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williamaltman · 3 months

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Life is Strange 2 thoughts/feelings/review

So, Life is Strange 2. I finished the game yesterday and watched the other endings today. Things are not as fresh in my mind as if I had just finished and I talked a bit about it in other places so this feels a bit hard, but I'll try to lay down all my thoughts...

First of all... All my homies love LIS2, fuck you if you don't like LIS2! Seriously though, for years I've seen people say that the game wasn't good, that the characters weren't as good as the ones from the first one, that the Sean/Daniel relationship wasn't that interesting... I kinda did suspect it was just nostalgia goggles or whatever, but now I know for sure. I don't think there's anything wrong with connecting more with LIS1 and having a deeper relationship with it, but in this case I think you shouldn't even be comparing them and expecting the game to live up to that to you in the first place.

Now, onto the actual game. God, this was so fucking heartbreaking. I think I cried in every single episode. The very core premise of the story is just so sad, so unfair, and despite the powers so rooted in reality that it left me legit feeling uncomfortable with how fucked up their whole situation was. There are good moments, sure, but honestly every single thing that happens from the moment their dad is shot is just... Not how their life should've had to be.

Sure, LIS1 and BTS had dark themes too. But here, it's like, they lose everything from the beginning. Sean doesn't get to go to his party, to hang out with Lyla, to continue his normal life in any way. Daniel loses a part of his childhood. They're both forced to grow up so much faster than they should. There's a line Sean says in episode 3, and it's just a little idle VO, but it fucking crushed me, "Stop overthinking. You're not a teenager anymore". Even though he's fucking 16... He's 16 and he has to essentially become a parent. I knew what the game was about and lowkey followed it a bit when it was releasing, knew a few spoilers, but that didn't make anything any less heartbreaking.

I thought it was beautiful how the game took the opportunity to showcase and celebrate alternate lifestyles. The "family", Away, their freedom and how they interacted with society brings so much into perspective. I'm still a bit conflicted about Karen tbh, but I'm glad that at least they did show something beautiful through her story.

My biggest problem overall is probably how they handled the Finn romance route... I knew back when the game was releasing that despite adding a male LI, they pushed the female one more onto you and gave her more content, while locking the option to kiss him with a "bad choice" (I didn't know what exactly it was). And yeah, that is still true. I still think it was a mistake to lock the kiss with accepting the heist, and while I kinda understand the writer's explanation for that, I still think it could've been handled in another way, or they could've just let him kiss you and "betray" you by doing the heist anyway, since he still does that when you're friends lol.

I see people complaining that because they moved from place to place each episode, there wasn't enough time to connect with the characters... Idk if I'd say I disagree, but it just wasn't really the case for me. I was very invested in all the relationships, in Finn, Cassidy, Jacob, Chris, Karen. Everyone at the farm was cool and everyone in Away too. Lyla. You get so many tidbits about the characters even when they're not there on screen. The only thing I have to say which is kinda related to that, is that I think the time jumps were maybe a bit too big, and that the way they handled Mushroom was... weird.

I got the Parting Ways ending, and I'm satisfied with it. I kinda planned to get it, but only in the sense that I was spoiled that you get with Finn there. I didn't know that the whole morality thing had anything to do with it, and I played the first two episodes without even knowing that there was a points system about that and about brotherhood. I just made all the choices that were high morality (besides killing the cougar and the heist) because it was what I would do, and tried to be a good brother for Daniel. I figured that choosing to cross the border would most likely give me that one, but I just couldn't accept Sean having to go to prison for 15 years for something he didn't even do. If we were able to choose between Parting Ways and Blood Brothers, then I would actually be conflicted about which I wanted.

With the way the game's system works though, where you need to have low morality to get Blood Brothers, I couldn't really do it. I can't imagine myself teaching Daniel to be selfish and not care about killing people. I actually think it's super cool to watch Daniel use his power offensively and fuck shit up, but it just wouldn't be my version of the story. It's funny because, if we just played as Daniel, I wouldn't mind going that route. But since we play as Sean, with it being our job to raise Daniel, I feel a different kind of responsability towards leading him to become a good person. I also think it's beautiful that he gets to have the rest of his childhood, teenagehood, and live a "normal" healthy life with his grandparents. He does it in the redemption one too, but as I said, that just screws up Sean too much.

So, I'm a little disappointed that they're separated (and maybe can't ever see each other again? I'm a bit confused about Daniel's situation and whether he could visit), and that it's a bit shorter than the others (at least than the redemption one), but it IS the ending my playthrough led to and in that I'm satisfied.

I think this story is just incredible. It touched me so much, and the fact that some people can't see it genuinely frustrates me. The people complaining it's too political in particular can just go fuck themselves. It might not be perfect, but like with all things I appreciate, I'm just so glad it exists.

#life is strange 2 #life is strange #lis 2 #lis2 #sean diaz #daniel diaz #finn mcnamara #sean x finn #rambling #review

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girlshoegames · 3 months

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LiS2 EP 5 SPOILERS

DAVID MADSEN WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?!?

#text #gaming #life is strange #life is strange 2 #david madsen

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kuzco-lover · 1 year

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Actual Critiques of my Favorite Game, Life is Strange 2.

Life is Strange 2 (2018) is factually an amazing well developed game. Personally, I adore the game on every level. That, however, does not mean there aren't flaws, because there's BIG problems with this game and I want to shed light on 2 issues for those wondering why many people dislike parts of the game. Here is my (unasked for) criticism of Life is Strange 2. There will be spoilers so please tread lightly.

Number 1: Growing up with Esteban, and Karen's grandparents.

I believe that it was pretty unnecessary to make Sean and Daniel, the first important POC characters in the franchise, mixed with white and barely show their heritage. While it wasn't a big problem that they were mixed with white because mixed kids deserve all the representation in world (me being one, I would know), the problem is that the dev's should have shown more of how Sean and Daniel grew up with their father, Esteban, and shown the cultural dynamic from then in flashbacks or something. Instead, Esteban is just killed off and we never get to see how they celebrated culture. This could have been a great moment for Hispanic fans who grew up in a household where they celebrated Hispanic family dynamics and culture, to relate to the characters on a bigger level. This also would've contributed to the engagement of the game, which was so bad for many reasons, some being on this list. (I am African American, so please let me know actual Mexican opinions on this subject)

Number 2: The Horrible, No Good, Very Bad, Love Interests

A big part of LiS games is the selection of a straight relationship, or a queer relationship. Every main character is bisexual for the players enjoyment of the game. LiS2 is the first game in the series where the mc is a male. This made the queer fans very happy because of the MLM representation. Here's the problem, the male love interest was absolutely horrid. Apparently, this is an unpopular opinion and it really shouldn't be. Finn McNamara is a shitty love interest for so many reasons. First, lets talk ages of the characters. Sean Diaz, born August of 2000. The game starts in 2016 and takes place in October, near/on Halloween. This means Sean is freshly 16 when the incident occurs. Finn and Cassidy are described as teens in an article in the game, but are very obviously adults and their age range is from 18-21. Considering they can get beers, ouid, tattoos, etc. It makes sense for them to be 18+. Sean meets Finn and Cassidy in the winter of 2017, making Sean still a 16 year old. Sean escapes and starts hanging with them in the winter up until the summer of 2017. Sean is 16 throughout the whole time. Finn and Cassidy should not be romantically interested in a minor. Some people think 16 and 18 isn't a bad age gap, but Finn and Cassidy are also on a whole different maturity level, they have been through homelessness and so much tragedy themselves that they are nowhere near the maturity level of Sean. Let's take age out of the equation in case Finn and Cass are in fact under 18, Finn is still a bad person. Trauma makes people do crazy things, but that is just an explanation and not an excuse. Finn screws Sean and Daniel over. Finn gets Sean and Daniel caught and separated because he wants money. Finn manipulates Daniel and exploits his power to steal from Finns boss, who literally has a body guard. Finn knew his boss is very dangerous, probably armed, and that Daniel is still learning his power and is not in full control of it yet. Because of this heist, that Sean can either agree to do, or refuse, Sean and Daniel get busted and separated. Finn and Sean have no romantic chemistry at all. In the game, they share one small kiss, and are flirtatious almost in a friend way, the relationship is very forced. Cassidy, on the other hand, has sex with underage Sean. Cassidy's age is not determined as well, but assumed 18-21 as well, and the sex was just completely unnecessary. The only sex scene in all of the games is in the one game where the MC is underage, which is honestly so weird. There shouldn't have been love interests in this game. A person I've talked to brought up a great point. There would be no time for a love interest if Sean is always on the run from the law. I'm sure police would track down that his family lives in the part of Mexico that Sean fled to. Anyways, I'm very passionate about this specific topic, let me know your opinions :).

Thanks or listening to my LiS 2 rant. No matter what, I will adore this game, and I am very hopeful for a LiS game where we have black love interests and a Black MC (without making anything stereotypical PLEASE). Let me know your critiques of the LiS games, or if I said anything wrong please correct me but be civil and nice. (´｡• ᵕ •｡`) ♡

#life is strange #lis #lis2 #sean diaz #daniel diaz #life is strange 2 #dontnod #square enix #criticism

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ghost-in-the-hella · 5 months

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Let's play LiS2!

We're finally doing the thing! Tonight at 7pm ET, my partner and I will begin streaming Life is Strange 2, as promised/threatened in the earliest days of our YouTube channel when we thought "we'll do that if we ever hit 100 subscribers" was an easy way to ensure we never actually had to do the thing. Now here we are at 119 subscribers, finally streaming LiS2.

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Get ready for SPOILERS for this and potentially all Life is Strange games (and maybe some for Tell Me Why just for funsies; we'll see how it goes) and also for complaining.

Seriously, if you're a huge LiS2 fan, this probably isn't the stream for you. We're going to try to focus on the good in this game and not just roast it the whole time, but I'm guessing our opinions on certain things (like creepy fuckboi Finn) won't have changed since the game first came out, and we're not going to bite our tongues about that.

#life is strange #life is strange 2 #LiS2 #LiS #DontNod #Ship Wrecks #let's play #Youtube

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uglyduckling339 · 6 months

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HOLY FUCKING SHIT NOBODY TOLD ME I COULD KILL THE LOVE INTEREST??? OH MY GOD

#anyways i just killed finn #lis 2 #life is strange 2 spoilers #life is strange 2 #Ky liveblogs playing lis2 #i love my organization tags <3 (i dont use them at all)

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innuendostudios · 2 years

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To Filth: Thoughts on Life is Strange: True Colors

[spoilers ahead]

1. I will state my biases before the court:

Maybe you have a person who is, for whatever reason, not in your life anymore, and you have missed them every day since you said goodbye. Their absence is a scar, a bit of ostensibly healed flesh that nevertheless acts up when the weather changes. That person whom you can think about, after several years of effort, for up to thirty entire seconds before crying.

I don't know how universal this experience is. But I have that person, and True Colors' protagonist Alex Chen reminds me of her so much. The hair, the fashion sense, the taste in music, the unexpectedly good singing voice, her friends' exclamation of "oh my god, you own a skirt???" Even the central hook of taking on everyone else's feelings. It's uncanny.

And I adore her. I would do almost anything for Alex Chen. And random moments were so authentic to my own, hyper-specific experience that I was devastated in ways pretty much no one but me will experience that way. The other 99.9999% of players may be devastated by the same moments in similar ways - a lot of us have That Person and, mathematically, at least a few will be like Alex Chen (in fact I think Alex Chen is the kind of character destined to be That Person for a lot of people) - but they won't drag up my memories. They won't think of that one day, that one moment, that one song. No one has lived my life but me.

So this game hit in ways particular to Ian Danskin, and it will hit different for people who are not me.

2. So here we are again. I made a whole video about Life is Strange. I did a write-up on Life is Strange: Before the Storm. I devoted 1/3 of another write up to Life is Strange 2. (Are those diminishing returns? Maybe.) I guess I'm a lifer for this series, even as my thoughts on every single one have been different phrasings of "mixed."

Life is Strange: True Colors isn't getting a video, but it deserves a full write-up.

In absolute terms, this is probably the series' best entry since the first. It also, I think, marks the point where the series stops growing. This is the FarCry 3 of Life is Strange. Dontnod created the IP but it's owned by Square Enix, and they've handed it off to Deck Nine. Dontnod are a weird bunch, driven to do weird things, tackle weird subjects, mess with weird mechanics. They have heads bursting with ideas; their reach is very long, and their grasp very finicky; they are a claw machine.

That's not Deck Nine. Deck Nine played things very safe when they made Before the Storm, their previous entry in the LiS series, made while Dontnod was working on the (ambitious, disastrous) LiS2. And they gonna take it from here. Dontnod will be off doing weirdo shit like Twin Mirror and Tell Me Why and Squeenix will leave Deck Nine to make LiS the sweet, offbeat series the first game was about 40% of the time and will try to wrangle the other stuff it was into something... manageable. Peripheral. Repeatable.

It's good, but it's also the end of something.

3. Thing is, Deck Nine does what it does well. Per Goethe's three questions, I am ambivalent as to whether Deck Nine should be turning Life is Strange into something cozy and safe, but damn if they don't sell it!

True Colors is about another young person with superpowers, using them to explore human drama (and the occasional criminal conspiracy) in a sleepy noplace with a one-block Main Street and about 12 residents who've known each other since forever. (Haven Springs is very much a pretty how town with up so floating many bells down.) Another bisexual love triangle, another set of tragedies, another pack of hallucinatory images safely cordoned off from the narrative in dreams and visions.

But Deck Nine can write. Deck Nine can animate. Deck Nine is more about tugging heartstrings than punching feels, but they are expert stringpullers. The first chapter (this is a single game in five chapters rather than Dontnod's episodic structure) is more or less perfect. The depth/nuance/subtlety on Alex's face, the amount of emotion she conveys with a nervous, sideways glance (you can tell she's breaking eye contact even when the person she's talking to is unseen). How do they pull off "conveying emotion while trying to hide it" solely in facial animations when they clearly don't have Last of Us money?? How do you capture "trying to disappear into the background" and make it look easy? Because, friends, I know it's not easy. And the dialogue is miles beyond what Dontnod can pull off, not even when they brought in ringers for LiS2. These are nuanced, believable, human characters who come into focus with only a few lines and expressions.

If you're going to make Life is Strange be about this and only this, the quiet, the human, the slice-of-life shit, it helps to be really good at that.

But there are reasons True Colors had so much good will when it was new but seemed to fade quickly from everyone's memory. Cozy and safe doesn't leave an impression the way a Dontnod dumpster fire does.

4. Here's the hook: Alex can feel people's emotions. They cast auras that she can tune into. For most strong feelings, she can hear the associated thoughts; for particularly intense ones, she feels them to the point of losing control.

Alex's deal is she and her brother, Gabe, lost their mom as children and, after a few years, their dad bailed and they ended up in the foster system. She and Gabe were separated when he stole a car and got sent to juvie. You can imagine a young girl with no family and a lot of trauma surrounded by a bunch of other youths dealing with similar and who literally feels all of their feelings as well would have a rough time at the orphanage. She is afraid when other people are afraid, gets in fights when other people are angry, and has a long history of scaring away friends and foster parents. As the game begins, she is finally a legal adult, about to reunite with her long-lost brother who settled in a small burg in Colorado.

The way Max's time travel powers in LiS1 could function as a metaphor for youthful indecision, Alex's work as a metaphor for empathy. This leads to a lot of beautiful moments; like, shockingly beautiful. Genuinely incredible. But between those moments are choppy waters.

5. Basically, a metaphor - especially an interactive metaphor - should illuminate something. It makes the abstract literal - emotions, ideas, what have you. Like, part of Max's story was about how every choice has consequences, that there isn't always a "right" decision, a "good" ending, that it's all trade-offs and decisions. Becoming who you want to be is giving up all the people you could have been. Making that tangible with time travel is a great way to explore the idea! It helps us get into guts of it, gives us something to hold onto, to visualize. It works.

Alex's powers don't work as a metaphor for empathy. They're too simple, too literal. Alex is carrying a lot of baggage, her emotions are erratic. She's understandably anxious and focuses a lot on how people around her are feeling. As a child she took it on herself to make peace between her ever-fighting father and brother, stuffing her own feelings down for their benefit. She gets in fights when other people are angry at her, or even around her. She panics when other people are afraid. She needs everyone around her to be stable before she can be stable herself. And now, as an adult, it means becoming a caretaker for everyone around her, even her elders, diving into everyone else's fear and anxiety and trauma, trying to help them instead of asking them for help with her own shit.

I didn't need a metaphor to explain any of that. Those are perfectly understandable themes. In fact, Deck Nine's precise set of skills are ideal for exploring them. Much of the game is them doing precisely that - conveying these themes with nothing but good writing and careful animation.

And, worse than not adding much, the superpowers are actually where the game feels... over-simple. Mechanical. Gamey.

6. The big upheaval at the end of Chapter 1 is that Gabe dies. His long-term girlfriend's son, Ethan, runs off to the mountains alone, Alex and Gabe and Gabe's best friend Ryan go looking for him, but the mining company is blasting that night and this causes a rock slide. Alex is tied to Gabe with mountain-climbing gear, but he gets knocked off the cliff and starts to drag Alex with him, so Ryan, to save Alex, has to cut the rope, letting Gabe fall to his death.

As I said, this chapter is more or less perfect. The set of puzzles you solve to figure out where Ethan has gone (reading his homemade comic book and realizing it's based on his adventures at the abandoned mine) really work. Alex has to save the kid despite having to fight through his fear as well as her own. It's really good! And that final beat - Ryan cutting the rope - sets up a lot of possibility for the rest of the game.

I mean, imagine it! A girl just out of the foster system, reunited with her brother, coming to a tiny town that immediately promises to stitch her into the community as they've already done with Gabe. A home and a life and a new set of friends, all the things she's been missing. And now that brother is dead. Imagine her having to deal with her own grief and everybody else's. Imagine the question of whether Ryan was wrong to cut that rope, whether Alex could have pulled Gabe up instead of going over, whether Ryan had any right to make that decision for her. Just think!

So many of these possibilities are weakened by the central metaphor. Alex starts tapping into people's feelings without getting overpowered by them (the thread where anger and terror make her lose control is swiftly dropped) in order to fix people's grief. We get little puzzles where we dig around in their memories of Gabe so she can find just the right things to say. Sometimes we get visualizations of their pain: Ryan's surroundings fall away until there's nothing but him and the cliff where Gabe died; Gabe's girlfriend Charlotte's abstract sculpture turns into a manifestation of the people she's angry with. And these all turn into little adventure game puzzles where you find all the memories and say the right thing, and... poof! Grief resolved!

There's just so much about the subject matter that can't fit into that Psychonauts loop. How on Earth am I doing little puzzles to relieve Ryan of his grief over killing my brother?? How is he not dealing with my grief? Where even is my grief? At the end of Ryan's puzzle chain, I'm given three dialogue options regarding who should forgive Ryan: does Alex forgive him, would Gabe forgive him, or does he need to forgive himself? What it doesn't give me is the option of Ryan not getting forgiven. Not because he doesn't deserve forgiveness, not because he should've risked us both dying, but because it's too soon. I believe Alex can forgive Ryan someday; I can even believe she'll need to for her own healing. I don't believe she can forgive him the day after it happened, nor that he could forgive himself so quickly. But it's a sequel to Life is Strange, so we've gotta have a bisexual love triangle, and Ryan's the only eligible bachelor in Haven Springs, so we've gotta get that pesky "grief over letting your brother die" thing squared away with a single dialogue puzzle.

(Which, by the way? Not a fucking chance. I got together with the cool lesbian - you think Alex Chen is straight? Do you see her side-cut? (Though, unlike Warren in LiS1, I could at least see the appeal of Ryan - he's sweet and lumbersexual. It's just that he killed my brother.))

This is the issue. The very first thing Alex does after Gabe's wake is solve a little puzzle to make Steph (the cool lesbian) feel better about her friend dying. Then she helps the old lady in the early stages of dementia deal with her fear and confusion. And on and on.

And the game lends itself to the interpretation that Alex is dealing with everyone else's feelings rather than addressing her own, and that this is her character flaw, the thing she'll need to overcome. But it doesn't actually go there. Because, like, that's the core mechanic! You help people with their problems. The game is gonna keep making you do it, so it can't come out and say "this is actually deeply unhealthy for Alex." (I mean, Dontnod would've done it. They spent the second half of LiS1 saying that about Max, but those are the very parts Squeenix hired Deck Nine to sand off.) So many interactions resolve with Alex "forgiving" people at the time in her grief where forgiving others would be most painful, and, based on the framing (and the "other player stats" at the end of each chapter), I can't shake that this is, canonically, the "right" way to play.

7. Let's talk about what works.

Beyond that immaculate first chapter, there's an extended bit in Chapter 3 that is pure delight. To cheer Ethan up, Steph plans a an elaborate LARP set in the universe of Ethan's own homemade comic, with Alex playing his companion (in my game she was a bard). The whole town gets in on it - the local bar is converted to a tavern managed by the local high-functioning alcoholic, the record shop sells "potions," a townsperson whose cat went missing in Chapter 1 is pretending to be a blacksmith and when you read his mind he's really into it. Also Ryan shows up three times in three different masks as monsters to be felled. And when you enter battle? The camera moves to the side and, since it's a LARP and you have to yell out what move you're doing, you of course pick your moves from a dialogue tree, but that means, functionally, the game becomes a turn-based RPG. It's wonderful.

Oh but it gets better. Ethan has been having a hard time since Gabe died, and this is the first he's really perked up. And at the end when he finds his magical boon, he's so happy that Alex starts picking up on his joy. And it does that thing where she gets visions of what the other person is experiencing, so the whole town turns into an actual fantasy realm and you fight the final boss in realistic garb with realistic ruins and the same sideways camera but now selecting moves from the dialogue tree has the Final Fantasy "bwip bwip" sound effect and the moves have particle and lighting effects instead of just a boy swinging a cardboard sword and yelling "two damage!" It's beautiful. It's everything.

And in Chapter 5 there's an extended tour through Alex's memories, where she has to "play her part" in the moments when she lost each member of her family, and it's absolutely heartbreaking. (Though it ends with her imagined Gabe telling her to stop blaming herself and "let it go," which, once again, is treated as an event rather than the beginning of a years-long process but whatever!)

And the climax is Alex confronting the man responsible for covering up Gabe's death. (Oh, uh... Gabe's death wasn't an accident, the mining company set off the blast knowing people were on the mountain, and there's been an elaborate cover-up because it's not Life is Strange without a small-town criminal conspiracy! Anyway, Ryan's dad was in on it and he shoots you and drops you down a mine shaft at the end of Chapter 4.)

Anyway, you confront Ryan's dad (Jed) at the end, and it's another of those scenes where the game reviews all your choices for you, this time by seeing who in town believes your story. The nonbelievers think Alex is delusional and only looks like hell because she wandered into the mines alone. (Weirdly she never says "I have a bullet matching Jed's gun in my gut right now." (And this would be a really easy plot hole to fix? Just have Jed kick Alex down the mine shaft instead of shooting her. C'mon people!)) And, whatever, that's always hokey, but I've come to expect it from these kinds of games.

But then her powers come into the confrontation and it's... glorious. Because it's the first time Alex uses her powers to do something other than make someone's bad feelings go away. She uses her power of empathy to read Jed to filth.

And it works so freaking well. She, I dunno, freezes time or something (don't ask questions) and basically searches his soul and tells him everything that's going on inside him. Tells him why he covered up the truth, what lies he tells himself, what feelings are under those lies. She uses her empathy but not to absolve, not to heal, but to confront. She uses it to inform her own emotions, and then make someone else see how she's feeling. She is able to feel complete and total empathy while still tell him he is wrong. And, if you are inclined to read her character arc as being about learning not to caretake everyone around her, it's a real culminating moment (though you'd be doing most of the legwork there). I still think the game wants me to forgive him but it at least gives me a choice this time.

Confronted with the brutally honest truth about him, forced to feel all the things he's buried, he bursts into tears and confesses.

This scene is powerful.

8. In the end, True Colors is a bunch of good parts. It's not more than the sum of its parts. I'm not convinced it's less, either. I don't think it's parts sum at all. It's a collection of good bits and some stuff holding them together. It doesn't feel complete. It doesn't cohere. There is so much it should be that is left on the table. I am left wanting. But it has parts that are among the best moments in the series. And that's what I'll be remembering. I won't remember this as a whole game. I'll remember it as a character I cared about, and a handful of scenes that meant the world to me. And the rest, I'll just... forget.

It could have been so much more. But it could have been so much less. I don't have much hope for the series' future. But. We had some moments. I'll hold onto them.

And I'm going to miss Alex.

#capsule review #adventure games #life is strange true colors

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