Twin Mirror
Dontnod’s narrative mystery redoubles the mind games
PC, PS4, Xbox One
Two heads are better than one, they say – though Twin Mirror more accurately extols the virtues of having two minds. Don’t let main character Sam Higgs’ resemblance to James McAvoy fool you, though; this is not a Split-style take on a fractured personality, per se. Rather, Dontnod uses the idea of duality – of a usefully detached alter-ego and a secondary world in which its hero frequently sojourns – to explore the complexities of analytical thought and emotions.
“Sam is not really comfortable in reality,” says game director Florian Desforges of Sam’s mind palace, an imaginary construct into which he frequently escapes and which helps him organise his thoughts and memories. “Sam’s mind palace is a peaceful place that allows him to remember things. Sometimes you find an object or speak with someone and you can access your mind palace to remember something else connected to it.”
We explore this mnemonic device early on. Journalist Sam, who has returned to his hometown for the funeral of a friend killed in a car crash, stops at an overlook that provides a vista of the town of Basswood, nestled in the hills of West Virginia. Examining a tree into which lovers’ initials are carved opens up a fantastical world of floating islands with interconnected walkways that allow the player to physically revisit Sam’s memories and reconstruct places and events. At one of the islands, we witness Sam’s rejected proposal to then-girlfriend Anna, a moment of heartbreak that contributed to Sam’s leaving.
Such reconstructions allow Sam to make hypotheses about events that might otherwise be unclear. For example, he is able to reconstruct his hotel room and retrace his actions after he wakes up with no recollection of events the night before. Sam’s mind palace deductions are also fleshed out by his investigations in the real world, through interactions with items and clues that are then methodically logged in his ‘mind notes’. Some discoveries provide the option for extra, more emotive, input from Sam. “We call this ‘focus-object-narrative’,” Desforges says. “It’s Sam analysing things, his pragmatic way of seeing things. We have things to remember, to find, and they can be important, so the player will want to see everything.”
The downside to Sam’s introspection is that he loses hours wandering in this mental locale. “Sam doesn’t control the time he spends in his mind palace so sometimes things can be a little wild,” Desforges says. In fact, his reverie results in him missing the funeral.
Entering town, he meets Joan, the daughter of his deceased friend, who is convinced her father’s death was no accident: we can agree to investigate the accident, or brush off her doubts as childish imagination. The decisions you make in key conversations impact the flow of the story as relationships are strengthened or weakened by your choices. To help us make a decision, the game again skews from reality, manifesting Sam’s inner voice as the Double – a smartly dressed, more confident version of Sam, more socially able yet also more inclined to self-interest. As Sam and Joan chat, the Double gives advice as to the pros and cons of either decision. The Double appears at all such critical junctures, but whether you follow his advice is up to you.
“What we really want is there to not be a good or bad way – it’s your way,” Desforges says. “The consequences, we hope, are right with your choices. Sam uses the Double to restrain his pragmatism, he is there to alert him that there is maybe another way to do things, or another way to answer someone.”
Fight Club’s themes of duality and the power of the mind are an influence, executive producer Xavier Spinat reveals. “What you’re going to see on screen is not just reality, it’s what’s happening in the hero’s mind. We want believable characters in real situations, to anchor them in reality so people can immerse in what their emotional state and choices will be – you feel a connection and understand what the character is going through. But in another way we also wanted to show off elements that are really surprising, which is difficult when everything is super-real.”
It uses the idea of duality to explore the complexities of analytical thought