I have no problems with games exploring uncomfortable topics, with presenting the player with challenging ideas.
This is not that. It’s a last minute twist out of nowhere that makes no sense by the rules of the story. It actively relies on the player character (not the player) not having information.
Because it turns out the Husband the half brother of the Wife. Plus he actually committed the murder the wife is being accused of. From there you can take responsibility, hide the truth from everyone and live a happy life with your wife and eventual child, or go for the secret third ending.
What’s especially frustrating is that the story does not make any sense! And not even in a cinema sins fake flaw kind of way.
One of the key pieces of evidence in the narrative is a photo taken on a specific date. It proves the Wife was in a specific location when the photo was taken. Talking about the photo with the Wife confirms the Husband was there too.
Except that can’t be right because the Husband was killing his Father at the same time.
If you’re trying to tell a story about piecing together clues to solve a mystery, you simply can’t get away with this.
Except, okay, maybe the ending was supposed to be a thematically satisfying resolution to the story. It turns out the only option to deal with the time loop is simply not to enter it.
Because maybe the time loop is itself a metaphor. That there’s no good way out of this situation. That the only way to avoid the problem is to never create it in the first place. To walk away like the hidden ending suggests, forgetting that the Husband had ever met the Wife.
No wait there’s like three endings that actually count and in a couple of them the events of the story play out according to your actions and have resolutions. That you can only take because of the loop.
Drat.
I don’t know whether this is simply me not getting the story that the creator is trying to tell. It’s possible!
But I know that when I realised what was happening with the arc of the Husband, the first thing that came to mind was the plot twist in Heavy Rain. The reveal that you were actually playing a murderer all along. It was just happening when you weren’t looking at the character.
That is not good storytelling.
Twelve Minutes has prestigious actors, a publisher with pedigree and a fascinating pitch. But it falls apart under even the slightest scrutiny of its components. It’s the veneer of an impressive indie game but completely hollow inside.