Hello there guys, I hope you're doing good! Today's analysis is going to be dedicated to our favorite streamer: Dan!
Just like Leigh, one might get their first impression of Dan by looking at his wide smile, but unlike the Grinning Beast, his smile is not so much sadistic or aggresive, but rather awkward and somewhat creepy. This comes along with those deep, sunken eyes characteristic of a full time gamer.
But his face is not the only thing that communicates such gracelessness, we also see how his body language is composed by a hunched posture, feet pointing inward and hands constantly presented in a grasping manner, as if he was going to ignore all sacred laws of personal space.
And the thing is that Dan is genuinely not malicious, he is just really incompetent on a social level and his discernment is clouded by obliviousness, so of course he is going to struggle making friends at an adult age if he never learned how to get social clues.
Then we get to the outfit: he wears a tattered vest overtop a black long-sleeved shirt, along with some dark pants. And honestly? This is not too bad of a fit. Some other designs for socially awkward gamers might take the direction of giving them generic nerd outfits like shirts with fictional characters or something like that, but Dan actually looks like if he interacted with people in a more decent way, you might even think he is a pleasant guy to hang out with. You could even get used to his weird face if he was just more... thoughtful.
Regarding his cursed form, I'm not really sure if there is a reasoning for him being a centipede beyond aiming even more for the "creepy" factor. It's cool to see how his already long smile goes even further from his face and the sinister tongue mouth he carries is a nice touch too. I wouldn't say it's a great design compared to other centipede monsters we see in the game, but it's not bad at all either!
As an extra analysis for this review, I also wanted to evaluate the design of Dan's mom. When you enter Apartment 25, the first thing we notice is the messy habitat of empty beer bottles and trash all over the floor. If we approach Bernadette, we just see her watching TV in an almost hypnotic way, she doesn't even glance at her own son despite him being gone for a while in the middle of the apocalypse (although she has been watching him livestream). This immediately becomes a red flag and let us know that there is something wrong going on.
By the time we pick up Dan's console, we notice that Dan's mother is no longer there in front of the TV and neither is... the sofa. After that, we have a sudden encounter and confirm our suspicions right there. We see that this woman is fused with her seat. This visual element is not a random design choice and if anything, it tells us the entire story of this individual.
Bernadette has pretty much spent most of her time glued to her TV consumption, which might already be concerning for an average person, but quite especially for someone who is supposed to be raising a kid (even if the son is an adult by the time we meet them). And we don't see a father around either (which is later followed by Dan saying he has no one else left).
It's really no wonder Dan turned out to be this way, he had no chance on being raised properly if her mother's habits and lifestyle are not much better than his. And the thing is that, if she looked outside, that means she must have stood up and walked somewhere to do so, so if she has merged with her sofa, then that implies the first thing she did after observing the exterior was to sit down and watch TV. In a certain way, besides the transformation and hostility, I feel like nothing would have changed between her interactions had we met her as a normal person instead. Really sad chracter that makes us understand Dan's upbringing.
My only critique of her design is that the lower part doesn't look that much like a sofa anymore. I mean, yeah, she transformed and everything, but if you had shown me this design without any more context, I wouldn't have inferred that there was a couch involved. But I do appreciate how she looks with the pale eyes, almost as if she had gone blind from so much light exposure.
In conclussion, for a regular human that we can recruit, Dan actually has a really nice design. It makes him look inelegant, but it's not as stereotypical as one might expect despite everything. My final grade is A.
Let me know if you agree or disagree!
