DONTNOD Entertainment has had a very good run lately, earning the particular devotion of adventure game fans with its two best-selling Life Is Strange games. After the bankruptcy of Telltale Games in 2018, DONTNOD’s approach to third-person narrative-driven experiences helps fuel the notion that this particular gaming niche yet has legs to it, with unique choices of characters and topics that set it mostly apart from the adventure games of the past. Twin Mirror can’t help but seem like something of a departure, only in the sense that it presents some more recognizable cues and conflicts and, unfortunately, what seems like a potentially bland main character to control.
In a short guided demo presentation that Screen Rant was able to participate in, we are introduced to Sam, an investigative journalist returning to the scene of… well, not any apparent crime, but definitely the shame and pain of his past. He grew up in Basswood, West Virginia, and his hometown seems rich with closet skeletons for him to contend with; interestingly, returning to a hometown was a facet of Life is Strange as well. When Sam wanders onto a scenic overlook on his approach to Basswood, memories visually manifest, replaying a humiliating marriage proposal denied. Today, it seems like he’s here for the funeral of a departed friend, but Sam loses himself in his "mind palace" and actually outright misses the event (and yes, he seems sober).
Twin Mirror trades the pop recognizability of Life Is Strange’s well-trod Pacific Northwest landscape for WV, with a white male blue-eyed character full of quirks and curiously realized delusions. While the BBC’s lauded series Sherlock hasn’t been on TV in years, it’s impossible not to recall it when the game’s mind palace mechanic is revealed in the demo. Essentially, at certain stages—it’s not clear whether this mechanic is actually activatable at will—the player will navigate a crystalline fantasy world with frozen memories available to trigger and explore. It doesn’t represent a huge portion of the demo and it’s unclear as to how much Sam’s mind palace will factor into the finished game, but it’s jarring and seems to pull the player completely out of the experience. It looks pretty, but practical application of it beyond just filling in plot details is unclear at this point.
The second wrinkle in Twin Mirror’s gameplay is The Double, a genuinely odd character who presents as a kind of imaginary friend who only Sam can see. In a scene where Sam has a dramatic conversation with his young goddaughter Joan in a car, The Double appears in the back seat and talks Sam through making a specific binary choice (apparently he appears to coach him through “social situations?”). Following their unheard conversation, the player can choose to follow Sam's instinct or The Double's suggestions. It’s all frankly jarring to witness, especially without any preparation or justification, and who exactly The Double is—hallucination, ideated invisible friend, mystical involvement—is, of course, not outrightly stated by DONTNOD thus far. He doesn’t exactly look like Sam, though, potentially dismissing any Twin Peaks/Deadly Premonition twin theories, although duality is a central focus of the plot, as indicated by the title.
The small area of the world we get to see looks to have plenty of interactive potential and commentary, with Sam remarking on most any readable text or contextual input. The character also seems more than a bit stiff and uninteresting, though, with the main emotional pain the aforementioned memory of a botched proposal. Not to say that this matter won’t be relatable to some, but it wouldn’t hold muster in powering through an entire character arc. The recalled scene as shown also seems stiff and clumsy, definitely intended to invite sympathy for the character but missing a coherent ingredient that travels beyond cliché.
Medication also appeared in the demo, with two prescription bottles filled with *something* slotted in the cup holder of Sam's car. Whether he's an addict or taking a medically prescribed and administered drug has not been revealed, but seems to imply the potential of a mental health component that is being considered for the character. If so, that's a tricky and rarely well-done story inclusion in gaming, so we're interested to finally find out what Sam's pills are all about.
Visually and aurally speaking, Twin Mirror's looks to be coming along nicely. While Basswood doesn't look drastically different than the PNW in the only gameplay we've seen, the landscape looks great. The aforementioned bar scene looks moody and suspenseful, and the mind palace looks like...well, it looks more like a floating collection of crystal islands than any kind of palace, but contrasts nicely with the dusky light of West Virginia. The soundtrack in the demo was excellent, as well as the voice actors' line delivery, although the script's intentions aren't clear enough to comment on at the moment.
Of course, this was just a preliminary peek at Twin Mirror, and mixing up mind palaces with imaginary friends and murder investigations still seems like a promising combination. While Life Is Strange’s time-warping mechanics are immediately more interesting than what we’ve seen so far in this newest game, DONTNOD’s potential for intimate storytelling may persevere in a new and rarely-seen locale for a personal video game drama about an unresolved past.
Twin Mirror will release later this year on PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One.