Gaming Everything
IGN published a new preview about D4 earlier today. It houses a little bit of extra information, which we’ve rounded up below.
- Murder mystery game
- Main character David has lost his memory
- David can dive into the past to solve crimes (wife’s murder)
- David refers to his wife as ‘little Peggy,’
- Interactions between characters are deliberately weird, with bizarre facial expressions and glances held for uncomfortably long moments
- Swery says “this one’s also a little bit weird.”
- Plays a bit like a modern point and click adventure
- Ex: within the demo’s passenger jet setting you can investigate the world in a number of ways, bringing up information about people and objects, and choosing responses when in conversation
- Action sequences are choreographed, but will play out with a few different variations based on how well players follow the on-screen cues
- Made for next-gen Kinect from ground up
- Players mimic on-screen gestures during action sequences and can simply speak their chosen option during conversations
- Designed to be played sitting down
- Xbox One controller will be supported
- Episodic structure
- David’s quest to solve his wife’s murder is the overarching story arc
- Digital-only
- Planning on releasing it episode by episode only
- In order to jump into the past, David has to touch mementos that are connected to memories he wants to investigate
- David: “The day little Peggy died, I managed to survive, through some miracle. In exchange for my memories, I got this skill. This has to be some kind of revelation, but I plan to use this skill to find a memento that can take me back to that day, so I can save my wife.”
- D4 name: in addition to Dark Dreams Don’t Die, it “also comes from the fact that the main character’s special skill is to go back into the past, so it’s the fourth dimension… Also, in the game, ‘D’, the initial, is going to be a key word, and it’s going to have lots of important meanings.”
- One sequence: meet a stewardess that looks exactly like David’s dead wife who alludes to being on the same “side” as him; meet a scarred bald man who demands to know how David got on the plane
- Throughout these conversational vignettes the screen regularly splits into two or three frames, showing various elements of the scene from different angles
- Climax of the sequence is a fight between David and Zapatero
- They struggle up and down the aisle, with the game moving in and out of slow motion
- David screams into a megaphone in Zapatero’s face and the cord from an air mask is used as an impromptu garrotte. – There’s also a delightful move mid-way through the battle where our hero is pushed back into a stewardess
- Players who nail the timing on the input see him turn smoothly and grasp her hands as if she were a dancing partner, pirouetting on the spot to get past
- It all ends with Zapatero disappearing amidst a blinding flash of light
