Life is Strange 2
While this post endeavours to contain no major story spoilers about Life is Strange 2, it does discuss some thematic elements and small gameplay moments that may be best discovered yourself.
I think the original Life is Strange is one of the few examples that demonstrates that video games can be more than just shooting men in the face and lining up against the dragon to stab it. It's a slow, interactive teen drama with dialogue that sounds like it was written by a team of French people trying to emulate what teenagers sound like. It was awkward in places, but I still liked it. It's a common take, but Life is Strange was a better Telltale game than most Telltale games. It's great to see that it warranted enough success to see a sequel.
Not to be satisfied with a check-box follow-up, Dontnod has subverted almost every pillar of the original in every way. I can't think of a sequel that has shifted so radically in all but gameplay from its predecessor. If you are interested in any way at all in Life is Strange 2, then let me provide a litmus test for you: Life is Strange 2 is The Last Jedi of video games. If that sounds amazing, stop reading and go and play it.
It's not perfect by any means, but I've got nothing but respect for Dontnod for trying. Instead of playing the superpowered time traveller Max protecting Chloe at every turn from danger, Life is Strange 2 follows the story of seventeen-year-old Sean and his nine-year-old brother Daniel. This time, it's you without the power while Daniel has telekinesis.
Once again, Life is Strange has some of the best music choices around
The misery starts right away with your father being murdered by the police. It's a heart-breaking scene and makes a statement from the developers: We're going to be covering political issues that you rarely see in video games. The game really does cover almost every aspect of the modern spectrum to the point where it's maybe a little box-checky. It takes a pace hike in the third chapter as you spend your time working on a weed farm which feels like it's there just because the developers wanted to tick "legalisation of weed" off the list. I think forgoing set pieces like that to focus on the issues more relevant to the story such as race and the American-Mexican border could have worked a little better. With regards to how effectively these issues are tackled, I'm probably not all too qualified to talk about it. Sorry. One thing I will say is that Life is Strange 2 does more showing than actual exploring of these issues. Instead of actually diving into the issue of racism and the systems that allow it to happen, it just sort of shows it happening. I think video games can do a lot better than just saying 'racism is bad'.
Life is Strange 2 is much closer to the despair of The Walking Dead than its predecessor. Though the world hasn't ended, your world certainly has. In the same way that I would kill several human beings for Clementine, I would commit several counts of parking ticket evasion for Daniel. It puts you through a variety of terrible situations with the hope that you might both make it out in the end. It lays it on a little thick sometimes - seeming eager to take the moral high-ground and then promptly beat you to death with it. Any decision that appears reasonable at the time can be taken and thrown back in your face half an hour later. I don't know if it was intentional for Sean and Daniel to go through the gauntlet of trauma, or maybe I just made the wrong decisions, but it does get a bit much at times. One particular option had me pausing the game in shock which is incredibly off brand for a miserable, soulless idiot like myself. At one point, you have the option to ask Daniel to beg a nearby family for food. Jesus.
A lot of the original Life is Strange was about your empowerment and how that empowerment had unforeseen consequences. Life is Strange 2 is the opposite. You don't have any powers, and while Daniel has the firepower of a military special forces unit, it's completely unreasonable to expect a nine-year-old to actually use that power to that degree. You usually just ask him to fetch the can of beans from the top shelf or whatever. It's an incredibly interesting dynamic. This time you are playing the dumbass with the social skills, although the other person is also a dumbass because he is nine.
Life is Strange 2 subvert things in another way by always being on the move. No longer are you constricted to the sleepy seaside of Arcadia Bay. It's interesting seeing the move from the familiar geography of Seattle into more unexplored areas as you get closer to the southern border (that's where you're trying to go, by the way). It fits with the theme of being on the run - you can never be comfortable for too long. I think it wears a little too thin on the third and fourth episodes. As mentioned before, some locations do seem like they were there just because they'd be cool to see rather than being relevant to the story, but I can't complain too much. Despite how out of place it feels, the set piece at episode four is some of the best the modern adventure game has to offer.
And that's Life is Strange 2. I wish I could talk more about the story, but exactly nobody played this game and I don't want to spoil it. It's an example of a story that is "good for video games". If Life is Strange 2 was a film, it wouldn't be a very good one. I think the big brother, little brother dynamic is okay, but Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons did it better. I wish it properly tackled the issues that were closer to its heart and forgoed some of the less relevant issues. Still, I'm happy that Dontnod did not rest on their laurels and actually tried something different. While it's not perfect, it makes me excited for the future of Dontnod - their best work is still ahead of them.