I quickly learned I was not the demographic for life is strange when I tried playing it with my roommates (looking for games like until dawn, detroit become human, etc.) Cool concept tho.
Unfortunately outside of Life is Strange, they didn’t really do anything interesting.
While Life is Strange (the original) is probably the best story, the second game was technologically the best. While the first, and many other “choices matter” adventure games let you make choices that steer the story in meaningful ways (and show you how your choices stacked up against your friends and other gamers), Life is Strange 2 didn’t. The choices you made contributed to choices made by an NPC (your character’s brother), and you could not always predict how he would react. Your choices manipulated a couple of hidden scores. How much he respected you and how much he liked you. But there was a random element as well. There was never a sure fire way to control the little brother. You still make choices that affect the story, but it’s really his story, and some of his choices mattered more. Pricefield is still one of my favourite ships, and that’s from the first game (and, I guess, the new one, but I haven’t played the last two, just the first three).
Unfortunately outside of Life is Strange, they didn’t really do anything interesting.
I liked Remember Me, it had some cool ideas at the time.
I started Remember Me and Tell Me Why. Got bored real quick with them both. Remember Me, I spent less time with. I should really try it again, see where it goes.
Remember Me was interesting as a concept, but the gameplay was very “we have Arkham Asylum at home.”
I mean I played it 13 years ago, but I remember I liked it.
I mean, at the end of life is strange 1,only one choice mattered and all other choices had 0 impact
I mean, I also liked Remember Me so much that the art book for it is on my shelf.
Fuuuuck, Life is Strange is foundational to how I am!
EDIT: I mean, I come here at least monthly, cause LiS means that much to me:
Notably this is not the developer who has done Life is Strange True Colours, Double Exposure or Reunion.
This is the ones that did the amazing first one, the meh second one, and then a bunch of non-LiS games that IMO were of varying and unstable quality. Although I’ll have to make an exception for Bloom&Rage, because that one was absolutely fantastic, for all its flaws.
I really feel Don’t Nod is a studio that captured lightning in a bottle, and have since mostly failed to understand how they did, and how to replicate it. They’re still chasing it.
I really enjoyed the first game, but the rest of them got progressively worse from me. Out of curiosity, what stuck out about Bloom and Rage? I found it to be the worst of all of them; the characters were written in an insanely out-of-touch way, the dialogue was sooo painful to me.
I gotta go through Before the Storm, though!
Before the Storm is also from Deck Nine not Don’t Nod, and I think you can still notice they didn’t truly know how to handle the franchise at that point. It’s a cool DLC though, really enjoyed it, I just don’t think Chloe’s “special mechanic” works well in contrast to Max’s (a problem Reunion shares but since the rewind is essentially on-rails there it’s far less a noteworthy).
About Bloom&Rage, hrm… tricky to say. I think what made it come together for me - because I agree the characters are overwritten extremely, and I gotta assume that’s intentional with the degree to which they are - is the atmosphere of the childhood sequences, in particular the inherently-creepy elements when you’re taping stuff going wonky contrasted with the extremely somber and wistful tone of the adults talking. The children being so overdone I almost see like Varric’s description of the DA2 PC at the start where you’re overly muscular or have a huge rack, because he’s embellishing. They’re remembering, but they’re only remembering some aspects and overfocusing on them.
I’m in just the right age bracket to feel with the women sitting there reminiscing about their youths though. So that worked really well for me. And I loved how I didn’t know how I looked as an adult, that was a cool payoff at the end.Thank you for your thoughtful perspective! I didn’t mean to be so harsh on the game—it just really didn’t hit for me. I think honestly the “adult versions of characters imagining themselves but younger” wasn’t something I even thought of; I took the dialogue as if it was just coming straight from the writers. That’s an interesting way to frame it, and I should take another look with that in mind.
I’m also about the right age bracket, maybe a tad older? My childhood and teen years generally ranged from boring to “pretty alright” with a little bad sprinkled in though; very little gives me nostalgia for that time of my life. I suppose that’s a good thing? Kinda? I dunno. But thank you again! :3 I have not played any DA games but I do have some, and I’ve heard they’re great. The beginning of DA2 you describe sounds great, hahaha
Notably this is not the developer who has done Life is Strange True Colours, Double Exposure or Reunion.
And Before the Storm. Don’t Nod has only made LiS and LiS 2, all the other games were developed by Deck Nine.
And how are you?
I am also out of cash!
I truly hope you’re doing better. I love Max and Chloe too, but maaan, they went through some shit. I didn’t get the secret outcome from one of the chapters… I later found out there’s a guide to pulling it off, but while I did do some of the things, I didn’t do all of them, so… one chapter turned out worse than it could have.
I also couldn’t save both the Geth and the Quarians in Mass Effect 3. I mostly played paragon, but I missed a couple little things. That choice is based on choices set up in the first and second games. So long story short, in the third game you’re trying to build an army to defend Earth. The Quarians wear biosuits because they have basically no immune system. The Geth are robots they made that were repurposed to kill people, so they were initially thought of as evil. If you make a bunch of right choices and do a bunch of random stuff, it is actually possible to save both races in the third game; however, most players, for not following a guide carefully across three whole games, must choose between one race or the other. Kind of similar to Life is Strange but on a much grander scale, and over a longer period of time.
I truly hope you’re doing better. I love Max and Chloe too, but maaan, they went through some shit. I didn’t get the secret outcome from one of the chapters… I later found out there’s a guide to pulling it off, but while I did do some of the things, I didn’t do all of them, so… one chapter turned out worse than it could have.
I also couldn’t save both the Geth and the Quarians in Mass Effect 3. I mostly played paragon, but I missed a couple little things. That choice is based on choices set up in the first and second games. So long story short, in the third game you’re trying to build an army to defend Earth. The Quarians wear biosuits because they have basically no immune system. The Geth are robots they made that were repurposed to kill people, so they were initially thought of as evil. If you make a bunch of right choices and do a bunch of random stuff, it is actually possible to save both races in the third game; however, most players, for not following a guide carefully across three whole games, must choose between one race or the other. Kind of similar to Life is Strange but on a much grander scale, and over a longer period of time.
How? I thought they were a success story.
Edit: Read the article:
While Don’t Nod have managed to put out five games in the past three years alone, more recent releases like Lost Records: Bloom & Rage and Aphelion don’t appear to have moved the needle quite enough.
Lost Records: Bloom & Rage
What a waste of time it was. A game about nothing where nothing happens. How the mighty have fallen.
Vampyr and Banishers were interesting though. Rough, but interesting.
I don’t even mind what happens in Bloom and Rage, both my partner and I were in psychic pain listening to the horrible, unnatural dialogue from all of the extremely unlikable characters the whole time.
Haven’t heard of Vampyr or Banishers—I’ll look into those!
Uh oh. The big vultures are circling, salivating at the devs they’re going to poach and the IPs they’re going to gut - or, alternatively: shelf forever, much to the shegrin of the fans.
…
Wait a minute, a youngin’ is whispering in my ear that’s probably not going to happen anymore. Let me check the gaming industry market…
Overblown budgets, you say… unrealized gains, you say… faulty projections, enshitification, people prefer playing Chinese games nowadays? EA is struggling!!!
…wtf happened?!
Sounds like usual things… Unsustainable hiring practices, toxic positivity culture, hostile environments, etc etc
My partner absolutely loved Lost Records. I thought it took way too long to get going, so I fell off pretty early on.
