Kinect didn’t make the game
To say that developer Hidetaka Suehiro — or, Swery65 as most everyone knows him — has a knack for creating unique and strange videogame experiences would be an understatement. He has a loyal cult following, as anyone that loves his works tends to really love them; the opposite is just as true for his detractors. It’s what has led to 2010’s Deadly Premonition being named the most critically polarizing survival horror game. You either get it or you don’t.
While the fandom may not be as severely fragmented, the same can be said for last year’s Xbox One exclusive D4: Dark Dreams Don’t Die. Unfortunately, D4 has a release structure that doesn’t jell with the prospect (or reality) of uncertain sales. It’s an episodic story, and thus far, only the first part of an unknown number of entries has been told. The narrative has been left teetering, the same cliffhanger that the future of the game delicately balances on. We don’t know yet if the story will ever see advancement or resolution.
What we do know is that D4 is making lateral progress of sorts. A PC port of the game is being made by Swery’s team at Access Games, allowing exposure to an entirely new audience. The true D4 experience was originally highly contingent upon the use of Xbox One’s Kinect. On PC, D4 will be controlled entirely with the mouse. Despite the change in inputs, in an interview with Destructoid, Swery insists that both methods are “100 percent bona fide D4.”
The reason that Swery doesn’t feel that the Kinect-to-mouse transition is a concession of sorts is because control method isn’t what’s at the core of D4. Swery elaborated “D4 is a game that doesn’t derive its entertainment value merely from the fact that you can control it. My design has always been focused around the ‘sensory replication’ element. All input devices have their own special characteristics, and I feel that I’ve created separate control schemes that are all designed specifically for the Kinect, controller, and now the mouse.”
This “sensory replication” Swery speaks of isn’t some marketable-sounding term that he tacked on to describe control schemes; it’s something he spends a lot of time thinking about and crafting experiences around. In fact, further hypothesizing by Swery is the reason the PC port is even happening.
He explained how D4 on PC came to be by saying “I started working on the PC version at the end of last year, through to GDC this year. At that time, I had made no plans about releasing it. It was just an experiment to help prove the contents of my GDC speech. To sum up [my speech]: ‘Even without Kinect, the theory of symbolization and sensory replication through minute observations is still possible, and pieces that replicate sensations in this manner can enhance the overall empathy that people experience.’ In order to prove this, I started making a sample version of the game that could be played using only the mouse. I revealed it to people at GDC and PAX East, and since people responded more positively than I had expected, I decided to develop an official release.”
That official release won’t come as easy as one might think. This is Access Games’ first time working on a PC title. (The poorly-received PC port of Deadly Premonition was controlled by another studio, and Swery says that Access wasn’t able to exert control over the process because it didn’t own the rights to the game.)
Because of Access’ inexperience developing for PC, Swery describes the process as including “a lot of unexpected surprises and problems.” He went into detail by saying “Like I talked about earlier, we had to figure out how to create sensory replication with the mouse. Since we couldn’t use Kinect, we needed to figure out how to make the PC version a game that anyone could easily enjoy with the mouse. Our game designers, programmers, and UI designers really had to rack their brains about this. Next, we had to think about adding user options and confirming minimum system requirements and recommended specifications that didn’t exist in the console version. Since we created an original shader for D4 using our own code, it was hard to make it backwards compatible simply through changing settings in Unreal Engine, so we had to adjust the code and add new parts to it. Since we’ve only worked on console games so far, this was a brand new experience for us.”
Above all else, Swery’s says he’s dedicated to not letting the PC version of D4 go the way of Deadly Premonition. “The team that worked on the Xbox One version of D4 is in charge, and I’ve also been taking part in the adjustments. We’re really serious about this, and intend to treat the D4 IP with the utmost care.”
One thing that he wasn’t too serious about was commenting on his feelings about Microsoft announcing one year ago that it’d release a version of Xbox One without Kinect. After all, Swery had likely undertook this project with the understanding that Kinect would be something that’s in every living room that an Xbox One is in. All of a sudden, that wasn’t the case. Swery took the high (and humorous) road by simply chiming in “#ThanksObama.”
Temporary comedic relief aside, Swery seems very serious about D4 and its future. When asked about reading fan theories (a pastime that’s dominated the Destructoid office at times), Swery said that he refrains out of respect for the fans. He clarified by saying “D4 is of the mystery genre. With this genre, the fun comes from ‘enjoying’ all the mysteries up to the end. I think it’s natural for people to closely watch the developments, hypothesize, and then think up their own opinions and theories. That’s what’s so great and important about the mystery genre. With that in mind, I think I have no right to take part in those sorts of discussions.”
For all the transparency and openness behind the whole process of getting D4 to PC, Swery turned mysterious again when the topic on everyone’s mind came up: Is a second part to D4 ever getting made? “I still can’t talk about what’ll be coming next. All I can say is that I’m working my hardest!,” he said. Figures. But, maybe with the help of a PC audience pushing for more D4, we’ll get the resolution we need. Or, maybe we’ll get more fights with a cat lady. Both are welcome with open arms.
