That Tune Is His Mind Control Music.

[rionaleonhart]

Here is a genuine thought I had a couple of nights ago:

Perhaps I should write fanfiction about Derren Brown's hammering-a-nail-up-his-nose act. But how am I supposed to write convincingly about that if I don't know how it feels? I suppose I'll have to NO WAIT NO THIS IS A VERY BAD IDEA.


Speaking of bad ideas, one spawned in a recent exchange with emmarrrrr:

emmarrrrr: (regarding Dissidia: Final Fantasy) You don't control Jecht - Jecht uses his manliness to make you input the moves he wants to use!
rionaleonhart: The idea of the character controlling the player is a rather interesting one. Although I suppose it wouldn't make for a terribly good game. (That is exactly what would happen in Derren Brown: The Videogame.)

So! Derren Brown: The Videogame. It has all sorts of different story paths, but it turns out that programming them in was entirely pointless, because Derren will always manipulate your choices to ensure his preferred outcome. You'll replay it in the hope of getting the 'arrested for fraud' ending this time and realise halfway through that, for reasons you can't quite place, you're taking all the actions that lead to the 'world conquest, intimate relationship with David Tennant and all the broken glass you can eat' ending again.

Whenever you interact with another character, Derren's internal voice quietly analyses all their language and behaviour in the background. Because Derren may claim to 'switch off' his analytical powers in day-to-day life, but it is so much more fun to assume he can't.

You barely need to touch the controls, of course, because the main character can read your intentions. Most of which he has carefully planted himself. Despite its quite clearly being a terrible concept for a game, it somehow achieves perfect scores in every magazine and on every review site, and even Yahtzee sings its praises.

Also, the ending credits send the player into a catatonic trance, just in case Derren is short on volunteers for his more disturbing television sequences and needs to resort to kidnapping.

Even knowing this, you're going to buy the game.


Mr Brown has been using his Twitter more in the past couple of days, which pleases me. My favourite of his tweets has to be the thousandth:

1000th tweet! Omgomg! Ok, here we go... I'm gay! God, that's so much better. Huge cloud lifted.

With the initial rather low-key 'by the way, I'm gay' mention in the Independent, and the Sun's later 'EXCLUSIVE: DERREN BROWN IS GAY, A FACT THAT WE ARE SURE DID NOT BECOME PUBLIC KNOWLEDGE HALF A YEAR AGO (LOOK, LEAVE US ALONE, WE REALLY WANTED TO MAKE THAT "MIND BENDER" PUN)', I think Derren Brown's thousandth tweet is actually the third time he has come out. Perhaps he is going for some sort of record.

Comments

[rionaleonhart]

I do love that bit. Derren, you creepy man.

[amy-wolf.livejournal.com]

He does it more than once! And he has Angela kidnapped, tied up, and pushed in a lake! And he's so polite about it! He's like a freakishly considerate kidnapper!

[rionaleonhart]

Derren is really sweet to her, and somehow that just makes it more disturbing. Terrifying man. I was impressed by how calm she was.

[amy-wolf.livejournal.com]

Yes. She seemed, understandably, a bit rattled by "Strangers are hovering over your bed demanding you change into a wetsuit so they can tie you up", but when it got to being shoved in a lake, she was incredibly calm.

The sweetness of it all does make it considerably scarier, yes.