This review contains spoilers
LIFE IS STRANGE 2: LIFE IS FUCKED
I really wanted to be one of the contrarians that thought LiS2 was an overlooked gem. I have played it, thought about it, and I am not one of those people.
LiS2 has plenty of its own merits. It's still a "good"game (or at the very least solid). I like the protagonist and most of the characters. The writers are still doing a nice job of humanizing complex people. I definitely got emotional several times. But I am more interested in the things that I found lacking. Not because I "want to be a hater", but because I think the conversation to be had about this game could be a learning lesson for choice-based narrative point-and-click games in general. Trigger warning: Comparisons to LiS1 will be made. Not because I want to, but because it is necessary.
Case Study A) ROAD TRIPPIN
LiS1 has impeccable structure. I am currently working on a video describing just how much info is packed into the first "level" of the game. You essentially know everything you need to know for every set-up of every plot in the story before you hit the thirty minute mark.
LiS1 does a lot with a little. LiS2 does a little with a lot.
I'll be frank, the game is way too fuckin long. There's a good reason most of these choice-based narrative driven games typically clock in between 9 and 12 hours (LiS2 is a whopping 16). Telltale's The Walking Dead tells a very similar story (survival odyssey with a child) in 12 hours or so.
The Walking Dead's plot is to-the-point and unquestionable: it is the zombie apocalypse and we need to get the fuck to an island. In contrast, despite a fairly compelling inciting incident, LiS2 is never quite clear about why running to a town in Mexico that we've never been to is the best course of action. In fact, it questions itself many times about this through the characters themselves. And when I had found myself making my 9 year-old brother work on an illegal weed farm in Cali that was being enforced by a giant scary man with a military-style rifle, I thought to myself, much like GOB in Arrested Development, that "I've made a huge mistake".
The road trip could have worked, obviously. It worked in The Walking Dead. It wasn't great in LiS2. Characters and places came and went with the seasons (literally). The only constant were the brothers. Which I get was the point, but it's not a point that was successful. The worst side-effect of this plot decision is that Sean has to interact only with his child brother for most of the game. And they are already brothers that love each other, so what all exactly is there to explore there in terms of an arc?
It has so much more time than LiS1 and The Walking Dead. And yet it tells less of a story.
CASE STUDY B) BE A GOOD BOY
It is an absolutely puzzling decision to not give the player character the magical powers. They are instead relegated to Daniel, a sweet baby child. Remember how fun it was to hit L2 and reverse time in LiS1 to solve puzzles and conversation mistakes? Now you ask a 9 year old to do stuff for you. You look at a thing, interact with a button, and a second later an npc does the magic stuff, which is typically just lifting something telekinetically out of your walking path. It's not very engaging.
In terms of the choice-based systems... I actually think it was a neat idea to make your influence on Daniel (a subtle compiling of all the things you've told him and stuff you've done in front of him) an unknown quantity in how certain situations would play out. It makes Daniel feel like his own person rather than "just another child-kick you have to protect in a video game".
The problem: Daniel makes some of the biggest decisions in the game. Not only that, but the "influence" thing seems to run counter-intuitive to your ability to role-play. I told Daniel to be a good boy and only use his powers when he absolutely needed to. That resulted in somebody getting real hurt later on and Daniel going "What? I thought you said don't use my powers?"
It takes away from player agency both directly AND indirectly. Kind of a feat.
CASE STUDY C) DAMN DANIEL
Daniel is a truly awful child. By the end of the third episode, I kind of wanted to scream every time our main goal became "save Daniel" or "respect Daniel". Daniel would not listen to save his life. Literally. Here are some things Daniel does:
1) Breaks into a drug dealers house seconds after I sternly told him to stay put or else we might die. This resulted in us and our friends not getting paid for weeks of slave labor. It also got Sean knocked tf out by a big man.
2) Decides to break into a drug-dealer's vault after being told that "that would be very bad to do". It results in several very injured people (some potentially even extremely dead) and Sean losing an eye--something horrific on its face but even more so when you remember Sean's main drive in life was to be an artist.
3) Leaves Sean for dead and ends up in a religious cult, totally buying into his newfound belief in God. He refuses to leave with Sean, which results in Sean getting massively beaten in front of him-- nearly to death. And even then, Daniel still feels conflicted as to whether he should go with Sean.
4) Hurts his brother with his powers multiple times throughout the story.
And now for the grand finale:
5) Fucks with the VERY obviously bigger than him, very angry, very racist neighbor teen which results in the death of his father and a year (potentially 16 years) of horror and trauma for his brother.
I do not really blame Daniel. I blame the writers for using Daniel as a plot device.
CASE STUDY D) HNGGGGG
LiS2 tries to tackle very serious American political themes. But dear reader... just remember who these writers are. They did LiS1, a campy highschool sci-fi mystery. They wrote, "Ready for the mosh-pit shaka brah" (which I now love). Now imagine them trying to do pointed, serious representation of what it is like to be a person of color in America in 2016. It's about as tactful as you are thinking.
It is good to confront racial politics and experiences in media. Necessary actually. But perhaps these were not the people to do it. There are times when it honestly feels like trauma porn for people who aren't hispanic (similar to 12 Years a Slave).
FINAL THOUGHTS:
LiS2 is a weird combination of LiS1 and The Walking Dead, but fails to reach the heights of either. It wants to have its own identity, but struggles due to its namesake. It wants to be "important", but lacks deftness and call-to-action due to the limitations of its writers.
I read in interviews that the devs basically wanted to completely distance themselves from LiS1 (bewildering). It is clear that they wanted to do the complete opposite of everything related to LiS1. And, while doing the complete opposite of a game that was very successful and beloved is a bold artistic move, its also very counter-intuitive. The only person I've ever seen pull this off is David Lynch--that's a PRETTY HIGH difficulty setting. You may as well be playing Death March of The Witcher 3 for your second playthrough.
The game should have been its own thing, similar to Tell Me Why, a game much more successful executing its pursuits (probably due to actually consulting the communities it wants to portray). So the ultimate problem here (opposed to the seeming consensus among the LiS1 fandom) isn't that LiS2 isn't LiS enough. It's actually too Life is Strange.
I really wanted to be one of the contrarians that thought LiS2 was an overlooked gem. I have played it, thought about it, and I am not one of those people.
LiS2 has plenty of its own merits. It's still a "good"game (or at the very least solid). I like the protagonist and most of the characters. The writers are still doing a nice job of humanizing complex people. I definitely got emotional several times. But I am more interested in the things that I found lacking. Not because I "want to be a hater", but because I think the conversation to be had about this game could be a learning lesson for choice-based narrative point-and-click games in general. Trigger warning: Comparisons to LiS1 will be made. Not because I want to, but because it is necessary.
Case Study A) ROAD TRIPPIN
LiS1 has impeccable structure. I am currently working on a video describing just how much info is packed into the first "level" of the game. You essentially know everything you need to know for every set-up of every plot in the story before you hit the thirty minute mark.
LiS1 does a lot with a little. LiS2 does a little with a lot.
I'll be frank, the game is way too fuckin long. There's a good reason most of these choice-based narrative driven games typically clock in between 9 and 12 hours (LiS2 is a whopping 16). Telltale's The Walking Dead tells a very similar story (survival odyssey with a child) in 12 hours or so.
The Walking Dead's plot is to-the-point and unquestionable: it is the zombie apocalypse and we need to get the fuck to an island. In contrast, despite a fairly compelling inciting incident, LiS2 is never quite clear about why running to a town in Mexico that we've never been to is the best course of action. In fact, it questions itself many times about this through the characters themselves. And when I had found myself making my 9 year-old brother work on an illegal weed farm in Cali that was being enforced by a giant scary man with a military-style rifle, I thought to myself, much like GOB in Arrested Development, that "I've made a huge mistake".
The road trip could have worked, obviously. It worked in The Walking Dead. It wasn't great in LiS2. Characters and places came and went with the seasons (literally). The only constant were the brothers. Which I get was the point, but it's not a point that was successful. The worst side-effect of this plot decision is that Sean has to interact only with his child brother for most of the game. And they are already brothers that love each other, so what all exactly is there to explore there in terms of an arc?
It has so much more time than LiS1 and The Walking Dead. And yet it tells less of a story.
CASE STUDY B) BE A GOOD BOY
It is an absolutely puzzling decision to not give the player character the magical powers. They are instead relegated to Daniel, a sweet baby child. Remember how fun it was to hit L2 and reverse time in LiS1 to solve puzzles and conversation mistakes? Now you ask a 9 year old to do stuff for you. You look at a thing, interact with a button, and a second later an npc does the magic stuff, which is typically just lifting something telekinetically out of your walking path. It's not very engaging.
In terms of the choice-based systems... I actually think it was a neat idea to make your influence on Daniel (a subtle compiling of all the things you've told him and stuff you've done in front of him) an unknown quantity in how certain situations would play out. It makes Daniel feel like his own person rather than "just another child-kick you have to protect in a video game".
The problem: Daniel makes some of the biggest decisions in the game. Not only that, but the "influence" thing seems to run counter-intuitive to your ability to role-play. I told Daniel to be a good boy and only use his powers when he absolutely needed to. That resulted in somebody getting real hurt later on and Daniel going "What? I thought you said don't use my powers?"
It takes away from player agency both directly AND indirectly. Kind of a feat.
CASE STUDY C) DAMN DANIEL
Daniel is a truly awful child. By the end of the third episode, I kind of wanted to scream every time our main goal became "save Daniel" or "respect Daniel". Daniel would not listen to save his life. Literally. Here are some things Daniel does:
1) Breaks into a drug dealers house seconds after I sternly told him to stay put or else we might die. This resulted in us and our friends not getting paid for weeks of slave labor. It also got Sean knocked tf out by a big man.
2) Decides to break into a drug-dealer's vault after being told that "that would be very bad to do". It results in several very injured people (some potentially even extremely dead) and Sean losing an eye--something horrific on its face but even more so when you remember Sean's main drive in life was to be an artist.
3) Leaves Sean for dead and ends up in a religious cult, totally buying into his newfound belief in God. He refuses to leave with Sean, which results in Sean getting massively beaten in front of him-- nearly to death. And even then, Daniel still feels conflicted as to whether he should go with Sean.
4) Hurts his brother with his powers multiple times throughout the story.
And now for the grand finale:
5) Fucks with the VERY obviously bigger than him, very angry, very racist neighbor teen which results in the death of his father and a year (potentially 16 years) of horror and trauma for his brother.
I do not really blame Daniel. I blame the writers for using Daniel as a plot device.
CASE STUDY D) HNGGGGG
LiS2 tries to tackle very serious American political themes. But dear reader... just remember who these writers are. They did LiS1, a campy highschool sci-fi mystery. They wrote, "Ready for the mosh-pit shaka brah" (which I now love). Now imagine them trying to do pointed, serious representation of what it is like to be a person of color in America in 2016. It's about as tactful as you are thinking.
It is good to confront racial politics and experiences in media. Necessary actually. But perhaps these were not the people to do it. There are times when it honestly feels like trauma porn for people who aren't hispanic (similar to 12 Years a Slave).
FINAL THOUGHTS:
LiS2 is a weird combination of LiS1 and The Walking Dead, but fails to reach the heights of either. It wants to have its own identity, but struggles due to its namesake. It wants to be "important", but lacks deftness and call-to-action due to the limitations of its writers.
I read in interviews that the devs basically wanted to completely distance themselves from LiS1 (bewildering). It is clear that they wanted to do the complete opposite of everything related to LiS1. And, while doing the complete opposite of a game that was very successful and beloved is a bold artistic move, its also very counter-intuitive. The only person I've ever seen pull this off is David Lynch--that's a PRETTY HIGH difficulty setting. You may as well be playing Death March of The Witcher 3 for your second playthrough.
The game should have been its own thing, similar to Tell Me Why, a game much more successful executing its pursuits (probably due to actually consulting the communities it wants to portray). So the ultimate problem here (opposed to the seeming consensus among the LiS1 fandom) isn't that LiS2 isn't LiS enough. It's actually too Life is Strange.