While I was wrapping up my own Endurance Run of sorts--The Best of Giant Bomb’s Persona 4 Endurance Run--I was quietly working my way through both of the Deadly Premonition Endurance Runs. Unlike Persona 4, which I considered to be my favorite videogame, I didn’t really know what to expect going into these dueling Endurance Runs. Years ago, I heard about how Deadly Premonition was one of the worst games ever made. Then when the Director’s Cut was released, I realized the public opinion was more mixed. It seemed closer to a 50/50 split between people hating it and adoring the game. In fact, Brad and Ryan’s first conversation during the opening credits perfectly encapsulates what I thought about this game.

Despite being a fan of this site for a number of years, and just being a person on the Internet, I knew nothing about Deadly Premonition, aside from how it is kinda like Twin Peaks. Going into it more or less blind was a befuddling trip. Watching both Endurance Runs when I wasn’t even finished with Persona 4 was inadvisable. Editing Vinny and Jeff’s and Brad and Ryan’s play through together into one Best Of series by itself was a fairly long process for me. It’s been a weird…<looks at notes>...oh my god, nine months?! I started this project NINE MONTHS ago?!?! Well that aside, it’s time for me to wrap things up and say goodbye to Deadly Premonition.

On Deadly Premonition:

As I was uploading videos for the Persona 4 series, I remember talking to people here and there about the game. Somewhere on these forums, there are probably thousands of words devoted to me giving people advice on getting into and playing the Persona games. So by the time I uploaded the final video, my feelings about Persona 4 were fairly well documented. In contrast, besides a few offhand comments, I haven’t really talked about what I think of Deadly Premonition. Do I love this game? Do I hate it? Well, it’s complicated. Deadly Premonition is not just a mixed bag. It is the most mixed bag. This is the most indecisive, wishy-washy, and confused I have ever been about a videogame.

First and foremost, Deadly Premonition in my mind is the quintessential definition of a bad videogame. From walking around, fighting enemies, driving, solving puzzles, completing side quests, and overall how the game looks, feels, and sounds, Deadly Premonition is demonstrably, scientifically bad. If I were playing this game by myself, I probably would have stopped playing before York meets up with Emily. I know I’m not alone in this, and I assume the majority of the people who read this will agree with how flawed this game is.

However, if you put all of that aside--literally everything that makes it a videogame--there is some genuine magic behind Deadly Premonition. The cast of characters are colorful, goofy, and memorable. Even when something about their performance, animation, or writing was stilted, I was consistently fascinated by them. It is both intentionally and unintentionally funny. Genuinely funny moments are mixed in with characters not quite acting like actual people and cinematic moments often lack the music, camerawork, and editing to make the scene have a more comprehensible flow. However, as someone who watches some of the worst movies ever made for laughs, this game has a bizarrely memorizing quality. Putting aside all of those imperfections, the story behind Deadly Premonition is also entertaining almost to a surprising level. Even beyond all the wacky shenanigans that happen in Greenvale, the murder mystery and investigation behind the deaths of Anna Graham and the others is tautly paced and executed. In particular, I remember how the events before and after Becky’s death grabbed me. While I mostly watched the Brad and Ryan and Vinny and Jeff’s Endurance Runs back-to-back, by the time it was revealed George was the Raincoat Killer, I marathoned my way through the VJ Endurance Run simply because I just had to see what the hell this game was going to end.

The fact that I was so motivated to see how this game ends, even though it is plainly obvious who the true culprits are, is perhaps Deadly Premonition's greatest triumph. I mean the game is a murder mystery where you know who the murderer is. It is as clear as crystal George was behind the various Raincoat Killer murders and he was responsible for Becky and Diane's deaths when their bodies were discovered. As if how he was conveniently away from York and Emily during critical moments in the story wasn't enough, there is a big red tree and red vegetation spread across his house. And then you have Kaysen, Mr. "F K" in the Coffee himself. The first fucking clue York gets about the murders points directly to Forrest Kaysen, a man who just so happens to be carrying around red saplings who also travels from town to town. If that wasn't a big enough clue, for some reason there are mini-Kaysen dolls spread throughout the Red Room when York thinks about the various murder cases. I'm not sure if the intent was to let everyone know as early as possible who the bad guys are or if these clues were meant to be more subtle than they actually were. Whatever the case, I was still on the edge of my seat as the story continued to unfold, despite how obvious some things were telegraphed.

And then you have that ending. As if the big revelation of what happened to his parents and the real identity of Zach and York wasn’t enough, you fight Kaysen in an ever escalating series of mindfuck battles. You see him transform from a giddy psychopath, into a lightbulb shaped mutant, into a lizard monster that was probably a rejected Garbage Pail Kids, into a giant Kaysen who towers over you in the middle of a lost level from Bayonetta. It is a shockingly elaborate ending for a videogame that consistently felt like it was constrained by its budget or development time. The first time I saw this entire sequence, I was either scratching my head, laughing my ass off, or recreating Drew’s blink gif. This is by far one of my main highlights for Deadly Premonition. That said, this sequence also has the lowest moment of the game: the death of Emily.

It’s not even the fact that she dies; it’s how she dies. Emily rips out the red sapling from her abdomen which presumably tears out her intestines and other vital organs. If that wasn’t enough, Emily describes how she has been “soiled”. And if that doesn’t sound rape-y enough for you, you get to see Kaysen slobber all over himself as he describes how he already had his fun with Emily and how she was the ultimate desert. And while we’re at it, how about we have Emily confess how she wants York, while Kaysen licks her face with his monster tongue, 'cus sure, why not. Even with all of the horrible shit that happens to Emily, the game expects the player to think she has a happy ending. Even though she went through an experience presumably so painful and terrible she wants to die, Emily feels better by effectively committing suicide and hearing York say how he thinks she's pretty. After she dies, Emily transcends and becomes a goddess of a forest, only to be joined by other people who died in horrible ways. This also includes people like Carol and Thomas, who apparently hate Emily for ruining George’s kinky sex dungeon club. If living for an eternity alongside traumatized serial killer victims and people who are so jealous of you they tried to kill you a couple of hours ago isn’t paradise, I don’t know what is.

Even if I were to put aside all of the red room, white room, and the forest aspects of the ending, I am still left uncomfortable about what happens to Emily. If this happened to a minor character who we didn’t know much about, this scene would just be kinda gross. Instead, all of this stuff happens to Emily, who is arguably Deadly Premonition’s most grounded and sincere character. While I enjoyed the entire cast of Deadly Premonition, the vast majority of the people in Greenvale are either goofy, have something off about them, or are used to deliver a funny bit. Between the wonky animation and some of the hammy lines of dialogue, this aspect is perhaps more noticeable than it otherwise would be if everything was executed perfectly. On the other hand, Emily more or less doesn’t fall into these categories. She is also the character York spends the most time with and knows the most about. She talks about what it was like for her growing up. For god's sake, Emily even has a speech about how she takes pride in being a member of the police force that protects Greenvale. The fact that Deadly Premonition chooses this character to throw that horrible death sequence and allusions to sexual assault at feels almost nihilistic. Emily’s death scene was just dark and left a bad taste in my mouth.

There is fun to be had with Deadly Premonition, but even as a viewer, you have to put in work. You have to look at this ugly game with poor audio mixing and repetitive music. You have to see the same enemies over and over again. The amount of wall ladies York encounters throughout the game is incalculable, despite how having one of these things is arguably one too many. Putting everything aside, you do get some funny and wacky moments, with likeable characters, and a mystery that becomes more and more intriguing as time goes on. Despite those positive moments, one of the most memorable scenes in the game just makes me feel bad. It feels ugly, for the sake of being ugly. During my undergraduate, I often brought up this point in my creative writing classes when people wrote stories about acts of violence or other disturbing content. Just because something makes the reader, viewer, or player uncomfortable doesn't automatically make it good or worthwhile. These scenes can still feel shallow, pointless, unmotivated, or cheap if not executed properly. The impact of Emily's death scene has lessened over time--especially since I had to watch Emily die ten to twenty more times as I was editing the final Best Of episode. At this point as I look back on the game, I mainly wish Deadly Premonition fully stuck the landing with its ending and treated Emily better than they did. Even if the creators felt like she had to die, they could have done so without going so low.

On the Endurance Run(s):

My history with the Endurance Run before I started these videos was basically sitting down watching thirty minutes worth of videos and thinking “Man, I don’t have time for this!” First it happened with Persona 4, and then with Deadly Premonition when I thought about how watching a game I wasn’t familiar with would make this endeavour more worthwhile. When I first tried watching Deadly Premonition, I was immediately turned off by how the bad the game looked. When I was in the early episodes of the Endurance Run(s), I kept asking myself why. Why did Vinny, Brad, Jeff, and Ryan decide to play this game? Why did they record two simultaneous Endurance Runs? Did somebody make a back channel bet to see who could play the game longer? Even if they all had a perfectly rational reason to do this, this just seemed like a tremendous amount of work, especially for Drew, who I assume sat in on every single episode.

Almost everything I have mentioned so far feels like it adds up to some sort of equation. On paper, it feels like the dueling Deadly Premonition Endurance Runs shouldn’t have happened at all. Finally seeing what this game really is for myself was a rewarding experience and there are plenty of hilarious moments to be found in both of these series. However, at times watching both Endurance Runs back-to-back felt like a chore. Looking at some comments dating back seven years ago, it seemed like a lot of people would watch the Endurance Run during their lunch break, which seems like the best way to do it. In comparison, there were days where I watched three or four episodes back-to-back after getting off at work at 11:00 PM. (That one evening where I watched nothing but the guys wandering around the Lumber Mill was a particularly dark day for me) Granted, this is mainly my fault. I should have followed Mr. Stewart's advice and took my time. On the other hand, when Deadly Premonition is bad, it can be really terrible, so maybe this would have been a drag for me regardless.

While I would be crazy to do it, I can actually foresee myself rewatching the Persona 4 Endurance Run years from now. With Deadly Premonition, I can confidently say I am never watching this series again. Experiencing Deadly Premonition alongside Ryan, Jeff, Vinny, and Brad is a great and hilarious way to see what this game is. At the end of the day, seeing this game from start to finish is a bit too much for me. On top of that, rewatching both the VJ and BR Endurance Runs is overkill for me at this point. I am sincerely glad I watched both series when I did, but man I sure did have my fill with this game.

On the Best of Series:

The Best of Deadly Premonition had an entirely different production pipeline than the Persona 4 series. By the time I started to watch the both Endurance Runs, I decided to edit both series together. The primary reason behind this was to highlight the different aspects of Deadly Premonition while avoiding repetition. For example, if I created two separate series, what if a lot of the highlights were identical? What if the funniest moments were the same? What if Jeff and Ryan made the same joke? (In the end, it turns out this was often true. Not only do some episodes have the same highlights, but sometimes the same joke or remark would appear across Endurance Runs)

To avoid this issue, I decided to combine both series together and pick the highlights as I went along. As a result, this Best Of series required a lot of note taking. In comparison, the Persona 4 Endurance Run was at times pretty straightforward. When Vinny casts Bufu or gets hit by Hama, those are basically the highlights I have to pick by default. For Deadly Premonition, I ended up with a list of 347 highlights from both Endurance Runs that I then had to compare and evaluate on a couple of different levels (e.g. Which of these scenes is funnier? Which Endurance Run should cover this aspect of the game? Who had the best reaction to this shocking moment?).

While I thought combining both of these Endurance Runs together would be the hardest part, that wasn’t even close. As I progressed further and further into the story, the more I started to dread what was ahead of me. How the hell am I going to summarize the ending of Deadly Premonition? By the time I reached Part 09 of my series, I was editing the remaining thirteen hours of footage simultaneously, simply because I didn't know where one episode should end and where the next one should begin.

When I was gathering clips from the episodes that featured the fights against George and Kaysen, I had four hours of video. A rough cut of the final episode alone was over an hour long. For my own sanity, I had to keep cutting and cutting and cutting the ending. When I realized how much stuff I should cut out from these videos, I decided to throw up a disclaimer that basically said, “I can’t do this. If you want the full experience, go watch the Endurance Run.” On paper, it is probably a little weird to go tell people to watch a different video, but it felt like that’s all I could do.

Overall I am really happy with how this series turned out. Personally I think the Persona 4 Endurance Run has more funny moments than the Deadly Premonition Endurance Run(s). Additionally, since there were so many episodes of the Persona 4 Endurance Run, it felt like I had more freedom between picking different types of highlights, while Deadly Premonition sometimes gave me nothing but wall ladies. With some stuff like that, there are probably entire highlights worth cutting from if I was only interested in picking the funniest moments in the series. That said, from an archival perspective of showing A) What is Deadly Premonition, and B) What happened in the Endurance Run(s), I think I did a good enough job at both of those things. At the very least, this Best Of series should give people a perspective of what happened during both Endurance Runs, since I imagine people probably stick to either one or the other, if they were to rewatch this series.

Before I move on, I would like to thank those who commented on my blogs or videos as the series went on. I always appreciate hearing feedback and other people's perspectives on these games or the Endurance Runs, whether they are new to these games or saw them back in the day. Lastly, I would like to thank @zombiepie as always for featuring the Best of Giant Bomb's Deadly Premonition Endurance Run videos on the Community Spotlight. It's always great seeing the work done throughout the Giant Bomb community and my work alongside the other cool stuff that appears in the community.

On the Future:

Well, with the conclusion of these simultaneous play throughs, I have technically highlighted three out of the five Endurance Runs. With that in mind, it is perhaps not the craziest thing to assume I will try to tackle the Chrono Trigger or Shenmue Endurance Runs at some point. That said...no comment. This time I’m not even trying to be coy, while I’m secretly working on something else in the background. I have nothing lined up and I don’t know when/if I will highlight another Endurance Run. If I were to do something like this again, it is almost guaranteed to follow the same format of the other series I have done so far. The only major change I am thinking about doing is editing all of the videos together beforehand. With both the Persona 4 and Deadly Premonition series, real life got in the way, which is why there are some gaps in the release dates towards the middle of the series. While it will be more upfront work on my end and perhaps a longer delay between series, my hunch is that consistency is more ideal or necessary for the people watching.

I probably shouldn’t say this, but I’ll mention it anyways. While I don’t want to say it by name, I have been dying to highlight one series in particular for some time. However, that project involves a lot of premium content, and I don’t feel comfortable condensing and uploading a lot of those videos onto YouTube for free. (From a content perspective, my Best Of videos are borderline as is. I basically condensed 235 videos down to 29, which is quite a lot.)

So between not having a project already lined up, leaning towards not working on my true #1 choice, and having Endurance Run on the brain for so long, I honestly don’t know when my next Best Of series will come. I would love to work on another project like this at some point, but for now I need a break. For a while, I’ve been meaning to work on several smaller projects in same vein as some of these dumb videos. The next thing or two I upload will most definitely be one of these smaller projects. Beyond that, we shall see.

On Saying Goodbye to Deadly Premonition:

With that, all that’s left is to say so long to Greenvale.

Although I may be down on large parts of Deadly Premonition, I am still fascinated by this game. While the influences may be not so subtle, the combination of everything on top of Swery’s style make Deadly Premonition a true one of a kind game.

Over the years, I have generally kept up with what Swery has been up to. From D4: Dark Dreams Don’t Die, to its troubled development, to Swery’s health scare, to the formation of White Owls Inc. Even before I watched the Deadly Premonition Endurance Runs and only knew what his games were like in hearsay, I have been a fan of Swery, the man, for a while. Over the years, he seems to be a funny and sincere person, who unfortunately seems to continuously hit a number of speed bumps over the course of his career.

Being realistic, I will never play Deadly Premonition for myself and I will never watch either Endurance Run again. If I were to do anything, I will most likely play through D4 and get a glimpse into that weird thing. Looking towards the future, I am dying to see Swery’s next game. Half of that is honestly because I just wish Swery all the best and hope he can work on a project he loves without encountering so many mishaps like he did with Deadly Premonition or D4. Beyond that, I sincerely want to see White Owls Inc.’s first game for myself.

While I may think Deadly Premonition is overall not a great game, there is an audacity to it. Sure it’s a mess, but it’s a beautiful mess. It is a strange game, but you can’t help but get sucked into its world. Although it is an easy complement to throw out, Swery makes games that are uniquely his own. For better and worse, they stand out from most other videogames. While I may be done with Deadly Premonition forever and ever, I can’t wait to see what Swery and the other folks at White Owls Inc. are working on next.