Life is Strange by Developer Dontnod

I mean... NSMike, to be fair, they really skirted some pretty dark issues in LiS too.
LiS spoilers

Spoiler:

And it's something I still hold against them to this day. I feel they used the all too common violence against women for shock value without really asking the hard questions and getting at why this happens.
They basically sprung a big bad at us at the end, with the horrific truth of what happened to Rachel, just because.

Eleima wrote:

LiS spoilers

Probably/Almost Certainly not the examination desired, but I'd make the case that:

Spoiler:

#1 did offer a "Why?": Because everyone let it happen, and it's easier to ignore and pretend and maintain the veneer and pretense.

And while I understand the disappointment that the #2 goes in a much different direction, I suspect/hope it will be a season 2 of The Wire situation--expanding the world to make something capital G Great.

I understand the escapist impulse, too, but...forgive the seeming digression, but when I left JoJo Rabbit, I IMed a friend saying that it felt like my brain was bloated and self-loathing from subsisting on nothing but garbage, and then the film came along and gave it a proper nutritional meal, and I emerged energize and rejuvenated, and I feel similarly about the tone of these games.

SpacePPoliceman wrote:
Eleima wrote:

LiS spoilers

Probably/Almost Certainly not the examination desired, but I'd make the case that:

Spoiler:

#1 did offer a "Why?": Because everyone let it happen, and it's easier to ignore and pretend and maintain the veneer and pretense.

But that adds absolutely nothing, because that's exactly what happens in real life.

Yeah, Eleima, that's the reason I don't trust them to handle any of these issues well.

At the bare minimum, LiS1 had the rewind game mechanics to play with. It's really looking like LiS2 isn't even going to offer that much.

JFC Dontnod. FFS.

(has just played the opening hour of episode 2)

Spoiler:

just couldn't WAIT to kill off the puppy could you. f*ckers.

Yeah up to the end of Episode 3 now. Fuming.

Spoiler:

I am officially over giving a sh*t about what happens to Daniel. Nine or not, that little brat's inability to follow sensible rules designed to keep him and others safe, or comprehend the whole "great power / great responsibility" thing just got a whole sh*tload of people either hurt or facing significant retribution from some real nasty people.

And tricking the kid from Captain Spirit into thinking HE has powers was reprehensible, especially because in my game it got him seriously wounded - though admittedly that was down to me making a wrong call).

Eleima wrote:
SpacePPoliceman wrote:
Eleima wrote:

LiS spoilers

Probably/Almost Certainly not the examination desired, but I'd make the case that:

Spoiler:

#1 did offer a "Why?": Because everyone let it happen, and it's easier to ignore and pretend and maintain the veneer and pretense.

But that adds absolutely nothing, because that's exactly what happens in real life.

I connected with Max because she reminded me of where I was in my life, back when I started college. I also saw it as a fresh start, but unsurprisingly my social anxiety tagged along with me and I had an even lonelier experience than in high school.

And then they video gamed it in Episode 5, with well all that happened. Not only was it bad because of everything you mentioned, but it was such a departure from all the reasons I liked Max in the first place.

Also: that alternative ending was so bad.

Spoiler:

How can you eradicate a town and its inhabitants, to ride off into the distance with your BFF/lover? How does that not doom your relationship from the get-go, assuming Max and Chloe are not complete psychopaths?

dejanzie wrote:

Also: that alternative ending was so bad.

Spoiler:

How can you eradicate a town and its inhabitants, to ride off into the distance with your BFF/lover? How does that not doom your relationship from the get-go, assuming Max and Chloe are not complete psychopaths?

YES!!!!!! The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. Or the one.

Eleima wrote:
dejanzie wrote:

Also: that alternative ending was so bad.

Spoiler:

How can you eradicate a town and its inhabitants, to ride off into the distance with your BFF/lover? How does that not doom your relationship from the get-go, assuming Max and Chloe are not complete psychopaths?

YES!!!!!! The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. Or the one.

Thirded! Definitely the correct - if heartbreakingly painful - choice.

Speaking of... I've now finished LiS2. Brief thoughts...

Spoiler:

I don't want to say it's far weaker than the first game, but it was one I had considerably less personal connections with, so i most definitely didn't enjoy it as much. Max was much more personally relatable to me, as an introverted artsy type living in a relatively quiet coastal town myself!

I'm especially increasingly weary of DontNod's obsession with pulling the rug out of a happy moment with something miserable (see: puppy death for the most egregious example in this season. Literally the only reason for giving them the puppy in episode 1 was so they could kill it early in episode 2. I'm still raging about that.

I appreciated that you could make Sean Bisexual, even though his only male 'romance' option was a selfish stoner douchebag spouting irritating 'road wisdom'. I' also raging that we only get to keep Sean's cool undercut for the end of one episode. There's no justice in the world. *shakes fist*

However, I feel like by the end i was certainly invested in Sean's struggle. Less so with the brother, who was frustratingly bratty and unlikable for the majority of the 'season', only really becoming likeable in the final chapter, by which point i thankfully managed to turn him away from becoming an angry super powered rage-monster. I've never liked "hormonal angry kid get's superpowers and turns into a monster" stories, and that's no exception here.

It was good - if heartbreaking - to see David again briefly, and good to hear that at least Joyce is finally seeing the world a bit.

Final choice : surrendered to the police. That's probably my incredibly whiter than white privilege showing, given attitudes towards "immigrants" both home and abroad at the moment, but it felt like the only sensible outcome and one i'd have chosen far sooner if the option had been available.

Anyway - that's that! I probably wont replay this the way i'd happily replay life is strange 1, but I AM very much looking forward to their next game with the trans twin in it. Crossing everything they do their research and don't make it all about the Dysphoria and misery the way Hollywood does whenever it dares tackle Trans topics.

Thing is, there is no reason to think that

Spoiler:

sacrificing Chloe is going to save everyone. The damage might already be done. The game tells us that it will work - but for Max it doesn't seem particularly clear.
But riding off into the distance is a fairly bad ending though. Guess they could have gone back into the town to help instead.

Edit: Didn't think about spoilering an ooold game, but just in case.

dejanzie wrote:

Also: that alternative ending was so bad.

Spoiler:

How can you eradicate a town and its inhabitants, to ride off into the distance with your BFF/lover? How does that not doom your relationship from the get-go, assuming Max and Chloe are not complete psychopaths?

Spoiler:

(1) Most teenagers are sociopaths. I don't say this jokingly; your brain isn't done baking yet, and your sense of empathy is often underdeveloped.

(2) If you aren't a sociopath to start with, trauma can sure turn you into one.

(3) More significantly, since these games are (let's face it) designed to be emotionally manipulative: making the "good choice" is more emotionally resonant if it is a literal choice. If you were just un-interactively watching, it wouldn't feel the same as knowing that you COULD have done differently, and still consciously purposely made the sacrifice.

So I am finally about to start LiS2 Episode 2, but it keeps prompting me about not having a save file for Captain Spirit. I did play Captain Spirit, but on PC. Is this just saying "hey we hope you know what happened in that", and I can proceed without losing anything, or does it actually need a save file to reference to do anything different? I was assuming the former, but the way it keeps emphasizing specifically that it doesn't see a save file for Captain Spirit is giving me doubts...

Arise Thread!!!

Just got through LiS2 episode 1 last night, and they aren't pulling any punches.

Looking forward to going through and digging out some opinions later.

Spoiler:

I look forward to turning little Davis into Darth Diaz.

pyxistyx wrote:

Yeah up to the end of Episode 3 now. Fuming.

Spoiler:

I am officially over giving a sh*t about what happens to Daniel. Nine or not, that little brat's inability to follow sensible rules designed to keep him and others safe, or comprehend the whole "great power / great responsibility" thing just got a whole sh*tload of people either hurt or facing significant retribution from some real nasty people.

And tricking the kid from Captain Spirit into thinking HE has powers was reprehensible, especially because in my game it got him seriously wounded - though admittedly that was down to me making a wrong call).

Spoiler:

I donno, Daniel's behavior seems pretty consistent with a 9yo who has experienced so much trauma.
My foster parent training keeps kicking in and I keep thinking what I would do if Sean and Daniel ended up in my care.

On the other hand... Darth Diaz.

Spoiler for the end of LiS2, Episode 4.

The end of Lisbeth...

Spoiler:

IMAGE(https://i.kym-cdn.com/entries/icons/facebook/000/017/886/download.jpg)

Finished the game, got the ending I wanted

Spoiler:

Which involved a 10-year old killing a bunch of cops at the border

saw the rest of the endings, and I 1) made the right choice and 2) highly recommend this game. If I would have finished it last year, it would have been somewhere in my top five.

Glad to see positive feelings about LiS2. I'm really going to get going on Episode 2 soon, I swear. Maybe this is the weekend for it.

Well, if positive feelings will help, for the record Life is Strange 2 made #3 on my GotY list (behind A Plague Tale: Innocence and Final Fantasy XIV). What I had to say about it was general, but here it is:

Me wrote:

3 Life is Strange 2 - In a just world, 2015’s Life is Strange would have acquired a robust following, and spawned a prequel and a sequel and maybe even a comic series people could randomly happen upon when they decide to stop by the old comic shop because they’re in the neighborhood, but then angst over if those comics will be the story they want...wait, hold up. In a just world, the events of this series wouldn’t have such a grounding in reality... Damn, guess justice’s limits are low. Anyway. This sequel is much different than the original (Certified SPP #1 Game Pick 2017!), almost inverted in a sense--rather than gentle normalcy punctured by devastation, it’s desperation marked by moments of grace. And yet, the sequel keeps much of what I adored in the first game. The investment in their protagonists’ interior lives. The careful rendering of spaces. Ordinary people in credible circumstances (save for the “hook,” obvs). The languidness. They’re both chronicles of the tragedies and indignities we thoughtlessly and intentionally inflict upon our society’s most precarious. They took the themes and concerns and even aesthetics of the original, and reshaped them for a new tale and a new cast expanding the canvas and effect. I didn’t guide Sean the way I guided Max, and there is a lot of fruitful discussion to be teased out of why that is. I think this is the medium’s most valuable series, and certainly the most deserving of being one.

I completed Episode 2 of LiS2 over the weekend. I liked it. The structure of the plot felt very familiar with prior LiS installments, particularly in the way that on the one hand I felt a strong motivation to steer my characters away from certain situations but on the other hand knew there was little I could do to avoid them. In a story that is going to span 5 episodes, you know any hope of finding a reasonable solution to all your problems is going to be dashed in one way or another, but I still played with an eye towards fixing everything.

There are several points in this episode where there were bad ideas afoot, yet I couldn't steer the characters away from them. That was a little frustrating on one level, but generally I understood why those bad ideas appealed to the characters, and can understand why the game does not allow you to pick choices that just leaves everything resolved and happy.

Over the first 2 episodes, one thing that has stuck out to me has been that the "choices" revealed at the end of the episodes includes a number of options that never occurred to me and were not presented to me, presumably as a result of how I had steered characters or the order in which I had done things. It's interesting. I'm glad there are so many choices that are not strict binaries, and it will cause me to continue to pay very close attention to everything I'm doing. There are still occasionally frustrating bits--I missed out on listening to someone singing a song, apparently, but I guess they were just done singing by the time I met them, how was I supposed to know I could've done that?--but I'd rather have a wider range of experiences with the possibility I'll miss a chance to make a given choice than have everything reduce to binary options.

Some spoiler-ed ramblings about the substance of the episode:

Spoiler:

I'm a little surprised that Trump's election wasn't mentioned at all. In Episode 1, set 1-2 weeks before the election, you meet one or two obvious MAGA-types, and Sean has text chats with Lyla that were unspecifically but obviously about the presidential debates. I wasn't looking forward to Sean and Daniel learning the news, and felt like it was a rather fraught situation to explore that could go bad in a bunch of different ways...which could be said about a lot of things DONTNOD attempts, and I give them a lot of credit for trying even if they don't always nail it. So I'm a little surprised they took a pass on this, at least for now, not even just a page in Sean's notebook in early November that's just "WTF UGH".

I am a little confused about what the deal is with the boys' mother. Obviously she left them, and Sean is mad at them. I understand Sean says his dad didn't want to have anything to do with their maternal grandparents after the mom left, which doesn't seem like the most mature reaction, but is not an unrealistic one, and also there could be additional reasons supporting that choice that I'm just not aware of... At times during this episode it seemed that perhaps their mother had killed herself, which would make some sense in the way the characters responded to it (again, not the right response, but a response some people do have) but from the letter that is discovered, clearly she is alive. This is a plot thread I'm wary of in general... The description of everyone's feelings about the boys' mother along with the portrayal of Claire, all feels like things could be headed into a gross misogynistic direction where all of the maternal figures are selfish and neglectful. Hopefully not! It feels like the story they are telling must be one in which their mother ends up being a person who made some bad choices but for which we may learn there are some meaningfully mitigating circumstances and people forgive each other, but, I dunno. We'll see.

I passed on the opportunity to login on the computer or call Lyla. I am curious to see what would happen down those paths, but it seems like such an obviously bad idea that would come back to haunt me. I just hope I see some positive payoff for having exercised that caution.

Things ended up better with the grandparents than I feared. The grandmother in particular was too grumpy and scold-y for my liking--"you didn't do a good job taking care of your little brother because he has a cold" is a strange response to finding your estranged grandchildren on your doorstep after their father died and they are involved in some ambiguously bad business with the police. I'm glad they didn't end up as mustache-twirling villains, at least. The whole Chekhov's bookcase situation was kind of absurd, but the way the kids getting caught in their moms room was interrupted by the need to save their grandfather was interrupted by the cops arriving at their house because someone noticed the kids all really helped sand some of the edges off at that sequence for me--a lot of things I didn't really like about the detail, but it moved quickly enough that none of it bothered me too much. I was somewhat surprised the grandparents didn't turn the boys in. Given the dangerous situations the kids had already faced and the ambiguity of their long-term plan, it is not hard to imagine the grandparents thinking it would be the right thing to do to call the police...particularly for two older, white grandparents, the idea that the cops are the good guys who will hear the kids out and resolve this appropriately would seem like a tempting vision.

I didn't love the hipster hobos Sean encountered at the Christmas market, and am not excited to run into them more in the next episode. Maybe they'll be great, I just see a lot of ways in which those characters could be portrayed poorly. We'll see, I guess.

I was a little surprised by how everything played out with Captain Spirit Chris. I'd thought I'd heard somewhere that Captain Spirit was a prequel to this, and that Chris would be much older when encountered here. I guess not.

I told Daniel that it was a big mistake to show Chris his powers (because duh, it was) but that he could not correct that by telling Chris the truth because it was too risky. That led to a real sad situation where Chris jumped out into the road to stop the police car that was pursuing Sean and Daniel and getting hit by a car. Apparently there was a scenario where Chris still did that but Daniel used his powers to stop the car so Chris wouldn't get injured? Maybe I shamed Daniel too much about his power usage. Oh well.

I also had Sean talk with Chris in detail about his worries about his father, but I declined to tell the dad what Chris had told me--I have no idea if this alcoholic and neglectful father was also the sort who would get abusive if he learned something like that (tho Captain Spirit suggested he wasn't, but Sean doesn't know that, and it may not be the whole picture). I felt like the choices at the end of the episode implied to me that maybe I should've told him, but I still think I made the right call.

For those that have played and have comments on my spoiler comments, I'd appreciate it if you either omit or mark separately any spoilers from Episodes 3+.

Very much looking forward to getting into this more over the next few weeks. The music is so good, I really like the characters, I love all the stuff in the notebooks, and I think the dialogue is generally pretty strong. I'm most wary of where the plot is going...I'm not sure how they solve these problems in a way that is neither upsetting nor totally unrealistic.

I finished the first episode of LiS 2 last night.

Unlike a lot of you, I never connected with the first series. It seems right up my alley. A queer adventure game! With time travel! But I've played the first episode three or four times now hoping to find the spark, and it's never worked for me. I just can't warm to Max who always feels like the least interesting character in her own story. And I'm frustrated by the way the game talks out both sides of its mouth with time travel: it's both a device for previewing outcomes where there is no right answer, and it's a mechanism for solving puzzles where there is one correct solution.

But I decided to play LiS 2 for the same reason Edmund Hillary climbed Mt. Everest: because it was available through one of my game subscription services.

I was really pleasantly surprised. I wasn't expecting to click with it given my experience with the first series, but I quickly warmed to Sean and Daniel. I like that both characters are equally interesting with neither feeling like simply a companion to the other, and I was especially drawn to Sean's struggle to both ensure their survival and to be a model for Daniel.

I also admit that I was a bit shocked by how explicitly political the game was. There was no effort made to pretend that it takes some kind of neutral stance.

I think I'll take a bit of a break before playing the next episode, because they were obviously not intended to be played back to back. But I'm looking forward to seeing what happens next.

I finished LiS2 Episode 3 over the past couple of days. Still liking it quite a bit.

In non-spoilery talk, I think it continues to walk a good line about letting you manage conflict while, at certain points, making conflict inevitable. As me in real life, I am overly conflict-avoidant, and so as I realize how I am trying to impose that on Sean as I try to help him make people be happy, keep Daniel safe, and find some sort of security in his situation, it does leave me slightly chagrined at my own obvious and maybe not entirely healthy tendencies, though I do think these are reasonable choices given Sean's circumstances. Yet, no matter how much you try to manage things, Sean, Daniel, or other circumstances will not let you get away from every scenario without causing trouble. Sometimes that can feel a little frustrating--how many times am I going to warn Daniel about this?! why did Sean agree to do this thing without my input that I knew was a bad idea?!--but I am mostly at peace with it. For this game and this story, bad things need to happen, and it is natural that these characters would make these mistakes. So even if occasionally I'm like "but come ON, how obvious was it that that bad thing was going to happen when you made that choice?", the story generally feels plausible and true and still presents me with options that are genuinely difficult to choose between.

The music in these games continues to be great. I was happy but also surprised to recognize correctly a Ben Lee song at one point...I haven't listened to that guy's music in ages, yet I heard just a hint of an Australian-y warble in a song that struck me as familiar, and I googled the lyrics I was hearing and sure enough, it was him.

The tone is overall quite good. Sad but heartfelt with a little bit of hopeful optimism. Occasionally conversations do drag for me a little...I think 2 or 3 times over the few hours I spent on this episode, I absentmindedly started checking my phone while a scene was playing out, which isn't the best sign of it keeping my attention. Still, there are so few games that operate in this space, and it makes strong emotional connections with me, even if it occasionally misfires on certain beats.

Spoiler comments on Episode 3:

Spoiler:

Finn's backstory makes no sense to me. He and his brothers and his father worked stripping stolen cars, but when the police caught on, his dad blamed it on his children and the police just bought it and put his kids in jail and let the dad walk? Feels extremely implausible to me. I'm willing to roll with the idea that he was raised in crappy circumstances and went to jail taking the fall for something his dad did, but the specific story they told struck me as poorly conceived.

Is Penny supposed to read as having a serious mental illness? Or is he just making weird jokes? They don't focus on it much, but at least 2 or 3 different times, Penny starts saying things about thinking aliens are coming for them or some sort of conspiracy going after them, and I'm not sure whether we're supposed to think that he's just a wacky goofball or if we're supposed to think he is struggling with schizophrenia or some other mental illness that is causing paranoid hallucinations. Seemed like a weird thing that kept popping up that I wasn't sure what to think about.

Why, when a few of the crew see Daniel use his powers and Sean asks everyone to keep it to themselves, is Jacob so uncertain about that, and why is Sean not freaking out about that? I don't really understand what's so hard about Jacob keeping his mouth shut. I can imagine a certain type of kid thinking 'we must report this to the authorities!' but runaways working on a remote weed farm don't really seem like the 'squeal to the cops immediately' type. And Sean seems either unobservant or just surprisingly chill about Jacob's ambivalence about keeping Daniel's secret. I dunno, maybe this is all me misreading Jacob, but I feel like this might come back to bite Sean and Daniel.

One of the minor failings of this episode is the whole scenario with Finn's heist. I understand that money is of course useful to Sean, and the loss of their payday (which I found not especially convincing--Daniel was sneaking around where he shouldn't be, so I can see kicking them out and/or docking Sean's pay, but not paying Sean or anyone else either seems not only unfair but like a very shortsighted strategy) puts some financial pressure on them. And I know they will need some amount of money to help them on their journey. But, absent more specifics, I didn't have any way to evaluate the risk vs. reward on Finn's proposed heist. Particularly understanding the high possibility of extremely serious consequences for getting caught, the downside of not stealing the money didn't seem anywhere near high enough to make this a difficult decision. I don't mind that too much--every decision doesn't have to be a tough decision, and it seems kind of obvious that Sean should not put Daniel in this position regardless of the circumstances--but it was just a moment where the game could have had more interesting stakes.

I did end up pursuing the romance with Cassidy, though, having heard it was there, I initially planned to avoid it. But the writing and the performances just made me believe it made sense. It was interesting to me that you are at least presented with a path to direct romantic interest towards Finn instead. That option felt slightly out of nowhere to me, given that we'd seen explicit evidence of Sean's romantic interest in another girl and no signs that I had picked up on of interest in men, but then again I'm the person who played Life is Strange 1 and was slightly surprised to read people refer to it as a queer romance. So perhaps that path that seemed like a surprising option to me was exactly what some other player was looking for. I imagine it would've added a very different feeling to the whole heist setup.

In the confrontation with the drug boss at the end, I obeyed when he ordered us to all get on our knees, and I told Daniel to use his powers when the boss was (slightly ambiguously) threatening Finn. In my result, everyone got knocked out and hurt, but no one died. I was interested to see in the options at the end that it looks like there was a chance in not intervening for Finn to be fine and a chance for him to die, and perhaps a chance in intervening for at least Cassidy to not be hurt, maybe Finn too? Very curious how those scenarios would've happened and what they would've looked like. I wish there were an easy way to just replay that final sequence and see how other choices would've played out. But I will plan to do more reading when I finish the game.

Those are my long ramblings. Looking forward to getting to Episode 4 in the near future!

I finished Episode 4 last night. It was good. Mechanically more interesting than the previous ones, but also, given the stakes, I confess I relied on a walkthrough at a later sequence. It was probably unnecessary--I assume the range of possible outcomes is fairly limited--but I was already keeping an eye on a guide to make sure I didn't miss any collectibles for achievements, so in a stressful moment I decided to read a little further. The story got slightly more ridiculous, a little less grounded than previous chapters, but was still entertaining and moving in some spots. Some of the spoiler-y questions I raised last episode were addressed, if not exactly answered. I'm a little puzzled about where this is going but will be interested to see how this gets wrapped up. I'm leaning towards saying that, had I played this last year, LiS2 would've topped my GOTY list.

Spoiler comments!

Spoiler:

Does it make a difference how well you do on the eye tests? I passed 1 of the 2 tests. I wonder, if you pass them both, does it affect the extent of Sean's recovery?

I had no real problem telling the FBI agent that the whole robbery plan was Finn's idea. The impulse for the Angelic playthrough made me think for a moment about whether it would be nobler to take the blame for everything, but ultimately I didn't think that made much sense. When Sean was escaping, as an attorney, I started thinking through all the hearsay exceptions and am pretty sure none of them apply, so I don't think my truthfully blaming Finn should really have any consequences for him. And I did have Seanpop his head into his (extremely conveniently-located) window and talk to him and accept his apology. I'm not sure why he didn't ask to come with Sean? And what injuries had Finn suffered that meant that he, too, needed to be in the hospital for multiple weeks?

I liked Joey and was glad I was able to escape the hospital without dragging him into it, or without attacking the guard, even though he seemed deserving of a good knock on the head. I wonder if you do get Joey to help if you learn of whether he gets in trouble for it?

It is *extremely* convenient that Sean knows how to hotwire cars.

I hated the scene where two jerks harass and humiliate Sean. I don't know if it's a good scene or not, it definitely made me feel things, but I didn't enjoy it. I always find that sort of humiliation to be a particularly visceral and unpleasant pain. I decided that my vision of Sean was that, as angry as he would be about this, he would also be aware that he was traveling in a stolen car, and so he was semi-compliant. I did get out of the car and did not try to grab Daniel's toy back (which the stats indicate mean would have caused it to break, so, whew). I did respond to the jerk's requests that I translate things into Spanish with variations on "come on, don't do this" and "f*ck off." But for the final request that I sing a song, I decided to go along with it. Sean's sobbing song wasn't the way I wanted the character to play it--I was thinking more with an attitude of "here, here's your stupid song, jerk"--and I couldn't believe he went for multiple verses of Twinkle Twinkle (at least I'm like 90% sure that's what he was singing in spanish) which seemed unnecessary. Anyway, a tough scene to watch, very similar to the MAGA gas station jerk in the first episode, where it made me angry and seemed a bit over the top and on the nose, but I think I would still say it is well done. I think.

I was extremely wary of the trucker who stopped to pick Sean up. I felt like the smartest thing to do would be to keep walking, but given Sean's condition and his distance from town (the trucker later mentions it's an hour away, so presumably Sean still had 50-60 miles to go, which would be a hell of a walk) I rolled the dice. My radar was tingling a bit when the trucker declines to tell his dispatcher or whoever that he just picked someone up (could be protecting Sean, or could be avoiding creating a record of having picked someone up), and was wary again but had Sean accept a sandwich, and then when the trucker suggested Sean take a nap I was like AAAAH NO! and fully expected the scene to open again on something unseemly happening. Thank goodness the trucker turned out to be just a helpful and kind person! Whew! I am glad they didn't try to tell a different story in this scene.

It's interesting to see how faith and religion were set up in earlier episodes as themes and have that come into play more directly here. I have felt like in prior episodes (talking about what happened to Esteban and the sequence involving praying with the grandmother) there has been some suggestion that perhaps Sean's reaction can influence how Daniel feels. I wonder whether Daniel might react differently to his involvement in this cult if I had had Sean react more skeptically to religion throughout.

The cult was a bit silly and vaguely drawn. We see the leader is bad for various reasons, and are told she is super manipulative, but we don't really see any way of understanding why people follow her or how what she preaches is in any way unusual (aside from Daniel's superpower side show, but obviously the cult pre-dated that by a lot). Given how little time we really spend dealing with it, it's not a problem that it's not especially thoroughly laid out, but it could've been better.

So, we meet Sean and Daniel's mom! The instant she appeared I had an interesting explanation for her absence pop into my head: what if, like Daniel, she had some sort of power too, and that was what caused her to bail on her family in some capacity? But no, it's a much simpler answer than that: basically she thought being a mother and wife sucked and wanted to be free? I'm genuinely quite surprised there's not a more sympathetic reasoning here, and am curious if DONTNOD mean for this to be as bad a reason as it seems to me. As a father of 3, the idea of just being like "nah, I'm not feeling this whole parenting/spousing thing, I'm going to leave and never come back and just totally ghost my kids" is a completely abhorrent idea. Still unacceptable but more understandable to me would be something like her deciding she was dying in their boring town and unhappy in her marriage and feeling unsuited to being a mother and so she's getting a divorce and leaving town but still at least attempting to maintain some semblance of a relationship with her kids, telling them she'll have them come visit her when she get settled, and maybe that whole situation leads to further estrangement because she doesn't end up getting her life together well enough to make it practical and/or the dad responds to it by saying no, if you leave you're out of their lives and she doesn't fight hard enough... I feel like there's a way to explain this character and her decisions that doesn't make her a total monster, but the way they tell her story, at least so far...she kinda seems like a monster! My inclination is usually to play Sean as pretty sympathetic and kind, but I was pretty harsh with her, though I did avoid walking out on her altogether, did agree to tentatively trust her so we could help Daniel together, and did let her clean my eye, and so the stats indicated that I at least let her in to some degree. I'm pretty surprised by the extent to which she doesn't have a redeeming story. Where can she go in the final episode? Does she make some more dramatic sacrifice to save the boys? Does she realize that, with their father dead, she really needs to actually take care of them? Or does she just send them off to Mexico and say have a nice life? I'm kind of fascinated by how they've chosen to tell her story, but I'm not sure if it's good or not.

The escape from the cult was where I leaned on a walkthrough a bit, because I just really couldn't stand to let something bad happen to Daniel. I still did manage to draw the attention of the cult enforcer guy, but Karen drew him off by...setting fire to a building in the compound, I think? Yet, because the sequence culminates in the church getting set on fire, Karen's distraction doesn't get referenced again, but that seemed like a pretty extreme distraction! I didn't entirely buy Daniel's reticence to believe Sean over the cult leader. She didn't seem like an especially skilled manipulator, we were just told a lot that she had manipulated people.

I'm not sure how much the outcome was dictated by my conversation choices vs. the information I had acquired snooping around, but I managed to get out of the church without anyone getting killed. Daniel tossed the cult leader aside and we just walked past. It seemed kinda silly that I even needed a big dramatic choice to make that happen...it was a pretty big set of double doors, the leader was a smallish person, and she was unarmed. Why couldn't the three of us them just shove past her?

A thought that occurred to me late in this episode is that I miss Lyla and wish there were a way to reconnect with her--I really liked Sean and Lyla's relationship in the first episode. But, because I want Sean to be safe, I have not had him contact her at all. I wonder, I haven't seen any obvious point in the last couple of episodes where it seems like, had Sean left more of a trail, someone would have caught up with him, whether law enforcement or anyone else. That has to pay off in the next episode, right?

Anyway, on to the final chapter! I don't know what it will be. What I want for the boys is a resolution that lets them live safely and peacefully, which really means in my mind clearing their names with the law in the US (the FBI agent's questioning seemed to imply that Sean...murdered the police officer with his bare hands? I know Sean and Daniel were the only ones alive to flee the scene, but I'm still not sure how they think that is a likely explanation for what happened). It's hard to imagine how they get there, though, so maybe it's more about finding family in Mexico that can provide a stable life? Or... no, I really don't know where this is going! I hope that proves to be a good thing rather than "I can't guess how they get out of this because they really painted themselves into a corner and so their solution will inevitably be deus ex machina-y." Time will tell!

Finished Episode 5 last night, all done with LiS2 now. I really enjoyed the characters and relationships, and connected strongly with many aspects of the story, but none of it quite as strongly as LiS1, primarily because I found the mystery, the time travel mechanics, and the school setting more engaging than the LiS2 structure, settings, and mechanics. Still, a worthwhile and moving game in a lot of ways. I was reasonably happy with the ending, although I thought the path there was a bit forced. I'm glad I played this, and would definitely come back for an LiS3, although I get the impression LiS2 may not have had the sales to justify a third. Spoiler thoughts on the episode and the ending.

Spoiler:

Karen's commune was an interesting setting. It felt a little hand wave-y that they basically said "well these are cool hippies so they are fairly blase about Daniel having superpowers." I understand them not wanting to burn him as a witch or something, but I would expect them to be a little more interested than they seemed to be.

Still not really getting Karen's whole deal. As far as I can tell, she abandoned her kids because she wasn't into the whole parenting thing, got an advance on a book, lived in New York for a while, then the book fell apart and she had to repay her advance but couldn't afford to and that's why she lives in a commune in the middle of nowhere? And I think the letter said this was like a $10k debt? Not that that's not a scary amount of money to owe, but lots of people have that much ore more debt, lots of people could default on debts like that or declare bankruptcy...I still don't see any of it as providing much explanation for who she is. Shrug. I generally had Sean accept her and not be a jerk to her, but I avoided the full "all is forgiven, I totally understand why you did what you did" route, since I didn't feel that.

It was interesting seeing David at the RV park. When I heard his name, I wondered if it was David from LiS1, but when I actually saw him I didn't realize it was intended to be him...his look was different, but also his voice didn't sound as I remembered. I would guess I'm wrong about that (though maybe I'm confused because of the different voice actors in LiSBtS?). As I ended LiS1 by rightly saving my best friend's life, it was interesting to hear David's take on what happened, and to hear David have a loving call with his stepdaughter. I feel that scene would've been more depressing had I made the other choice in LiS1.

Seeing Daniel blow open the wall and Daniel and Sean standing together in front of the opening was powerful imagery, if a bit easy and on the nose. Daniel getting shot from out of nowhere by out of control border security enthusiasts felt a little over the top, but it fit with the slightly heightened reality of the world. Still, I kinda hated interacting with them, both at the border and in prison, where they were just the worst sneering racist a-holes. It felt a bit much, but again, consistent with the tone of the world.

In the interrogation scene, I was a little frustrated that I didn't have the ability to let Sean decline to answer the Border Patrol guy's questions. Earlier in the episode, I was slow to answer some dialogue choice and the game just moved on without Sean commenting, so I hoped to do the same while Sean was being questioned, given his legal jeopardy and the wisdom of exercising his right to remain silent, but it just led to Sean staring blankly for a minute or two before I relented and made a choice.

It seemed silly that, on escaping from the Border Patrol detention center, I had the choice to free the vigilante jerks. I get leaving them there, and I get taking revenge on them, but why would Sean ever want to free them? What good could come of that? It's not like the place was on fire and they needed to get out. It seemed like an option only for someone looking to max out their karma points.

I managed to escape without injuring anyone. I could not understand for the life of me why Sean and Daniel's decision on escaping the jail was to...drive straight to the border checkpoint? Why not go back to the hole they blew in the wall? Or, if they reasonably worried that might be monitored, just drive to some other section of wall and have Daniel rip that open? I get the game wanted to come to a big decision point where you had to surrender or force your way out, but having Sean just drive to the border checkpoint just seemed like a "let's get this over with" kinda move.

I wish the decision had been more interesting to me, but the game never once made me believe in the idea that getting to Mexico would help. Why would they be safe there? It's not like Mexico is a non-extradition country, and if the plan is to stay in their dad's house there, they would be incredibly easy to find. There were occasional mentions of Esteban's family there in Mexico, but never any sense of Sean and Daniel having menaingful relationships with them or an ability to count on the family taking care of them. Daniel putting these questions to Sean this episode--how will we make money, how will I get along if I don't speak Spanish, etc.--reinforced that these are pretty big problems, though why Daniel only started asking them now, I don't know.

So, I surrendered, and I liked the feel of my ending, with Daniel having a seemingly nice life with his grandparents, growing up, and coming with Karen to meet Sean when he got out of prison in about 15 years. It doesn't totally make sense to me, though. The hand wave-y "they can't prosecute Daniel because he's a kid" explanation doesn't ring true--sure he's not going to get 10+ years in jail, but he might face some other pretty serious consequences--and I still don't really get what Sean is accused of. Did he get convicted of murdering that cop in Seattle? How is he supposed to have done that? And what did all the Border Patrol people who saw Daniel using his powers say about that? I dunno. It didn't kill the experience for me, I can avoid dwelling on the details, but it's not a strength of the plot.

I am disappointed that Lyla never came back up! Maybe it's because I never took the risk of calling her, but aside from seeing some of her social media posts on Karen's laptop, I had no additional contact with her. I loved her relationship with Daniel in the first episode and am disappointed that never paid off for me. And was all my caution in not calling Lyla or checking in on computers for nothing? I didn't see an obvious point where one of those points of contact would've come back to bite me anyway.

I do want to look up the other ending on youtube at some point. Do you get the same montage of the next 15 years or so of their lives? Maybe that answers some of my questions about what exactly was entailed in the Mexico plan.

Anyway, apologies for turning this thread into my personal blog. I will be very interested to see more of what others think of this as people work through this game in the future.

Also I read pyxi and uptolso's spoiler comments and -

Spoiler:

pyxi, I agree with the frustration about Daniel not following rules and being a bit bratty, but I feel like uptolso does that his frustrating decisions, while a bit much, are generally understandable given his youth and the horrible circumstances he's dealing with. I feel my kids make comparably stupid decisions all the time but are just fortunate enough that they don't have superpowers and haven't had a parent murdered in front of them, so it was easier for me to shake that off.

Curious about uptolso's decision to kill some cops. How'd that work out? I didn't want to do that to Daniel and couldn't really imagine that having a good ending long-term. Like pyxi, I felt surrendering was the only option, and even recognizing how much my white person privilege must be influencing my thinking there, it felt like the right answer to me from day 1. For me, I was not so much thinking "the legal system will surely treat them well!" as I was thinking "there is no way they are going to get away from the legal system and running is only going to lead to worse outcomes."

oh BY THE WAY.

If you're looking for Life Is Strange adjacent fiction - definitely check out I Am Not OK With This on Netflix. It's pretty much the closest i've seen to a LiS TV Show (excluding the official LiS show which is supposedly in the works).

I'm not finished it yet but i'm a good way through and the best way i can describe it is "What if Chloe ended up with the powers of the kid from LiS2"

pyxistyx wrote:

excluding the official LiS show which is supposedly in the works

What?
I need that, now.

haven't heard anything about it in a while (and probably wont now for a bit) but as far as i know it's in development...somewhere.

"We’re super excited to announce that we’re teaming up with Legendary Digital Studios and dj2 to develop a digital series based on Life is Strange! Much like many of you, both Legendary and we here at Square Enix & DONTNOD agree that Life Is Strange lends itself perfectly to live-action imaginings. While we can’t wait to see what Legendary will do with the digital series we don’t have any further details to share at this point in time."
—Official Blog[3]

LiS2 is on game pass, so since I'm at home, played through it all this week. I think I prefered it to the first one, maybe it's the less cringly dialogue or I just clicked with the characters/story more.

Spoiler Thoughts

Spoiler:

Daniel annoyed me at certain points, he never seemed to take anything on board but then again given he is 9 and gone through a lot so maybe that makes sense. The poltical beats weren't subtle at all but I guess that is what they were going for. In the end though the emotional beats were good, highlight was the end of chapter 4.
Anyway I ended up smashing my way through to Mexico. Given all their interactions with cops, I didn't trust them not to just shoot him tbh. However because I had brought Daniel up well, he jumped out of the car when he got me through and I ended up in some unnamed place with Cassidy. Almost quite an upbeat ending really.

Some pics of me having some LiS related fun.

pyxistyx wrote:

Yeah up to the end of Episode 3 now. Fuming.

Spoiler:

I am officially over giving a sh*t about what happens to Daniel. Nine or not, that little brat's inability to follow sensible rules designed to keep him and others safe, or comprehend the whole "great power / great responsibility" thing just got a whole sh*tload of people either hurt or facing significant retribution from some real nasty people.

And tricking the kid from Captain Spirit into thinking HE has powers was reprehensible, especially because in my game it got him seriously wounded - though admittedly that was down to me making a wrong call).

I’ve just finished episode 3 and the EXACT same stance as you, Pyxi. I’ll report more when I finish the game tomorrow but good grief, LiS2 is a major disappointment to me, so far.

As a victim of police brutality, I was pretty patient with Daniel.