Deadly Premonition: The Director’s Cut is a 2013 HD upgrade of the “Most Critically Polarizing survival horror game ever made” Deadly Premonition.
The game follows the eccentric FBI Agent Coop Francis York Morgan with his imaginary friend “Zach” as he investigates the grisly murder of the popular Laur Anna Graham in the small town logging town of Twin P Greenvale.
Despite being released on Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 (in Japan) the game had Playstation 2 era graphics and and outdated control scheme. But what Deadly Premonition lacked in the technical department it made up for it in spades with its endearing characters and charming dialogue with an engaging yet strange story that’s a bizarre mix of drama, horror, and comedy wrapped in an earworm of a tune you’ll find yourself humming days on end.
Deadly Premonition originally released in North America as a $20 budget title on February 23, 2010 with little fanfare and less than stellar initial reviews. One of the first and most infamous was IGN’s review that completely trashed Deadly Premonition for its horrible controls and low-res graphics:
"Deadly Premonition is the definition of a system seller. Once you play it, you’ll want to go sell your system” - Erik Brudvig, IGN (2/10)
So yeah, IGN a Deadly Premonition fan? Not so much…
With such a horrible early reception from critics it seemed Deadly Premonition was destined to fade into obscurity within retailer $5 bargain bins around the country. Hell, even SWERY, the game’s writer and director who fought a long and hard to get the game developed, began to wonder if his six year fight to get the game published was even worth it:
“I spent six years pushing past all these problems, and then soon after we released, I saw these first very negative reviews. I was shocked. I thought that the people who had tried to cancel the game might have been right.” - Hidetaka “SWERY” Suehiro, 2013 polygon.com interview
Luckily the tide turned in the game’s favor when prominent game critics won over by the game’s charms rallied to the game’s defense. Jim Sterling over on Destructoid gave the game a glowing review in spite of the game’s glaring technical flaws and awarded Deadly Premonition with a perfect score:
“Deadly Premonition is THE greatest game ever made” - Jim Sterling, Destructoid (10/10)
The disparity between IGN and Destructoid’s review scores soon piqued general interest with those previously unaware of Deadly Premonition’s existence. The disconnect even inspired the Giant Bomb crew to make Deadly Premonition the subject of their popular Endurance Run video series in April 2010 which helped the game amass a large online fan following.
By the end of 2010 Deadly Premonition had officially become a beloved “cult classic” and even won several year-end awards including “Game of the Year” from GameCritics.com, “Most Surprisingly Good Game” from GameSpot, “Best Worst Game” from GamesRadar, and “Best Cult Game” from Gamasutra.
Two years later a HD re-release of the game was announced with much excitement with a promise to fix some of the game’s biggest gameplay issues. On April 30, 2013 Deadly Premonition: The Director’s Cut, released in North America with upgraded graphics, re-designed controls, with new cutscenes and DLC but unfortunately the technical issues with the game persisted.
To the disappointment of many the re-release ran worse than the original game with massive framerate drops and for some players suffered frequent game crashes. Sadly Access Games never issued a patch for these problems and the issues with the Playstation 3 Director’s Cut release persist to this day.
Despite the known issues plaguing the Director’s Cut console release a PC port was quickly Greenlit on Steam in July, 2013 and released just a few months later on Halloween. Fans hoping for a less buggy experience were severely disappointed once again when they not only found the port not only locked at 720p but completely unplayable on some PC systems as well.
It was a shoddy port to say the least but luckily Peter “Durante” Thoman swooped in and provided a mod that not only made it possible to manually adjust the game’s resolution but also made game more stable and less prone to crashing with little to no framerate drops.
Even with the Durante’s mod there were still some lingering issues with the PC port but fortunately in the months since the game’s release a variety of workarounds for most of the glaring issues has been discovered to get the game to run smoothly.
Deadly Premonition: The Director’s Cut does take some work but to get it to run smoothly on your PC with the mod and workarounds but it is by far the best way to experience the game with its extra content, high resolution and more stable framerates.
I’m still somewhat of a newbie at making Let’s Plays but I’m no stranger to the wonderful world of Deadly Premonition. I’ve been a huge fan of the game since 2010 and I love it so much that I even run a large fan site for the game called Welcome to Greenvale.
I had recorded a 100% completion run of the original game years ago but the recording quality was terrible and it ended up not being as comprehensive as I hoped it was going to be at the time.
I completed all the side missions and found all the secret collectibles and weapons but in the years since I’ve realized I barely scratched the surface of what Deadly Premonition truly had to offer.
The developers put a lot of work into making Greenvale a living breathing town. Each resident has their own schedules and character interactions independent of the main story and these moments are easily missed if a player does not go out of their way to find them.
I’ve been wanting to try my hand at making a more in-depth run showing more of these optional interactions and the easily missed details for a quite while now. I figured since the Director’s Cut has some graphical improvements and extra content, it would be the perfect version to record and discuss.
So if you are looking for an informative 100% completion run that will discuss the game’s development and secrets from a fan who’s put waaaay too many hours into the game then this Let’s Play series is for you!
I don’t mind spoiler discussions within the thread as I realize that a lot of people have already played or at least watched an LP of the game in the past but please keep these discussion under a spoiler tag to not ruin any surprises for anyone who might be new to the story. 
I also welcome any questions or comments you may have about the game or the LP. I’ll be recording and uploading as I go so I’ll be able to address anything you guys may bring up between the updates in the next video.
(Even though I’m playing the the PC version of the game I’ve decided to keep the game resolution at 720p to cut down on the file size of the videos recorded and to prevent my computer from choking while editing footage.)
- CHAPTER 00
- CHAPTER 01
- CHAPTER 02
- CHAPTER 03
- CHAPTER 04
- CHAPTER 05
- CHAPTER 06
- Missed Conversations CH 01-03
- Missed Conversations CH06
- CHAPTER 07
- CHAPTER 08
- CHAPTER 09
- CHAPTER 10
- CHAPTER 11
- CHAPTER 12
- CHAPTER 13
- CHAPTER 14 & 15
- CHAPTER 16 & 17
- CHAPTER 18 & 19
- CHAPTER 20
- CHAPTER 21
- CHAPTER 22 & 23
- CHAPTER 24 & 25
- CHAPTER 26 (END)
I haven’t played D4 yet (I was waiting for all the episodes to come out which isn’t happening anymore 
) so I will definitely being watching your LP. I’m really interested in seeing the nods to DP the only one I know at the moment is all I know is that there’s a character named Kaysen in that game as well
I’ve only just started so I only have the one video made so far and will update as I go. I’m recording game footage for the next video currently and It will cover CH01 and CH02 so it will be rather long.