Steam Next: The Good Life

 Well I'll be.

And now onto the game that I was excited about. Here's one title that I didn't browse by in a list and didn't hear somebody blurt out over the internet, no, this was a game that I knew was coming, already had wishlisted and was just waiting for the drop date. In fact, the only thing I didn't know was that it would be getting a demo on the Steam Next fest. That was a surprise to me, and a rather pleasant one as it turns out because I got to play the thing which sporadically caught my fancy for a split second and confirm my suspicions about it. (And blossom whole new expectations as I went) So this finale to the Steam Next saga doesn't quite end on 'exploration' like it started, but on 'affirmation'. Something I already hoped and wanted to be good turned to be good, who'd a thunk it? Oh, and this blog is totally redundant because the game has already been out for a week now, but considering the demo is pretty much just the first few chapters anyway, consider this my early thoughts on the game. (I'm probably mid playing the full game when this drops anyway)

This is a game that I've latched onto purely because it is my personal recompense for the death of a game I wanted to come out years ago. That's right, Hidetaka "Swery" Suehiro owes me for never bringing me the latter half of the murder mystery game that swept my attention and imagination all those years ago: Dark Dreams Don't Die. (Or D4) I wish I had time to explain to you why D4 was so insane, and needed to have more to it, but unfortunately that would take up an entire blog. (And require me to replay the thing which I'm not entirely sure I have the mental fortitude to endure) Most people know this legendary writer (who seems to always write murder mysteries) for his work on Deadly Premonition, but I'm the outlier, I guess. I want more D4, and The Good Life is going to have to do.

It makes for a decent replacement, given that The Good Life is a game set in my very own backyard for the sleepy English village backdrop that Swery chose. Whatsmore, this game promises to be a charming semi life-simulator game that mixes up the very closely tied concepts of 'big city girl (New York) comes to small town', 'Murder mystery' (obviously) and 'the town's inhabitants anthropomorphise into cats and dogs at night and it's happening to me too'.  (What what?) Yeah, Suehiro is known for his, quite frankly, insane ideas for games and concepts that fuels his creativity and is probably the reason why there are no less than two pictures of him wearing a fake handlebar moustache with an owl on his arm. (That's... that is true. Look it up.)

But what grabbed me about this game was just how English it is, and proved to be. You get your 'anywhere, America' settings all the time in oddball games, Deadly Premonition, Alan Wake, Dead Rising 2's prequel game, but the only 'anywhere, UK' game I can think of is literally just 'Everyone's gone to the rapture'. And that game's boring. This is a title made for me, with all of the questionable affectations which makes us Brits just wince in- appreciation? Let's go with appreciation. And it works so well because, as anyone who lives down here can attest, all our villages do, in fact, look identical to one another, and Swery's studio has done a great job in nailing that eerie uniformity down to a tee. (If I wasn't playing a game, I'd be looking for the nearest flatbed ride out of this obviously haunted town in a jiffy.)

As it stands, the game follows a journalist coming to discover the secret of this sleepy nowhere town whilst simultaneously doing some freelance instagram work to help pay off her- hang on, I can't be reading this right. It says here "£30 million debt". That's correct? What did she do- get caught selling a weapon of mass destruction to a foreign super power? And she expects to pay that off with Instagram money? Is she high? Regardless, here are your driving motivations for the game and seeing as they morph into the paranormal in no time flat, Swery is on his usual crazy A game for this title. Thus the game really set's itself up as a journey of existing in a town full of colourful, sometimes oddly stereotyped, characters (the barkeep seems a bit old to be dressing up like a 90's punk girl) and going on a photography massacre across the pretty bubbly scenery. Bliss.

For me the whole 'routine' aspect of the game actually reminds me vaguely of Persona and a lot more directly of Stardew Valley. Don't get me wrong, there is a central story that the game wants you to attack, but it's built so that you'll remember to wash in the morning, plant something in your garden on your way out the door, wander about for a bit to see a perfect picture waiting to be taken, get a drink at the local pub at some point, kick the local child in the face, (just me?) basically just live your life inbetween the murder investigations. When the main quest does rear it's head, however, it typically comes alongside pressing time constraints that shatter the sleepy atmosphere of the rest of the game quite sharply. (Also, the one's I've seen so far all seem to be basic fetch quests. I assume the main game has a bit more variety. Hopefully.)

And then there's the whole 'animal transformation' part of the game which looks to be pretty significant but I can't for the life of me see how it fits into everything else. I mean, the game itself offers tutorials on stuff like 'some people are more cat people and others are more dog people' and how picking a side will effect relationships or something- all of which feels like it would be main game focusing stuff, but Swery wants it as an addition. Truly this man is on some different stuff. But with all of these moving cogs working in the machine, the effect is a game that feels deep in the most surprising of places and almost endearingly uneven in others.

Of course, these are again just initial impressions from some time playing a demo and the full experience is sure to have a few more surprises up it's sleeve, but when at the whims of a creative mind like Suehiro's it's important to know that on some basic level you're onboard with the mindbending trip you're about to embark on and for this premise I am. That's something you're going to have to come to terms with yourself too before even considering this game, because otherwise you're signing up to a game with a director who has a Yakuza-style tattoo of a monkey on his back. I'm talking whole-back, real Yakuza stuff, must have hurt like hell. Also, given that this game is the first being made by his new indie studio, I suppose we can expect a lot more weird ideas like this coming from the man over the years, like maybe he'll be able to try and make that one game idea that publishers told him he couldn't do because it was too perverted. How bad could it be? Hmm? It was about a high school detective girl who tries to solve a murder my utilising the imagination-power fuelled by her masturbation? I take it back. Swery needs to be stopped.

Deadly Premonition 2... really?

Oh god, the migraines are already starting!

One benefit of looking over brand new games is the chance to see grand new ideas based on things that you'd have never imagined getting a game. There's so many fresh and new concepts that are bouncing around the collective minds of humanity every single day that never see the light of day, so for something unique to get a spotlight is really a situation to celebrate. So with all that in mind, why in the fresh hell are we getting a 'Deadly Premonition 2'? Are we truly that far gone as a community, as a society of creative folk, that we have come around to making a sequel out of the weird, and bad, cult game from Hidetaka Suehiro? And why, oh why, do I want to play it so badly? Why do my very cells yearn to subject myself to an experience that made me feel physically ill the first time around. (That was due to monotonous visuals, by the by, and not some ingeniously grotesque imagery.) Bear with me as I try and figure myself out.

For those unfamiliar with his work, Hidetaka Suehiro is a Japanese developer and writer who has become somewhat famous for his frankly insane storylines and plotthreads, even for a Japanese game developer. These are often coupled with baffling scripts, call back lines, running themes and gameplay choices for good measure. When I first came across his work, it was all the way back in 2015 when I picked up his succinctly named game D4, or how I was introduced to it; 'Dark Dreams Don't Die'. What I discovered was a heavily narrative driven short story that straddled the line between a serious thread about a detective who lost his wife due to a psychedelic new drug, and the same man who has the ability to travel back into the past using items he calls 'memento's only to find himself unable to change anything. He desperately attempts to break the rules of his odd time travel to prove his actions have consequence and maybe even save his wife somewhere down the line. Oh, and also the new drug has the power to turn people into roid-monsters straight out of Cowboy Bebop. And there's a side quest that revolves around finding a map in order to prove to a flight attendant that the capital of Brazil isn't Rio de Janeiro but rather Brasilia. (I wish those three sentences captured even an ounce of that game's full weirdness.)

Of course, I never managed to be subjected to the full experience of a Hidetaka narrative, as D4 was to be released in episodes... until it wasn't anymore. I still don't know what happened, they just stopped communicating with anyone and confirmed several years later that there wouldn't be a second episode. (Or third if you count that prologue episode. Which I certainly don't.) So I was left with giving his other, much more famous, title a try and it was... oh god, it was certainly something special. 'Deadly Premonition' is an experiment of what would happen if you wrote a script whilst on acid, and somehow the final product isn't a complete train wreck. Or rather it is, but in a manner that is weirdly playable. I'm not even sure if this title fits in the 'so bad it's good' category, because I'm not convinced that the title fails at achieving anything that it attempts. You may have noticed that I'm being very non-specific about my time with DP, and that's because I'm even more at a loss to describe it, (and I never finished it) so you'll have to hit up someone else for a full plot breakdown.

Everyone who gets through one of these titles is inevitably hit with an existential crisis as they come to terms with the fact that their world view will never be so roundly challenged again. At no other point in a person's life are they going to be locked into a serious conversation about the moral leanings of a cup of coffee. (Did that conversation even actually happen in the game, or am I just remembering a serious stroke?) Nevermore will you be forced to drive somewhere in real time with the only obstacle in your way being a suspiciously easy-to-drain gas tank. (Unless you ever play Mafia 2, in which case your gas tank is literally the final boss of Act 1.) So you can understand why the general public mostly decided to file 'Deadly Premonition' away as a once in a lifetime experience that can never be recaptured or relived. But now they're making a sequel.

It's almost fitting for a game that hails from a franchise this uncomfortably indefinable to be announced by way of Nintendo Direct rather than through traditional trailers. In fact, it's been several months since that reveal and we still have little more to go on regarding this title over than a curious sizzle-reel accompanied by the jaunty voice of the Nintendo voice-over guy. (Just doesn't really set the mood right, now does it?) However, one benefit of this turn of events is that we don't have to shift through confusing trailers in order to figure out what we're seeing, we have a mascot from a kid-friendly game developer to explain to us the intricacies of this serial killer centric-story.

So in keeping with the theme of 'Quantum Leap' meets 'Silence of the Lambs', Deadly Premonition will follow two stories separated by fourteen years. One plot line will take place with FBI Agent Aaliyah Davis holding an interview with a serial killer in an abandoned apartment in Boston. (Hang on, isn't Dark Dreams Don't Die set in Boston? And doesn't that apartment strangely resemble David Young's? I smell a crossover...) Meanwhile, fourteen years in the past the player will also be following the journeys of Francis York Morgan, back from the first game, right dab in the middle of New Orleans. His investigation won't just be tied to the modern day story, either, but apparently back to the original title in what's shaping up to be a grand wrap up of loose story threads that I assume exist because I never finished the original. (Crucify me, whatever.)

The rest of the trailer consists of a brief run-through of screen shots that I can best describe as 'interesting'. These include a brief first person shot of York (presumably) riding a boat through the bayou (When in New Orleans...) and a hellish Silent Hill-esque dreamscape in which he faces off against an obscure monstrosity that appears to have a coffin chained to it's back. (So everything looking as normal as these games get.) If there is one sticking point that I have to point out, and I hate to do this, it's the graphics. I mean what am I looking at in 2020? D4 sort of managed to brag off having lower gen graphics by being stylised, but this game looks like it came out the week after the first game. (Which was literally 10 years ago.) I understand that visual fidelity isn't really the point here, (or really fidelity in any aspect aside from gas consumption) but these aren't exactly visually demanding games, it wouldn't have killed the team to shoot for 1080p textures at least. (And don't give me anything about "The Nintendo Switch's capabilities", that thing can run 'The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt')

That's all there is to tide fans over for now, but I'd imagine that there may be some more exciting info heading this way in an upcoming Nintendo Direct. (Or at least I hope there is, Mr. Suehiro doesn't seem to operate through normal marketing rules so literally anything is game at this point.) Although I must say there already is some strange force within me that's attracting me to this title, even when everything should be pulling me away. I just can't shake the feeling that avoiding this title would be one of the biggest mistakes of my life, and I have enough of those racked up already. So perhaps it's time I dusted out my copy of 'Deadly Premonition' (Digital copy, but what are you gonna do) and finally push myself forwards to completion. Maybe I'll even make a blog about it. Who knows anymore, I clearly don't.