Deadly Premonition director's enigmatic The Missing gets a baffling first gameplay trailer
Complete with backward-talk and many deaths.
Earlier this month, Deadly Premonition director Hidetaka "Swery" Suehiro unveiled a small selection of screenshots for his enigmatic new "atmospheric puzzle platformer" The Missing - and now there's a baffling first gameplay trailer to keep them company.
Beyond the fact that The Missing: J.J. Macfield and the Island of Memories - to give the game its gleefully unwieldy full title - is being created in-house at Swery's own studio White Owls, little has been revealed about the game since its announcement back in February.
All Swery would say at the time, was that the title had many meanings: "A missing person, someone who's lost, or even something lost... Maybe it's your loved one... or a place you belong." And now, with a handful of screenshots and an entire two-minute trailer out in the wild...well, it's fair to say that things really aren't much clearer.
The Missing's debut gameplay trailer spends most of its 128-second running time demonstrating the many different ways in which the game's lead character - I'm going to assume she's called Jackie Jameson for the time being - can die in the game, from electrocution to incineration and even death by rotary fan.
It's a typically idiosyncratic way for Swery to properly showcase The Missing, particularly as its huge dollop of arcade-like visceral mayhem runs hilariously counter to the low-key narrative adventure that early promotional material seemed to be hinting at. But at least the Twin-Peaks-esque reversed backward-talk that pops up halfway through the video reminds us that we're still very much in familiar Swery territory.
Swery's The Missing, whatever it eventually turns out to be, is due to release on Xbox One, PlayStation 4, PC, and Switch later this year.