In Raw Danger!, if you’ve been nice to Stephanie and suffer many trials all the while convincing her she should do so in order to clear her conscience you can
- witness an over-the-shoulder deathbed reconciliation with her step-mother who’s been kept alive up to this point by circus performers from the nearby big top
- before being asked to leave the trailer once the step-mother expires
- when you’re then given the opportunity to feel like a scumbag “what if” interaction junkie by trying to reenter the vehicle but it’s locked
- so you head back for the circus tent towards the front of the vehicle where your previously thwarted voyeuristic curiosity is rewarded with a wide screen TV’s worth of windshield framing Stephanie’s grieving next to the still warm corpse inside
- while outside, snow and body temperature drop as you gawk
- and maybe you think about the animal trainer in the tent who, moments ago, told you about having to put all the animals to sleep earlier that day
that’s the kind of intersection of “you’re in a movie now, action!” and “it’s a video game, just hangout with your paper doll dress up character in these eerie downtimes that kinda feel like the film crew have left to set up the next scene” that have made the first two Disaster Report games so endearing the past couple of days
think I gotta check out this 4th one on the Steam while it’s on sale…
(this sequence is part of a scattered tradition at least in my mind of early 3D game cutscenes that inexplicably feature a split-second shot of something random (in this case the character’s legs (maybe it has to do with the camers shake being applied in this instance) Shadows of the Empire Boba Fett boss battle completion screen comes to mind, I guess camera’s were a bitch back then even when players didn’t have to control them!)