David Lynch Is Creating a Virtual Reality Experience for Twin Peaks

David Lynch and Mark Frost’s Black Lodge/Red Room, the extra-dimen­sion­al space that is both an inte­gral part of Twin Peaks and icon­ic in its set design, is a place most of us would not want to vis­it. Detec­tive Dale Coop­er got trapped there for 25 years and it was not pleas­ant. But that hasn’t stopped fans from want­i­ng to cre­ate that space any chance they get, whether as a bar or place to sing karaoke. And when the final episode of the sec­ond sea­son showed the lodge was an end­less series of rooms con­nect­ed by hall­ways, it wasn’t long until the video game ver­sions start­ed appear­ing.

Well, now you can real­ly get lost in the Black Lodge with the slow unveil­ing of Twin Peaks VR, which AdWeek says will be avail­able “some­time in 2019” on Steam for HTC Vive and Ocu­lus Rift.

Fans who fol­low the Wel­come to Twin Peaks blog have been hear­ing about this game/not game since the begin­ning of the year, but it seems that the footage out there was only proof of con­cept graph­ics or some such attempt.

The first video dropped in Jan­u­ary of 2018, and it’s er, some­thing:

No doubt made by fans, this gives us a brief vis­it to the Red Room; a very strange and not par­tic­u­lar­ly flat­ter­ing por­tray­al of the Man from Anoth­er Place; a trip to the RR Din­er fea­tur­ing what I assume is Major Brig­gs; and a return to the fright­en­ing glass box some­where in New York City first seen in The Return. The man play­ing the VR seems appro­pri­ate­ly con­fused. “Is it future or past?” It’s your liv­ing room, man!

This sec­ond clip gives us a bit more of the Red Room and a dubi­ous look­ing Audrey Horne. The Con­ve­nience Store, how­ev­er, is well done.

But this is, we stress, nowhere near a fin­ished ver­sion. It’s not even clear if any of this will make it into the final ver­sion.

A beta ver­sion pre­miered two weeks ago at Lynch’s Fes­ti­val of Dis­rup­tion in Los Ange­les. AdWeek had the only real descrip­tion of the five minute demo, which starts near the ring of saplings in Glas­ton­bury Grove:

Imme­di­ate­ly after the pool turns to blood, view­ers are trans­port­ed to the Red Room, an extra-dimen­sion­al space that’s been a key fea­ture of Twin Peaks in both the orig­i­nal series from the 1990s and the mod­ern revival that aired last year. (It’s also a loca­tion fre­quent­ly vis­it­ed by the show’s main char­ac­ter, FBI Spe­cial Agent Dale Coop­er.) Inside the room, view­ers aren’t able to walk like they can in some VR expe­ri­ences, but they’re able to tele­port with­in the room as it rapid­ly changes in ways sim­i­lar to what hap­pens in the show itself. (One moment, a stat­ue falls over before run­ning around as a shad­ow on the oth­er side of a cur­tain. In anoth­er, users can pick up a cof­fee mug that won’t emp­ty until the sec­ond time it’s picked up.) The demo ends as a white horse appears in the room in the dis­tance, sur­round­ed in dark­ness but unreach­able.

The best news is that the com­pa­ny devel­op­ing the game, Col­lid­er Games, is giv­ing cre­ative con­trol to Lynch, so hope­ful­ly the game won’t be like those ter­ri­ble non-Lynch episodes in Sea­son Two. Says AdWeek:

“[T]he more we show, and the more we progress with this devel­op­ment, hope­ful­ly the more [Lynch] will want to be involved,” Ras­sool said. “And the more we can do with maybe even some new narrative—because I’m not going to write new nar­ra­tive for this. I’m only ever going to let David Lynch [write].”

Here’s to hop­ing Lynch doesn’t just give us a cheap VR ver­sion of what we’ve already seen. Instead, let’s hope he gives us some­thing that blows our minds (and a rea­son to final­ly buy a VR head­set).

via Wel­come to Twin Peaks

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch an Epic, 4‑Hour Video Essay on the Mak­ing & Mythol­o­gy of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks

Twin Peaks Tarot Cards Now Avail­able as 78-Card Deck

Play the Twin Peaks Video Game: Retro Fun for David Lynch Fans

David Lynch’s Twin Peaks Title Sequence, Recre­at­ed in an Adorable Paper Ani­ma­tion

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.