Well, it hasn’t been a 3 years wait before I decided to play the next Life is Strange title in line this time. Only slightly over half a year since the last episode of the game. As with the original (and unlike Before the Storm), I wasn’t sure if I want to continue when I started the first episode and it took me a few months of convincing myself to continue. Unlike with the first game, I’m still not quite sure if it was worth it, though.
What I have to admire about Life is Strange 2 is that it doesn’t even attempt to be a “sequel” to the previous game. The only real connection is that there are kids/teenagers caught up in a really big trouble and supernatural is involved, yet isn’t exactly the point of the story. It’s a story about two brothers, a young 9 year old Daniel and 16 year old Sean, who get in a horrible incident and find themselves on the run from the police. They’re trying to figure out where to go, what to do and how to survive and also how to deal with the fact that Daniel has, essentially, telekinesis powers. You control Sean throughout the game and become a role model for his younger brother, a concept not new for game stories, but handled well. And, of course, over the course of the 5 episodes the situations the brothers get into have an element of “heightened reality” to them, being overly dramatic to convey a certain point or explore different possibilities of how different people could react to who the brothers are.
Now… At this point I’m actually a bit at a loss when thinking about the situations and the characters. Because, for the majority of the game, though not all of it, I felt completely disconnected from whatever was happening on the screen. And on one hand, I feel like perhaps I could attribute this to the fact that unlike the previous games, even the free The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit that ties into one of the episodes of this game, I found way too little of it even remotely relatable. What I mean is that – as if Life is Strange 2 is harder to emphasize with if you’re not part of the English-speaking culture, or especially US. There are countless differences in the ways of life, the cultural identity, the economic reality shown in most of the story-driven media and it’s not usually the issue of understanding what the story is trying to communicate. Like – you can understand what situation means danger, what talks about racism (even if in my part of the world nationalism or chauvinism hits far closer to home), what should evoke the feelings of joy, what symbolizes freedom. But it goes on the “oh, I get it” level, without any real connection or a real emotional response – like deciphering an alien culture rather than emoting through a story. And, maybe that’s what made me not care as much about the story here.
But at the same time, there are countless examples of where the game just does outright bad character building (or more often lack of it), makes situations so melodramatic they become a parody or just having sudden jumps in narrative that make no sense. And then I start thinking – maybe it’s not the cultural differences, maybe the game is just not telling the story as good as it should?
Because, there are some genuinely fantastic moments here. After the shaky first episode, the game does become more interesting, builds into something tense, but really cute by the middle… Then turns everything into a farce in Episode 4. Only to end everything in a pretty solid way in the final Episode. It’s so weirdly uneven. So inconsistent. Like the characters. The character of Daniel, for example, was written like a complete moron for most of the story, going way over the “young spoiled kid doesn’t know how to behave” into the “I’m surprised you survived this far without eating a live wire” kind of character. Yet, there are moments when the writers get it together and turn him into a proper character who gets development. Only to be ruined again by the next scene or episode because the game’s story desperately needs conflict to progress and tries to fit in as many possibilities as it can manage, which is far less than what it tries to provide to the players.
And I think that’s exactly what the problem is – Life Is Strange: Before the Storm feels like a very concise well told interactive story and even that has lots of rough edges. Life is Strange 2 tries to do way more, but it cannot. Even with unlimited budget and time, providing the characters with stories that can change, with that change feeling like it can mean something to the player making the choices, you hit the limits pretty quickly. And, as could be seen with every game by DONTNOD so far, they’re trying to do far more than they can manage. And the fact that they’re still often hitting a solid story, at least for one Episode or a section in a non-episodic game, is pleasantly surprising. But I’d really wish they’d scale down their desires. The best moments in all of the Life is Strange games so far, including Before the Storm which was developed by a different team, were the simpler human moments. Moments where characters get to shine through simple interactions or even silence. Moments where simpler, but still meaningful, choices must be made. Where the danger doesn’t involve a world shattering event, but being cornered by some thugs and not knowing what to do next. And then dealing with the consequences of the actions.
I wish Life is Strange 2 had more of that. It has some beautiful moments in it. It ends well, unlike the original game that really had no idea how to wrap things up. It has some fantastic examples of cinematography in a videogame and a beautiful art style. It tries to mix up realtime events, even if it fails horribly most of the time with distracting overlapping dialogue and repeating lines. And maybe I’m not even from the part of the world which can fully “get it”. But it has some horribly done narrative moments as well, it’s inconsistent, it tries far more than it can manage. And overall it’s quite a mixed bag. Not an apathetic mixed bag, which is a plus. But one that makes it hard for me to truly recommend the game more than saying – yeah, it’s most certainly not bad. But I can’t say that overall, actually overall counting all of the episodes and time spent on them… that overall I enjoyed it. I’m kinda glad it’s over and I don’t need to play more of it, really.