Around 2008, I got tired of the shallow coverage of the more prominent video game sites on the web. I asked a former roommate of mine what I should read and was pointed at Destructoid, which became my main haunt for… well, until recently for obvious reasons. RIP. So, I was there when Stephanie Sterling gave Deadly Premonition a 10/10. I was there when Dtoid’s coverage began.

Her adoration for such a bizarre title was infectious, I picked up a copy. Recently used; I wonder why. I even wrote a MobyGames review of it (I’m not linking to my embarrassing early reviews, but you can find it if you look), so there’s maybe a direct path from Deadly Premonition to this website.

I’ve returned to it again a few times since then. I’m pretty sure I played it twice with the original Xbox 360 version, then again when Deadly Premonition: The Director’s Cut hit PS3. Oh, I even pushed through the awful PC version at least once. I picked up Deadly Premonition: Origins when it landed on Switch, but it was extremely buggy at launch, and I dropped it. Buggier, I mean. So, I’m trying again, hoping the holes have been patched.

SPITE

It’s hard to explain Deadly Premonition’s appeal. Some people say “it’s so bad it’s good,” and others say it is just genuinely good. In my opinion, it’s good in spite of being bad.

The whole production was a mess, largely owing to an extremely protracted and painful development. Preproduction started in 2004 and the game released in 2010. It was nearly cancelled, like, four times, so the fact that it came out at all is nothing short of a miracle. However, all the stopping and starting in development is visible in the way that many of its key systems seem to have been cobbled together from more ambitious concepts.

From a technical perspective, it’s fucked. No version of the game has been solid. Access Games has admitted that their data management fell apart, and that’s obvious in the production. It would have looked ugly even if it had released in 2006, but it still runs terribly. Even in the best version. It’s a horrible mash that gives it an inconsistent aesthetic that you’d find in modern games cobbled together from asset stores. Most of the faces are horrendous, and the characters move like malfunctioning animatronics.

The technical issues don’t even end there. While character control is fine (just fine), the cars drive like shopping carts that know only pain. The slightest twitch of the stick causes them to jerk and slide sideways. Keeping them on the road is a constant struggle. Some of them handle better than others, but none of them handle well. None of the versions have addressed this, but I think the Director’s Cut (and by extension, Origins) tweaked things so driving off-road doesn’t slow you to an absolute crawl. If I remember correctly.

Finally, the audio mixing is beyond awful. The music is sometimes memorable, and the voice acting is passable most of the time. However, sometimes the music drowns everything out during cutscenes and the voices frequently get louder and quieter within the same scene. Again, this has never been corrected in any re-release.

HURTFUL TO LAUGH

However, this might sound strange, but the terrible technical state of the game lends to the whole production’s perpetual fever-dream. The story is intensely weird. Sometimes, this is on purpose because it’s heavily inspired by Twin Peaks. But it has the same inconsistency as the graphics. It’s hard to tell when it’s being serious, when it’s being subversive, if it’s being subversive, and if it’s even aware of its own strangeness. When things take a dive off the deep end, does it know how much of a mess it is and is just embracing it, or am I supposed to be keeping a straight face? Would it be hurtful if I laugh?

You play as Francis “York” Morgan, a character with an introduction cutscene so perfectly executed that I’ll probably write a separate article dedicated to celebrating it someday. He’s an FBI profiler who is clearly cracked. And that’s before you even consider that he talks to a seemingly imaginary friend named Zach. He has a stunted, sometimes child-like demeanor. He’s completely self-absorbed and has difficulty relating to the people around him, resulting in him frequently being called selfish and inconsiderate, even when he’s clearly trying to be friendly.

The supporting characters are also given more depth than their screen time usually warrants. There’s a significant amount of side-quests that allow you to get to know them, usually with their weirdness hanging out for all to see. Like everything else in the game, there’s an awkward quality to the characterization that often undermines a lot of the emotion. I really can’t say if the lead writers, Hidetaka “Swery” Suehiro and Kenji Goda are truly skilled in their craft, but they’re unique enough to make it worthwhile.

CALL HIM YORK. THAT’S WHAT EVERYONE CALLS HIM

The story has Francis “York” Morgan visiting the town of Greenvale to investigate the murder of a young woman. Normally, this sort of thing wouldn’t register on a federal level, but he’s quickly able to link the case to a series of others across America due to the presence of strange red seeds that were crammed down the young lady’s throat. As he investigates, more and more women are murdered, a clear suspect is always out of reach, and York takes advice from figures formed by milk in his coffee.

And like everything else, the actual structure of the game is a complete wreck. Its philosophy is one that I love. In theory, you’re supposed to be able to take the investigation at your own pace. Greenvale is an open world, time moves at a real world pace (though, you can advance it quickly by smoking cigarettes), and characters are all tied to a 24-hour schedule (like in Majora’s Mask or Chulip). Although the game cheats sometimes in that last part, with characters sometimes teleporting to a location they’re supposed to be.

However, the story moves in a linear fashion. You’re not really investigating on your own, you’re told where you’re supposed to be and when you need to be there, and that advances the plot. The original design document probably states that the player is supposed to figure things out by finding clues and interviewing characters, but that’s not what landed in the final version.

YOU DRIVE

You’re also rarely given time to actually do the side quests. There are only a couple of occasions where the other characters will say, “You need to be here at this time,” and you’re given a few hours to screw around. Usually, the characters will say, “Okay, we need to go here. You drive,” and everyone will pile into a car. You can get out of the car and walk away, leaving the characters questioning your sanity and then screw around for weeks before resuming the narrative if you want to. But it’s such an awkward thing to do that it feels like you’re pressured to just go along with things.

Plus, some of the side quests only happen during certain weather events, so it’s extremely unlikely that they’ll be available organically if you strictly follow the narrative. I tried to hit every quest playing through this time, and I got frustrated by one particular chain because the weather wouldn’t cooperate and sometimes when I went to the location at the correct time, the character wasn’t there. Instead, you can select a chapter from the main menu that a side quest is available. However, you have to complete said chapter in order for the completed side-quest to actually reflect in your current save. Not entirely difficult for a lot of chapters, but needlessly inconvenient all the same.

What’s ridiculous is that the side-quests and driving around town are my favourite parts of the game. For some reason (that I appreciate), Swery was intent on making the game world in a realistic scale. So, driving distances are sometimes rather extreme. You don’t have to leave town, but certain destination are far on the outskirts. If you’re someone who makes heavy use of fast-travel, you’ll be pulling your hair out.

But the effort to make Greenvale a believable place pays off. Again, this is in spite of itself. You can tell that the designers aren’t from around here. Swery seems pretty proud about all the location research they performed, but certain details didn’t connect with them, and that adds another layer of weirdness. The streets, for example? Swery confidently points out that they all have names. Unfortunately, whoever made the map didn’t understand that street names don’t change at an intersection, they typically follow until they terminate. To be clear: the streets in Japan don’t usually have names.

Still, just enough of that cozy, small-town atmosphere that the team was aiming for comes through. It can be enjoyable to just play hooky and swerve around town, taking on side quests. I think, along with the characters, that’s what I enjoyed most. In spite of itself, it can still be relaxing.

PSYCHO KILLER

I barely even mentioned the combat. It’s in a completely isolated corner of the game, away from the open-world parts. York travels to some dark, twisted version of reality where zombie things attack him. It’s a bit like Resident Evil 4, being over-the-shoulder laser-pointer aiming. The dark world angle is a smidge like Silent Hill. Overall, it’s just so stupid.

The combat was apparently thrown in because someone (not Swery, by the sound of things) thought the game wouldn’t sell without it. They might have been right, simply because the investigation side of things just isn’t there. Going from location to location and just watching cutscenes sounds pretty boring. Still, the dungeons are dumb. The Raincoat Killer shows up and can insta-kill you if you don’t succeed in dumb quicktime games. It’s dumb. Save often.

Deadly Premonition: Origins is the most recent version of the game. It’s based off the Director’s Cut but excises a number of cutscenes from that version that were supposed to lead into a sequel but are now considered non-canon. A few other facets, like some of the extra suits of the PC version and being able to buy a house are no longer there. So, it’s essentially like the vanilla version but with slightly updated graphics. But it still runs terrible. There are visual glitches that I don’t think were there originally. And, yeah, it crashed constantly. There really isn’t a good port of Deadly Premonition, somehow. Really, save often.

TEXTBOOK KUSOGE

As I said at the hop, it’s hard to really describe why Deadly Premonition works so well in spite of itself. Even at the best of times, its persistent awkwardness undermines the things it does well. At its worst, parts of it are abominations that should not exist. You can easily poke holes through its strengths. Most of the game is an unambiguous failure. Even the developers talk more about the lessons learned from its troubled development with little pride.

I think every time I play Deadly Premonition, I like it a bit less. And that’s probably because I know where to find its bright spots, and the rest of the murk becomes less and less tolerable. That’s not all that damning, though, because I think Deadly Premonition is necessary playing, especially if you want to develop your analytical skills. It’s textbook kusoge; a game that fails in every direction but still manages to be interesting. Some of the credit is often pushed in Swery’s direction, but while his interesting characters and strange plot (written alongside Kenji Goda, who seems to rarely be brought up) are what ties everything together and, arguably, makes it work, the tired and beaten down team give it heart. And lots of problems.

A good thought exercise is to consider whether or not Deadly Premonition would be so enjoyable if someone remade it. If they came through, polished the technical detail, fixed or reimplemented some of the half-baked gameplay ideas, re-did the cutscenes, and brought everything to modern standard. And like a good paradox, it’s hard to tell. Would the great parts seem so great when they aren’t placed against such a garbage backdrop? Impossible to say for sure, and that’s why Deadly Premonition is so fascinating.

8/10

This review was conducted on a Nintendo Switch using a digital copy of the game. It was paid for by the author.