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I spent time with Twin Mirror, Dontnod Entertainment’s next adventure game in which you play a guy called Sam. Sam, a former reporter, returned to the sleepy town of Basswood to attend his friend’s funeral, and he realizes that his companion may have been murdered. The game is all about finding the truth. If you’ve played Life Is Strange, it’s a similar, storytelling, one-click experience watching a lot of cutscenes.
Right off the bat, it’s clear Sam is struggling with his sanity – he’s taking pills to keep himself in check on the way to the wake, which is a sure visual shortcut for these struggles. It’s a topic that hasn’t always been handled well in games (like how every game fitting a Lovecraft property must have some sort of sanity metric). But because of Life Is Strange, Dontnod has a reputation for tackling difficult topics with some nuance. I thought they might be able to come up with a compelling story that touched on mental health tactfully. But no. My hopes were dashed pretty quickly.
Twin Mirror’s main schtick is Sam’s ability to enter his Mind Palace, a sort of alternate reality that represents his inner thoughts. Visually, it’s like a cross between The Void in Dishonored, a glassware store, and the Arctic. Very soothing. As you gather evidence and interact with people, you step into this world every once in a while for Sam to put things together.
And it turns out you’ll also be thrown into this Mind Palace when you confront Sam’s mental illness. There’s that moment Sam wakes up from a heavy night of drinking which, combined with the pills he took, means he does not remember anything from the evening. He walks to his bathroom, notices a bloody shirt, and begins to worry about what he may have done, eventually slipping into a total panic attack.
What follows isn’t meant to be hilarious, but I couldn’t help but laugh. In the footage, a half-naked Sam sprints down a dark hallway away from a shadow who – hands up if you already know the answer – himself! Well done to those of you who guessed it, you might have a Gold Star.
The ridiculous escalates even more, you’ll be happy to hear. Mirrors (because the game contains the word mirror and it’s all about confronting yourself) start to appear Sam’s way, saying things like “give up” and “there is no hope for you ”. The ones you avoid. These are the bad mirrors. But some say something like “Steady Yourself” or “Focus”. Sam is supposed to rush through these. An example of a manual to calm you down.
Eventually the mirrors all start to move and it becomes harder to walk through them. I felt like Fortnite’s Jonesy was having a nightmare, and I was trapped with him, which shows how juvenile it was for a depiction of a panic attack.
I don’t have a personal experience of dealing with severe anxiety, but there is an absurdity in Mind Palace and Twin Mirror’s gamification of sanity that clearly doesn’t get it right here. I can appreciate that Dontnod tried it, but if I’m someone who wants to deepen my understanding of what it’s like to live with anxiety, I go with a play section that’s only slightly more adult than Subway Surfers in my mind. .
I think the juxtaposition of theme and form is why it’s so funny to me. It’s like Dontnod assumed I was five and wrapped Sam’s problems in a “baby’s first panic attack.” I guess a spoon feeds me extremely obvious metaphors ensures that you get your point across, but that doesn’t take into account the absurdity of having an adult grown-up sitting in a high chair. I am expected to watch Sam plunge headlong into mirrors into a strange dimension and understand what a panic attack is for this man? Of course, there is no malicious intent on the part of the developers. Twin Mirror has just fallen into the trap of tackling complex problems through very serious means of a simplified mini-game.
It feels like Dontnod’s failure here is a lack of confidence. All these metaphors tell me that Sam is having a panic attack, of course, but not the reality of what it is for him to have one, or to deal with anxiety on a daily basis. If I asked someone to describe their own experience, I wouldn’t imagine they would say, “It’s like running through a gallery of mirrors.” Dontnod could have had the same effect as this sequence if Sam had just said “I’m having a panic attack” out loud. They didn’t even give us a more complex or meaningful metaphor, let alone sit patiently and watch Sam deal with his anxiety in the real world, without the stupid Mind Palace.