Enter the Dragon Punch
Banned
Alright, I want to get this off my chest, especially among all of the constant praise I've seen it receiving.
Life is Strange is... Interesting. It had a nice concept, and for the first three episodes, played out well.
From there on in? Eh...
The biggest flaw of them all is the most evident:
They don't explain a god damn thing about the hallucinations or the time travel. I've had people argue with me that, yeah, the game doesn't "need" to have it explained, and that it should be "left up to the players". You see, if the game had any substantial gameplay, or a story to be built via visual hints, that'd be a bit more fair game. But, no. One day, all of a sudden, Max develops the power to travel through time, whether it be through rewinding or staring at photos hard enough. A cool device that grants both plot armour and interesting possibilities, the latter of which is only really explored with the effect Max had by saving Chloe's dad's life.
You are built up the entire game towards finding out what exactly caused the growth of her ability. She has hallucinations/visions of animals in a ghostly state, she has constant predictions about a huge storm coming to destroy the town, and constant nosebleeds and lightheadedness caused by the use of said ability. Again, nothing here is ever elaborated on properly, and most are never touched at all in a major way. Considering that this is a game that's designed to be about its story, I found the lack of polish in that to be disheartening and disappointing from dontnod.
Also, there were moments in the game I simply didn't understand why there were even in it. What was the point of having to spend half an hour getting to a pool solely to get Max and Chloe to strip and swim together? Up until that point, the game had done a great job avoiding the shitty fanservice. It felt like pure filler and just... So, so out of place with the tone of the rest of the game. Same with the sleepover scene with the kiss, but that's nowhere near as bad as the pool scene.
On top of all of this: The stealth scene. Why? WHY? It added absolutely nothing. It was just a nightmare Max was having after she passed out from one of her unexplained nosebleeds. It wasn't fun at all. They took the worst section of gameplay, the fucking bottle collecting part, and coupled it with a piss poor forced stealth section that was separated in both tone and atmosphere with the rest of the game. Why not use that time in the fifth episode to shed some light on the power you've been using the entire series? Make me feel sorry for Max without resorting to "nightmares" and other shit like that. Though, on the other hand, my expectations for episode 5 were so low after playing through the shitty stealth section that the trash ending didn't surprise me that much.
I mean, really... Save Chloe, or save Arcadia Bay? You are given a choice to save a flunked out stoner or the lives of assumedly hundreds, if not thousands of people - women, children, all of them. Your only motivation to save Chloe whatsoever would be that fact that so many characters in Arcadia Bay are poorly written enough to just not care about their fate over a member of the main cast. In addition to that, no matter what you choose, it just... Ends. There's no hook for a sequel. There's no feeling of accomplishment, or any sense of actual satisfaction. The storm passes, and things return to normal. Or the storm passes and everyone you loved is dead. That's... It.
(The fact that Jefferson was the villain ends up being a bit too obvious the entire game, too. He's the only "main" character that's avoided by dontnod for fleshing out until the big "reveal". Prescott is too obvious, and anyone else didn't make sense.)
Honestly, it feels like Life is Strange had a great thing going for it, but dontnod couldn't figure out how to write the last chunk of it. I want to think that even they don't know how Max's powers work, and couldn't figure out a way that made sense without destroying the story (though, if that is the case, all I can say is that you shouldn't take on writing something you're not fully capable of in that situation).
Outside of this, I'm still looking forward to what dontnod bring to the table next, with and after Vampyr. I feel both Remember Me and Life is Strange are going to have taught dontnod some lessons, and they suffered from growing pains in the studio. I still have faith in whatever their vision is in future projects, and would still like to see them take on X-files.
The first 3 episodes were fun, had some touching moments. 4 was mediocre. 5 was an absolute shitshow.
Of course, most of this is purely subjective, and based on how I feel. I'm an obvious outlier here, I know that. Most people who played LiS seemed to love it. It made Game of the Year lists, and it was so well received Square even did a physical version afterwards.
But I would also like to hear other peoples' opinions on the game - without driveby posts of "I liked it" without elaborating why, insults, or just stupid gifs like "shakabrah" and such.
also sorry for mediocre sentence structure and all that stuff but me no gud righter
Life is Strange is... Interesting. It had a nice concept, and for the first three episodes, played out well.
From there on in? Eh...
The biggest flaw of them all is the most evident:
They don't explain a god damn thing about the hallucinations or the time travel. I've had people argue with me that, yeah, the game doesn't "need" to have it explained, and that it should be "left up to the players". You see, if the game had any substantial gameplay, or a story to be built via visual hints, that'd be a bit more fair game. But, no. One day, all of a sudden, Max develops the power to travel through time, whether it be through rewinding or staring at photos hard enough. A cool device that grants both plot armour and interesting possibilities, the latter of which is only really explored with the effect Max had by saving Chloe's dad's life.
You are built up the entire game towards finding out what exactly caused the growth of her ability. She has hallucinations/visions of animals in a ghostly state, she has constant predictions about a huge storm coming to destroy the town, and constant nosebleeds and lightheadedness caused by the use of said ability. Again, nothing here is ever elaborated on properly, and most are never touched at all in a major way. Considering that this is a game that's designed to be about its story, I found the lack of polish in that to be disheartening and disappointing from dontnod.
Also, there were moments in the game I simply didn't understand why there were even in it. What was the point of having to spend half an hour getting to a pool solely to get Max and Chloe to strip and swim together? Up until that point, the game had done a great job avoiding the shitty fanservice. It felt like pure filler and just... So, so out of place with the tone of the rest of the game. Same with the sleepover scene with the kiss, but that's nowhere near as bad as the pool scene.
On top of all of this: The stealth scene. Why? WHY? It added absolutely nothing. It was just a nightmare Max was having after she passed out from one of her unexplained nosebleeds. It wasn't fun at all. They took the worst section of gameplay, the fucking bottle collecting part, and coupled it with a piss poor forced stealth section that was separated in both tone and atmosphere with the rest of the game. Why not use that time in the fifth episode to shed some light on the power you've been using the entire series? Make me feel sorry for Max without resorting to "nightmares" and other shit like that. Though, on the other hand, my expectations for episode 5 were so low after playing through the shitty stealth section that the trash ending didn't surprise me that much.
I mean, really... Save Chloe, or save Arcadia Bay? You are given a choice to save a flunked out stoner or the lives of assumedly hundreds, if not thousands of people - women, children, all of them. Your only motivation to save Chloe whatsoever would be that fact that so many characters in Arcadia Bay are poorly written enough to just not care about their fate over a member of the main cast. In addition to that, no matter what you choose, it just... Ends. There's no hook for a sequel. There's no feeling of accomplishment, or any sense of actual satisfaction. The storm passes, and things return to normal. Or the storm passes and everyone you loved is dead. That's... It.
(The fact that Jefferson was the villain ends up being a bit too obvious the entire game, too. He's the only "main" character that's avoided by dontnod for fleshing out until the big "reveal". Prescott is too obvious, and anyone else didn't make sense.)
Honestly, it feels like Life is Strange had a great thing going for it, but dontnod couldn't figure out how to write the last chunk of it. I want to think that even they don't know how Max's powers work, and couldn't figure out a way that made sense without destroying the story (though, if that is the case, all I can say is that you shouldn't take on writing something you're not fully capable of in that situation).
Outside of this, I'm still looking forward to what dontnod bring to the table next, with and after Vampyr. I feel both Remember Me and Life is Strange are going to have taught dontnod some lessons, and they suffered from growing pains in the studio. I still have faith in whatever their vision is in future projects, and would still like to see them take on X-files.
The first 3 episodes were fun, had some touching moments. 4 was mediocre. 5 was an absolute shitshow.
Of course, most of this is purely subjective, and based on how I feel. I'm an obvious outlier here, I know that. Most people who played LiS seemed to love it. It made Game of the Year lists, and it was so well received Square even did a physical version afterwards.
But I would also like to hear other peoples' opinions on the game - without driveby posts of "I liked it" without elaborating why, insults, or just stupid gifs like "shakabrah" and such.
also sorry for mediocre sentence structure and all that stuff but me no gud righter
