I swear, I didn't mean for five days to go by AGAIN.
So Twin Mirror is all about this scruffy white dude investigating his BFF's murder. And he has that very traditional manpain backstory about leaving his hometown in disgrace and becoming, idk, Ewan McGregor at the end of Moulin Rouge. He is, of course, a writer. A journalist, technically. And I found it very disappointing to see Dontnod go from telling stories about queer girls who were allowed to be magical hot messes and people of colour who were allowed to be magical hot messes to White Dude Writing While Angsty. He's also a hot mess, but not in a way that makes me care about him. Mostly I just resented him for wasting my time.
And it isn't like this can't be done well, even today. Look at Joel from The Last of Us. He's distilled scruffy white guy with angst and I still really loved his story! That said: I feel, overall, that this story has been told over and over and over and over. We can tell other people's stories now.
I can't remember any of their names so I'm going to refer to the main character as Haircut because that's all he was to me. So Haircut comes back to town for BFF's funeral and discovers that BFF had started dating his ex. Which just did not sit well with me, I feel like that was breaking all sort of social propriety codes. It made it hard to sympathise with Ex or BFF, even when the story tried to pain Haircut as an asshole for leaving town and therefore not entitled to feel hurt about this? Honestly, I love a good love triangle when a) people behave like adults who recognise feelings are not rational but we can control how we respond to them; or b) no one ends up together. This managed to be all of those and also none of them because everyone acts like robots. In my ending, it's implied Haircut and Ex get back together and I guess she just pings from warm body to warm body without much agency. Fine, whatever.
A large part of the emotional crux of the story is Haircut's relationship with BFF's daughter, who is called Bug. That just seems mean but whatever. She's twelve or something. And she is a horrible little girl. She is so rude to her mother, to Haircut, to basically everyone she talks to. I generally have a high tolerance for this sort of thing: I had no issues with Chloe or Rachel, I only got mildly irritated with Daniel's brattiness, but - this child. I wanted to dump her on the side of the road and drive away. She yells at Haircut for moving, as if her father's friend owes her anything - hint, he fucking doesn't - and then manipulates him into investigating BFF's death. I hated every moment she was on screen.
Also, no spoilers, but the mystery that drove the story was really generic and the conclusion to Who Did Crime felt super half-assed. It did not have one tenth of the emotional impact of Jefferson's murder spree. Not only was the reveal of the murderer super blah, but - in LiS, I cared about finding Rachel's murderer because I cared about Chloe. I did not care about Haircut, so I certainly didn't care about solving the mystery a horrid monster child browbeat him into investigating.
The game had all these little events concerning Haircut's mental health, which - okay, I can give the game some mild props for being willing to address mental health as a factor of life. But the little minigames themselves were basically Max's Nightmare Sequence on steroids. They were not fun, they were infuriating. I get that they were meant to be representative of Haircut's mental struggles but I have such mixed feelings about allegorical interactivity. If it's done well, I can deal. This was an atrocious execution. I wanted to throw my controller across the room multiple times.
I did like Haircut's imaginary therapist. And I did somehow get the perfect ending on my first and only playthrough. According to PSN, less than 3% of players have gotten that, so... go me?
no subject
So Twin Mirror is all about this scruffy white dude investigating his BFF's murder. And he has that very traditional manpain backstory about leaving his hometown in disgrace and becoming, idk, Ewan McGregor at the end of Moulin Rouge. He is, of course, a writer. A journalist, technically. And I found it very disappointing to see Dontnod go from telling stories about queer girls who were allowed to be magical hot messes and people of colour who were allowed to be magical hot messes to White Dude Writing While Angsty. He's also a hot mess, but not in a way that makes me care about him. Mostly I just resented him for wasting my time.
And it isn't like this can't be done well, even today. Look at Joel from The Last of Us. He's distilled scruffy white guy with angst and I still really loved his story! That said: I feel, overall, that this story has been told over and over and over and over. We can tell other people's stories now.
I can't remember any of their names so I'm going to refer to the main character as Haircut because that's all he was to me. So Haircut comes back to town for BFF's funeral and discovers that BFF had started dating his ex. Which just did not sit well with me, I feel like that was breaking all sort of social propriety codes. It made it hard to sympathise with Ex or BFF, even when the story tried to pain Haircut as an asshole for leaving town and therefore not entitled to feel hurt about this? Honestly, I love a good love triangle when a) people behave like adults who recognise feelings are not rational but we can control how we respond to them; or b) no one ends up together. This managed to be all of those and also none of them because everyone acts like robots. In my ending, it's implied Haircut and Ex get back together and I guess she just pings from warm body to warm body without much agency. Fine, whatever.
A large part of the emotional crux of the story is Haircut's relationship with BFF's daughter, who is called Bug. That just seems mean but whatever. She's twelve or something. And she is a horrible little girl. She is so rude to her mother, to Haircut, to basically everyone she talks to. I generally have a high tolerance for this sort of thing: I had no issues with Chloe or Rachel, I only got mildly irritated with Daniel's brattiness, but - this child. I wanted to dump her on the side of the road and drive away. She yells at Haircut for moving, as if her father's friend owes her anything - hint, he fucking doesn't - and then manipulates him into investigating BFF's death. I hated every moment she was on screen.
Also, no spoilers, but the mystery that drove the story was really generic and the conclusion to Who Did Crime felt super half-assed. It did not have one tenth of the emotional impact of Jefferson's murder spree. Not only was the reveal of the murderer super blah, but - in LiS, I cared about finding Rachel's murderer because I cared about Chloe. I did not care about Haircut, so I certainly didn't care about solving the mystery a horrid monster child browbeat him into investigating.
The game had all these little events concerning Haircut's mental health, which - okay, I can give the game some mild props for being willing to address mental health as a factor of life. But the little minigames themselves were basically Max's Nightmare Sequence on steroids. They were not fun, they were infuriating. I get that they were meant to be representative of Haircut's mental struggles but I have such mixed feelings about allegorical interactivity. If it's done well, I can deal. This was an atrocious execution. I wanted to throw my controller across the room multiple times.
I did like Haircut's imaginary therapist. And I did somehow get the perfect ending on my first and only playthrough. According to PSN, less than 3% of players have gotten that, so... go me?
tl;dr don't play it
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