it's a little early to say with 100% certainty and i might need to marinade on this a bit, but my knee-jerk reaction to this episode is that it is quite possibly the best episode any LIS game has had thus far. holy shit. this is exactly everything i'd been wanting from LIS1. it's not done perfectly, and there is the illusion of choice that rears its head every now and again, but wow if this isn't extremely promising for the rest of the game.

now that it's been two episodes, i can safely say that i really like the voice acting in this game. sean especially gives so much range in a natural adolescent way that helps sell scenes where he's coping or conflict or running on adrenaline. there's also great understated performances with characters like claire and charles, who manage to give very convincing and understated performances. maybe i'm just starved for good voicework coming hot off of BTS (which had infamous voice acting issues due to the strike), but it is refreshing either way.

another thing that i can now safely say i'm appreciating about this game is how low stakes it feels. this is an odd thing to say, given how the premise is "your dad dies from police brutality and you have to survive on your own", but it's a nice change of pace when you compare it to "OH MY GOD MY TIME POWERS ARE CONNECTED TO GLOBAL WARMING AND A SECOND MOON APPEARED AND THE WORLD IS BEING IMPACTED!!!!". LIS1's stakes felt very artificial and dragged the game down from where it was strongest: a character-driven narrative that handled topics like grief, anger, revenge, etc. and it ultimately took me out of the game to remember "oh yeah there's a big hurricane that's gonna kill everyone. ok." every so often. here? the stakes begin and end at the diaz twins. there's no ticking bomb in a natural disaster or something sinister like a dark room. it's, again, refreshing.

so, when you take that approach, give characters like claire and sean diametrically opposed yet completely understandable viewpoints on both sides, you get organic conflict like the confrontation in karen's room. neither side was truly in the wrong at all, and it felt natural that eventually the curiosity would eat away at the boys to where they'd have to know what was being hidden from them. yet, you can't help but sympathize with claire wanting to not only put away a painful past, but also to enforce boundaries in a tumultuous and precarious situation such as being on the run from the law. it makes sense, and it works wonderfully.

another thing i wanna praise this game for is how it's willing to keep the characters in constant motion. no set feels dawdled in for too long, and there's a kinetic energy to this narrative that makes it truly feel like a journey. compare to either of the prior LIS games where you'd be often exploring the same area multiple times. the games were at least somewhat decent amount trying to keep the recycled environments fresh, but it did drag at times. i much rather prefer this game's approach so far of changing scenery every so often, and it's keeping me engaged with wanting to see where the plot goes. yes, there's an endgoal of mexico, but there's no guarantee that's where the game ends, and how they try to make it there is still very much up in the air. i feel a little silly praising something as small as narrative hooks, but these things matter in interactive dramas and it's rarer than i'd like to actually see them done well.

again, the only complaint i have is that illusion of choice shows up a couple of times, but it's honestly starting to feel like a nitpick. the only thing that really stood out to me was when sean just absolutely had to get a gift for daniel, and by this point, i hadn't enough money to legitimately buy anything at the area you're cordoned off into for gift-buying. so, i was forced to steal a yo-yo, and i was worried like fuck that i'd be given a slap on the wrist for stealing when i literally could not advance without taking something at invisible wall-point. fortunately, the game didn't admonish me for something i had no control over, unlike last episode, so criticism averted. plus, judging by the ending stats that show the various choices that can be made, a lot of things are being taken into consideration. hell, the very last choice with chris i wasn't even aware was a choice at all because of how natural and integrated it felt into my narrative. imagine my surprise when i see that things could've gone much differently. that is what choice-based games promise, and that is something i rarely if ever experience.

yeah i mean. i could probably gush for a couple more paragraphs but i'm worried that i'll start setting my expectations too high for later episodes. i mean, i came into this review sitting on a 3.5/5.0, but going over all the positives again, i felt obligated to bump this to a 4.0/5.0. it bears repeating: this game is doing choice-based gameplay in a way i've yet to see any other interactive drama do nearly as well. even if this manages to be a high-water mark for the game and it never quite lives up to the standard set here, i still feel as though getting to this point was something special. i hope like hell this game manages to stay the course and stick the landing, because this could be an all-timer if so.

Completed with 100% of achievements unlocked (190/190G). Episode 2 is where we see the connections to the short teaser prequel The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit come to play, and even though I played through that on PS4 so didn't get a customised experience, seeing the events of that game in the light of the circumstances revealed by the first two episodes of Life is Strange 2 was fascinating. That said, it's a little disappointing here that we see that some of the seemingly significant choices from the first episode don't actually make much of an impact on how the story progresses - and leaves me suspecting that the same will happen with much of episode 2's developments. That aside, though, as an interactive experience the game still tells an interesting story, albeit one that doesn't develop on some of its themes as much as there was potential for.