https://www.cybersport.ru/games/articles/obzor-twin-mirror-samyi-banalnyi-detektiv-kotoryi-nevozmozhno-vykinut-iz-golovy

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Like Life is Strange, just the opposite

“The main character, after a long departure, returns to his native provincial town, with the help of a unique power he saves others and investigates a mysterious case, simultaneously restoring relations with loved ones whom he left.” What game are you talking about – Life is Strange or Twin Mirror? In fact, this description fits both. Indeed, the synopsis of the titles are quite similar, and you can find certain intersections in the characters’ images and dialogues. However, on a semantic level, these are two directly opposite games.

Life is Strange tried, first of all, to evoke emotions in the gamer, to make them empathize with all the characters. And she really did it: the posthumous message of the secondary bad-guy character Nathan is one of the most dramatic episodes in the game. Life is Strange breathed with naivety, it pushed through nostalgia and seemed to resurrect fragmentary pictures of your own first love, youth, the feeling of that very freedom and fullness of life with all the inherent teenage experiences. Twin Mirror could not or did not want to build a similar emotional connection with the player – she focused on a more adult reflection on life priorities, happiness and self-identification.

Instead of romantic affection for Chloe from Life is Strange, in Twin Mirror there is only torment about a broken relationship with ex-girlfriend Anna. Instead of teenage dreams of the future – constantly digging into past mistakes. Therefore, Twin Mirror does not charm, like Life is Strange, but beats its face against reality. However, there is a catch – if you want to get rid of rosy teenage fantasies and talk to your audience about something serious, the story has to match, and this Twin Mirror cannot boast of.

A banal detective, better than even TV series

Life is Strange was also built around a simple detective story, but when the emphasis is on emotions and feelings, the plot twist is not that important. But the sober and thoughtful Twin Mirror needed a strong story. In the end, as a detective, she came out almost weaker than Life is Strange. The investigation around which the Twin Mirror is built would be more suitable for a passing episode of some police series like “Castle” or “Mentalist”. Although even in these shows, the scriptwriters often surprise or confuse the viewer. It turns out that the main storyline of Twin Mirror is less meaningful than a 45-minute episode of a TV show, for which, moreover, you will not have to pay more than RUB2K.

For all the questions that a gamer faces in Twin Mirror, the developers instantly offer intelligible and clear answers, without even giving us a chance to doubt whether we are taking the character there. Why did our best friend die? How exactly did this happen? We don’t even need to investigate ourselves, the authors just lead us in a straight line. Sometimes it looks completely absurd – even the name of the killer is told to us by the very first guy whom we begin to interrogate. By the way, the whole investigation of the hero took exactly one day, half of which he spent in his subconscious, analyzing his past life.

The problem with the detective component of Twin Mirror is not only in its simplicity and straightforwardness, but also in its presentation. There are not so many good games in this genre, and most of them are not able to create a coherent and logical story. However, they are often great at intriguing the player in the early stages of the passage, as in the conditional The Council. Twin Mirror didn’t work that either. Despite the modest timing (the game can be completed in 4-5 hours), the events in it are still presented as something too lazy and ordinary. Sam should be pursued by the cops who suspect him of murder, but we won’t see them on the tail. All they will do is send an SMS: “Come to the police station, you need to talk.” A similar situation is with the relations of the locals, who, in theory, hate Sam fiercely after his article that led to the closure of the local mine and the impoverishment of Baswood. Miners will pester us twice, but this, in fact, will not aggravate the situation and will not interfere with our investigation. The authors seemed to simply write in text: “The hero is in a difficult situation,” but at the same time they left him in the comfort zone.

At the beginning of Twin Mirror there is an interesting scene – our hero wakes up in a hotel, sees traces of blood on his shirt and realizes that he does not remember anything about the events of last night. Sam immediately begins to panic, admitting the idea that he could have killed someone, and a little later finds the corpse of the person with whom he quarreled yesterday. And now, it would seem, is the very moment when you can fully reveal the psychological instability of Sam and make him believe in his own guilt, thereby generating doubts in the gamer about the adequacy of our hero, talking with an imaginary friend and living in the palaces of mind. But two minutes later, the hero himself announces: “No, something doesn’t fit, I’m not a murderer,” and immediately recreates the scene in detail. And a minute later, straight away convinces Anna of her innocence, who finds Sam next to the corpse. And despite the sometimes extremely strange behavior of the protagonist, who will increasingly talk aloud with an imaginary friend, the girl will never suspect Sam of anything.

Because of this, the developers fail to cause the player to feel anxiety, although even those multi-part shows can cope with this task. Even in them, you sometimes worry about the fate of the hero, although you know perfectly well that everything will be all right with him, because there are still two seasons ahead with his participation.

The saddest thing about all this is that from the very first shots it becomes noticeable that Dontnod Entertainment is trying to present Twin Mirror as a serious full-length detective story with philosophical overtones. The developers have relied heavily on cinematography. The point here is not only the quality of the picture itself, the abundance of cut-scenes and the colorful scenery of the palace of reason. Twin Mirror seems to copy all the cinematographers’ tricks from a big movie – this is noticeable in the selection of camera angles and in the way the individual scenes are constructed, from the Vertigo effect from Hitchcock’s Vertigo to setting plans during dialogues. And yes, it looks really nice, but the developers have overdone it here too. Almost every scene is presented so pretentiously, as if it were the most important moment of the game, although we were simply introduced to the next hero. Such redundancy of visual techniques does not make the game worse, but it is a disadvantage of the overall drama, because at really important moments this cinematography is no longer so amazing.

But all these shortcomings fade into the background in the penultimate episode of the game, in which we are completely immersed in the palaces of the mind. Endless corridors, doors leading nowhere, and labyrinths of memories filled with scraps of phrases – you’ve probably seen all this somewhere, but in Twin Mirror, such a location looks mesmerizingly beautiful.

And most importantly, the developers added wandering through the corridors of their own “I” not for the sake of visual appeal, but with a very specific narrative task – so that the hero could finally understand himself and answer the question of who he really wants to be. It is symbolic that after going through all the dark nooks and crannies of our memories, which seem to be rotting from the feeling of guilt that decays them, we will see the most beautiful and powerful scene in the entire Twin Mirror – a frank conversation with Him.

Only thoughts are all about him and about him, about him and about him

The most interesting character in Twin Mirror was He – an imaginary friend of Sam. It is worth giving credit to the developers that they abandoned the clichés in which the voice in the head is always hostile, pulls the hero to the dark side, or wants to gain control over his will. In Twin Mirror, on the contrary, He acts as our main assistant and companion. He empathizes with other characters and tries to awaken humanity in Sam. Often, in almost all dialogues, except for scenes of communication with 11-year-old Joan, you should choose the lines that He offers. Our imaginary friend is quite charismatic, looks good in the frame and it is with him that the most curious dialogues in the game take place.

At the same time, He does not draw Sam’s attention to himself, does not want to close the hero from the whole world and lock him inside the halls of reason alone with himself. An imaginary friend turns out to be the only link connecting Sam to reality. Moreover, it is He who pushes the hero to socialization and tries to make him happy.

This is one of the most interesting paradoxes of the game. Sam constantly exists between two worlds: the real and the inner palaces of the mind. Logically, He should be part of the second world. However, the authors, on the contrary, identify an imaginary friend with the real world, while putting Him in a tough confrontation with the palaces of reason. And this conflict is so acute that the palaces of reason and He cannot exist at the same time – Sam will have to choose one thing. “But why did the imaginary friend become part of the real world?” – you can ask a reasonable question to the authors of Twin Mirror. This paradox brings us to the most interesting part of the game.

Happy ignorance or truth alone – which is more important?

The authors of Twin Mirror, who spent four hours showing us a sluggish detective story, at the end of the game unexpectedly dumped a number of philosophical questions at once, the most important of which is – is there something more important than happiness? Here I recall one of the episodes of House Doctor, in which the patient turned out to be a brilliant scientist, who deliberately dulls his own mind with the help of pills and alcohol in order to be happy with his wife and not feel lonely. Sam has almost the same story, only instead of a high IQ – palaces of reason, free from any distortions, social conventions and half measures. In them, the hero interacts only with facts, thanks to which he analyzes the world and the people around him.

As a child, his father told Sam that being himself and doing what he loves is the only thing that is, perhaps, more important than happiness. As a result, our hero was stuck at this crossroads: in the palaces of his mind he can be his real self – cold, detached, a little selfish, but in the company of an imaginary friend, he still cherishes thoughts of happiness. However, internal dualism does not allow achieving either one or the other. Therefore, the authors identify Him with the real world. However, in doing this, they deliberately make a significant substitution of the concept of “real”. For the sake of happiness, Sam needs to give up his own self, sacrifice his principles in order to understand and accept other people and forget about his own identity. The world in which the hero decided to do this is presented as similar to The Matrix or The Truman Show, where the pill of happiness replaces reality. However, in Twin Mirror at this moment you are in reality, and not in the palace of the mind, and Sam looks like an alien organism in these decorations. Final shots: the camera moves away from smiling Anna and Sam, who at the last moment seems to want to return to his real self and resume the investigation, but His voice interrupts these attempts: “Don’t spoil the happy ending, forget it.” So Sam finds happiness in the real world, which for him personally, perhaps, cannot be called real.

There are four endings in Twin Mirror, but only one of them will make you reflect so. But in others, you will learn more about the investigation and meet the real antagonist. But given the weak detective part, it’s probably not that interesting. And so with Twin Mirror in everything. The game has interesting finds, beautiful visual design and original ideas, but they are scattered, unfinished and chaotically scattered, and the main storyline is frankly boring. Those glimpses of the philosophical that are in Twin Mirror are able to catch and make you think. Another question – is it worth giving $ 2,000 for these needles in a haystack? Then decide for yourself.