Light spoilers ahead...
Well here I am at the border wall, the final destination of a long journey that has had its ups and downs, but over the last two episodes, mostly downs.
Life is Strange 2 is not a good game. It's well produced, well acted, it looks nice, it has a great soundtrack. A lot of heart evidently went into it. But the results speak for themselves. The game suffers from poor writing and planning, and a lack a coherent vision.
I got the sense that the creators of the series poured everything they had into the first game, which is not only a testament to the possibilities of telling stories through games, but also a homage to many coming-of-age works that came before it, stuff like Donnie Dark and Twin Peaks being so fundamental to Max and Chloe's story. But not only that, Life is Strange has a mechanic - time travel - that plays well into the photography theme. One thing that made the original so compelling is just how often we were taken back to the same places, left to explore the drastic changes in perspective and evolution occurring differences in time as great as years or a minuscule as thirty seconds.
Despite being sort of an epic journey, Life is Strange 2 never lets us take in anything of the world's sites and sounds with near the amount of detail. The brothers move from one location to the next, conversing with one character or another, and we never do get to form our own opinions on much that is going on. The game is always chiefly concerned with delivering one heavy-handed edict and forced epiphany after another, in social-media level doses that are concentrated for maximum effect but always feel hollow. There is no gameplay mechanic (occasionally having Daniel float stuff around does not count), there are no choices (real or perceived), there is just heavy handed scenarios that may be coming from the right place, but miss far more often than they hit. It is a shame, because I thought the first episode was really great, and the third episode was a high point for all three series, LiS2 is a pivot from the immersive, mysterious, open-ended world of the first game to a more topical one where choices are obvious and people are predictable.
Well here I am at the border wall, the final destination of a long journey that has had its ups and downs, but over the last two episodes, mostly downs.
Life is Strange 2 is not a good game. It's well produced, well acted, it looks nice, it has a great soundtrack. A lot of heart evidently went into it. But the results speak for themselves. The game suffers from poor writing and planning, and a lack a coherent vision.
I got the sense that the creators of the series poured everything they had into the first game, which is not only a testament to the possibilities of telling stories through games, but also a homage to many coming-of-age works that came before it, stuff like Donnie Dark and Twin Peaks being so fundamental to Max and Chloe's story. But not only that, Life is Strange has a mechanic - time travel - that plays well into the photography theme. One thing that made the original so compelling is just how often we were taken back to the same places, left to explore the drastic changes in perspective and evolution occurring differences in time as great as years or a minuscule as thirty seconds.
Despite being sort of an epic journey, Life is Strange 2 never lets us take in anything of the world's sites and sounds with near the amount of detail. The brothers move from one location to the next, conversing with one character or another, and we never do get to form our own opinions on much that is going on. The game is always chiefly concerned with delivering one heavy-handed edict and forced epiphany after another, in social-media level doses that are concentrated for maximum effect but always feel hollow. There is no gameplay mechanic (occasionally having Daniel float stuff around does not count), there are no choices (real or perceived), there is just heavy handed scenarios that may be coming from the right place, but miss far more often than they hit. It is a shame, because I thought the first episode was really great, and the third episode was a high point for all three series, LiS2 is a pivot from the immersive, mysterious, open-ended world of the first game to a more topical one where choices are obvious and people are predictable.