#Cop (LIS1)

[crimescrimson]

Max Changing History in Life Is Strange (2015): Jefferson Studies His Work & Jefferson's Ruined Photos | An Officer Dines & The Police Storm The Dark Room | Kate's Plan & Jefferson Arrested | Kate's Agony & Rachel's Body Discovered | Chloe's Grief & Max's Victory | Chloe's Third Shot & Max Packs | Max In The Dark Room & Max Leaves Blackwell | Max's Psychological Torture & Max In San Francisco | Max Rips Her Photograph so Jefferson Burns The Photos

[oodlyenough]

life is strange: double exposure

I've been meaning to make a big post since finishing the other week but there is simply So Much to say and I imagine most of it has been said already by other people, because I played this game so slowly (starting with the pre-order release until... last week lol)

As someone who regards the original as her favourite game probably ever and loves Pricefield, I really do think I tried to give this game as far a shot as I could under the circumstances. And frankly they only made this Max to capitalize on the popularity of the first and of Pricefield so I don't feel I owe them that grace to begin with =P But anyway. Let's get into it

Spoilers ofc for everything

Elephant in the room: Bae vs Bay

It seems obvious this game is really intended for a post-Bay Max. I wish they had stuck to their own vision and just said that. It's ridiculous to suggest Max as a character would go through two completely different life-altering decisions and timelines and end up the exact same fuckin person. But more on that later.

I always save Chloe in LIS1, no question. Trying to include the Bae timeline while clearly disdaining it is frankly insulting. The Pricefield breakup is ridiculous and not even giving the player the OPTION to text Chloe back at the end of the game is antagonizing the playerbase for no reason.

But, I thought, well maybe if I pretend this is post-Bay Max, the story works better. I've done two runs of the opening eps now, one Bae and one Bay, and there is really very little that changes. Stuff I thought would make way more sense in the Bay play was ... exactly the same as it was in the Bae ending. I don't really think the game deserves any shield from this criticism. They are capitalizing on fans' love for the original game and characters only to disregard them. D9 invited this criticism when they made the game about Max.

The game is also not nearly as standalone as they marketed it. The events of the first game are clearly (meant to be...) informing Max's behaviour here, and stuff like the dark room, the storm, etc, I can't imagine they make a whole lot of sense if you're someone who never played LIS1.

Rewind vs Timeline hop and pulse and whatever the new stuff is called

The new powers are OK. Rewind is THE greatest possible power in a game about choice and consequence because it directly relates to choice and consequence and helped reinforce the first game's "there is no right choice" theme. But it's tricky to code so that's out, now we have something blander. Hurrah!

If this was a new OC with timeline powers, this would feel like less of a downgrade. For it to be Max, again, just invites the criticism. I do think the powers were not as interestingly incorporated into the plot as they could have been. People seeing their doubles, the cop erasing himself from existence, etc had potential.

The plot

The mystery of Safi's murder, Maya, the book ... it is mostly very bland. I like a mystery! I like solving one! When we got to play detective a bit they were mostly highlights of the game. I didn't think the resolution here was particularly satisfying though. I feel like the game's scale of morality was all off, so characters under- or over-reacted to events by wide margins. Fundamentally the crux of this being that Safi had a book deal cancelled ... is so underwhelming to me... like come on. Where are the STAKES... where is the DRAMA...

The Maya plotline was a total faceplant imo. Plagiarism is bad. It also seems easily provable. Maya killing herself because her manuscript was stolen is just not equivalently compelling as a tragic backstory to Rachel Amber being drugged and murdered. Of course it's sad, but it's much harder to assign the same level of blame and responsibility in Maya's case, which makes Safi's revenge tour feel frankly unhinged at times. Involving Lucas' son for example is SO over the line and beyond the pale and yet Max is totally unbothered by this and so is the narrative ...? The car vandalism plot is barely coherent. Lucas is a jerk in a regular-jerk level way that they treat as if he's Jefferson. Yasmin puts too much pressure on her daughter? Ok?

There's just really nothing all that sinister going on, apart from...

Safi

Safi having powers and having impersonated various characters you interact with is an interesting twist. I also think having the main best friend character turn into a semi-villain is an interesting idea. Safi wanting to recruit Max for evil is also something I see potential in.

However I don't feel any of this works for Max. I was surprised to be in the only 7% who rejected Safi and also was "done" with her, lol. I don't really feel the game gave me compelling reasons Max would put up with this. If this were a new character, and the relationship with Safi and the player were developed better, I can see the toxic yuri powercouple thing being really fun. It's just not Max Caulfield.

The rest of Safi as a character I feel is underwritten. We don't spend near as much time with her or bonding with her as I think we needed to, for the plot of the game to work. I also think the reveal about her tragic backstory is just ... not compelling enough to justify her behaviour. She does a LOT of really over the line manipulative things, it takes Max almost the entire game to even notice/care, and the justification for these things being a cancelled book deal is just not enough for me. People had problems with Chloe or Rachel being bratty teenagers and Safi is a grown ass woman behaving this way because she has a bad relationship with her mom? I mean... come on man... this is little league stuff.

The romance

First of all the main romance in this game should've been Safi. Safi and Max are the central relationship, the emotional core, their scenes at the end of the game are more romantic than anything that happens with Amanda or Vinh. I don't ship Safield but it objectively should have been the romance option. Part of what made Pricefield so beloved is that they WERE the story, not some b-plot off to the side of the main plot like gay romance so often is. I don't understand why they wrote that final choice, the hand-on-heart, "I need her" stuff and then decided to give Max two other romance options instead.

Amanda is so lab-grown focus-grouped cute tumblr gf... it's not for me. It comes across like DeckNine is so desperate for their queer love interests to be unproblematic that they're not allowed to DO anything. Why is Amanda so entirely removed from anything happening in the plot!? Why are there like, three scenes with her and they're all therapyspeak fluff??? It's so substanceless. It feels like it exists solely as a counterpoint to ten years of people calling Pricefield toxic.

Vinh on the other hand -- is that a great romance for the ages, well no, but at least he was related to the main goings-on with Maya, Luca, Safi, Yasmin, etc. I would never have come into this game expecting I'd ship the m/f option lol but I liked him and Max. I liked that Max was in comparison the cool one flustering him lol.

The ending

"Max should've been able to save both Chloe AND Arcadia Bay" has been a sticking point for me in LIS discourse since I first played the game. No, there's no secret third option, there's no "good ending", that was the entire point of the first game, that you can't fix everything, that sometimes you have to make hard choices, that your actions have consequences.

So of course this sequel goes "lol jk actually you can just do that <3". Fuck off. This is where the game fails not only as a save-Chloe sequel but also as a save-the-Bay sequel. Ridiculous. Deck Nine is so fucking afraid of having lasting consequences or making characters do mean things :( that they can't commit to any fallout. This was my main criticism of True Colours (a game I otherwise liked!) and Double Exposure doing it with Max is just insulting. Too busy setting up a sequel that will probably never happen to write a good ending. All roads and choices lead to basically the same thing and basically the same Max because it's the easiest way to build out our next moneygrab sequel. Everyone wants what Polarized had.

Was ANY of it good?

I've spent most of this post complaining so I should shout out the things I did like. The main feature of this list is Hannah Telle. It was really, really nice to see her take another swing at Max, and it meant whenever there was a particularly Max-y line ("oofa doofa...") it was such a nice feeling to hear her say it, and get to see her mocap too.

The aged-up model for Max grew on me. I liked it by the end of the game. I also love Max's moogle hat idc if it's a Square Enix self promo she loves Final Fantasy: Spirits Within ok it's in character

I think setting the game in a university is pretty fun; these kinds of limited settings help create the recurring cast, but I like the cast being well into adulthood this time. I don't hate the idea of Max as a photographer in residence either, that's kind of fun.

I thought Moses knowing about Max's powers and knowing there's a timeline where Safi is alive and helping her without getting to see Safi again was pretty sweet and sad, I felt bad for him.

Loretta was really interesting to me as a potential oppositional snoop. Wish we had more of her.

In Conclusion

Without Max I think this would've been a C+ game, maybe a B- if I'm being generous. The base characters and some of the plot ideas are potentially interesting but mostly underwritten.

However using Max and invoking the beloved original game only to disregard so much of what made it beloved in the first place takes it all the way down to a D.

[lenskyq]

"the ending, where Daniel and Sean live together in Mexico, is selfish and does not take into account the wishes of Daniel, who does not want to do this/ does not want to go to Mexico"

*deep breath*

okay, I just once again came across a similar comment on youtube, and I could just pass by. but I understand that I have a great need to speak out about this. even if other people have already talked about it.

you know, the statement that Daniel "does not want" to go to Mexico is perhaps the most common, which can be found as a criticism of Blood Brothers. that he just wants an "ordinary, comfortable life" like any child, that Daniel deserves this normal life, which he gets in the high morality endings.

but the problem is that people don't understand one simple fact: with different levels of morality, Daniel has different needs/priorities. with high morality, he prioritizes "morality" and the desire for a normal life, with low morality, he prioritizes his brotherhood with Sean.

people have remembered the image of "high morality Daniel" and believe that this is the only canon for Daniel as a character, forgetting that there is a way of "low morality".

with low morality, Daniel as a character is aimed at only one outcome: to stay together with Sean, not to let them be separated. he decides to cross the border even if Sean decides to surrender. this is what leads to the ending of "Lone Wolf".

the essence of the endings of "Lone Wolf" and "Parting Ways" is that Daniel makes his own decision based on his priorities, even if Sean does not agree with this decision. the statement that "Blood Brothers" is violence against Daniel and what he does not want does not make sense, because existing an ending "Lone Wolf" and because this is what Daniel demands at the border: to cross the border. "we can't let them catch us" and "don't say that, let's just get out of here" when Sean only dares to hint about surrender.

Daniel doesn't want Sean to surrender because it will lead to them being separated. Daniel crosses the border and does not let Sean give up if he decides to do so, because Daniel does not want them to be separated.

In Blood Brothers, Sean acts based on Daniel's wishes, because that's what Daniel wants: cross the border. He does not force Daniel, Daniel himself inclines Sean to this decision and this is the only decision that Daniel will make.

just as the highly moral Daniel cannot cross the border with Sean, and in any case chooses "a normal life instead of living with Sean", the low moral Daniel does not accept Sean's decision to surrender and decides to cross the border, go with Sean to Mexico.

Daniel, who wants a "normal life," gets it. Daniel, who wants to stay with Sean (no matter where, in an abandoned house in the middle of the forest, in the house of his grandparents, on a plantation, in Dali or in Puerto Lobos), wants to stay with Sean and he does not need this "normal" life if it means separation from Sean.

yes, at first he was hesitant about moving to Mexico, and that's fine. many adults are even worried about moving to another city, and here a ten-year-old child is talking about moving to another country. it's okay to doubt. people doubt even when they are offered a better job instead of the usual for them, but uncomfortable and low-paid work. this does not mean that a person "does not want" changes. we are always hesitant when it comes to major changes.

when Sean convinces Daniel that everything will be fine, Daniel stops worrying and begins to fantasize about what their life in Puerto Lobos will be like, enthusiastically waiting for this moment. apparently from the fact that he doesn't want it very much (no).

Daniel doesn't want to go to Mexico so much that he locks Sean in the car and starts attacking the cops in order to clear the way and redirect them to Mexico. see the logic? I don't see it either.

many refer to David's words, but they are not objective (remembering how many times he was seriously wrong in lis1: in relation to Kate, in a relationship with his own stepdaughter, etc.). especially when, in contrast to David, we have characters who speak in defense of Blood Brothers, such as Karen (literally their mother, to whom Daniel has a strong connection) and Finn (to whom Daniel has a strong connection). Brody, whom we meet in episode 1, also approves of their trip to Puerto Lobos. Even Jacob writes in his letter and personally tells them that he wants a successful escape to Puerto Lobos for them.

of course, we must have characters who, in contrast to the "Mexico ending team", will convince us to surrender at the border (grandparents, David, Lyla, even Hank, lol). it would be strange if they didn't exist. but to refer only to them, ignoring the characters who tell us to cross the border, is strange and incorrect.

the low morality Daniel really wants to go to Mexico, because the main thing for him is to stay together with Sean, not to let them be separated. this is exactly what he wants, not a "normal" life, like the highly moral Daniel. and each of the two Daniels acts based on their desires and needs.

stop ignoring the low-moral Daniel and judge him by the standards of the high-normal, pls.

in Blood Brothers, Sean acts based on Daniel's wishes, he contradicts them in the ending (Lone Wolf), where he decides to give him a "normal" life, which he does not need if the price is separation from Sean. you could even say that in Lone Wolf, Sean was deceived by those characters who convinced him that Daniel needed a normal life when in fact he needed Sean.

the only ending that can be said that Sean "uses" Daniel is Parting Ways. Not Blood Brothers.

[mal3nko]

“Why wasn’t Life is Strange 2 as popular as the first game?”

A lot of people like myself have wondered what exactly made Life is Strange 2 go so relatively unnoticed compared its predecessor, Life is Strange 1. And when you think about it, you may come up with the few obvious generic answers, such as the lack of Max and Chloe and just the original cast in general. However, I think there was a lot more at play here that prevented Life is Strange 2 from reaching the amount of success/popularity the first game had. So I want to take the time and break down what exactly happened to Life is Strange 2 and the things that hurt the game’s ability to really connect with the audience of LiS1.

Disclaimer: We do NOT know how well Life is Strange 2 was for Dontnod and if it was a success or not. No sales numbers have been given out to the public so there’s no way of knowing for sure how well the game did. What we do know is that LiS2 did not receive the same amount of attention/popularity as the first game. That can’t be denied, it simply didn’t. However, based on the fact that Dontnod have recently announced they are working on six new games at the moment and are now expanding their studio, even if LiS2 was a “flop” it doesn’t seem to have had much of an effect on them (most likely due to the success of Vampyr). Dontnod is going to be fine either way. Another thing I want to mention is that this is not a anti-LiS2 post and that I am a fan of the game. I’d consider myself a pretty big fan actually. I have my problems with the game of course and don’t agree with a lot of the writing decisions but I enjoyed the game very much overall. But for the sake of this post I will try to be as unbiased as possible, giving out only what I’ve observed when it comes to reactions from the fandom on different websites and forums. So with that all being said, let’s dive in to this.

Here I will be listing the many different reasons as to why Life is Strange 2 failed to reach the same amount of popularity as LiS1 or even BtS managed to achieve. This list isn’t in any particular order but some reasons are bigger/more important than others.

For some background, there was a lot of hype going into Life is Strange 2. The teaser trailer for it with the cop car trended at #2 on YouTube, a huge feat for the series. It generated immense amount of views and comments in a short period in time, completely surpassing Before the Storm’s announcement trailer in just a few weeks. So what exactly happened to all that hype? Where did everybody go? Well, let’s break everything down.

1. The lack of Max and Chloe: Yes I said that this list wouldn’t be in any particular order in terms of importance but I think it’s obvious this one is one of, if not the biggest reason as to why LiS2 failed to match LiS1’s popularity. When the protagonists Sean and Daniel were first revealed, the reception was pretty divisive. Specifically, a very vocal part of the community were baffled and disappointed at the lack of Max and Chloe present within the trailer and subsequently the game itself. This instantly turned off a lot of people from the game, as they couldn’t connect with the new characters or simply didn’t want to. At that point in the franchise Max and Chloe as well as the original cast from the first game had been the face of the series for almost three years. It’s understandable why it was hard for people to just…move on. To this day people are still asking for Max and Chloe to return. The Life is Strange subreddit is still dominated with Max and Chloe fanart. Whenever the social media accounts for Life is Strange post anything Max and Chloe related it gets way more attention compared to a post about Sean and Daniel. Whenever a post online goes viral about Life is Strange you can bet it’s most likely about Max and Chloe. Hell the only reason why episode 5 of Life is Strange 2 trended on Tumblr was because of the fucking picture of Max and Chloe. On the releas day of episode 5 of LiS2 the top post on the subreddit was the Max and Chloe picture. It was almost as if that one photo of them completely overshadowed the entire episode. Point is, Life is Strange 2 lost a lot of momentum the moment it was revealed Max and Chloe would not be present. Case closed, let’s move on.

2. The release schedule: Words cannot describe how frustrating the release schedule was for LiS2 when it came to it’s episodes. For those reading this who didn’t follow LiS2 until the game was finished, each episode took around 3-4 months to be released. This was because Dontnod bit off a bit more than they could chew with the road trip story in having to create new locations and character models from scratch. The reason why this wasn’t a problem for LiS1 was because Max was for the most part always in the same locations around the same characters (I’m pretty sure you roam around Chloe’s house like 4 times throughout the season), which made development a lot easier since the devs could just reuse a lot of the assets. Unfortunately, this wasn’t possible for LiS2 due to the nature of it’s story. The wait times between each episode made a lot of people leave the fandom due to loosing interest or simply forgetting about the game altogether. This also impacted youtubers/streamers as many of them either stopped coming back to play the new episodes or they’d not be as connected as they were in the previous episode due to the amount of time that had passed. One of the reasons why LiS1 gained so much popularity was because of youtubers/streamers and how they would bring in their audience and would pretty much make them fans of the series. With quite a handful of youtubers/streamers quitting LiS2, the game was not able to draw in as much of an audience as previous games did. This is how detreminetal the release schedule was for LiS2.

3. The marketing (or lack thereof): Square Enix really fucked up on this aspect. Due to the ridiculous wait times you would think Square Enix would try and advertise the game heavily when a new episode was about to be released, right? Well they didn’t. Not at all actually. Throughout the games release schedule from September 2018 up to December 2019, I had not seen a single ad for the game. Nothing on YouTube, nothing on reddit or any other websites, it was like Square Enix had completely forgotten about the game’s existence. Now don’t get me wrong, SE did do a few things with LiS2 like starting up the community series on their YouTube channel and also the dev updates that came after episode 1 (that stopped after episode 2 for some reason) but these went relatively unnoticed to people outside of the fandom and did pretty much nothing. I believe SE was trying to wait until the game was fully complete with all of it’s episodes released before actually marketing the game (and they DID start advertising the game after episode 5 came out) but that’s just WAAAY too long to go without any type of advertisement. I understand marketing teams have budgets and what not, but you’re telling me there was no way for SE to market each episode in anyway as they were about to be released? Seems a bit ridiculous, don’t you think?

4. The road trip story: I completely understand why Dontnod wanted to branch out and do something different with the story of Life is Strange 2 and I respect them for stepping out of their comfort zones. However, it can’t be denied that the road trip story where characters are cycled in and out as Sean and Daniel make their way to Mexico was a very…questionable decision. Seeing as how LiS1 was loved for it’s world filled with a reoccurring cast of characters that developed as the story went on, it’s really easy to understand why LiS2 was so off-putting for a lot of fans. It was off-putting for me, even. It just…wasn’t fun having to leave these truly interesting characters behind because the plot demanded it. This left a lot of characters feeling underdeveloped to many people and by the time you meet new characters you already know they’re most likely gonna be gone soon anyways, so it made it even harder to connect with them. Couple this with the fact that LiS2 lacked any type of mystery unlike LiS1, speculation and discussion fizzled out a few weeks after each episode was released. LiS1 kept people speculating and wondering about what would happen next, while LiS2 left a lot of people struggling to care.

5. Politics: Yeeeeaaaaah I think I had to put this somewhere on the list. While many of the people who tease and mock how LiS2 handled its political topics were most likely not fans of the series anyway (the type of people who called LiS1 “Life is Tumblr” and hate Chloe), I do think it’s important to realize that some people just don’t want politics in their games, period. I’ve seen people online come out and say that while they agreed with what the writers were saying when it came to the political topics, it overall still came off very forced and one-sided to them, lacking any type of nuance or subtlety. I could write an entire essay discussing if the politics in LiS2 were handled well and whatnot but this is not that post so I’ll just leave it at that.

6: Lack of a prominent female cast/wlw: This is a bit more tricky to talk about (for the record the person writing this is a black gay guy) but I will try and write about this the best way I can. For many women, specifically queer women, Life is Strange was a series they could expect representation from. Max, Chloe, Rachel, and Steph are all popular characters amongst the fandom and even other wlw ships such as Marshfield, Chasefield, Chaseprice, etc are popular. So when LiS2 was revealed to be about two (hispanic) males, the queer women within the community were understandably upset. It felt like DN were simply throwing away the community that for the most part made up the entire fandom. At the time I simply found the situation ridiculous and overblown as many people were dismissing Sean and Daniel as “generic straight males” (even though it turned out Sean was bisexual in the end) before really getting to know them. However, looking back I totally get why people were upset. A lot of the fanart/fanfiction that was made for the LiS series was mostly created by queer women, so when the franchise pretty much stopped giving them representation, they left in search of other media (like She-Ra, which honestly has better wlw rep anyway). LiS2 is also mostly male dominated in terms of its cast, and features no queer women as well, which is really disappointing in my opinion.

7. Price: This one is pretty simple. When Life is Strange 2 was first released the full season costed $40. This was a pretty big jump in comparison to LiS1’s $20 price tag (original price was $25 however) and BtS’s $16. Obviously people would be more skeptical about buying a sequel that is pretty much double the price of its predecessor and has completely new characters. With the pretty mixed reception from gaming communities I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of people saw the price and decided to either watch a playthrough or simply not check out the game at all. With the first episode now free the base price has been lowered to around $30-32 I believe so yeah.

8. Daniel Diaz: Some people just don’t like kids, and I wouldn’t be surprised if people grew easily frustrated with Daniel early on and once he got more irrational and bratty as the story progressed they just stopped playing altogether. Even if you do like kids, or at least don’t mind them like myself, Daniel can still be quite a pain.

9. Not having control of the powers: This one is honestly really disappointing and I know it was to a lot of other people as well. In LiS1 Max had the ability to rewind time and do certain scenarios and conversations over and that basically acted as the more interesting gameplay segments. In LiS2 Sean doesn’t have the power, his brother Daniel does. This leads to the gameplay feeling much more boring and mundane. There are also no interesting puzzles this time around, most likely because Dontnod didn’t know how to implement them without the rewind power so they just…didn’t even attempt to add any. The power itself, telekinesis, is also much less interesting compared to rewinding time, according to a lot of people.

SO YEAH that’s basically it for me. I know this probably came off a bit rambly/incoherent but I tried my best to be as clear as I possibly could. I don’t doubt there are other reasons at play as to why LiS2 failed to meet LiS1’s success (such as liscensed music not being quite as good as LiS1) but I think I hit the main points I believe were key reasons. And the thing is, there isn’t just one main reason why LiS2 didn’t do as well as LiS1. It’s overall very unfortunate so many things went wrong with it that ended up making people lose interest in it. I think the lack of Max and Chloe hurt the game the most right off the bat, but the other reasons just led it to do even worse. Oh well.

I hope any of the people who read this enjoyed it (it was a BITCH to write). I’ve been wanting to get my thoughts down about this for SO long but just never had the motivation/time but I finally did it!

Again, thanks for reading! If you have any disagreements or just thoughts in general don’t be afraid to reply or dm me about it and I’ll be sure to reply! Now back to reblogging Marco posts….

[chloepricestan]

Oh so here’s my predictions right now based on the trailer

1. daniel’s going to hurt someone in this episode (or the next one)

2. you’re going to have to choose in episode 5 between hurting daniel or letting him kill someone / wreak mass havoc

why? I’ll explain under the cut.

what do y’all think?

OK SO in my playthrough I decided not to intervene and daniel fucking MURDERED THAT COUGAR right in front of my eyes. Okay

Then later on he swipes that police car to the side like it’s nothing. OKAY

Now in the trailer for episode 3 we have the line from somebody about “Your brother needs a lesson... you ALL need a lesson” >:C implying someone will try to physically hurt daniel

AND 

we see daniel lift a bigass fucking log over you just to prank you.

So let’s recap, we’ve seen Daniel...

Kill in anger (while conscious of what he was doing, not like when the cop died in the explosion)

Manipulate massive objects (huge tree, cop car)

Disobey Sean on many instances, more angrily now in the trailer for ep 3

Including pushing Sean physically to the ground with his power

Do something with his power that could kill Sean easily (as a joke, but still...)

which leads me to believe that Daniel not only CAN but WILL hurt other people with his power, particularly if he’s upset

and the narrative of lis1 leads me to believe that your final, most painful choice is gonna be letting him intentionally hurt people or stopping him with force

thoughts?

[firesignenergy]

A rant about Life is strange & Dontnod’s poor story-telling (particularily season 2)

Who knows me also knows I find Lis1 awfully boring and cringe-worthy as a whole, its characters utterly flat, 1-dimensional & steorotypical, and Chloe one of the most annoying protagonists ever… but that’s for s1, we ain’t even gonna talk about that…

I gave both Lis1 and Before the storm a fair chance and played the first episodes but in the end I had to resort to play-throughs on youtube just to spicy things up a bit with commentary from other people because I was getting pretty bored playing on my own. I actually revisited Lis1 a few days ago and it does have a few cool things, like the game mechanism and a relatively engaging plot… But that’s about it.

The only character I truly care about in the Lis universe is Chris tbh. I wanted so bad to care about Sean and Daniel… and I did, but only in the first ep. The rest was trash. The plot didn’t make any sense, the protagonists had no real goals, they were just wondering around, killing time… out of 3 hours of gameplay, only like 40 minutes were ACTUAL game play. The rest was just air.

Daniel was such a baby boy in the first episode but becomes such a brat later on. And Sean had ZERO personality outside taking care of his brother and doing random sketches. I love stories about brotherhood, this could’ve been sooooo great. But they messed it up.

The romantic interests were gross (Finn had a somewhat decent personality at some point but still 1-dimensional). I would’ve been perfectly fine without the tumblr hippies OR their useless grandparents (grandpa was kind of a sweetheart tho). I could’ve done without seeing their mom too. And wtf was that religious cult thing all about jjsjfjjsjfjjdj it was SO ridiculous. The 4 episodes had NOTHING to do with each other.

Ok listen… if the writers were to go for a “religious cult kidnaps child with powers because they mistaken him for an angel and his brother tries to rescue him” type thing from the beginning, cool. But to throw that in the 4th ep just felt out of place. Not to mention they try to make Sean look like some badass mofo from The walking dead or something.

And if they were to make Daniel slowly become more and more rebellious against Sean, I would’ve been fine with that too, you know? But the shift was way to abrupt and unearned. So was his “redemption arc”.

I would’ve liked to see more real conflict between them but instead the story went something like “boohoo my little brother likes this dude more than me because he shows him how to throw knives and oh btw it’s time to lecture him for the 28th time today about using his powers because God forbid the writers giving me any good dialogue or character development”. AHHAHHHHHHH that was Sean’s wholeass character, I swear!!!

And Daniel’s character was just making mistakes so Sean had something to do aka clean up after him. And like, I know Daniel is like 9 and people say it’s normal for him to act dumb and make mistakes but… come on, kids are not THAT dumb.

AND WHAT HAPPENED TO THE REAL CONFLICT??? DID DANIEL REALLY FORGIVE SEAN ABOUT LYING TO HIM ABOUT THEIR DAD THAT EASILY??!! Dude what happened to Sean teaching Daniel basic survival skills like in first episode?

The wolf allegory didn’t work either… it didn’t tie into anything. They could’ve easily simply remained in the forest for the rest of the game, growing closer, building shelters, hunting for food, training Daniel or whatever. I would’ve been like yep, that’s the wolf brothers, running the forest and shit. But no.

What if the cop who shot dad was alive and Sean was framed and the whole time that they hid in the forest Daniel trained in order to get some sort of revenge? Imagine if Daniel turned into a villain and we, as Sean, had to make him good again? I don’t know…

The trip to Mexico wasn’t a bad objective either, but why not make it a triple threat? What if the police, the religious cult and a group of scientists who were curious about Daniel’s powers were all after him? That would’ve been a better story, with multiple layers, connecting subplots and whatnot. Not just random shit thrown in the pot to fill the space. Ohh and don’t get me STARTED about that pot farm !

Anyway… wasted potential.

As for Captain Spirit, I kinda enjoyed this little story. It could’ve had more punch to it but whatever. Dontnod are simply not best at creating atmosphere or building emotional moments… or at facial aniamations for that matter but we ain’t even gonna talk about that either.

Now, Chris Erikson…. For the first time in the history of the Lis universe I felt emotionally invested in a character. He was sensitive, talented, clever as far as I could tell, but still underused :/ and I didn’t see any purpose for him in Lis2. I liked the dynamic between him and Daniel. The fact that Daniel sort of lent his powers to Chris without him knowing was of one few interesting subplots of Lis2, but again, it wasn’t explored enough.

I would’ve personally enjoyed a full game exploring Chris’ story. The handling of the abuse was a bit luckluster. But the portrayal of the abuse itself, yeah. They nailed it. The way Chris’ father would be aggressive on moment, then goof around the next one… It makes a kid confused and, as we saw, willing to lie in order to protect their parent.

I imagine a universe where Lis2 doesn’t exist but Captain Spirit does, right? And Chris and Daniel are neighbors and also best friends obsessed with superheroes and Daniel still has his powers.

Just like he did in Lis2, he pretends that Chris is the one with powers, just to make his best friend’s life a little brighter. Their playful moments would contrast the abuse Chris is going through. The player doesn’t know it’s Daniel who owns the power though, and it comes as a plot twist at the end of the game.

That would make so much more sense to me and it would make for a much better story. But whatever. I’m done with the rant. I just had to because Lis2 left me so… disappointed.

[crimescrimson]

Life is Strange (2015) & Each Optional Conversation Character [3/3]: Cop | Principal Wells | Zachary | Courtney | David | Warren | Sarah | Logan