Reply to Re: Crazy Old Tim Plays all the DMODs of 2003
If you don't have an account, just leave the password field blank.
159: Twins Author: Binirit Release Date: June 18, 2003
"You Evil Alternative Hero that you are! You will not get away with that!"
"Twins" won the contest handily, nearly sweeping the first-place vote. It certainly has a compelling description: "Someone has to save the world. And someone is trying very hard. It's not you though!"
This entry came the closest in the contest to the concept that immediately occurred to me when I heard "Evil Hero:" the typical 'save the world from the bad guy' plot, but with the player in the role of said bad guy. This DMOD doesn't take a straightforward approach to this story, however. I found the angle Binirit took to be quite interesting.
As you might guess, you play as Dink's evil twin, but there's more to it than that. Wizard Martridge has an evil twin too ("Wizard Cartridge," which I found way funnier than I should have), and he kidnapped Dink's twin at birth, named him Dinc (pronounced the same), and raised him as a son. Dinc now happily does his "dad's" evil bidding, adding his own morally reprehensible deeds in along the way.
Martridge and Cartridge discuss their respective worldviews.
As the description says, Dinc's quest is to save the world from being saved by his counterpart, Dink. Through Cartridge, he serves a mostly-unseen overlord he calls the "Good Mistress" - though of course this same character is known to the good Dink as the "Evil Mistress." Dinc tries to help the Mistress's army bring about her goal of total destruction.
When I first saw the phrase "Evil Hero" in the name of the contest, I thought it was a contradiction in terms. Surely, I thought, "Evil Protagonist" would have made more sense. But "Twins" embraces the designation, presenting a character who is evil but, in a way, also a hero. There's no moral ambiguity in this DMOD - Dinc's actions, such as leading a frightened girl looking for help to her death - are inarguably evil - yet we see from his perspective that everyone is the hero of their own story. Dinc loves and is devoted to his adoptive father, who treats him well. Dinc's callous disregard for the lives of human beings is offset by the concern he shows for the monsters who fight on his side of the conflict. He beams with pride when he sees a field of human corpses, but when he encounters a tunnel filled with dead monsters, he's horrified.
Dinc admires the handiwork of his allies.
I just wanted to call this to everybody's attention - Susan the stone giant.
There may not be much moral ambiguity in "Twins," but there's plenty of ambiguity to go around nonetheless. The game itself does not feed you the plot as readily as I'm doing here. At the start, you don't get anything except Dink saying he needs to meet his father. You don't learn about Dinc's name being spelled with a 'c' until near the end. What really throws some confusion into the mix is the fact that Dink and his twin share some kind of mental connection, so one will "dream" they are committing the actions of the other. As such, you occasionally switch between them, and it isn't completely clear at first that they aren't really two sides of the same person.
Dink's quest features these lovely sunflowers. How nice.
And then there are the wizards. Despite being on opposite sides of a huge conflict, they maintain a close relationship with one another. Even though their views on morality are practically opposite, their methods are surprisingly similar. Dink and Dinc are both manipulated by the wizards, and it sometimes seems that both wizards care more about their personal disagreement than anyone who gets hurt in the process.
Another prominent feature of this game is that the player is often given a choice of what to do. Sometimes, one choice is wrong and the other one is right. At other times, it doesn't really matter very much what you pick. I thought I felt the game building toward an ending where the player would have to decide whether to accomplish the good goal or the evil one, but that's not what happens. In fact, the wizards make up, the Smallwood brothers meet and make their peace with one another, and everybody on both sides just kind of gets over the conflict and has a nice dinner party. This is kind of a bizarre ending when so much blood has been spilled, but then, this was kind of a bizarre DMOD anyway, so I was fine with it.
I think this is the only DMOD I've seen that features people in line to use the bathroom.
While I found "Twins" quite fascinating, there are some things holding it back. While there are a good number of new backgrounds, some of the maps are quite dull. The opening takes place in a rather clumsy woods, and a good chunk of the early game happens in a huge, totally nondescript cave. Combat mostly consists of rooms absolutely teeming with slimes, which are quite hard to get past if you don't find some very well-hidden megapotions fairly early on.
I hope you like trees!
No, they really aren't.
Some of the maps are good, though. This jungle is quite memorable.
While it wasn't as unique as the jungle, I really admired the unusual use of rocks in this scene.
And then there were some bugs. I ran into a particularly nasty one where talking to a certain character twice or choosing the wrong option when talking to him the first time causes Dink to stay frozen. I traced this problem to a missing bracket in the script, which I fixed. Dink's idle animation seems to be disabled throughout this mod, which is a bit unsettling when you're as used to him rocking back and forth as I am.
While "Mayhem" was definitely the most well-made DMOD in the contest, and I was intrigued as Hell by "Rascal," I think that "Twins" really deserved to win for the way that it dug into the theme of the contest and used it to tell a good story.
"You Evil Alternative Hero that you are! You will not get away with that!"
"Twins" won the contest handily, nearly sweeping the first-place vote. It certainly has a compelling description: "Someone has to save the world. And someone is trying very hard. It's not you though!"
This entry came the closest in the contest to the concept that immediately occurred to me when I heard "Evil Hero:" the typical 'save the world from the bad guy' plot, but with the player in the role of said bad guy. This DMOD doesn't take a straightforward approach to this story, however. I found the angle Binirit took to be quite interesting.
As you might guess, you play as Dink's evil twin, but there's more to it than that. Wizard Martridge has an evil twin too ("Wizard Cartridge," which I found way funnier than I should have), and he kidnapped Dink's twin at birth, named him Dinc (pronounced the same), and raised him as a son. Dinc now happily does his "dad's" evil bidding, adding his own morally reprehensible deeds in along the way.
Martridge and Cartridge discuss their respective worldviews.
As the description says, Dinc's quest is to save the world from being saved by his counterpart, Dink. Through Cartridge, he serves a mostly-unseen overlord he calls the "Good Mistress" - though of course this same character is known to the good Dink as the "Evil Mistress." Dinc tries to help the Mistress's army bring about her goal of total destruction.
When I first saw the phrase "Evil Hero" in the name of the contest, I thought it was a contradiction in terms. Surely, I thought, "Evil Protagonist" would have made more sense. But "Twins" embraces the designation, presenting a character who is evil but, in a way, also a hero. There's no moral ambiguity in this DMOD - Dinc's actions, such as leading a frightened girl looking for help to her death - are inarguably evil - yet we see from his perspective that everyone is the hero of their own story. Dinc loves and is devoted to his adoptive father, who treats him well. Dinc's callous disregard for the lives of human beings is offset by the concern he shows for the monsters who fight on his side of the conflict. He beams with pride when he sees a field of human corpses, but when he encounters a tunnel filled with dead monsters, he's horrified.
Dinc admires the handiwork of his allies.
I just wanted to call this to everybody's attention - Susan the stone giant.
There may not be much moral ambiguity in "Twins," but there's plenty of ambiguity to go around nonetheless. The game itself does not feed you the plot as readily as I'm doing here. At the start, you don't get anything except Dink saying he needs to meet his father. You don't learn about Dinc's name being spelled with a 'c' until near the end. What really throws some confusion into the mix is the fact that Dink and his twin share some kind of mental connection, so one will "dream" they are committing the actions of the other. As such, you occasionally switch between them, and it isn't completely clear at first that they aren't really two sides of the same person.
Dink's quest features these lovely sunflowers. How nice.
And then there are the wizards. Despite being on opposite sides of a huge conflict, they maintain a close relationship with one another. Even though their views on morality are practically opposite, their methods are surprisingly similar. Dink and Dinc are both manipulated by the wizards, and it sometimes seems that both wizards care more about their personal disagreement than anyone who gets hurt in the process.
Another prominent feature of this game is that the player is often given a choice of what to do. Sometimes, one choice is wrong and the other one is right. At other times, it doesn't really matter very much what you pick. I thought I felt the game building toward an ending where the player would have to decide whether to accomplish the good goal or the evil one, but that's not what happens. In fact, the wizards make up, the Smallwood brothers meet and make their peace with one another, and everybody on both sides just kind of gets over the conflict and has a nice dinner party. This is kind of a bizarre ending when so much blood has been spilled, but then, this was kind of a bizarre DMOD anyway, so I was fine with it.
I think this is the only DMOD I've seen that features people in line to use the bathroom.
While I found "Twins" quite fascinating, there are some things holding it back. While there are a good number of new backgrounds, some of the maps are quite dull. The opening takes place in a rather clumsy woods, and a good chunk of the early game happens in a huge, totally nondescript cave. Combat mostly consists of rooms absolutely teeming with slimes, which are quite hard to get past if you don't find some very well-hidden megapotions fairly early on.
I hope you like trees!
No, they really aren't.
Some of the maps are good, though. This jungle is quite memorable.
While it wasn't as unique as the jungle, I really admired the unusual use of rocks in this scene.
And then there were some bugs. I ran into a particularly nasty one where talking to a certain character twice or choosing the wrong option when talking to him the first time causes Dink to stay frozen. I traced this problem to a missing bracket in the script, which I fixed. Dink's idle animation seems to be disabled throughout this mod, which is a bit unsettling when you're as used to him rocking back and forth as I am.
While "Mayhem" was definitely the most well-made DMOD in the contest, and I was intrigued as Hell by "Rascal," I think that "Twins" really deserved to win for the way that it dug into the theme of the contest and used it to tell a good story.
