Dontnod's Twin Mirror has a real wanger of an imaginary friend

Turns out, Dontnod's small-town mystery Twin Mirror does indeed have a fair bit in common with Deadly Premonition. I'd avoided mentioning my suspicions when the Life Is Strange studio announced their next game earlier this year, because I recognise I have a problem of shouting "THAT'S LIKE DEADLY PREMONITION!" any time I see e.g. a car, a vending machine, a tree, or a man in a suit. But our mystery-investigating man goes inside his head to organise his thoughts and has an imaginary friend helping out, like Deadly Premonition. Except instead of a good boy like Deadly Premonition's Zach, Twin Mirror's man shares his head with a total jeb end. Come meet him in this new trailer.

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Our man Sam has returned to his home town in West Virginia for a friend's funeral only to wake up with a bloody shirt and an empty memory. Helpfully, he can slip inside his head to revisit memories in his Mind Palace, reliving them or fiddling with them to explore different possibilities. All of which reminds me of Dontnod's debut game, the memory-hacking Remember Me. And a bit of Francis York Morgan's trippy living room inside his head.

And like nice man York, Sam has an imaginary chum helping him out, named the Double. Publishers Bandai Namco say the Double is a "classy yet sarcastic version" of Sam and that he's "quirky"; I say he's a dickhead. Wouldn't want to talk about punk rock and Richard Donner movies with that fella.

Look, you have to understand: I'm playing a long game here. My goal is that by 2025, I will have seeded enough references to Deadly Premonition as a seminal game influencing all who came after that Wikipedia will mention it in the same breath as Super Mario, Pong, and Devil Daggers. We can make this happen, together. And if Wikipedia says it, reality will soon follow its course. 2026, the year of Zachlikes Yorklikes.

Twin Mirror is coming in three episodes. The first, named Lost On Arrival, is due in "early 2019".