Retronauts - Retronauts Episode 312: Deadly Premonition

Episode Date: July 20, 2020

We're just a few days out from the release of Deadly Premonition 2: A Blessing in Disguise, so it's about time we take a look back at the first game that just happened to turn ten years old earlier this year. Back when it launched in 2010, Deadly Premonition stood as a budget oddity, at first only seen as a wacky, broken game that cribbed a little too hard from Twin Peaks. But over time, this open-world mystery became something of a mini-phenomenon, and generated a small cult of fans willing to look past the rough exterior to see the brilliant ideas tucked away inside. On this episode, join host Bob Mackey and guest supergreatfriend (Check out his YouTube channel!) as the two dig deep into the game that put SWERY on the map. Did you get all that, Zach? Retronauts is a completely fan-funded operation. To support the show, and get exclusive episodes every month, please visit the official Retronauts Patreon.

Retronauts is part of the Greenlit Podcast Network. For more information, please go to greenlitpodcast.com. This week on Retronauts, FK, in the podcast. Hello everybody and welcome to yet another episode of Retronauts. I am your host for this one, Bob Mackie. Today's topic is Deadly Premonition, the 2010 Open World Murder Mystery Game that put the director Swery on the map. So yes, of course, it's been 10 years making it officially retro.

And by the time you listen to this, the sequel, Deadly Premonition 2, a Blessing in Disguise, will be out on Switch. So now it's finally time to celebrate this original and why. It is so great. And in case you want to play it, it is available on the Switch as well. It is the most recent ports. It is a little buggy,

but then again, every port of this game is buggy, so I can't help you there. So we've been doing a lot of remote podcasts lately, and this one is no different. So what you're about to hear is going to be a remote segment with one of our guests who's not been on the show before. He does a lot of great stuff on YouTube,

and his name on there is super great friend. And like me, he is also a huge fan of deadly premonition. So I think you're really going to enjoy this. conversation. So I've already recorded that conversation with super great fun and I can say that it is almost entirely spoiler-free. Obviously, we might spoil a few events in the game for you if you haven't played it yet, but the main facts of the hood done it like, you know, the murderer, the victim or victims, all that stuff will not obviously be talked about because we want you to enjoy the game and not have us ruin any of it for you. So if you've never played the game before, it is still

safe to listen to this, although I do recommend that you play the game because it's a lot of fun. So without further ado, let's get into my discussion with Super Great Friend about Deadly Premonition. So our first guest is Super Great Friend. I'm a podcaster, but I don't know what you prefer to be called. Is it YouTuber? Is it YouTube creator? Is it content creator? What is your preferred title?

Oh, man, I don't know. I'm just a guy who plays video games on the internet. I was kind of odd that it was a job now. I do like that. I wish there was a more concise way to say it, though, because some people are upset with the idea of being creator of content. I'm fine with it. Yeah. Let's just say streamer for right now. That's probably

fine. That is factually accurate. And so I've been watching your videos for over a decade now and I think I found you because in 2010 you did a great full 100% let's play of deadly premonition

and recently in the past few years you just replayed it with the director's cut. So you have a very, very strong connection to this game. It was a very unique game at its time. When people first started seeing what this looked like back in 2010, and yeah, as you mentioned, that game did come out 10 years ago. Well, the easiest comparison is to say that it's a video game version of Twin Peaks. And I think that for most people, the first thing they saw was probably a video of a cutscene featuring two people having a very awkward

conversation at a dinner table, which is really what sold me on. it, just a very strange vibe coming off of this game. So it ended up being a game that had a very, very, I guess you might even say a touching story and interesting characters, even though a lot of people do, maybe bag on the gameplay a little bit. The gameplay is a little bit sort of like a combination of Resident Evil 4 and Shenmoo, but maybe not quite as,

maybe not quite as polished as those games. but that deadly premonition is remembered strongly for its writing and its characters up to today, I think. That's true. We'll get into the phenomenon very soon on this podcast, but I think where most people start with this game is the Twin Peaks thing and the kind of it's so bad it's good kind of quality to it. But then once you play past the intro, you learn, oh, there's a lot of really neat things happening. It's actually a very well-told murder story and the characters can really get to you too. Yeah, I never agreed with the idea that it's so bad that it's good. because the bad parts of the game are parts that people don't...

I mean, you're not really going to praise the bad parts of the game. That's not really why you're playing it. And the bad parts you might consider to be things like, well, the controls being a bit stiff, the driving controls as you drive around town, being very unnatural, the shooting controls, maybe not being the most accurate.

But that's not really why anyone praises the game. People do praise the game because they really like these characters, especially the main character, York. They like the way the story goes, the twist and turns how it takes. And the very strong Twin Peaks-inspired style. So it's more like, it's not so bad it's good,

it's more like this is a low-budget game. You can see how this is, it's a game that is barely holding itself together. It is ridiculously ambitious when you consider what it's doing, how it has this town with individual characters that all have their own routines. They all have their own schedules each day

that you can follow them and see what they're doing every day if you want. It works really well as a living world even though it is obviously low budget and obviously has some problems in terms of the execution, but I don't agree with the idea that it's so bad it's good.

The good parts are just that good that people enjoy them despite the bad. Yeah, I totally agree with you. And I think most people got into the game initially for, just to make fun of it, for the lulls, as you would say. Or not as I would personally say, but people have been known to say that. And once you get past that initial, the initial awkwardness, the initial sort of blatant, maybe into the realm of ripping off Twin Peaks a little too much, you learn there's a lot of sincerity there, there's a lot of great ideas there. And people quickly fell in love with this game.

It wasn't just a quick target of ridicule. It put the director on the map. And I know that you have also streamed some of his other games and recorded let's plays. What are your takes on the director, Swery's other works before and after Deadly Permanition? Well, the Deadly Permanition was the first of his games that I played. I wasn't really sure what to make of him after that. If this game was maybe a lightning and a bottle kind of thing, or if he would be able to replicate the particular charm that this had. Since then, I mean, before then, he did write and direct Spy Fiction, which was like a Metal Gear Solid kind of game on the PS2.

That one sort of came and went. I don't think that many people really noted that. After Delhi Premonition, some years after Deli Premonition, he made D4, which I think reinforced that he was able to, he was able to write characters with this sort of charm. And it wasn't really just a lightning and a bottle kind of thing. Also, unfortunately, D4 is mostly known for the unfortunate way that it was cut short. And then after that, it seemed like for a while he might not be able to make video games after he left Access Games, his development house. But he formed his own development house, White Owls, and he released The Missing, which is a very, it's a very heartfelt and touching game. And having played these games after Deadly Premonition gives me a lot more confidence.

in the games that he's working on going forward, such as Dudley Premonition 2 and The Good Life, I feel like there is more confidence there that he is able to make this sort of charming story and charming characters, and it wasn't just luck with deadly premonition. Very true. I did want to talk about the history of this game briefly.

There's not a lot of history, and a lot of it is covered in some great post-mortems you can find online, but this game came out first in America on February 23, 2010, And I have to give props to our friend Shane Bettenhausen. He was a former person who worked at OneUp.com where I worked. And he was very instrumental in getting this game off the ground.

He was at Ignition Entertainment. He was working there with that publisher. And he was the booster for this game internally. And I don't know if he deserves full credit, but I'm pretty sure he does because he's also a Twin Peaks mega fan. So Shane, thank you so much for bringing us deadly premonition. It probably just would have been an odd import. I don't know if it was him,

but I thought I heard some years ago that it was his idea to release the game for $20. I don't know if that is true. That might have been him. I just know he was there at the time and as a big Twin Peaks fan, he was all over this game. And it might have been other people there too, but Shane definitely deserves credit. And I think that $20 made it, you know, less of a proposition of a, like, it made it more interesting to people to buy because you're going to take a $20 gamble on something that could be trash. Right.

And my understanding is that the publisher didn't intend for it to be a budget. budget game, but it was a good move to advertise that as being a budget game for, you know, for the 360, because it clearly was not a AAA game. It clearly had, it clearly was on a lower scale. But I remember that the initial trailer for Deadly Prime Minition did emphasize the $20 price point. Yeah, I assume that if it had been released for $60, people would have been angry. Probably. Not knowing what they were getting. But yeah, so it released in February of 2010. Not a lot of fanfare. the regular sites gave it the standard reviews, but there were a few

standouts. Destructoid one-up and something awful were all going against the narrative like this is a bad game from Japan that nobody wants. They were saying like, look at all of the cool things you can do, look how funny this game is, yes, the game doesn't play very well, but there are so many interesting things

about it, this is worth playing and that is when the phenomenon started taking off. And then the website Giant Bomb they were some of the early like professional let's players, let's call them. And they did their endurance runs. They did basically two let's plays with two people on each team playing through the game. And I think that is what really made the game catch fire because previously Giant Bomb had

did that with Persona 4. And I believe they made that game even more popular. So yeah, Giant Bomb was a huge part of making people get into this game. I remember that back at that time, there was a lot of debate on whether or not doing let's plays was something that could maybe boost the sales of a game. or if it took away from the sales of a game. But in the case of Deadly Permanition, I think that is a game that really did benefit from that kind of exposure

because when you just see a little bit of it, you might just disregard it. But when you see more of it and you see what's really under the hood, that's where it really starts to shine. So I think that doing Let's Play streaming what's so popular now, not as popular back then, but I think Deadly Promenitions, the success that it did have, probably benefited greatly from that.

Yeah, I'm very glad you brought that up because I think professionally, both in the press and with publishers, let's plays were looked upon with skepticism, and they were often dismissed as just a frivolous thing. And I remember, let's plays were in no way new when I started working in the press, but I had a hard time convincing my peers that let's plays could be more than just like your puty pies of the world screaming and pretending to be afraid.

And I would use people like you as an example, like, look, this person can play a game and have like, you know, be sort of dry about it, but also be funny and be sincere and not be faking any emotions. And now we understand like, yes, let's plays are an accepted form of entertainment. But in 2010, it was just like, what are these things? I'm watching a guy play a game. What even is that? Yeah.

And there's, of course, a question about if you play a game to completion, does that mean there's less incentive for the person who was watching to actually buy the game? Are you taking away from sales if you're doing that? And there was a discussion that was being had at that time. But I think that today, there's a lot more variety when it comes to just, just the idea of playing video games online going from let's plays or going from streamers or going to something like speed runners with games done quick which is a you know completely different form of streaming definitely and even though it started very small um i think that this sort of this whole

hobby just became much much bigger than than anyone could really have expected and i think also one thing this game had going against it when it came out was i was there at the time and i was writing about games and I feel like as someone who loves Japanese games, Japan was having problems keeping up with the HD generations of, you know, production, keeping up with those demands. And the narrative was like, oh, you know, Japan, their goose is cooked. They're kind of done making games or they're on the way out. Like these American games, these European games, this is the future. So like immediately any sort of Japanese game was met with skepticism like, oh, Japan is still doing this. We figured it out. Like the bioshocks of the world are going to be the big games. Not these weird twin

peaks ripoffs, Final Fantasy is bad now. Like, there was the Japan forgot how to make games narrative that was also sort of a curse on this as well that it overcame. Yeah, I do remember that sentiment from, let's say the first half of the previous generation, 360 PS3 generation. There was a lot of talk about that. And you had companies like Capcom that were trying to sort of reinvent themselves to try to appeal more to a Western audience. So there was a lot of that kind of thing happening at the time. And with deadly premonition, it's kind of interesting in that it's sort of, it is Western, but in a completely different way in that clearly Swery is a fan of, let's say, American culture and really wanted to make a game that really sort of caught the essence of a small town

in the U.S. whether or not you might say that was inspired a bit too much from Twin Peaks. You know, that's up to debate. But Swery did actually come to the U.S. He did. visit some small towns to try to do his own research on that subject. So deadly premonition, even though it does have a Western setting, it also has very Japanese sensibilities in terms of its gameplay. Oh, definitely. Yeah. And I think we'll do an episode about Twin Peaks in the future just about the series because it was very, very, I mean, it was big in America, but it was also very, very big in Japan. And it influenced a lot of creators and game designers.

One of the standouts is Link's Awakening is on the record inspired. by Twin Peaks? Like, what if Link woke up in a town full of weirdos with secrets and, like, how would that play out? I remember hearing about that sometime back. And I did play Link's Awakening when it first came out years ago and I loved that game. And I could definitely see that. That game does have a very, it has a very weird atmosphere to it that was even evident to me when I was playing it as a little kid. So I want to talk about the production of Deadly Permanition. There is a very good post-mortem of this game from a 20-ton issue of game developer magazine.

magazine folded in 2012, I believe, but they put all of the contents of their previous issues online. So if you just Google for like deadly premonition post-mortem, you can find it. But it's a lot of very, very in-depth detail about what they think went right, what they think went wrong, and a lot of like technical details about the game and the timeline of the production. It's all like a lot of really important information about the game. And we can kind of gloss over it right now. But first, I wanted to talk about access games and just who they are because they were founded in two, 2003 and basically made up of some key members of the studio Whoopi Camp and if you've played the two Tomba games for the PlayStation, that's essentially all Whippy Camp made. And do you have any familiarity with the Tomba games? I've actually not played the Tomba games myself. I do know that's where he did work on at least Tomba 2. Yeah. So that's, we'll talk about his career very soon, but he was part of Whoopi Camp for Tomba 2, a game I think only I played and bought when it was new. But I did enjoy that game. So yeah, they were made up of the

Remnants of Whoopi Camp. They became a thing called, I believe, Dark Matter, and they released extermination, and then they became Access Games. And Spy Fiction, which we just talked about earlier, was their first release under the Access Games brand. Now, I could be misremembering this, but I believe you did a let's play of Spy Fiction. Yes, I did after doing the one for Deadly Permanition. Spy Fiction, it is, it's interesting in how kind of dissimilar it is from Deadly Premonition because with Deadly Premonition, I was used to this, let's say, janky game that had not the greatest performance and the resolution was clearly not the highest. And then I went to Spy Fiction, a game that runs at a solid 60 FPS and it,

the game, the actual controls and gameplay is much different and much more polished. And, but the voice acting, still weird, still weird voice acting. So at least there was that. but there was spy fiction had a lot less plot a lot less personality it was much more gameplay focused and however swery's love of american media did shine through as it was clearly heavily inspired by mission impossible uh the first movie with tom cruise anyway yeah i played um spy fiction after deadly premonition and it was then i realized like oh he was kind of trying to turn himself into an autore even back then because all of his games have some common shared qualities

including like a character named Forrest Kaysen, certain expressions, certain animations even. Yeah, that is true. There are recycled animations in Delhi Premonition from Spy Fiction. There is a specific shrug animation and a character waving that you will see many times in both of those games. So you can see some asset reuse between those games. So after Spy Fiction releases in 2003, Access Games can't decide what they want to do next. They have many projects in mind. but eventually what would become deadly premonition starts production fall of 2004.

Now, keep in mind, this game won't see release until spring of 2010. So this is a very long production cycle, even in our modern age. So I have many conflicting sources, and I think even Swery himself is kind of cagey about certain facts about this game. But I have one source that says it started as a PSP game. In one source, it says it started as a PS2 game. But either way, it does seem like this game started as a title for the previous generation of hardware. And I can believe that that was a criticism of the game when it first came out, that people did say it looked like a PS2 game. And when looking at how long the development was, it is believable that they did not intend for deadly premonition to be on that generation of hardware.

And I think that when you were talking about the length of the development cycle, there also is that strange part about how it originally was called something else, called Rainy Woods. And then three years into development, they said it was canceled. And then after that, they said that the development of Deadly Premonition started. And at least back then, they claimed that those were two different projects, even though that trailer for Rainy Woods came out. And they're clearly the same game. I don't know if Swery is still as coy about that subject as he used to be. But at the time, he was pretty adamant that those were two different projects. I haven't read a recent interview with him about Deadly Premonition.

one, but the previous ones that I read around 2010, people were asking, like, what was this Rainy Woods thing? And he was like, yeah, you were right, a super great friend. He was like, that's a different game I was working on, completely unrelated. But if you look at the trailer, it seems that that game was reworked in the Deadly Premonition. And some things were changed. Like, my conjecture is Rainy Woods was a deadly premonition that was more Twin Peaksie in a way that could get them in trouble. But also, my conjecture is it was also a stealth-based game because certain elements of what would have been a stealth-based game are in Deadly Premonition, but they are not very functional.

Right. And that is sort of a longstanding theory that maybe the people who own Twin Peaks, maybe they saw that trailer for Rainy Woods and thought it was a little too close. I don't know if there's any truth to that, but it could possibly be for legal reasons that they stated that Rainy Woods and Deadly Promenition were different projects, even though you do see cuts, scenes from Deadly Premonition in that trailer. You do see characters that are doing animations that are clearly in the final game, but with different models. And as you said, in Deadly Premonition, there is a mechanic that they introduce where you

hold your breath to hide from monsters. Now, that is something that you can use, but it's never really important and it never really comes up all that much, except in some cutscenes. but it is thought that perhaps that the game was supposed to incorporate that a lot more instead of using the shooter combat. Sweri did say at some point he said that the game was not really meant to have combat, but he was told by the publisher that you got to put combat in because that's what the players expect.

That's the gameplay. You have to have that in there. Everything else is sort of window dressing for the combat. But if that's true, then it might be. the case that it was originally supposed to play with York sneaking around the zombies holding his breath instead of actually shooting them.

If that's the case, that would be a very significant change to the game. I kind of wonder how some of those boss conflicts would go. I kind of wonder if there would be any sort of upgrade path, since there's no weapons or anything to upgrade. It's hard to imagine how that version of the game

would have gone. Yeah, definitely. I just replayed the game for this podcast. I really enjoyed my replay of it. And two of the first things they teach you in the game as a player is like here's how you hold your breath and here's how to work your flashlight. Two things that don't matter at all. Like once you turn your flashlight on,

you never have to turn it off. And actually when you turn it off, it doesn't really matter too much. So it does feel like those are both elements of a stealth game that was just never made. There are some legacy elements in the game that just at some point they decided that maybe it wasn't so important

or maybe they had to dial back on because of maybe time or budget constraints. Another example of that kind of thing, is I mentioned previously about how all the characters in the town have their own schedules. It's thought that in an earlier version of the game, that what you would do is that it would be essential to the story that you would need to tell people throughout the day, to look at what they're doing throughout their day, what they're doing, and try to get clues that way. The final game is not really like that.

It's much more linear, but it is projected that perhaps this used to be a much more nonlinear detective game in which you would actually do that kind of investigation, and that's why all the characters have their own schedules, why they go to different places and live their lives throughout the day, because originally you were supposed to tell them and try to learn information about what it is they're up to in that way. It sounds like that could have been an interesting idea, but also it would have made for a much lengthier game, I think. Definitely. Yeah, I mean, at least we know on record that the last thing they worked on in the game was the action stuff. So I think it's inferred that they had an existing work that these action bits were sort of

affixed to in a way that does feel still a bit unnatural. So you can see like the game that was is still there, but there's also this added content that you have to take part in that is now part of the deadly premonition experience. Yeah, and when you play the game, it feels very separate. It feels like sometimes, okay, I'm in the open world, I'm driving around, I'm going to talk to people, I'm going to find some side quests, and then it's, okay, I'm in a combat, area now. Here are enemies. I have a gun. And these feel like two separate aspects of the game. It's not really combined. Yeah, it's very modal in that way in a strange way. But obviously the action stuff is not the stuff worth playing, even though it's mandatory. But thankfully, they do make

it fairly easy to get through. And I think there's a quality of this game that I think the game recognizes its weaknesses. So it puts in a lot of what I would call like debug tools for you to use because like the action isn't great so the game is like okay it's very easy but also you don't have to work very hard to get these infinite weapons that have like infinite bullets you can just spray a fire hose torrent of bullets into a crowd of enemies and just get rid of them immediately yeah they do give you options uh in terms of doing side quests to get super weapons uh to get infinite guns with infinite ammo melee weapons with infinite durability and if you play the director's cut of the game or deadly premonition origins on the switch the difficulty

of those versions is easier than the easy difficulty on the 360 version. The 360 version had an easy, normal, and hard difficulty. Hard difficulty, enemies had a lot of health. It was a much harder game. But the versions of the game that you can get now, just there are no, there's no difficulty select. And by default, all the enemies die very quickly. So it's pretty clear that when they retuned the game for the director's cut, that they took those complaints about the combat in mind. They still didn't fix the wall ladies, the wall crawling enemies that take maybe six times the amount of damage they should. There are the wall ladies, but in defense of the wall ladies, that's a puzzle enemy in which you can figure out a fast way to kill them, but it's, that's the enemy where your normal strategy of just shooting is not going to work. Basically, the puzzle is that if you can get the wall lady on the wall, you can one shot them with melee weapons.

It's basically the idea is that you need to experiment with other weapons for that. But that's kind of the only time that idea comes up. Everything else in the game, you can just spray with the machine gun. That's right. You know what? I watch both of your let's plays, but I completely forgot that aspect of it. So that was a huge bummer when I got to those hallways. Like, I got to fight three of these now, but I got over it.

That does seem to be a very common reaction to that section of the game. It is a big bummer, but you can get through it. It's completely doable. I want to talk about I want to move on to talk about Swery, who he is a very enigmatic creator, a very cool guy, I will say, and he was born a Hidataka Sui Hero in April of 1973, and he comes from a family of monks.

He was born, I believe, in a Buddhist temple. His parents are both Buddhist monks. He got what is called a monk license at age 17. And much later in life, he became a monk. Like when he took a long hiatus from gaming that we'll talk about very soon, he became a Buddhist monk, and I believe, 2016. So you don't see a lot of game creators with this background. No, I mean, he does seem very unique.

also he's as much he's much more of a personality than you will see for many developers and uh but i mean in terms of just business maybe that is good for business to be that kind of personality and getting yourself out there and not trying to be you know sort of hidden behind the scenes he doesn't really have to advertise himself to try to you know to try to make his way in in the business considering that a lot of his games have been lower budget and now he's the head of his own studio maybe it is to his benefit to be a larger larger than life personality. I totally agree with you. And he started by being interested in movies and that's obvious from Deadly Premonition, the

conversations you hear and the references you see. But he was eventually lured away by the Siren song of video games in 1996. He applied to S&K because it was the closest developer to his house. And he got in. And he worked on three fighting games for S&K doing things like creating the story and the characters. So So the Last Blade, the Last Blade 2, and Kizuna Encounter, those are all games that Swearie worked on, creating characters and the story. I haven't played those games.

I have to assume there's a little bit of Swearie cookiness in them, but I'm kind of ignorant to these games. I have not played them either. I just know that it is something that tends to surprise people when they realize that Swery did work on the last blade, since that is a beloved fighting game. That's definitely something I completely forgot about. So he went on to work for Whoopi Camp. He worked on Tamba 2 as a designer, so Whoopi Camp Folds. Tomba didn't really do anything for the world. I love those games, but Whoopi Camp folds.

People move on to form Deep Space and then Access Games. He's a writer and planner on extermination for access games, and then he goes on to direct spy fiction. So he is directing games pretty quickly in his career, and then we have the saga of the Deadly Previnition Development. While that is going on, he is also working on this PSP game called Lord of Arcana. So while Deadly Premonition is on the brink of being canceled and reworked and, you know, redone, he's also working on a PSP game that apparently is pretty good. I have never played it. And I don't think it's the kind of like a quirky sweary game you would expect from him. No, I haven't played it either. But it's not really what you would call a sweary game. It is, I generally separate Swarry's games into two categories. Something like the Arcana games seem like business as opposed to the things that he might really want to do. This is the sort of. a thing that he kind of, you know, has to do for, uh, to get the paycheck, right? Totally.

Um, it's not, I don't believe he directed those games. So his name does not appear at the beginning of it. Like, if you play any of the other games we're talking about, it starts with saying, uh, directed by Swery, um, those games do not. So yeah, after your deadly permission comes out, it's a, it's a big, I would say not a big hit, but like, it sells enough copies to make him a name to give him permission to do whatever he wants, essentially. And we all thought, like, what would he do next?

And his next game was an interesting one. It was a Connect only game for a while game for the Xbox one called D4, Dark Dreams Don't Die. And Xbox One, the launch was a huge mess. They realized the Connect was something that nobody wanted, and they quickly reworked that console. Unfortunately, Swery's game was designed for the original idea of the console, which is why when that game was released, it was buried. I remember being very excited for the game. It got a stealth release during packs of that year, and you had to literally search for D4 in the Xbox marketplace to find it. It was sent to die.

That is correct. I do remember distinctly that the lack of advertising, say, if you were following Xbox's Twitter and they were talking about the games coming out, and they never really mentioned D4 at all, which was a little heartbreaking. But, yeah, I was excited for D4 as Swery was announcing that his new big detective game, was coming. Anyone who enjoyed deadly premonition was waiting, had been waiting for a while for a follow-up, not necessarily a sequel, but something in the same vein. And now it's coming. It's going to be an Xbox one game. It's going to use the Connect, which was a surprise for everyone, but okay, I'll say, I'll give it a chance and see what he was able to come up with. I ended up buying an Xbox 1 for D4. Wow. And I enjoyed it. I never actually got the Connect working. I don't have enough

space in my little area for it but uh fortunately played fine with the controller so with d4 it was called season one uh season one calling it that might be a bit of a misnomer basically it was a prolog and a two episodes the episodes were rather short gameplay is kind of i would actually call it a point and click adventure that sort of fitted for controller or connect yeah my take was i don't know if you would agree with this my take was this is sort of sweary doing a a tell-tale game in his own style, which was a very popular kind of game iteration of that time, a very popular

kind of game play type. He was kind of doing his own thing within that realm. Yeah, tell-tale or maybe a Quantic Dream kind of game. It was definitely that style. In terms of, if we're talking about movies, it didn't have the Twin Peaks

vibe anymore. This game was a lot about memories. And so really the main comparison point, I think, would be Memento if you want to compare a movie to D4. That's probably a big inspiration. And D4, it wasn't long. It was fairly short, but there was a lot of additional material in terms of text files, in terms of additional costumes, things like that to sort of expand the gameplay. It was pretty clear that even though D4 among the fans, it seemed to have been,

gotten a positive reception. After that game, came out there was no news on a season two now that of course is a very bad sign when it comes to an episodic game episode one comes out you want to know when that episode two is going to come out you want some kind of schedule but unfortunately there just never was a schedule and then as time went on it became pretty clear why that was that funding for the game just dried up Microsoft I suppose just was going into a different direction they weren't interested in the connect anymore so d4 was a casualty of that, and it didn't sell enough on its own to be

considered a success. It did, however, get a second chance at life as it was poured into the PC by playism, I believe. I guess it didn't sell enough there either, because a season two never came. In the end, Swery ended up

leaving access games entirely, so that sort of leaves D4 in kind of a limbo. It wasn't completed, but even if Swery wanted to continue on with it, he can't. Microsoft still owns it, and I don't expect they would have any interest in continuing that.

Yeah, I really recommend it. I mean, don't expect a complete story, but I think if all the swarthy stuff is there that you want, it's a good game to play if you want to have that experience. Not as much gameplay as something like deadly premonition in terms of what you can do, but it's still a very enjoyable experience. And I think

at this point in his life, he was going through a lot of stuff, because now I can tell my own sweary story that I've been holding inside for like seven years now or I think it's been that long. So Swery was seeming to have a lot of problems with access games, particularly like management people there or a producer there or something. Like I remember like he, uh, wasn't making a lot of things. There was no news of, you know, new project by Swery or whatever. And it seemed like he wasn't having a good time in excess games.

And I was, I was searching his Twitter recently because I remember he was doing a lot of sub-tweeting of people, like of talk of villains he was trying to fight. And it seemed to imply that he was having a really rough time at Access Games. And I think he was having the worst time when I met him when he was doing press for the director's cut in 2013. I was still at OneUp.com. It was right before oneup.com closed. And I was like, oh boy, I get to beat Swearry, get to talk to him. He's going to be fun. He's going to just be like a fun, rowdy, you know, funster. And when I met him, he was the opposite of that. He was in a bad, bad place. And maybe he was, you know, hung over. Maybe he was tired or jet lagged, but I just remember him just not being game for anything. And it personally

kind of disappointing me until I realized, like, maybe he was having a bad day. But then learning about, you know, him going on hiatus and becoming a monk, I just think like the industry was being too much for him. He was being denied certain freedoms he wanted to have. And I just remember like interviewing him, you know, asking your typical fun questions to a guy you assume is going to be fun. And one of my questions was, can you tell me who you would cast in a deadly premonition movie? And his answer was no. So it wasn't into having a lot of fun that day. And he was with his producer from Access Games there.

And his producer was his translator, but his producer did not speak English very well. And this was all something that was being filmed for a video segment. So we ended up using none of it because it took his translator a very, very long time to translate. And I started asking less fun questions then, like, so is this going to be in the game? Is that going to be in the game? because, you know, we heard about this director's cut and that he had all these ideas for changes and he just kept saying, no, my producer

wouldn't let me do this. And we wanted more conversations in the game with York in the car, but they said it would be too expensive. So it felt like the director's cut was him, he was sort of being bait and switched there. We're like, Swearer, you can finally fix this game and then them saying, no, we'll add a few like little video segments and sort of like hack

in new content, but you're not going to get to make the game you always wanted to make. You're not going to get to fix the game you always wanted to fix. I do agree with that. that sort of feel of the director's cut. It doesn't feel like a director's cut. It feels like they added some additional cut scenes that maybe didn't need to be there.

They added some DLC that some of it seemed a bit half-baked. There were some changes made to like the camera and the graphics, which I didn't really like that much. I still feel like the original 360 version is the best one. So a lot of the changes the director's cut didn't really like. But as you were talking about, Swery maybe being in a dark place. I do remember his tweets about having to fight the villains and trying to work out what

that it might refer to. And it was pretty clear that he was talking about someone at Axis Games anyway. Yeah. Yeah. And it's it's good that he seems a lot happier now. I agree. I have to say like it did personally make me sad that I met him and I was like, what a jerk. But then I realized like after the fact like he went through a lot. He had a major health scare.

with hypoglycemia he sort of took a break from games for about i say like three or four years i think and then he became a monk so clearly he had a journey he needed to make and he was not very happy with access games and i was just one of the people uh that was he was trotted out in front up to be the the the fun making funster but he was not having any of it anymore no no it's uh at the very least the director's cut and then origins later at least that allowed the game to get onto more platforms and allowed more people to play it. And at least he is still, he was willing afterwards to still, you know, be affiliated with any sort of attempts to expand the Deadly Premonition brand like the Kickstarter for the board game, which he was on board

for. And then, of course, we know that now Deadly Premation 2 is coming out. But at the time, it didn't seem like he would get to be able to do anything else with it after that. Yeah, and then he disappeared for five years. I mean, he was still tweeting and stuff. But between, D4 and The Missing, he did not have his name on any games. As far as I know, that that was the five-year gap in his career in his late 30s to early 40s. He was just taking a journey, traveling a lot, becoming a monk, working on himself. And then he came back with The Missing, and now he has two games. So we're recording this right before DP2 comes out.

It will have been out for a few days once this hits the feed. So hopefully it's good. But the other game he had kickstarted a few years ago, 2018, was The Good Life, which seems similar to deadly premonition and that it is an open world with people that have schedules and lots of fun, useless little features that you can play with in the world. Right. So when Swarie came back, he announced that he was starting his own studio called White Owls. And it was a little while before we saw anything that they were doing. And the first thing we heard from them, as you said, was the Kickstarter for the good life in which they said, Swari said, that he wanted. white owls to actually own one of the games that they were making. And this is, I think it's pretty clear as to why this would be an important sticking point for him, considering what happened with D4, a story he was working on that he just doesn't get to work on anymore because he doesn't

have any rights concerning that. I'm sure that he would really want his studio to own the game that they're working on. So, of course, to do this, you can't get a publisher. You do have to fund it yourself so he went to Kickstarter for it uh and at first naturally no no i'm wrong about that he went to fig first right i forgot about phig yeah and then that that one did not reach its goal um and then he did a kickstarter and that one was not looking too good for a little bit uh but as it started to reach its end some people suggested that he should release some sort of playable demo uh which he did it was very very basic demo but it did have the effect of getting a lot of attention to that kickstarter and pushing it over the goal, which I was already happy about because I, at that point, I really didn't expect that it was going to happen. So it was a great thing that it actually did happen. Yeah, I'm a backer on that. And I was like, I want him to make more games. And I had no idea, deadly premonition 2 would be coming out. And we'll have a little chat about that at the end of our discussion here. But I'm actually not sure who's making deadly premonition 2 because there's no Wikipedia entry for it yet, as of this recording. And as far as I know, the developer is Toy Box. And Access Games is not affiliated with the game.

I'm not sure, like, what the rights issues are there, how Swear he's able to make a sequel to that game, if Access gets, you know, character payments or royalties or whatever. But that game, as of this recording, will be out very soon. It's out if you're listening to this right now. Yeah, Access Games, their name is not on it. On the trailer, it said Toy Box was the primary developer, and White Owls's logo was on that.

And I believe the publisher, well, I don't know publisher, but maybe IP rights holder, I think was, as Marvelous Entertainment and Rising Star Games, who are two of the publishers of Deadly Premonition 1 and other regions. I guess they're the ones who actually have the IP, but it doesn't seem that access games has anything to do with this, even if they may have been the developer on the first one, maybe there's just no involvement from them,

which probably makes Swearie happy. He probably's pleased about that. Yeah, but it does seem to be, of course, Toy Box and White Owls and the IP holder being Rising Star and Marvelous. It seems, I think that that's what the situation is. Yeah, the sweary being unhappy with Access Games narrative seems to make sense, if you consider they have nothing to do with this sequel that everybody wants and has won it for a decade. As far as Delly Premonition 2 goes, as you said, it is just about to come out.

It is supposed to be exclusive to the Switch as far as we know. I remember there was some question at the time that trailer came out if Nintendo might have anything to do with it. I don't think they do. I don't think their name is on it anywhere. But I remember there was a little talk about whether or not that might be the case. Rank and Vile is a podcast dedicated to ranking every horror movie ever made from best to worst. Every single one of them. Each episode, we add a couple more to our list of hundreds and then justify why we think killer clowns from outer space is a better movie than dead ringers.

No, really, that did actually end up happening. Check us out on the Greenlit Podcast Network where you can find a new episode every Wednesday. Hey there, this is Jeremy Parrish, and if you're a fan of classic video game, soundtracks, or if you just love 20-minute rock epics about war-ready armadillos that battle Catholicism, you should listen to Alexander's ragtime band. Join the power trio of myself, Elliot Long, and James Eldred, each month as we talk about the most pretentious music of all progressive rock right here on the Greenlit Podcast Network. Hi, I'm Ray, and this is my friend Alex. Hi. And we do a show called Norman Woppers.

Some call it corn. We call it therapy. We're adults with the virility of men. Want to hear us read snack food copy and talk about Japanese chips? Too bad! every month or so on the Greenlight Podcast Network. So we're halfway through our discussion now. It's finally time to start talking about the actual game. And I will say up front that we're not going to spoil anything major, including like who done it and people, possible murder victims in the game. We're going to leave that stuff for you to find out.

So maybe some light spoilers about events. But I do want to say that there are many versions of this game. There's the original 360 version, which came out in 2010. There's the director's cut in 20. for PS3 and Steam. And then there's Origins, which came out for Switch in 2019. And that's essentially a version of the first game with some improvements, but not all of the director's cut improvements. Now, super great friend, do you have a preferred version?

Because seemingly, every new version is much bugier than the last version. I still think that the 360 original one is the best one in terms of performance, and just in terms of how the game looks and plays. I didn't really like the changes made for the director's cut just in terms of how the game looks and the additional cutscenes. If you were going to play one that is available now, I guess I would probably say Origins on the Switch. That game does have some performance issues, but it's fine. Really, if you can get it working,

the PC version of the director's cut is the best performing one. That one's on Steam, but you do need to get a fan patch to actually get that running a 60 FPS and then there is the possibility that it might crash on your PC which you won't know until you try so there is a lot of there's a lot of question marks

on whether the PC version will work for you but if you have the opportunity to play the 360 version I do still think that's the best one that is the best one it's a little buggy but I will say it didn't affect my enjoyment of the game very much but I played 25 hours

on this replay of the game for Switch and I think it crashed maybe 20 times which is absurd for any released game. You know, that's not like a fan project. But I do think the developers know we made a buggy game. So that's why there's a save point like every three feet in this game. So I'm going to say, if you are going to play this game, save after everything you do.

And thankfully saving is very quick in the Origins Edition. But you're totally right. The 361 is still the best, most stable one. And I watched your second Let's Play when it went live and I'm rewatching it now. And when I watched it for the first time, I was like, I couldn't get through the director's cut because it was just too buggy and too laggy. I want to see what this extra story content is because there is a framing device for the director's cut that is certain characters in the future.

It should be obvious who they are. But there's a framing device and I was like, boy, how does this pay off? And in my estimation, it doesn't at all. There is no big payoff to this added story content. What is your take on that? I agree. In the original version, the game is taking place in whatever the, the present day is. I think officially it's 2005, but maybe 2008, but you're not really given a date.

So it's just whatever is the present day. In the directors cut, the events of the game are being told as a story years, maybe decades in the future. And like you say, you kind of wonder, where is that going to lead? Why did they change the nature of the story? So now it's something that is being told years down the line and they do add an additional ending not an alternate ending but an additional amount of ending to that original ending and it kind of falls flat and I'm not sure why it's there to begin with and I thought that the the way it ended originally was a better bookmark to the whole thing rather than the additional content yeah it was very unfulfilling and I expected a lot more of that framing device but it doesn't pop up that often but I did enjoy watching a rewatching your second

let's play because there are all these other elements that do feel like rom hacks in a way the way they're implemented like new york has a bunch of new suits there are new cars you can buy a house in this game that's very silly so they they tried to give you some added features but they didn't work hard enough on it to make it feel like a natural part of the game right and the additional suits are nice like i like those but as far as the house goes it's nice like the idea that you can buy a house in this town but you can't really do anything with the house it's just there and you can't go in it. And that's about it. There's no cutscenes related to the house. There's no side quest related to the house. There's really nothing at all about this house aside from it

being there. You can't even save in the house, I don't think. And it's just not really satisfying at all to buy a house. It's just another door you can open in the world, I guess. Yeah, just one more door. It just, the director's cut just sort of seemed like, it fell flat because of that. As you mentioned before, it did seem like this might be a chance to sort of improve and polish up some of the elements of the original game that were lacking, and it really doesn't do that. In fact, I think that the aesthetic of the game, the look, is worse because the original game has a strong, saturated green and red color scheme. Frequently, you have like a green filter over everything, and then areas that

are red are very bright, vibrant red, and everything in the director's cut seems a bit desaturated, seems a bit purple. I just think the look is not quite as good as in the original. And also, if you're playing on the PS3, the frame rate is kind of a disaster. It seemingly gets worse with every new port. So yeah, we recommend the 360 version. And I guess we didn't really talk about how the game plays or what's that about. I think we hit it at it. But I think most people know 10 years later, but in case you don't know, like, I think a lot of people think this is a survival horror game, and it's not. I would call it, like, an open world mystery game, and there's an emphasis on this game in poking and prodding at this world to, you know, figure out people's

schedules, to see how they are related to the crime, and to see how the story unravels. I mean, there are mandatory points you have to hit, usually, that are played out via action scenes and cutscenes, but the main appeal of this game is this giant world that sort of operates by itself without your intervention and people will just do their things however mundane they are throughout the day you can choose to you know take part in those things you can choose to spy in those things but it's very fulfilling because those things remain consistent and you are the moving variable in the world the perception that it's a survival horror game that is going to come about from the beginning of it which as much as i like the game i do think it doesn't start well because around the

first 40 minutes of the game is a common sequence where you are walking around a forest shooting zombies, or as they're called in the game, Mysterious Shadows. And in any other game, it would seem like, okay, this is the gameplay. I'm going to be walking around, and this is over the shoulder camera, Resident Evil 4 style. It kind of seems like a low budget version of that. I guess this is what I'm playing. And you play that for around 40 minutes, and then you get out of the forest, you get a cutscene where the chapter ends, you get a dream sequence.

you then get a scene where you're walking around a hotel. You eat breakfast. No combat. You walk out of the hotel. They give you a car and they say, okay, you can drive around now. And you can go where the arrow was pointing. But then you quickly realize you don't have to do that. You can just drive in any direction. And you'll find things in every direction. You'll find people. They're there. And at that point, you begin to realize that this is not really what you thought it was going to be because now there's no shooting. Now there are no enemies. It's just, here is this large map. Go wherever you want. See what you find. Yeah, figure it out. And speaking of the map, the game also has a terrible map. They could never fix the map, which blows my mind. I think maybe the PC fan patch might fix the map a bit, but only so much. I think you're right. I think they did do something. But the thing about the map is that you can't zoom out. You're always really zoomed in to the point that you would just, you really want to pull out. see the whole thing in once and you can never do it and the map keeps rotating as you as you turn around on the map so you can't really get a fixed idea of where you are you get used to it eventually

but it is it's kind of a baffling map it's pretty bad and no you're right like the perception of this game is that it's a survival horror game with like goofy dialogue and wiki characters but uh i remember i've been playing this a lot recently for this podcast just having a great time with it and at the end of the day i was talking to my fiance and i was like i was playing deadly premonition all day it was just so relaxing and she was like relaxing because she thinks it is the you know zombie shooting game or you know the goofy game with you know mostly horror kind of action and but deadly premonition to me is not like shooting zombies it's like I'm going to watch this family eat breakfast and then I'm going to go fishing and then I'm going to follow around this person to see where they end up and especially

knowing about all the facts of the mystery going in for a second time it was so much more fulfilling because I was like aha I know why this person is here I know why that person is there I understand like every part of this game is so planned out, but it also is so organic that you don't notice it's planned out until you do a replay and see just how all the pieces fit together. It seems very chaotic at first. There's a lot of empty space. There's a lot of space to go around. You don't know where anything is or where anyone is. So it does have, it can be a little bit overwhelming in terms of if you want to go off on your own and try to work out what you want to do. But maybe one good example of how the game can reward that is if you go off the beaten path and you look at the map

and you see who's around and you look at the different houses on the map like one one example of detective work you can do is you can find the house of the murder victim now the main plot of the game never requires you to go there uh it never actually uh that's never actually a goal you have very distinctive goals that it wants you to do places to go people to talk to this house never comes up on that on that path if you notice that house is there you can go there even though the game's telling you to go somewhere else you can go inside and you can find the murder victim's mother who has been traumatized by the murder of her daughter you can talk to her you can activate a side quest if you do that and if you do this you then go on a path a chain of side quests where you

start getting clues to other people that you can talk to you can find the murder victim's friends, talk to them and see what they know, find a little bit about their background and how they might be involved with any shady goings-ons in the town. And by the end of this path, well, the ultimate reward is you get a really good weapon, but you also get a lot of additional information about these characters, about the murder victim, and just some background that you would never have gotten if you just followed the main path. And I think that's also something that takes people by surprise that the game does reward that kind of exploration. Yeah, you're totally right. And even if the information you get from characters is not relevant to the mystery,

it does flesh them out and why they act the way they do. Like, it was so fun for me looking at the characters and asking myself, like, why does Richard take care of Sally in the game, for example? And then you watch their activities, you talk to them after hours, and you figure out why these characters are interacting with each other in the way that they do throughout the day. It doesn't really affect the mystery, but it really makes what they do make sense. They're not just driving to random locations and talking to each other for no reason.

There is a backstory there that you can choose to opt into if you want to. And when you do, it's very rewarding. Yeah, and like in that example, if you are paying attention to what Sally is doing, the murder victim's mother, you'll see that Richard's son, Quint, comes by often to give her lunch.

You'll notice that sometimes Sally is not in her house, but she is within Richard's trailer house. And these are just, like you said, there are things that you can notice. You don't have to. You don't need to to complete the game, but it is some additional bit of flavor that you can notice.

So I have a list of topics about this game broken down into good and bad categories. So I want to talk about the good stuff first, that we can just go over these and talk about them for as long as you want to. So, like, I would say number one good thing about this game is probably, I would say, one of the top three protagonists in any video game, and I'm not being hyperbolic, is Francis York Morgan. There is nobody like him, and this game would not be as good if he was not. the protagonist how do you feel about that yeah i do agree with that that there is like a real strength to this protagonist that he is just a really interesting character um i mean when you describe him he sounds kind of generic he's like this really good FBI agent who has been on some weird cases he's come to this small town to investigate this murder and it sounds like well okay i guess you're

going to be just you're describing agent cooper from twin peaks you might be just describing Mulder and Scully from X-Files but York ends up having a really distinctive personality and a part of that has to do with how he is talking to you all the time

in a very curious way he puts his fingers to his head in a very video game manner many video games your protagonist will put their fingers up to their ear because they're talking to someone somewhere else York will do it but he doesn't have an earpiece and he's not talking on the phone

He just puts his hand to his head and starts talking to someone named Zach. And you don't know who he's talking about. You think maybe he's talking about you, the player. And he just starts talking about 80s movies and punk music and a variety of pop culture things that he likes. And it is really weird and really unexpected when that starts to happen. At the same time, he's also a character that works really well with just the weird plot in that. the plot of what's going on in the town is quite weird and everyone else in the town well most of the people who you're talking to are more playing the role of the straight men kind of

even though they do have their own quirks themselves but in comparison to them york is this really weird dude who comes into town and is just able to solve all the mysteries while talking about pop culture and apparently talking to an imaginary friend i do think that he is a very memorable character and which is a big reason i'm looking forward to deadly premonition too and the voice acting for York done very well by Jeff Kramer. I had never heard Jeff Kramer in any other role besides this game, but his voice just works very well for this character. Yeah, I love the performance.

He's a hard character to describe unless you see him, unless you get the experience with him. But I would say, like, my best description of York is he's someone with no social graces that says embarrassing things but can't be embarrassed. He is sort of unflappable in a very strange way that's just intriguing to watch. watch. Yes, he has no shame. If he does something that embarrasses people, he's sort of

mildly curious about it, but it's not, it seems like he can't really feel anything about it himself. And it makes for some, some good comedy scenes in this game about brutal murders. Definitely. My next point in the good category is, I think I'm a big fan of murder mysteries. I read a lot of them. I play a lot of murder mystery games. I will say the murder mystery in this game is actually great and it's very fulfilling once you know all the answers this is the first time i play through the game knowing like who all the characters are what their secret lives are who gets murdered and who is the murderer and like at no point did anything in the game let me down i'm like oh yeah that checks out that's why that person's there that's why he wasn't on the scene

like so many tiny things add up and uh swery and the screenwriter for this game who he worked with they really worked hard to make sure like every fact checked out like i don't see any real lot holes that aren't supernatural in this game. Yeah, I do think that the mystery does wrap up very well. And as you mentioned, you can go around the town. You can see what everyone is up to. And if you know who the murderer is and you can see what it is that they're doing throughout the day and the night, sometimes you see them do something a little bit

suspicious. And you might say, okay, I know what that's about now. But the first time through the game, you might not have really have clocked that. You might not have realized that there is something strange. The game does give you clues that you can figure out who the killer is at any point through the game. They do give you clues that if you notice them are pretty obvious who the killer is going to be to the point that I think that for a lot of people, once you get to the point, you get to the scene where York is going to tell you what's what, you probably have already figured it out by then,

even though your first time through the game, it may not be the most obvious thing. And I do like that about this mystery. Some murder mystery games, they might be so concerned about you not being able to figure out that they might give you like maybe false information. Some games might actively lie to the player

for the sake of having the big twist. Deadly premonition does not really do that. Deadly premonition does give you the tools and information to figure things out. I mean, I could just be a big sucker for mystery stories and I choose to remain ignorant, but this mystery got me the first time. Like I didn't know who the,

killer would be, were you the same way? I had a pretty good guess by the time we got there. I don't really know how much I want to talk about it since we said that, no spoilers. I just want to say that I think something I really liked that's where he did in this game. Even though I had worked out who the killer was, he was still able to get me with a surprise after that because I had kind of been lulled maybe into a sense of security of, oh, I know who it is. I know what's going on here. And then maybe like when you get to the end of the game, even if you have figured it out, it's, it kind of pulls you into a sense of maybe not seeing

something else coming. Yeah, I will leave spoilers out of the podcast, but I found the game so much more fulfilling going back into it with the knowledge. But obviously you should witness the mystery for yourself first and then replay it for an even more fulfilling experience. But my next point in this, and it's something that I really loved upon this replay, was there was so much flavor text and so many unique conversations that, again, are completely optional. The not ideal way to play this game is to just hit all the main scenario points and just plow through the story in the cutscenes and the action scenes. In this game, like I remember, if you want to go to the murder victim's house, you can. That's optional. You go to her house, you can actually go

to the bathroom of the murder victim, and there is like unique dialogue of him observing the bathtub. for that house, for that person. And it extends far beyond that. Like, there is so much unique dialogue for every situation. Part of this game, when Swayre was directing it, he was like, I want players to not be scolded or punished when they don't do things. So when characters are like, okay, York, you need to be here at this time, you better be there. If you don't do that and do your own thing, they will complain to you the next day or that night.

Like, you said there'd be a town meeting, and I had to close my bar and you're ruining my business. You better do that tomorrow. Like there are so many different circumstances in which you can see new dialogue, get new characterizations, and read new flavor text. It is almost alarming as to how much detail there is in this seemingly very janky game. Oh, yeah. There is definitely just so, I mean, even when I did my let's play, there was still turned out to be like some things here and there that I had missed, some dialogue, like maybe a lunch scene.

there's still so much to just find and conversations to be had even if they just might be small things just things that are insignificant in the long run I mean there's still things like being able to drive out into a quiet part of town and maybe finding someone just standing there

having a smoke and having a little conversation with them you mentioned the town hall scene where it's the only scene in the game where everyone in the town will go to one location when I did the let's play of it I did like a little thing where you can block traffic, which is fun, and you can see the AI of the cars attempting to navigate to where they need to be.

And as you mentioned, Swery wants you to be able to just have fun and not really need to stick to a schedule, which is why that even if you miss your appointment, you can do it the next day. You don't, there's no, people might be angry at you, but there's really no consequence. There's nothing that you miss out on by doing that. If you feel like, okay, I don't actually want to go to my goal today because it's raining and it needs to be sunny for me to do this one particular side quest, I'm just going to go home and go to bed, do it next day. Yeah, you can do it. It's fine. It's not going to be mad at you for doing that. And even York, he keeps saying to the player or Zach, he keeps saying to Zach like, oh, hey, Zach, do you want to get out and explore? That's fine, I guess. We can just do that. He's not like, come on, Zach, we got to go to this meeting or we got to meet this person. And even like vocally within the game, the main character's like, sure, let's just hang out and explore. That's fine. Like, York is not concerned with other people's schedules. Yeah, he takes things slow. And in fact, that maybe in terms of the story, that does come back to haunt him in that maybe a little too slow. But in terms of the gameplay, yeah, he encourages you to take a lackadaisical pace to things and just look around and just do what you want. Maybe you want a fish. Maybe you want to drive down this wooded and find a skull in the middle of a field and you don't know why that's there,

but you'll take it with you because maybe you might need to give it to someone. There is so much side stuff in the game, it's actually difficult to get it all in one play-through. I kind of think that maybe you're not meant to. I think perhaps that the intention is that there's just so much side stuff around that the idea is that as you are going through the town, solving the mystery, different people will encounter different things. Someone will not have the same play-through as someone else just because of how much side stuff there is.

And it's so easy to just find some random things that you didn't know we're there. And it's so easy to miss a whole lot of things. For example, one side quest that a lot of people might miss, but when they find out about it, they want to do is when they find out how to do fast travel. There's a specific series of side quests in which the reward is fast travel.

But there's really no clue in the game that you can get that That is just a fun reward if he decided to engage with the town. Yeah, and all the quests in the game are great. And I will say, like, they offer a lot of tools to the player to make things easier. And if you're worried about missing something in the game, what's really cool is, like, from the title screen, you can go into any chapter you want. And within the menus of the game, it tells you, okay, this quest can be done in these chapters. So you know, like, I want to do quest 49. Okay, I have to go to chapter six to do that.

So they give you all the tools you need pretty much up front to finish the game 100%. if you really want to do that. Yeah, the menus will tell you when the quests can be done. For some of those quests, for some of those quests, it is quite difficult

to actually do them, even though it'll tell you when you can. Like, for example, the hardest series of side quests in the game, I think, are Emily's side quests.

Definitely. You have to go to her house in the evening or between like 6 and 7 p.m. And I think it has to be raining because otherwise she would be at a bar eating dinner. So it has to be at night that it's raining. So she'll be home and then she'll let you in and then you can help her with her cooking. And then the timing is not constant because sometimes her house will be open and

sometimes it won't be. And sometimes you just might have to try this a few times on different nights until she's finally there and we'll let you in. Even if you know what chapters you can do this in, the timing on these can be very, very touchy. Yeah, those quests are a real bummer because the connection between York and Emily is very important in the game and you kind of want them to spend a lot of time together. But those are very difficult quests timing-wise. And I believe the reward for those quests in the end is a device that can control the weather, which is what you sort of needed before these quests even began. Is that correct? Well, that's what people think from the description. The description of the item called the weather doll makes you think that. It's not that. It's actually a

health regent item. What it is is, I think when the weather is sunny, you hold it right side up and your health will regener, but then when it rains, you have to turn it upside down and then to keep the regent effect going. I don't know why it works like that, but that's what it is. It's very useful, but the description does not really accurately say what it is at all. I completely forgot about that. All right. But yeah, so not all the quests are ideal, but there are a lot of them in the game. And last stuff I have, we've talked about a bit of it before, But obviously the characters on their own schedules is a really cool thing. Like if you enjoy games like Majora's Mask, this is very much that, but even on a grander scale.

And you can learn a lot about the characters. And peeping is a very important part of the game, too, if you want to learn about the characters. And what I was doing on this playthrough was just like sort of learning about their domestic lives. Even though it wasn't important for the story, I was like, what do, let's say, Keith and Lily do when they get home? So what happens is Keith is a giant man baby, and he sits at the dinner table with the kids, and Lily basically does everything. She makes everybody dinner and then cleans up for everybody. Like that is an important part of their relationship that is not spoken that much, but it plays out in a way that makes sense according to their dynamic. And you don't have to even see that content to finish the game.

It's just something that's happening in the background, but if you look in the window, you can actually see it take place. Yeah, that's something that we hadn't mentioned yet, that whenever you go up to a window of a house or a building, you'll get a prompt that says peep, and then you can press the peep button, and York will peer into the window to see what's inside. And, you know, maybe it's like a bar or a restaurant, or maybe it's someone's house, maybe it's their bedroom, and you can look at what they're doing. And you can, yeah, you can see them doing some things that you will not have seen them doing otherwise because you would have been in the room. So you can see what they're up to when you're not there. And you can do this with any window for any building that you can go into, even if there's no one there, even if there's no one to be found. It's an option. And of course, you do want to spend as much time as you can doing this to increase your peeping times on the leaderboards, which the game totally has. I totally forgot about that. But yeah, like, for some reason, I would just so caught up in the non-important details of these characters' lives. Like, okay, here's what happens to Lily and Keith in the morning. Here's where the boys go.

Oh, they're left at home alone. That seems wrong. period of time before Lily gets home and just like all these little things I just enjoyed witnessing because someone had to put them in the game like this was not an accident that these characters lives were designed in such a way I just found it fascinating that's why I was mentioning before that I feel like maybe in the original vision of the game this might have been more important to be able to follow these characters and observe them in that way and sort of put clues together it feels like a lot of work was put into that for something that is totally missable yeah yeah not to go on too long about

like characters making dinner but I was doing a lot of watching of that just thinking like someone had to sit down and be like what does thomas make for dinner when does he make dinner how does he clean up what does he do after he cleans up when does he go to bed when does he get up for work all of these things are programmed into the game and they can change depending on the chapter there is so much thought put into this and that's one of the main reasons why this game is admirable it may seem very janky and broken in many ways it is but someone thought so much about these characters lives yeah everyone has a lot of personality there is everyone feels like a person like you mentioned Thomas, if you go into his apartment, it's spotless, it's clean.

His sister lives right next to him. You go in her apartments full of trash bags. I thought it was a funny touch. But yeah, everyone just has, everyone just feels kind of real. There's a lot behind. It feels like they're doing things when you're not there because they actually are. Yeah, I have no more things in the good category. Is there anything I'm missing or do you want to move on to some of the bad points we can talk about?

I think we can move on to bad points. Some things you need to know about this game is a complete mess. The frame rate is bad. the driving controls are bad and as I said earlier my game crashed about 20 times in 25 hours not normal at all but yeah that's just one of the qualities that points to a trouble production schedule a game that had to switch platforms a game that had to sort of switch genres even so that has never changed or really been improved upon and it feels like every new port brings new problems yeah something that I frequently say about the game is that it feels like the engine is being held together with bubble gum and dreams. The games they made after this used more standard engines. D4 used Unreal and the missing used Unity. Deadly Permanition, I don't know what it's using. I think it was something they may have made in house. And whatever it is, it does not port well because any version of the game that you can get today is full of its share of technical problems. And I guess it just must be

very difficult to actually iron them out. You mentioned the game crashing on Switch 20 times. And that's after the patch. Like, there was a patch that was released to fix some problems. Yeah, once it was worse. And again, save, save your game. Every time you can, it takes like one second to do. I'm sorry, go ahead.

And that's why I said that if you're going to play this game, it really is the best if you can get the 360 version. It was made backwards compatible on Xbox One. The only issue is that it turns out that it's not available digitally anymore on Microsoft Store. I think, I guess no one, maybe no one has the U.S. publishing rights to it anymore.

I'm not sure. Yeah, Ignition folded in 2012, so they weren't around very long after this game came out in America. Yeah, and apparently the game went down from the U.S. Xbox store in 2018, I think. It's still up in other regions, but not in the U.S. So you can't get it digitally. You would have to get the physical disc. But if you have a 360 or Xbox one, that still is the best version. Every other version of the game, you know, you're kind of testing your luck.

For me, the PC version ran all right. But for other people, they can't even get it started. Yeah, I think when I bought it in 2013, it crashed at the title screen. And I knew I was in for a problem there. So more bad points about this game. We've been talking a lot of talking it up. There are problems with the game. We talked about the action scenes.

They are a little tedious, but again, the game offers you a lot of tools to get through them in an easier way. One thing that marks this game as a 2010 game is there are QTEs. They're not too frequent, but they can be annoying. because they pop up very suddenly. But the good thing is the checkpoints in this game are very good. Right. And when you're talking about QTEs, I think that the one that most people think of is there's a certain QTE

where you have to wiggle the left analog stick back and forth to left and right to either dodge things or to run. There are segments in the game where you really have to do that for a while. Your thumb is going to get really sore by the end. There's a QTE right at the beginning in which if you, fail, you will die instantly, and many people do fail that QTE. It's at the end of the first combat section of the game. And I remember in the original 360 version, it did send you back quite a bit if you lost that QTE. In the director's cut in future versions, it was more generous

with where you had to start. But that is one that most people will probably lose the first time they see. So while there aren't too many QTEs, when they do appear, they can be difficult. At the timing on them and the demands of your thumb can be kind of kind of tight. And another thing that's in this game that is not ideal is the stealth scenes, which are very few in number, but again, it does point to a different version of this game and that the villain in this game is the raincoat killer. At times, he finds you in these action scenes and you have to hide from him. And what that amounts to is finding basically the one spot in a room that lets you hide and waiting there and occasionally pressing like the ZR button.

when you're prompted and then he leaves so i could see that you know being a very reductive version of a stealth mechanic that was in that original rainy woods game that is now just sort of uh very weak and not very well uh articulated in this game yeah it happens like maybe three times in the game i think and the first time it happens it is it is a bit tense because you don't know what's going on the game does this sort of split screen thing where you have the main screen and then you also have the another screen where you see the first person's perspective of the raincoat killer as walking around the room trying to find york and uh if the raincoat killer gets near york you do have to hold down in for the 361 i think it was right trigger to hold your breath

uh until walks away and first time it happens it's interesting because you don't know what's going on but then happens a couple more times in the game and it's like well okay i i know what this is I know what's happening. I think we can just get on with it. Also, in the console versions of the game, the performance just isn't there

to have two screens. Yeah, it's just not there. It's kind of cool the first time you see it, but then it's a bummer when you're like, I got to wait through this again to get back to the game.

But there is like what I see as like the beginning of a cool idea because when you enter those stealth scenes, you have your gameplay camera and then there's like a picture and picture with the raincoat killer's first person perspective.

and it feels a bit like were they trying to do a siren kind of gameplay siren being the survival horror game for the PS2 that sort of thing was that the idea for deadly premonition that you would see the perspective of the killer but not necessarily your own camera it seems like there was something more there because otherwise i don't see the point at there being a split screen i never heard of an idea that maybe you might do a sightjacking sort of thing like in siren that's that particular scene you're talking about does is kind of reminiscent about the that since you are seeing through his perspective. And it really doesn't happen any other time in the game. The concept of the investigator having some sort of psychic link with the killer, that is something that has been done in other forms of media. So if there was an idea that that might be implemented here, it wouldn't be that surprising. I had never heard of an idea that maybe that could have been implemented and maybe an earlier version of the game because certainly it doesn't really come up in the final. That is just my empty conjecture, and I'm glad it didn't end up being like Siren because I can't play Siren, and I'm glad you, let's played it, because that looks like a big pain in the ass to play through, and you have an entire full LP on your channel. It is, it is very difficult and very unique, and it does not care if you can get through it.

It does not care if you die. So a few more-Rem edition, much more forgiving. They want you to play through the game. I think Siren doesn't want you to. So a few more other things about the game that aren't so great. So, like, we talked about how, like, the action stuff was added late in development. And to me, that's apparent because the unique action areas are very front-loaded in that, like, you start the game in that forest section, and then you move on to the lumber mill. But it's seemingly after that, like, every, quote-unquote, dungeon in the game that you experience is just a reworked collection of assets of a regular environment that you've seen before.

Yeah, when you do go into a combat area. area. Basically the thing that announces that is the presence of red vines appearing everywhere. So like when you're in the hospital, at first you're just exploring the normal hospital, you're talking with people, you're looking for the doctor. Red vines appear and now you are in this alternate hospital that's full of tree roots and full of monstrous nurses. It is frequently the case that the combat area in the game will be a alternate version. of something that you had already experienced, which of course,

thinking of something like Silent Hill, that seems to be kind of where that idea came from, that there is a normal version of Greenvale, and this alternate red version of Greenvale. I wasn't sure where they were going with that when I first started playing the game, because, of course, the only one who notices this is York, and no one else seems to realize that anything is happening.

Yeah, they make good use. of it for the most part, but towards the end of the game, and I won't spoil anything, you go to the other world version of this one building, and then they're like, why don't you go back there? So they kind of use the same dungeon twice towards the end of the game, and the end of the game, I feel, is a bit weak just because it kind of, the action scenes are already front-loaded and back-loaded in this game, I feel, when there's a lot of, like, empty space in the middle for you to have fun and explore, and really the beginning and the end are just very linear and action focus, and those are the weakest parts of this game. Yeah, I see what you mean. I do know what, I do

remember the dungeon that you're talking about where you do it and then you leave and then you go back in yeah um yeah it is the case that there is in in deadly premonition as far as it being back loaded with action there is a point of no return and there is a point where it does tell you that it says you want to you have anything else you want to you want to do before you go in there is there anything else anything else and if you go in then yeah you are now on a linear path to the end there's no more exploration there's no more fun conversations with weird characters and going on side quests story is happening now we are doing this it is combat it is drama and shooting and you know if you really liked the more easy going parts of the game it's like well okay it's not really

action part is not really why i'm playing the game yeah the less than ideal part does take over towards the end and uh one of the last things i have and again it's hard to talk about this stuff without spoiling things, that it's something that I noticed upon this play-through, you know, having lived an additional 10 years, and it's something that I feel that Swery has gotten a lot better at doing. And I think that the treatment of both women and queer characters is not ideal, I would say. I don't think there's, like, a lot of hatred informing these choices, but I do feel like the pop culture influence on this game does sort of affect the treatment of those types of

characters. How do you feel about that? And again, it's hard to talk about this without saying, Well, you know, they treat women bad because of this, or they treat, they treat queer characters poorly because of this. Yeah, and you don't really want to name the characters that you're talking about. But I do know that when doing a play-through of the game, there's sort of a question of, what do you think Swery meant by this character here and the way this character was used? And those questions will come up when you play through deadly premonition.

I think as far as any sort of growth, Swery might have had, you can see if you play The Missing, which, again, I wouldn't really want to say why, because you don't really, I don't think someone should be spoiled if they're going to play that game either. It's a short game and very good if you don't know what is going to happen in it. But I think sort of those questions about maybe Swery's portrayal of maybe queer characters sort of gets, maybe a bit more wrapped up in the missing. Yeah, yeah. I haven't spoiled myself on that game and it's a game I've been wanting to play and I did buy but I've heard he has improved a lot in terms of that kind of storytelling in terms of those kind of characters

and that's great to hear and who knows what the future will hold for his future games but I think he's moving in the right direction and before we talk about what I call our pro tip section for this game one of the things that they even point out in the postmortem is that access games did not have an

audio department. And they had to outsource a lot of the audio to another third party. And that does explain a lot in terms of the bad choices in terms of mixing, in terms of sound effects. There's a lot going on audio-wise with the game that's not ideal. And I do think the game has good music. I do enjoy a lot of the pieces of music from the game. One I think is genuinely moving and touching. But the audio is pretty rough. And I think something that, you know, Swarie definitely learned a lot from this game in future games when it comes to addressing those issues. Yeah, well, first, I will say that I do really like the soundtrack as well, but there are some parts of the game where, well, the, maybe the most well-known cutscene in

the game is the breakfast scene in the hotel at the beginning, and the thing everyone takes away from it is wondering, is the music supposed to be drowning out the conversation? Is that deliberate? I don't know. And it's kind of hard to say. And yeah, there are issues with the audio as well as, like, something that really comes up now and again is there were different recording sessions there was the when they did recording the voice recording for um rainy woods and then they had to bring some people back when it changed

the deadly premonition because names changed and you can hear that you can hear when york will talk and you can tell if it's a rainy woods take or a deli premonition take basically anytime he says Zach, that's a deli premonition take because that name was changed. Anytime someone says York's name, that's a deli premonition take because that name had to be changed from what he originally was in Rainy Woods. So there is a different difference in sort of just the audio quality between those two takes and it really stands out, especially with Harry since he uses a, he has like a voice modulator and it's very different when you hear the two different takes. The voice sounds very different. Yeah, I do recall that from your

Let's Play, there being different audio, different takes on the audio and I guess it makes you think they probably recorded all this dialogue or most of it in 2006 or very, very early before this game came out. Yeah, I can't remember the details. I do remember Jeff Kramer saying that he did the

audio recording for Rainy Woods and then it was multiple years later that he was called back in because some of these lines had to be redone. So there was a certain number of years between these two these two recording sessions. Yeah and I know they didn't have a lot of time

obviously not a lot of money and I was reading about the recording and basically they had five days in San Diego to record 26 characters in a let's say 15 to 20 hour game I'm guessing if you want to get all the dialogue and audio and stuff like that so very good working against adversity especially Jeff Kramer doing a great job as York and he's coming back thankfully. Yes he is I'm very happy to hear that I mean we're going to have a whole new game full of New York dialogue and I'm very interested to hear it. So I've taken up a lot of your time today. I do want to talk about deadly premonition too really quick. But first, I want to give people pro tips about

this game that should help them get past the rough stuff. And please let me know if you have any of your own or how you feel about these. So my number one pro tip for this game is get the radio and one of the infinite weapons as soon as you can because these will help you not only move around the world quicker, but also get through the enemies faster to speed up the action scenes. Oh yeah. I would definitely agree with that especially the fast travel there's like two two side quests you need to do there's first the side quest where you get a dumbbell for for george and then later on you have to get a flower for him at his house and if you do if you do that he gives you the radio and now you can fast travel and it does make things a lot a lot faster and a lot smoother if you get it i do

definitely agree with that my next pro tip is uh this may sound strange but i swear it's not always be running when you are going through a door. Otherwise, the door opening animation is so slow and painful. So never open a door unless you're running towards the door. Yes, York has a very cautious animation when he opens the door normally. And then if you, if you're lucky, you happen to realize that if you're running at the door when you press the button to open it, he just slams through it full force, no stopping. It is much faster. He's very hot and cold when it comes to doors. Yes. My other Pro tip is there are lots of little what I would call cutscenes but aren't really cutscenes that you can skip with the start button. So like whenever you pick up an item, just hit the start button to skip the frame rate item spinning around. Whenever you get into a car, hit the start button to skip the animation of your getting into the car. There are so many little instances of this that really add up over time. Yeah, that is true that you might not realize you can skip those little presentation presentations of when it tells you you have an item. Other things I have are. if you want to just see what there is to do in the world.

I just open up your map and see where people are, and this shortcut existed on the 360 version and the PS3 version and PC, but there is a button you can use to sort of zap between locations on the map just to see where everyone is instead of scanning across the two zoomed-in map. I believe on the Wii, sorry, on the switch, it's the ZR button. You can just tap that to just jump between locations and just see where people are. And that's a good way to get started in the world if you're like, well, I don't know where to go.

It's so big. I don't know where people are. you can always know where people are in the world. York has that power somehow to always know where everyone is. That's correct. Not all the characters will be available at first, so right at the beginning, there will not be many characters. But as you go on into a few chapters,

more characters will be introduced, and eventually you will be able to see everyone on the map and their location at any time. So those are all my tips up front, and I feel like all of those things will help you get through some of the creakier aspects of the game. Is there anything I'm forgetting or anything you would personally recommend as to how to approach this game

and sort of overcome the negative qualities? Well, one specific point that I almost don't really want to give because I think it's funny if someone doesn't notice it. Your car does have health. You might want to notice that it does have a health meter and a gas meter in the lower right-hand corner. And if the health runs out to zero, you do appear in the hospital the next day,

so interrupting whatever you were doing. And if you run out of the gas, then that car just is not moving and you're going to have to walk to wherever you were going. I do think it's funny if someone gets caught off guard with that, but it's good to know that that's there. But just in general, as far as how to enjoy deadly premonition, as we said, I think it's just an attitude thing of just realizing this is not really a survival horror game. The action is there.

The action is not the main attraction. The main attraction is the open world in exploring and just looking in all like the little corners here and there to see what you find and the people that you talk to. And it's, you mentioned that you found it relaxing the play. And that's basically the attitude to take tours. It's just a relaxing thing. You're going to spend some time in, spend some time on your little vacation in Greenvale, and on occasion, you're going to investigate a murder mystery.

It happens. So to wrap up with you, I just wanted to talk briefly about Deadly Premonition 2. That's the reason I replayed this game. That's the reason I'm doing this podcast and having you want to talk about it. And I've kind of been in a media blackout. I watched the original trailer that came out last year,

and that's all I needed to know. I want to know, what are your thoughts on the game? It's out in the world that people are listening to this, but pre-release, like, what are your thoughts in the game? What do you want it to be? And what do you know about the game that excites you? So I should have mentioned that the premise of the game is that it's both prequel and sequel. It seems like the main part of the game is an earlier case of York.

He's investigating a murder case in New Orleans, I think. This, of course, takes place before Deadly Prem, Edition 1. And then there is a segment that takes place in the modern day where you have some other FBI agents who are trying to discover facts about. that old case that York was on. I don't know how these two things are going to tie together, but that seems to be the basic format of how this story is going to go.

As far as what I want from Deadly Permanition to, well, I mean, obviously everything that we were saying that we considered to be good about the first game, such as the characters, the conversations, and the dialogue, that sense of exploration. I do hope all that is felt in this new game. I don't know what the budget of this new game is going to be like or what the size of it is like,

but I hope that this aspect does carry over. I would hope that as far as what you do in terms of investigating and combat, I don't know what kind of combat there's going to be. I don't know if there are guns. I don't know what you do with enemies, but I am hoping that whatever means you have to deal with enemies is more polished and maybe a bit more interesting

than the combat that we had in the first game. I don't know if that might mean that a stealth mechanic might play a bigger part holding your breath. Could that come back? Could that play a part? I don't know. But I am hoping for a bit more, just a bit more polish in the moment-to-moment movement and combat is just basically what I'm hoping for. Yeah, me too. I'm totally with you on that. And like some part of me worried at some point in time, like, oh, if there is a deadly premonition to, what if it's not as charming because it will actually have production values and, you know, more polish? But I think in the passing years, we've seen. sweary games that do have more polish and are more quote unquote professional and the charm is still there like d4 doesn't crash it looks good it doesn't have all of the audio issues or the frame rate issues and it's still a very charming swery game and i think we don't like the low production value

was just one aspect of what made that game interesting deadly premonition but i think you don't need that to make an interesting game the the kind of jankiness that was a a fun aspect of the original yeah and that's why i said back at the beginning of this that it only agree with the idea that deadly premonition is so bad that it's good. I don't think that the low budget or the janky technical aspects are the like the things you're looking for in deli premonition. I think that the parts that are good of denly premonition are genuinely good. And I would like to see a version of that game, but with the rough edges smoothed over. So can we assume that you will be streaming the game or is that a wishful thinking? I am primarily streaming things now,

but you were talking about the old LP that I did. So I am going to just play it in my own time and then like do an actual LP of it later. Awesome. So we've reached the end of the podcast. Thank you so much for your time. I've been wanting to speak with you for a while. Back in the one-up days when I was trying to spread the word about let's plays, you briefly started a Shadows of the Damned Let's Play for One Up and that was how we first got in contact with each other. But I contacted you nine years later and you still wanted to talk to me. So thank you so much. No, I'm glad that you contacted me. I'm always happy to talk about Dilley Permanition. had a good time.

And throughout quarantine, which has been going on for almost four months now, I have basically just been going through all of your old let's plays. Again, just as like either background audio or nighttime viewing, it's been a delight for me. And I want you to tell everybody out there what your channel is, where we can find it, and the kind of things you do there, because I love the different kinds of games you play and you let's play and you stream.

Well, my username is super great friend, S-U-P-E-A-T-F-R-I-E-N-D. That's the name on YouTube. on Twitch, it's the same name but take away the D super great friend. That's primarily where I'm doing stuff on YouTube and Twitch.

Mostly whenever I do a game, there's not really a consistent theme, but I do tend to like more obscure games, games that maybe that I'm attracted to because of the same reason I was attracted to Dully Premonition in that this is this smaller game,

it's lesser known, but it has a lot of heart to it. Clearly, the developers put a lot of love into this. That's kind of the, the kind of game that really does attract my attention. Like I said, it's what I play is not always consistent. I do play a lot of horror, survival horror, maybe visual novels. Recently, I've been playing some of the games from Itchio's racial justice bundle. I've been playing through some of that. And actually, what I'm about to be starting, well, by the time you post this, it will have started,

but I'm actually about to start a let's play of Siren 2. Oh, wow. Okay. That's been something I felt like I should reach out and request, although I'm sure you would find that irritating, but I've been waiting for someone to play through Siren, too, because it just seems the series is too intimidating, and I just appreciated the fact that, again, you went through that first game in such exquisite detail. And frankly, you deserve, like, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, I think, for doing that. Yeah, but Siren, even though it's very different from the deadly premonition, it's still like, it's still a similar idea of, okay, they made a game that they were passionate about, even though a lot of people weren't going to like it. It probably wasn't

going to sell very much, but they made the game they believed in. And it's, it stands out as something different and i think it does succeed at that even though it's real intimidating for a lot of people awesome i am looking forward to that so thanks again to super great friend for being on the show it was a great discussion and i'm sure he'll be back for more and please subscribe to his youtube channel obviously it is super great friend uh as of this recording he is doing that siren too let's play it's been a lot of fun i'm currently watching it now and it's a great game to experience vicariously uh not having to play a very very difficult survival horror game is the best way to experience that. So as for us, thanks again for listening if you want to support the show

and get all these episodes one week ahead of time and add free. Please go to patreon.com slash retronauts and sign up at the $3 level and you'll get just that. But also, if you want two exclusive episodes every month, that is two episodes that will never be available on the free feed. Please go to patreon.com slash retronauts and sign up for five bucks a month and you'll get early access, ad free episodes plus again, two exclusive episodes that won't be on the free feed. This is something that we started in 2020. So as of now, I'm guessing there are probably 12 or 13 Patreon-only full-length episodes you can only get for being a $5 patron. And once you sign up, those are all unlocked for you immediately. So again, that is

the $5 reward for patreon.com slash retronauts. And of course, you can find this online on Twitter as at Retronauts. And as for me, I have been your host for this one, Bob Mackey. I am on Twitter as at Bob Servo. And I have other podcasts outside of Retronauts that are not about video games that they're about old stuff like old Simpsons and old cartoons and those are Talking Simpsons and what a cartoon. Find those wherever you find podcasts or go to patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons, sign up there for again early access to those episodes and also lots of exclusive episodes over 100 exclusive episodes behind the $5 paywall.

That includes everything we've done for the past three years on that Patreon and that includes all of our limited miniseries. The most recent one is Talking Mission Hill. We're at the very end of that. We've been having a lot of fun going through the only season of Mission Hill. using our very in-depth format. I think you'll really enjoy it. So again, that is patreon.com

slash Talking Simpsons. Thanks again for listening, folks. We will see you very soon for another episode of Retronauts. Take it easy. La La La La La La La La La La La La La La La La La La La La La La La La La La La La La La La La La La La La La La La La La La La La La La La La La La La La La La Laa.