Life is Strange 2 is an odd one. On one hand, I admire the refusal to pander to fans of the first game, and willingness to try something new. Apart from a few easter eggs and cameos here and there, LiS2 truly could not care less about Max, Chloe, or Arcadia Bay, and I kind of like that energy. On the other hand, LiS2 doesn’t seem very aware of what made the first game compelling, and its attempt to tell a different kind of story ends up sabotaging a lot of what made the original work.

Life Is Strange was not by any metric a great work of art—it was a goofy, cringily written, emotionally manipulative teen melodrama—but it did have some effective hooks. There was a mystery to solve, a layered dynamic between the two leads, a quaint Twin Peaksy atmosphere with lots of archetypal characters, and there was the fun time-manipulation mechanic which let you see the immediate consequences of different narrative decisions before making up your mind.

Life Is Strange 2 lacks most of these, which would be okay, except it doesn’t do much to fill their absence. There’s little mystery this time beyond waiting to see if the brothers can make it to Mexico. The relationship between the brothers is sweet, but lacks the nuance of the Max/Chloe relationship, probably because one is still a kid, so the older one is pretty much just trying to be a good dad the whole time. The small-town vibes are jettisoned in favor of a road trip story with new locales in every chapter, which sounds fun in theory, but in practice ends up a slog, since every chapter opens with a bazillion descriptions to read and new characters to meet, who you already know will be gone soon, so there’s no real reason to care about them. Finally, the time-reversal mechanics are replaced with…the ability to tell your brother to fuck shit up with his brain, which is just not as interesting on a narrative level, since in every situation you basically have two options: tell your brother to fuck shit up, or tell him to not.

What LiS2 does retain from the original is its earnest sincerity and soap opera plot developments, two traits that serve the game less well than its predecessor. Life Is Strange was packed full of ludicrous teen drama, but it knew what kind of story it was telling, and never stepped too far outside the bounds of an edgy CW show. The themes of LiS2 are more overtly political, and as a result the game feels like a weird time capsule preserving a particular flavor of post-Obama mopey liberalism. The main messages seem to be: racism bad, border wall bad, america.....good? But the only way the writers know how to convey these simple ideas is by subjecting the protagonists to an unending parade of harassment and abuse. To be clear, there is nothing wrong with making a game with an anti-racist message, or with portraying racial violence, but the game simply ends up making the same points over and over, without deepening its themes or analysis. It feels awkward in the way that white liberals patting themselves on the back for recognizing racism often does.

I didn’t hate Life Is Strange 2. There are some touching moments along the way. But I really wish I could say its boldness pays off, when sadly the opposite is more often true. Also the soundtrack could have used a whole lot more Sufjan Stevens