Dontnod Entertainment's next title feels like it's taking lessons from every game the developer has put out so far. Twin Mirror follows investigative reporter Sam Higgs as he returns to his hometown of Basswood, West Virginia, after two years away. He's returning for the funeral of his best friend, with whom he's lost touch--but nothing about Basswood is welcoming for Sam, and he soon finds there's something dark and sinister going on, as well.
We checked out the first two hours of Twin Mirror, and you can see some of those moments in the video above. In gameplay, Twin Mirror feels a lot like Dontnod's Life is Strange games, focusing on well-drawn characters, expansive conversations, and player choices that can affect the branching narrative. How you deal with the people Sam reunites with in Basswood looks to affect how the narrative will play out, although we haven't quite seen what consequences those choices will have.
The preview did give us a glimpse into some of the additional mechanics at work in Twin Mirror, which help to literally put you in Sam's headspace. Part of the game take place in the Mind Palace, a representation of Sam's interior world, where he can view memories and collect his thoughts. You also use the Mind Palace to deal with the investigative parts of Twin Mirror. Sam can collect clues in the real world and then reconstruct possible scenarios, testing them in his mind. It feels like a riff on the memory mechanics of Remember Me and some of the investigative elements of Vampyr, two past Dontnod games with some interesting ideas. Over the course of the opening of the game, it felt like Twin Mirror is a combination of all the things Dontnod has learned to do well through its past games, emphasizing character-focused storytelling, interesting mechanics, and strange supernatural mysteries.