Last July, Granzella released the two-part post-story DLC for Disaster Report 4: Summer Memories. The post-story content takes place starting in December, around half a year since the events in the main game proper, and acts an epilogue for most of the characters you meet through the course of the game.
In the main game, we meet a lot of other survivors, all of whom are wrapped up in their own sub-plots, and have their own reasons to wish to survive. However, with the protagonist also trying to leave the city and survive, many of these sub-plots end midway, which can feel very annoying in some particular cases.
That said, perhaps with a game so centered around showing players the aftermath, it’s only natural that we get these little story vignettes set half a year later. This is reflected in our protagonist, who once again sets off for the town in order to see how the people they met over the summer are faring nowadays.
I was really happy to see characters like Danny again, and thankfully, he was still alive even after the beating he took half a year ago. However, Danny has been drifting around for half a year, with no goal in mind and wavering between staying in Japan or leaving to go home without accomplishing anything. Through Danny and some other characters, the post-story DLC shows how a disaster can continue to affect regular citizens even six months later, even when the city is being slowly rebuilt.
Over the main game, Disaster Report 4 takes a very hands-off approach to defining the main character, letting you decide who you are through your thoughts and interactions without major consequences. This holds true in the DLC, to the point that even I was surprised. You’re asked to carry over your save, but it seems that all it does is carry over your appearance and money.
This means that it’s up to you once again to remember just how you interacted with them in the main game. Perhaps the way you interact with them has changed over the half-year gap, or maybe you act as if you never left. The freedom to decide for yourself is once again in your hands, but I’ll say that for those trying to be consistent, it might be hard to remember the specifics of your interactions if you’ve put down the game for a while since beating it.
The final thing I’d like to talk about is how the DLC tries to tie into the larger world of the Disaster Report series. While the main game is divorced from the other games and don’t have many returning characters, it makes sense they are now in town now that reconstruction is well underway.
For example, Masayuki Sudou (Keith Helm in the original Disaster Report), heroine Saki from Disaster Report 3, and Ryouko Honda (Sophia Briggs from Raw Danger!) all make an appearance in the DLC. Some of them amount to glorified cameos, but it’s nice to see that the characters we know from other games are still doing well for themselves.
The DLC have eight short chapters in total, with the first three being free, and the other five paid. This post-story content only took around two hours to beat, and that is with me talking to every single NPC around.
Near the end, we get a hint for Disaster Report 5, saying that it’s supposedly set between Disaster Report and Raw Danger!. With Granzella’s Kazuma Kujo being known for his practical jokes, it’s hard to know if this is serious or not. But if it is, I can’t wait to see what’s next in store.
Disaster Report 4: Summer Memories will come to the Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and PC worldwide on April 7, 2020. It is immediately available on the Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4 in Japan.
