that lighter, and I'm like: "Who is this guy?" And then the car crashes and it becomes a terrible rip-off of Silent Hill. [Chuckles] And so I'm playing it and I'm like: "I don't know if this is the best game I've ever played or the worst." Everything before the gameplay started was just incredible, and then the gameplay was some of the worst I've ever encountered. So I pushed on through it, I hadn't weighed in, and then there's a point I talk about in one of the articles where I walk out of the town and it's dawn, and they're like: "You're 500 meters away from your destination point. Run there along a rainy highway—you know, a wet highway—with the absolute right foley work for footsteps running on wet concrete. Like, really good foley work for that sequence.
And I realized this is an experience I've never had in a game. This is a peaceful moment out in nature. I'm not being attacked; I'm not being threatened; nothing's blaring at me; there's not a little blinker. This is just they want me to be here in this town at this moment, and that's when I knew that this was something completely different and special, unlike anything I played before.
Tim Spaeth: Brad, did you have a similar epiphany, or did it take longer to grow on you?
Brad Gallaway: No. In fact, it's kind of embarrassing, but everything that Dan said, just, ditto. When you get to that first section when York is on the road and you just have to walk on the road…You look at it and you're like: "I don't really have to walk on this road, do I? I don't walk on roads in games. Who does that? That's not a gameplay thing. You get to where you're going or you have a car. You steal a car."
Dan Weissenberger: Yeah.
Brad Gallaway: "You have a plane, or you have a spaceship or you warp, or you do something else."
Dan Weissenberger: Or a cut-scene starts. Yeah.
Brad Gallaway: Or a cut-scene starts, yeah. And then you're sitting there like: "What the fuck? Am I…what? I have to walk?" And you sit there and you goggle over it for a minute, and then you're like: "Well, I guess I'd better start walking." And then you walk, and you realize nothing's jumping out and attacking you; nothing's happening. You're just literally, literally, literally walking on a road. And that's all it is. And that totally set the absolute correct tone for me.
The gameplay that immediately preceded it was terrible and I was like: "Aw, this sucks." Just like Dan said, really bad Silent Hill, and I was like: "Aw, this is lame. Going into the shadow world—how cliché; how boring. This combat blows. Controlling his gun blows. Looking for a key or whatever to flip the switch blows." But then you get to that road and it just totally was like somebody holding my hand and saying: "You know, it's going to be okay."
[Laughter]
And I'm like: "You know what? Yeah, it is. It is." And it was.
Richard Naik: I actually kind of agree with that.
Brad Gallaway: [Laughter]
Richard Naik: Like I said, the first part with shooting the zombies, I'm just like: "Wow. This is awful," but then you get to that road, and you're just slowing walking towards the town. It sets a feeling that's like: "This might be kind of unique," and it was. The other problems didn't iron themselves out for me to want to actually finish it, but I'm like: "Eh. This is going to be interesting."
Dan Weissenberger: And at least it was interesting. [Laughter]
Richard Naik: It was.
Tim Spaeth: For me, that moment did not occur until later in the game. For me, that moment was the assembly of the town at the community center.
Dan Weissenberger: Oh, my God.
Brad Gallaway: Mm. Mm.
Tim Spaeth: York gets up, he gives his speech, which is just…I would love to be able to recite that speech. Dan, you could probably recite it from memory. But he gets up and it's just the most…It's not an inspiring speech. It's not a spectacular speech. But it's the exact speech someone would give in that situation. Then the meeting ends, and you can just walk around the community center and get to know the characters.
When I use the word "character," I mean that in every sense of the word. These are real, actual characters with real, actual motivations and histories and you pick up on all that in the little two minute cut-scene that you have with each one of those characters. To me, that was the moment where I said: "This is a game that has been written where an incredible amount of thought has been given to the characterization." To me, that was a turning point in my experience with the game.
Brad Gallaway: Oh, yeah, you're right. I do actually call out that as one of my other favorite moments in the game, for sure. Like you said, it was exactly a very realistic…Granted, I've never been to a real briefing where someone was warning a town about a serial killer, so I can't say first-hand. But from TV and from what I know of actual police work, it was basically what I would expect in that situation, in a real life setting—not like a game setting. And so I was really impressed with that.
And like you said, also, that's the point at which the game reaches out to the player and says: "Hey, look. You've got this entire town full of people. We're going to line them up for you, right here, so that you know these people are here and that you'll be interested in them, because" like you said, "they're all characters. And that, as a detective, which you should be feeling like by this point, you'll want to go and investigate them." To me, that is the point I realized: "Wow, this is really, really, really something different." I already knew it was different, but that, to me, was when it really, really got hammered home. And it certainly is one of my favorite parts of the game, for sure.
Dan Weissenberger: Oh, and I just want to weigh in on this quickly. I've got a whole article [chuckles] about this scene.
Brad Gallaway: Mm.
Dan Weissenberger: But when I first started the scene, again, you know I was sold on the game by then. But as that scene started, he's so perfect and so funny in that scene. But the whole time, I'm thinking: "Oh! This is like that scene from that one episode of Millennium, which I then went and tracked down, and I've got a video of for the article, again, when I can edit it. I've already got it.
But what I loved—and, again, it's what makes this so much better as a video game than as a movie. Because in a movie, just like in that episode of Millennium, he would come in, he would give the speech; it would be weirdly funny but morbid and entertaining, and then we would cut to the next scene. But the fact that, as you said, he can then go around and talk to every single person that was there and get into their stories and learn something about them, it really makes you feel like the whole world of the town is open to you in a way that no other medium provides. And I think that the reason we're talking about it like it's such a key and pivotal and special scene is that is that it's a scene we've seen before a hundred times, but it's a completely new take on it. And it's putting you in it in a way that in real life you hope never happens, but in fiction, you've never been allowed to, because there's always another scene to jump to. But in a video game, you can take as much time as you want.
Brad Gallaway: Well, exactly. To follow up with that, I think you're exactly right, when, as viewers, we're so conditioned to seeing: "Okay. Well, here's the informational interview. The policeman who's starring in this movie obviously has an idea of who they're going to go talk to." Then we get to watch that scene; the movie plays out; the killer gets caught. But as you're playing it, you're sitting there thinking: "Well, I have no idea who the killer is, and the game is not telling me, and I have no leads, so I'm talking to these people." And it's like: "Well, who of these people do I actually think I should go and investigate?"
And the game does not tell you. There's obviously a storyline you can follow, but at that moment, you feel that the entire town is wide open and, for me, it wasn't hard to imagine myself as this detective, thinking: "If I was actually in this town and if I was conducting this investigation, who in the hell would I go and check out? Who would I talk to? What would my next step be?" That was really the first time ever in a video game where I really felt like it was up to me to figure out what to do next, in that kind of a sense. So I loved that part. It was clearly one of my favorite parts, by far.
Dan Weissenberger: Yeah.
Richard Naik: Yeah. Yeah, being able to play in an investigative role was actually a significant positive for me, and it was also another plus for me, when later on my initial, very first suspicion of who the killer was was actually correct. So plus ten points to me.
[Laughter]
Tim Spaeth: And we will talk more about that moment when we get to our spoiler section in a bit. Sticking with the townspeople, Dan, was there a particular subplot with one of the townspeople that you found particularly involving? Somebody whose story you really got into?
Dan Weissenberger: Actually, there was, and I'll tell you which one it was. How do I put this? There's a moment when you go and you see Carol out in the woods where Anna died.
Brad Gallaway: Carol is the singer at the bar, right?
Dan Weissenberger: Yeah. Carol's the singer at the bar.
Brad Gallaway: She's a singer. Okay.
Dan Weissenberger: She's singer-slash-bar owner. You go and see her where…I'm just amazed by the scene. You go and see her where she died, and she comes out there, because you hear that there's this woman wandering around in the woods. You hear that from the twins. You go to see her, and there's just this weird scene of seeing someone having their own way of mourning a death. That someone has died who they weren't particularly fond of, but they were close to, and they've come to mourn it. And I thought it was just a window into how people are really reacting to this tragedy in an actual town that I just found really affecting in a way that you don't normally see, even in movies about this subject.
Brad Gallaway: That's a really good moment. The one for me that I liked the best—granted, I didn't see all of the sidequests, but one of the ones that I did…I don't want to give any spoilers away, because I think that a large part of this game is actually discovering these things for yourself, so I don't want to ruin it. But I will say that it was good because it started out with me thinking one thing.
I had my suspicions about a certain person's involvement and how they were connected to the murders, and as I went to investigate and I did a couple things that got me the answers that I needed, when I got to the end of it, it turned out to be totally something absolutely different. The people were connected in a way, I guess, but not in the way that I thought. And so when I unravelled what was really going on, it was really cool, because I was like: "Oh! Well, I guess I really did do some private eye work here, because I figured out this little mystery that I thought went one way and it didn't, and then there's this other thing going on. Now it gives me a better picture of these two characters and really what's going on betweeen them."
That, to me, was really great that the game was able to flip it on me, and it was worthwhile. I got to the end of the sidequest and I felt like: "Wow, I'm really glad that I did that." Not because it really furthered the murder plot, but because it gave me a much better and deeper look at these townspeople who I felt already were pretty interesting. So it was just further illustrating the town, which already to me is already a character in the game. So that to me was probably my favorite sidequest moment.
Tim Spaeth: There is a character in the game, and I cannot recall his name right now to save my life. But he works behind the counter at a shop.
Dan Weissenberger: Keith.
Tim Spaeth: Keith. He talks like the surfer guy, the stoner guy: "Hey, everybody!" That guy?
Brad Gallaway: Yeah. The Milk Barn?
Tim Spaeth: The Milk Barn, thank you. And he's kind of a joke of a character. He's really goofy; he's got this strange herky-jerky animation. But then you go and visit him and you buy the Spirit Map. There's several of them throughout the game. And every time he gives you one of the Spirit Maps, the lights go dark and a spotlight comes down on him, and he tells you the most grisly, awful, horrific story about where this map came from. And it's just such a weird moment, coming from that character. But those stories are terrifying, and coming through that voice, the voice actor really sells it. He goes from being this complete goofball to telling this story that you just can't turn away from. I loved going back and checking for a new map from time to time, just to hear the next story. Just fantastic storytelling.
Dan Weissenberger: Let me point out here that the Spirit Maps, they're not in [unknown] at all: that's where the little combat zones are to fight more horrible zombies to get a bonus weapon. That's how much work went into the amazing storytelling in this game. There are fantastic ghost stories, even for the stupidest, most optional quests.
Tim Spaeth: The one question I want to ask, beccause I never could figure this out and I never understood what the point was. But there's a gas station, and every once in a while a girl, scantily-clad, she's a bikini-top, jean shorts. She comes out, she cleans your windshield, and that's basically all she does. Is there something going on wih her that I missed? Or is that pretty much her entire role in the game?
Dan Weissenberger: Oh. No, no. I'm kidding. There is no spoiler. That is her role in the game.
Tim Spaeth: Okay.
Brad Gallaway: Yeah. She's just eye candy.
Tim Spaeth: She's just there to look good. All right. Fair enough
Brad Gallaway: [Chuckles] A cigar is just a cigar, Tim.
Tim Spaeth: [Laughter] All right. Well, do we want to start talking about the ending? Do we want to get into the mega-spoiler section?
Dan Weissenberger: It's probably time.
Brad Gallaway: I think we must.
Tim Spaeth: All right.
Brad Gallaway: Let's do it.
Tim Spaeth: Let's do it.
Dan Weissenberger: Can we just pause to…I can't stress how much of a better time you will have with this game if you don't listen to us talking about it, and don't check it out on YouTube.
Brad Gallaway: Totally; totally.
Dan Weissenberger: This is my last plea on this podcast. It's $20, for God's sake!
Tim Spaeth: [Laughter]
Dan Weissenberger: Playing this video game—having a copy of this video game will improve your life more than having $20 will improve your life.
[Laughter]
Okay?
Brad Gallaway: No, that's very true. That's very true. Very true. And read Dan's articles, because he tells you exactly what to do to make the combat and the traveling much easier. I would also put in a plug to buy the first Spirit Map that comes out, because I think that having the weapon that comes from that is really helpful as well. So read Dan's articles because they'll fix that side of the game for you. And don't spoil it. The story is just so great and the characters and everything else. Just get the game, play it, suffer through the combat to get to the good stuff, and don't listen to the spoiler section if you have any intention whatsoever of ever playing this game.
Tim Spaeth: And that's your spoiler warning, folks. Because from this point forward, it's all spoilers.
Let's start with the identity of the Raincoat Killer, which, frankly, turned out to be, in my mind, not as important as some of the things that happen afterwards.
Richard Naik: Yeah.
Tim Spaeth: Richard, you said you called this.
Richard Naik: Yeah. And not to brag about it, but I actually did call it at the very beginning of the game. In the beginning of the game, you come out of the woods. Emily's waiting there. It's like: "Oh, yeah. George went to go look for you." I'm like: "Yep. He's the killer. He was the one out there chasing me in the woods."
Brad Gallaway: [Laughter] What? Seriously? Really, that early?
Dan Weissenberger: Yeah.
Richard Naik: Neither one of you guys thought that?
Dan Weissenberger: I'm going to jump in, because here's how great I thought the video game storytelling was. I agreed with that. The first time I saw George, I'm like: "He's got to be the killer." And this is how brilliant the game is. You find out very early on that the killer has a red tatoo on his back, and then right away, within two hours of the beginning of the game, you're like: "Sorry. I'm going to have to see everybody's back," because that's the totally logical thing for York Morgan to do.
Brad Gallaway: Right.
Dan Weissenberger: So he has George take off his shirt. There's no tattoo. I'm like: "Okay, I guess it's not George."
Brad Gallaway: Yeah.
Dan Weissenberger: The game completely got me. I did not see that coming at all. But I knew it was him right at the start, and I totally dismissed him, because the game told me to totally dismiss him.
Richard Naik: See, I didn't buy the game dismissing him. That's something that you could hide, so him showing me his back was like: "Okay, maybe it's not him." But he was still my number one suspect throughout most of the game.
Dan Weissenberger: Here's what I love about the game. Brad, did you know he did it, or were you surprised?
Brad Gallaway: I was actually surprised. I thought that maybe he would've did it, but like you said, when they reveal his back, I'm like: "Well, that was interesting, but it's not him, clearly, because there's no tattoo." So I didn't think it was him.
Dan Weissenberger: Here's the amazing thing about the game. I dismissed him [critically?] Again, good work, Richard. But I dismissed him completely, and I think a lot of people who played it all the way through…Tim, did you know he was the killer, or—?
Tim Spaeth: Uh, no. No. I'm easily fooled, though.
Dan Weissenberger: Okay. There you go. But I consider myself someone who's not easily fooled. But here's how much the game puts it in front of you. So not only does he not have an alibi for that first time, right? But then again, it turns out the Raincoat Killer appearances are largely hypothetical, so he didn't actually need an alibi. We know the red trees are the key to the mystery, right, and the key to the murders. And the entire town of Greenvale, there are only red trees in two places: the graveyard and the yard of George's house.
Tim Spaeth: Ah.
Brad Gallaway: Is there a red tree in his yard? I never noticed that. Is it really?
Dan Weissenberger: Exactly. If you drive to his house, it's right there. You want to hear the worst one, though? His SUV, do you know what the custom license plate is?
Brad Gallaway: No. What?
Dan Weissenberger: HES THE ONE.
Tim Spaeth: Oh, God. [Chuckles]
Brad Gallaway: Seriously? [Laughter]
Dan Weissenberger: The license plate tells you who the killer is! [Laughter]
Richard Naik: Oh. No, I didn't see that.
Brad Gallaway: Oh, my God.
Dan Weissenberger: I didn't notice it. Honestly, the game had me completely fooled that I didn't notice stuff that in your face about who the killer was. [Laughter]
Brad Gallaway: Oh, that's awesome.
Richard Naik: That's amazing.
Brad Gallaway: I never, never noticed.
Dan Weissenberger: Yeah.
Tim Spaeth: That's so great.
Dan Weissenberger: Oh, man. But, yeah, so I was completely taken in by the mystery, partially just because it pulled me along so expertly. But, yeah, I usually guess the killer and I had no idea.
Richard Naik: Yeah. At the beginning of the game when George just isn't there with Emily when you walk up, it just pulls a Jade Empire where it sort of drops the hint villain on you at the very beginning of the game, and it's fairly obvious. But interestingly, where in Jade Empire that was actually a huge negative for me, because they reveal the villain much later in the game and it's like: "Oh, well, I already knew that," in Deadly Premonition, it actually doesn't matter, because of all the stuff going on with Kaysen and the other women and York's mother. That was way more interesting than knowing the—
Dan Weissenberger: [Unknown]
Richard Naik: Yes. Yes.
Brad Gallaway: So, I got to ask you guys: I definitely agree with that. I think that the actual identity of the "new" Raincoat Killer is really not that important in the big scheme of things. I think that there's a lot underneath and behind that. So let me ask you guys; So when you got to the end of the game, and this is mega, mega huge spoiler—
Dan Weissenberger: The biggest spoiler we will ever discuss.
Brad Gallaway: I think so, because I think we're probably talking about the same thing.
Dan Weissenberger: Yeah.
Brad Gallaway: I was going to say, so when you finally get to the end, did you guys think that when it's actually revealed that Zach is not a fictional construct—he's not just an imaginary character, he's not just a split personality. Or was he? Because when I got to the end of the game, the way that I read the ending, and I've had discussions on this with a few people who disagreed.
The way that I read the ending was that when you start to get into the game's mythology of having the Red Room and the White Room, and you start to discover that there's this other dimension where these spirits or forces or whatever live, that York was a spirit from the White Room who came to protect Zach in the real world. And they actually were literally two separate people. It was not just a split personality, and that's how I read that. So how did you guys see that?
Dan Weissenberger: That is exactly what happened. The game flat-out says it [chuckles] because it has that brilliant scene—and again, I had no idea that Zach was the real guy. Never occurred to me.
Brad Gallaway: Me, neither. Totally caught me [off-guard?]
Richard Naik: Yeah. That did not occur to me at all. That last scene with Zach, when York comes in to take over for Zach, I'm like: "Wow." I needed this to be a better game, because that was amazing.
Brad Gallaway: [Laughter]
Dan Weissenberger: What I love about that scene…First off, I love the reveal, and again, I love that they hid this amazing reveal. But that reveal makes every bit of York's personality make perfect sense.
Richard Naik: Yeah.
Dan Weissenberger: Whether he's just a projection of Zach's mind or whether he's actually a spirit, everything he does makes sense if you realize that he exists only to protect Zach Morgan from further emotional pain.
Richard Naik: Yeah.
Dan Weissenberger: That's what he is. He is a mechanism that will keep Zach from getting close enough to anyone that he could ever be hurt again. And whether you want to read it as an abused child of tragedy's reaction or an actual spirit that does it for him, everything York does makes perfect sense when you think of it that way. And that's what I found so incredible about the character. Top on to that the fact that York, when he looks in a mirror, sees a gap in his eyebrow but doesn't see the scar. But when you become Zach, the scar is there. That just blew my mind.
Richard Naik: And when his hair changes color. Wen he's just standing there and his hair just magically changes to this bleach-blond.
Brad Gallaway: Yeah. His eyes are different colors and everything. It's pretty shocking, and it throws you at first. I did not see that coming at all. I didn't think they were really going to address that particular part of the game in the way that they did. And so when it happened, I was really like: "Woah. Okay, so there's this whole other level that I didn't really think was there." Yeah, it's pretty shocking, and I sincerely hope that people are not spoiling themselves on this. It's the best moment of the game.
Dan Weissenberger: Yeah. It is.
Brad Gallaway: I would hate for somebody to have ignored our warnings.
Richard Naik: I love talking about this.
Dan Weissenberger: You know I [unknown] about the game as I was watching it.
Tim Spaeth: Maybe this is just me being naïve, but I never thought that the game would specifically address the thing with Zach at all.
Richard Naik: Yep.
Tim Spaeth: I was satisfied with Zach just being the player—just representing me, the player of the game, and that Zach was just a fourth wall thing that was clever but wasn't going to be so integral to the plot. So when it happened, I was completely just blown away and stunned and overjoyed. Did you guys think that Zach would play an actual role in the backstory of York's life? That it was going to actually be explained?
Richard Naik: No. The whole time, I was thinking that Zach was just this weird figment of York's imagination. At no point at all did I see that Zach was the "real" person. I didn't see that coming at all. It…wow.
Brad Gallaway: Yeah. And I think it gives the game an extra level of integrity. It sounds kind of weird to say that, but like you said, most people, the reviewers who obviously didn't finish the game—and I think there's actually quite a few reviewers who did not finish the game—they wrote it off as being, like you said, a fourth-wall construct or a gag to talk directly to the player. And when you get to the end and you realize: "Okay, well, actually, he wasn't talking to the player at all." You're playing the role, of course. You're actually controlling the game, but it's revealed that there is this other person and that York is talking to Zach. He's not talking to you, the player. And so it's not that authorial shorthand.
Dan Weissenberger: Oh, he's talking to you the player. But you're playing Zach.
Brad Gallaway: Right, right. But he actually exists.
Dan Weissenberger: Yeah; yeah.
Brad Gallaway: It's not just this hypothetical construct shortcut so they can address you. It's actually thoroughly integrated into the story.
Dan Weissenberger: [Unknown]
Brad Gallaway: Yeah.
Richard Naik: Yeah. York just isn't being quirky or weird. He's actually talking to someone.
Brad Gallaway: Right. I just loved that it wasn't a shortcut. It wasn't an easy way for the director to do what he wanted to do. He actually went the full distance, completely interwove it into every aspect of the game, and when you just get that reveal, it totally puts everything into perspective—a different perspective.
Dan Weissenberger: Well, from the beginning…The second I realized that York wasn't talking to me, he was talking to the character Zach, who I was playing. And again, that didn't happen right away. That took me a while to figure out. The second that happened, I knew that there was going to be some explanation for why York is the way he is, but I just never imagined it was going to be as good as it was. That the payoff would be as satisfying as it is, when you get that…and it's a ten-minute cut-scene [Chuckles], the whole York's backstory. But it is worth every second, because it's incredible.
Brad Gallaway: Agreed.
Richard Naik: Um-hm. Yep.
Tim Spaeth: I think the one moment in the finale that rings false to me was when York is in the…Is he in Kaysen's basement? And there's a corpse?
Dan Weissenberger: George's basement.
Tim Spaeth: Is it George's basement?
Dan Weissenberger: It's George's basement.
Brad Gallaway: Yeah.
Tim Spaeth: It is George's basement. Okay, you're right. You're right. He goes through the hidden wall; he's in George's basement. And he has the revelation there that the initials in the coffee—the FK—connects to Forrest Kaysen.
Dan Weissenberger: Yeah.
Tim Spaeth: Which is a revelation that I think probably everyone playing the game figures that out within a few minutes of meeting Kaysen—or as I like to call him, Gabe Newell.
[Laughter]
Richard Naik: I was actually thinking the exact same thing when I first saw him.
Tim Spaeth: You have to.
Richard Naik: I was like: "Is this a Valve game, or—?"
Dan Weissenberger: It's completely true.
Tim Spaeth: So am I wrong for thinking that that rings false? That York would've figured that out or realized the importance of that much earlier on?
Dan Weissenberger: Well, the first second he meets Forrest Kaysen, he assumes that that's what the coffee was trying to tell him. He just doesn't know what it means. He doesn't know the coffee is telling him who the killer is. He knows that the coffee is trying to tell him that FK is important to the mystery.
Richard Naik: Yeah. And there's another scene in the Red Room. I can't remember when it actually happens, but it's after there's been three murders. There's Anna, there's Becky and then there's the third one.
Dan Weissenberger: Diane.
Richard Naik: Diane, yes. Anna, Becky and Diane, and they're playing with the bobblehead of Forrest Kaysen, and you're just like: "Mm. He's obviously involved in this somehow."
Dan Weissenberger: Well, actually, another thing that's interesting is at the very beginning of the game, the absolute first thing that you play when you're in the Red Room, there are little miniatures—not bobbleheads, miniatures—sitting on a map of the United States, where all of the Red [Seed] killings are, and they're little Forrests dressed in different outfits. Now, by the time I met Forrest, I had forgotten that about the game. But again, they're letting you know that he's the one responsible for…In the very first scene of the game, they tell you that Forrest is responsible for all of the Red Seed killings that York is investigating.
Richard Naik: Hm.
Dan Weissenberger: Which is weird. But he doesn't put it together, but they let you put it together immediately.
Brad Gallaway: Yeah.
Dan Weissenberger: And again, that's another bold thing I think the game did. Because I forgot about it.
Brad Gallaway: Yeah. I totally hear what you're saying though, Tim, because for a moment, I had the same reaction you did, and then I realized that it was like Dan said. He originally puts it together, but then he thinks it means something else, so that when you get to the second reveal he finally gets what the coffee was trying to tell him the first time. So I did the double-take like you did as well.
Tim Spaeth: Mm-kay.
Dan Weissenberger: Yeah.
Tim Spaeth: Hm. There is a choice in the climax, I think right before the final boss fight—
Brad Gallaway: [Chuckles] Yes, yes, yes, yes.
Tim Spaeth: —where you can choose to shoot yourself or shoot Emily or shoot Kaysen. Does it make a difference? I chose to shoot Emily, and of course, he doesn't. But is the result the same no matter which—?
Dan Weissenberger: It's Game Over if you do anything else.
Brad Gallaway: Yeah, yeah, it is. I chose something else, myself. [Chuckles]
Tim Spaeth: Okay.
Brad Gallaway: I was like: "Shoot Emily? Fuck that! I'm shooting Kaysen. What are you guys talking about?" [Laughter] And, yeah, it's a Game Over. It's actually a good Game Over, because when you do that, it's a short cut-scene and he tells you a little bit about himself. I thought that particular brief speech was actually kind of cool. But, yeah, it's a Game Over.
Dan Weissenberger: Yeah. And it's a Game Over because you've already been shown in the story what happens if you don't kill her. That there's no happy ending to this, in any event. And again, the fact that there's no happy ending, the feeling that there's no happy ending there, was another thing that I found so intense about the game. And then when we do get the epilogue, it's what I found the most just heart-rendingly beautiful. [Chuckles]
Brad Gallaway: I agree; I agree.
Richard Naik: Yeah.
Brad Gallaway: I totally agree that it was a really dark ending. But at the same time, they redeemed it at the end. But it didn't feel cheep or it didn't feel forced. When I got to the end of ICO and I found out—
Dan Weissenberger: Oh, she's not dead, now.
Brad Gallaway: Huh?
Dan Weissenberger: At the end of ICO: Oh, no. She's not dead.
Brad Gallaway: Yeah, it was a cop-out. I was like: "What? That was a total cop-out." It totally undercut the emotional significance of the moment. But in this instance, even though they did basically the same thing, it didn't feel cheap to me.
Dan Weissenberger: Well, they didn't, because, again, she is dead.
Brad Gallaway: Right. Right, right, right. Right. But she's happy dead. It's okay that she's dead.
Dan Weissenberger: Yeah.
Richard Naik: She's "happy dead?"
Brad Gallaway: Yeah. [Laughter]
Richard Naik: But she's not sad dead. She's happy dead.
Brad Gallaway: Yeah.
Dan Weissenberger: This is the least manly thing I've ever admitted, but when they cut to the shot in the Afterworld version of the diner, I teared up a little. I just thought that was a perfect ending. I thought it was amazingly emotional, but at the same time, just perfect and beautiful. I loved that ending.
Brad Gallaway: Yeah, I did, too. It was so much more satisfying than what happened at the end of Twin Peaks. And like I said at the beginning of the podcast, to me, being a Twin Peaks fan, it was almost like redemption for liking the TV series so much. This guy, obviously a fan; obviously felt the same way that I did. And he was able to fix that. It was doubly, doubly emotive for me.
Richard Naik: I did not get close to tearing up. There were some points where I thought I was going to, but I didn't. Well, I wound up not.
Dan Weissenberger: Well, when you don't actually play the game, you don't feel as close to York and Zach.
Richard Naik: But I did feel close to him. I just didn't feel enough to get that sort of emotional response.
Dan Weissenberger: Oh, no, no. I'm not saying you didn't feel close. I'm just saying you don't—
Richard Naik: You're telling me I don't have a heart, and I totally understand.
[Laughter]
Dan Weissenberger: [Unknown] can do that, and this is a point I made earlier in the podcast. The reason you have to play this game is because you don't get the emotional connection unless you actually play the whole time.
Richard Naik: Enh, see, I don't really agree with that. When I stopped after episode two, I felt: "Okay, I'm really involved in the story. I don't want to deal with any of the other shit this game is going to throw at me," so I just went and watched it on YouTube. To the point where my emotional involvement, I guess, carried over to YouTube. It was the transitive property of Xbox to YouTube. So at the end of the game, it still felt like—and I am making a fist that Tim can see, so I can exemplify the emotional reaction that I had—but it felt like I had played through and I was watching that end scene. I'm like: "Wow, this is really sad, yet somewhat happy at the same time."
Tim Spaeth: Yeah.
Dan Weissenberger: Oh, okay. Good.
Tim Spaeth: Well, guys, we are rapidly closing in on our time limit here, so I want to ask one more question of each of you and then give you a chance to maybe address a point that you were hoping to talk about but haven't had a chance to yet. Creator of the game, Swery, has indicated he would like to revisit Deadly Premonition—maybe create a sequel. My question to you, and I'll start with Dan: Is this a good idea? If so, would you like to see these characters come back, or would you like to see a completely new story just in the style of Deadly Premonition?
Dan Weissenberger: New story in the style of Deadly Premonition, I'd be fine. If this guy wants to tell another murder mystery about where these Red Seeds come from and let us know a little more about what exactly Kaysen was, that's fine by me. But he would have to be even more brilliant than I think he is to find a way to get Zach Morgan back without it feeling like it's undercutting the ending of this game.
Tim Spaeth: Hm. Brad, what about you?
Brad Gallaway: I would have to agree. Although I love York Morgan—seriously, one of my favorite characters of all time. I would love to actually have a game where I could play with him again and have it be as high-quality as it was this time. I don't think that's possible. So I would be up for either a completely different story with the director at the helm, or maybe even a prequel. They kind of make some allusions that Zach's dad was a Super Agent, too, so maybe something to do with that. I certainly wouldn't mind revisiting the mythology. I would like to know more about that, for sure, but, and again, I'm just parroting what Dan said. The ending was so picture perfect. It was so well-done; it was so amazing. I don't want that to be ruined, and if there was ever another adventure that just wasn't as good, it would take away from it for me. So I think maybe a prequel or just a totally different story would be fine. Different characters, different location.
Richard Naik: I was thinking this as soon as I wound up bailing on Deadly Premonition. This is a game that is begging for a remake.
Brad Gallaway: [Laughter]
Richard Naik: This story deserves a better game to tell it. So if he wants to take this story—take the exact same writing, take all the characters, take all that, keep it exactly the same as it is now—and just put a different engine to it, just make it more streamlined, get rid of the fucking zombies, do that. This story deserves it.
Dan Weissenberger: I will buy the game again, if he does that.
Richard Naik: I will gladly…I would buy that. I would buy that in a second and I would play through it.
Tim Spaeth: I feel like, as awful as some of the elements are in this game, some of the gameplay elements, and we haven't mentioned the map. That, to me—
Dan Weissenberger: [Laughter]
Brad Gallaway: Oh, God.
Richard Naik: Yeah.
Brad Gallaway: The map is an atrocity. It's terrible. It's terrible. It's bad.
Richard Naik: Oddly enough, the two worst game maps I've ever seen, I've played this year: Deadly Premonition and Hydrophobia.
Brad Gallaway: Hydrophobia I knew you were going to say Hydrophobia. [Laughter]
Richard Naik: The maps are just so completely worthless, it's amazing.
Brad Gallaway: Yeah, it's painful. It physically painful.
Richard Naik: Amerigo Vespucci would cry, they had such terrible maps.
[Laughter]
Dan Weissenberger: The funny thing about the map is that, honestly, by the end of the game, I now know Greenvale like the back of my hand. I can drive anywhere. I got so used to driving from place to place without looking at the map that now I just know the whole town.
Brad Gallaway: Well, 150 hours—
Tim Spaeth: 150 hours, yeah.
Dan Weissenberger: Yeah, it happens.
Tim Spaeth: So I was just going to say: taking all those bad elements, to me, it's now part of the charm of this game. I really feel like any sequel or remake or sidestory would cheapen the original experience. I kind of feel the same way about BioShock sequels cheapen the original experience. I won't go near BioShock 2. I don't think I would touch a Deadly Premonition universe game. Deadly or premonition, no. I'm not going near that.
Richard Naik: Deadly or Premonition: Emily's Revenge.
Tim Spaeth: Exactly. Or something and then a subtitle: A Deadly Premonition Game. Whatever. I'm not going to go near it. It won't exit for me.
Richard Naik: Yeah. I don't think that Greenvale really has any story left to tell, to be honest with you. What else is there to say after that?
Brad Gallaway: Totally; totally.
Richard Naik: So I don't think a sequel would really work. But I would love to see a remake of this game.
Tim Spaeth: So I'm going to give each of you 90 seconds, and if there are any points or observations that you would like to make that you haven't had a chance to get in, now is the time. Dan, I will start with you, sir. You final thoughts on Deadly Premonition?
Dan Weissenberger: Okay. Quite simply, the final thought is, as if I hadn't made it clear enough already, this is a game that everyone has to play. Right now, sitting here in my house, I have 20 copies between WinBack, Dead to Rights and Alone in the Dark, because these are all games, that for one reason or another, I feel that everyone has to play and I can pick them up for $5 each. So whenever I see a copy, I buy it, and I give it to somebody who doesn't have it yet. In a couple of months, when I start seeing copies of Deadly Premonition for $5-10, I'm going to start collecting copies of Deadly Premonition for the exact same purpose, because this is a game that everyone has to play. It honestly is. I'm willing to spend my own money for other people to play the game.
[Laughter]
Right now, and honestly, after I've done that, you want to send me an e-mail and say: "Can I get one of those Deadly Premonitions? Once it's $5, sure you can. By all means. Whoever you are, if you're listening to this, you should be playing Deadly Premonition instead.
Tim Spaeth: Beautiful. Beautifully said. Richard, your final thoughts?
Richard Naik: Well, first off, I played WinBack, too, so Dan, fist-bump.
[Laughter]
Second, Deadly Premonition is the funhouse mirror-image of Heavy Rain to me, in that Heavy Rain was ruined by horrible characterization, horrible writing, and everything else. But it managed to frame a lot of its individual scenes and its flow fairly well. It had some significant problems with it, but I thought it worked, for the most part, in that regard. Deadly Premonition is the total opposite, in that the story and the characterization and all the writing and all of the stuff is fantastic, but everything else is just terrible—especially when you get into the freaking combat situations.
When I was playing this, in my head, I was comparing it to Heavy Rain the whole time. For the first couple hours, I'm like: "Wow, this is going to be what Heavy Rain was trying to be and totally failed to be!" But then after, there's such long segments of the Dark World, I was just like: "Wow, it failed, but for the totally opposite reason." So if you put Heavy Rain and Deadly Premonition together, I think you might have an 11 out of 10 or something fucking ridiculous like that.
[Laughter]
If they had a baby, I don't know what kind of baby it would be. I'm not even sure if it would be a human baby. It would be some ungodly sin against God, but it would be amazing.
[Laughter]
Tim Spaeth: It would have tentacles, that's for sure.
Richard Naik: It would have tentacles.
Tim Spaeth: Brad, we started with you tonight. We'll end with you. Your final thoughts?
Brad Gallaway: Not really a lot left to say that hasn't already been said. But I would just like to, once again, really, really reiterate that if you're the kind of player who finds value in writing, in characters, in storytelling and mood, there's no better game this year than Deadly Premonition. And I mean that sincerely; I mean that honestly; I mean without any hyperbole attached to it. It's a phenomenal effort, whether you're a fan of Twin Peaks or not. And I think that there are a lot of really important lessons that other developers could take from this game.
I know that a lot of jokes have been made at Deadly Premonition's expense, and a lot of people see it as a joke and a lot of people really misunderstand what it's trying to do. But if you're one of those people who can see past that, forgive all of the rough edges and really get to the heart of what Swery65 is going for, Dan's not kidding. It really is the Game of the Year. So if you haven't checked it out, please, please, check it out. Absolutely.
Tim Spaeth: You know, we did a podcast about storytelling a few months ago, and none of us had played this game at that point. I feel like we should edit part of this show into that one.
Dan Weissenberger: [Laughter]
Tim Spaeth: Boy, oh, boy. You all said it. In terms of story, there's almost nothing that matches it, and, again, $20, folks. Get to the store, buy it now. Deadly Premonition. Now, if you have played it, we want to know what you think about what we've said tonight and your thoughts on the game. You can leave those thoughts at GameCritics.com You can also listen to the show there, or through iTunes, or through Zune. I always say, if you're shy, just send us an e-mail. Tell us what you think that way: podcast AT gamecritics DOT com. That's how you can get a hold of us.
Boy, oh, boy, guys. We're out of time. So we have to say goodbye. Dan, thanks for coming back on. We always love to have you; hope to have you on again soon.
Dan Weissenberger: Fantastic. My pleasure. Any chance to talk about my favorite game, I will take it.
Tim Spaeth: Rock and roll. Brad, always a pleasure.
Brad Gallaway: Absolutely.
Tim Spaeth: And Richard, we're going to hug in just about 60 seconds, so brace yourself.
Richard Naik: Oh, I'm bracing myself.
Tim Spaeth: Good, good. Don't brace yourself that hard. It's embarrassing. From all of us at GameCritics.com, thanks for listening. Keep the love alive. Good night, and bonne chance.
Four score and seven years ago, our forefathers brought upon this nation a new nation filled with nationalities.
Brad Gallaway: No echo.
Richard Naik: You screwed up the speech.
Tim Spaeth: Nations.
Richard Naik: We've brought upon this nation a new nation.
Tim Spaeth: Upon this nation came a new nation.
Dan Weissenberger: That is not actually how it goes.
Tim Spaeth: Except, Dan, you're in Canada, so really, I mean—
Brad Gallaway: Yeah. You don't get to talk.
Dan Weissenberger: Statistically speaking, a Canadian's likely to know more about American history than Americans.
Tim Spaeth: Actually, that's true. That is true.
Brad Gallaway: That is true; that is true. But you still don't get a say.
Dan Weissenberger: No, I don't get a say in your Gettysburg Address?
Brad Gallaway: Yeah. [Laughter]
Dan Weissenberger: Is that what that was?
Richard Naik: Yeah.
Brad Gallaway: Yeah, you can't talk about— [Laughter] Just like we can't talk about whoever it is that's famous in Canadian politics.
Dan Weissenberger: Well, we never had anyone have to free slaves, so it's less of an issue here.
[Laughter]
Brad Gallaway: You guys were underachievers.
Dan Weissenberger: That's true.
Richard Naik: It's just one [unknown] in the game.
Dan Weissenberger: You're right. We should've oppressd people so we could later dramatically de-oppress them.
Tim Spaeth: Exactly; exactly. It just makes—
Brad Gallaway: Totally. It's a rating bonus.
Tim Spaeth: I am talking; I am talking; I am talking; I am talking. Talking. Talking. Taalking. Taaaalking. Taaaalking. Taaaalking.
Richard Naik: [singing] Imagination. Imagination Imagine—[speaking] no, no, no. Wait. That's where [it?] went all flat. Oh. [singing] Imagination.
[End]
But then a friend introduced her to the seedy underworld of the Mario brothers and she spent her saved-up birthday and Christmas money to buy a Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). Her mom didn't like the Nintendo at first, but The Legend of Zelda changed her mind. (When Tera got Zelda II: The Adventure of Link one Christmas, she suspected it was as much for her mother as for her).
Though she graduated from Agnes Scott College in 2002 and recently learned how to find the movie theater restroom by herself, Tera still loves video games. Far from being a brain-rotting waste of time, they've helped her practice spatial skills and discover new passions. Her love of games like Kid Icarus and The Battle of Olympus led to a degree in Classical Languages and Literatures. She thinks games have a place in discussions on disability and other cultural issues, and is excited to work with the like-minded staff at GameCritics.com.
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