It’s blisteringly hot, laid-back and most of the people are ostensibly friendly… but that’s just on the surface. These mysteries play out in a tiny little backwater town in Louisiana, some ways out from New Orleans. Deadly Premonition 2 makes clear what Deadly Premonition 1 hints at – Francis York is not a reliable narrator, and therefore, once the flashback happens and York starts telling his story, we’re given a dual mystery to solve the murder itself, and the challenge of separating reality from York’s fictions. What’s more is that he’s under the influence with a particular substance, and combined, this 30-minute introductory sequence acts as a spot-on framing device. Through their eyes, York is presented as something truly malign – a dark and overwhelmingly competent intelligence that is hiding any number of secrets behind a façade of eccentricities. For the sequel to turn out like this does very much feel like a challenge to weed out the critics who are going to look at this thing as a creative pursuit rather than those that look at games as entertainment products.ĭeadly Premonition 2 kicks off with an older (and very sick) Francis York being interrogated by a couple of younger detectives over an old case that he participated in, as new evidence has come to light that has cast a shadow over him personally. SWERY has produced highly refined, technically precise games in the interim between Deadly Premonition and its sequel. In fact, given that Deadly Premonition 2 seems to be everything that Deadly Premonition 1 was, dialled up to 11, I’m reasonably confident that the writer/creative behind it, SWERY, deliberately make the game this way, knowing full well how it would be received, in a transgressive moment of “I just don’t give a bleep.” I really wouldn’t put it past him. What’s actually important here is that the game is a brilliant bit of comedy/horror/noirish surrealism, and it is the most distinctive, original, creative thing you’ll play this year. Who cares if the frame rate is inconsistent? You can finish the game, and so it gets the job done. Now they’re pulling the same stunt with Deadly Premonition 2. Ten years ago people fixated on technical issues of that game at the expense of the greater point, only for Deadly Premonition to eventually become celebrated because the greater point is, in fact, more important. Deadly Premonition was released ten years ago now, and you’d think that in that time people would have learned.
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