I'm not done with the game as only I'm only a ways into the third episode, but Zach is tied into York's past. That's why it ends up feeling fine to have a proper name not chosen by the player used to address the player...if you want to take it that way. In fact, once how it came to be is revealed, the whole concept just works even more strongly going further into the game, IMO.
It's very strange, but I actually think that this game might just have the most amazingly-handled static story progression ever attempted. I dunno, my love for low-budget and weird shit definitely helps, but the game does a good job in making you feel a sense of strange belonging to that crazy place and not so game-like detachment from the crazy characters who live there. There's a real sense of connection built with the kind of things characters will say and do in relation to York & Zach. Very RPG-like, at least, as far as a sense of written and explored depth to characters...a real sense of layers of revelation.
Might be my favorite story-based experience this whole generation so far, but it has competition from Alan Wake, Heavy Rain, and others...and I hesitate to put it in direct comparison because storytelling is still so heavily influenced by the production value used to convey it in games precisely because they are so intent on using film and television as their template. On a nuts and bolts level of storytelling, this is better than most games, IMO. Closer to a point 'n click adventure than an RPG, really...kind of like Shenmue or anything else that sort of channeled the point 'n click spirit into a 3D action-game framework, but better-handled here simply because the acting isn't so wooden and characters aren't so predictably simple.
In any case, this game deserves far more than the two reviews seem to give it. I'm not going to argue scores whether I agree with them or not, but there seems to be a lack of digging deeper into the very experience on offer with DP in the review text. There's simply no inkling of there being much more than a shitty game you shouldn't bother to even try from the review writing...almost appearing as dismissive handwaving that comes from some high standard of epicurean sense that if something is simply not polished enough, that the production values not high enough, that the tone isn't self-serious enough or clearly shunted to one side of the column instead of how it straddles comedy, drama, and horror...that the game simply isn't granted a reasonable level of attention. There doesn't seem to be any tolerance for something that doesn't meet some rather superficial standards. I've already long been wary of reviews from most, if not all, sites and magazine because they enforce a very narrow sense of taste and the overvaluation of production values in games to begin with. I'm not saying DP is some misunderstood genre classic, like Blade Runner, or something...just that it, like a lot of low-budget fare, which is already at some clear disadvantage for so long now, is pressured even more by the high standards in place with your average title in the current generation and that sort of automatic judgment will naturally result in even more really good titles being lost in the shadows of the giants they're sitting next to.