LurkerPrime
Member
I wonder what the callback to S1 will be... I mean, there has to be one, right? A photo would be fitting, but a newspaper/news headline would be an easy one too.
-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
Life Is Strange |OT| Rewinder Me
- Thread starter kubus
- Start date
I wonder what the callback to S1 will be... I mean, there has to be one, right? A photo would be fitting, but a newspaper/news headline would be an easy one too.
I hope Season 2 still involves the American Pacific Northwest. So Oregon or Seattle. I love that setting in video games (see Gone Home, Alan Wake).
Benzychenz
Member
Bought the Pricefield avatar on PSN <3
I have a soft spot for Telltale games, and I LOVED Tales from the Borderlands, but the world building and environmental detail on display is a pretty big wake-up call IMO. Not to mention the engine running flawlessly.
Yeah, that's what I'm getting from the game. I like me some telltale, even if I couldn't finish game of thrones. But this game had a world that feels actual. I'm blown away and haven't even hit episode 2.
Demoskinos
Member
I'm gonna be Hella pissed if the LiS Avatars aren't on the NA store today. They said they were putting them up last week and I kept checking back only to be sad every time I checked. 
petethepanda
Member
The excellent Firewatch dynamic theme reminded me: Who do we pester about a Life is Strange theme? Just the background shot from the main menu. It'd be awesome.
Mossybrew
Gold Member
Seriously. Different cliques/groups of friends at one school use different slang, let alone schools in different parts of the country.
I didn't realize they were bringing those out, I might have to pick those avatars up.I'm gonna be Hella pissed if the LiS Avatars aren't on the NA store today. They said they were putting them up last week and I kept checking back only to be sad every time I checked.
RedAssedApe
Banned
I'm gonna be Hella pissed if the LiS Avatars aren't on the NA store today. They said they were putting them up last week and I kept checking back only to be sad every time I checked.
hotdog man!
Demoskinos
Member
Yeah. Exactly. Like sure there is some scenes where the dialog could have been better but acting like its atrocious or something is just crazy to me.
EatinOlives
Member
Finished it today holy shit what an amazing experience. On mobile so I can't elaborate but I actually really liked the final episode. Why did so many hate it? I thought it was fantastic and the ending that I chose was thematically really great.
shinobi602
Member
Just finished Episode 5. Wow...WOW what an ending...what a game...what a fucking experience. Honestly I can't give it enough praise. It's one of the most powerful games I've ever played.
Bravo Dontnod. Bravo.
Bravo Dontnod. Bravo.
Benzychenz
Member
I liked it but I thought it was the weakest episode.
The nightmare sequence went on way too long and ate up any time to spend on other things.
Combichristoffersen
Combovers don't work when there is no hair
Bought the retail PS4 version, and I've been playing this the last few days. Finished episode 4 last night, and I absolutely love and adore the game, it's one of the best experiences I've had in quite some time. Looking forward to the sorta kinda semi-hinted towards season 2 of Life is Strange.
Demoskinos
Member
Welcome to the club! Glad you liked it. Fantastic game that I think still hasn't gotten enough credit.
Manny Calavera
Member
Very well said and I agree with you completely. I finished the game long time ago and I still think about it frequently. The characters really stay with me.
wait what? when? I remember there being some false confirmation that was adjusted some time after.
Extra Sauce
Member
Considering how one game can sink a studio nowadays, I'd say there is no way DONTNOD is not making more Life is Strange. It's financial security for them. I'm sure they'll do other things as well (they have that vampire game I think?) but Life is Strange is their "pension plan" now.
Demoskinos
Member
Yeah, for something that was a passion project that they could barely get funding for it really turned out to be a good move for them. If I wouldn't be so lazy I would love to go back and check out Remember Me.
LurkerPrime
Member
Vampyr is shaping to be quite interesting. And really, DONTNOD's mastery of atmosphere and ambient world-building is perfect for an immersive vampire game.
It's great that DONTNOD has some stability (and from a great game!). They are a talented studio.
shinobi602
Member
Did they say whether Vampyr would be episodic or not? I'm not fond of episodic games, hence I waited for the full retail disc for LiS last month. It'll be hard to wait another year for Vampyr (considering it should hopefully be good).
LurkerPrime
Member
General consensus seems to be no episodes, but I can't find an actual source that confirms it either way.
What I didn't realise with my last link is that Vampyr will have a choice & consequences system, in that NPCs will be missed. I need to stop looking into this stuff--it will only make the wait more difficult...
Curious what lessons learned from LiS that they'll incorporate into Vampyr. (The transition from Remember Me to Life is Strange was really iterative.) Maybe proper lipsyncing?
I have a small problem. I am in Episode 2. After the train thingy and I don't connect with the game.
Does it get better soon? Should I valiantly play the game through as I've bought the whole thing already as a bundle? Or should I just give up? I usually play in small doses because I get bored with the game mechanics.
I feel like I am interested in the overall story but I do not like the characters. I cannot relate to the teens at all.
I got tons of backlog but my friend swears this game is great. And he did his PhD on game narrative so I am inclined to believe he knows his shit.
Help me.
Does it get better soon? Should I valiantly play the game through as I've bought the whole thing already as a bundle? Or should I just give up? I usually play in small doses because I get bored with the game mechanics.
I feel like I am interested in the overall story but I do not like the characters. I cannot relate to the teens at all.
I got tons of backlog but my friend swears this game is great. And he did his PhD on game narrative so I am inclined to believe he knows his shit.
Help me.
No way man, that was great.
Demoskinos
Member
If you don't connect with it you don't connect with it. If you don't like the characters then you might as well bail out because this story is very character driven.
LurkerPrime
Member
If you're struggling now, with both characters and mechanics, it's unlikely to hook you even at its best (in Ep 3 and 4) so you might as well skip it.
Your friend is right--it's a great game. But its success is predicated on connecting to the characters and world it presents; without that connection, I doubt that you'll find much of value overall. It's like this for a lot of story-focused games.
shinobi602
Member
If it's not grabbing you, it's not grabbing. No amount of influence or suggestion from your PhD friend will change your mind if that's what you're truly feeling. Not trying to sound dismissive at all but basically, the heart wants what the heart wants. If you're not relating or getting attached to the characters by now, you probably won't in the long run.
There's nothing wrong with it, regardless of how good people tell you it is. I just completed it last night and it was, in my mind, one of the most memorable games I've ever played, but there's absolutely nothing wrong with you not enjoying the characters.
Hmmm, thanks for the comments. Like a lot.
I will however give it my last try as I want to see what happens in the story. It has this Twin Peak-ish nature that interests me and maybe I'm in that 'no game interests me' stage again. That usually goes away when stress goes away.
I will however give it my last try as I want to see what happens in the story. It has this Twin Peak-ish nature that interests me and maybe I'm in that 'no game interests me' stage again. That usually goes away when stress goes away.
RedAssedApe
Banned
pricefield lol
Megatron
Member
Oh wow. That IS spoilery! I think I want it though!
EVA UNIT 01
Member
I just finished Episode 3 while a friend was watching via shareplay.
Friend: What the fuck did you do!?
Me: I can fix this!
Wanted to dive strait into 4+5 but it was 3 am.
So ill be finishing today.
Amazing so far.
Friend: What the fuck did you do!?
Me: I can fix this!
Wanted to dive strait into 4+5 but it was 3 am.
So ill be finishing today.
Amazing so far.
RedAssedApe
Banned
I kind of want to buy that hotdog man avatar...its so silly
Imagining their reaction...
Imagining their reaction...
EatinOlives
Member
I think it's a fair critique, but enough of the elements were poignant enough that it made it worth it. Plus the slight horror elements worked on me since I was playing that part pretty late at night.
Man, that final decision in the game, though. I was staring at the screen for like 10 minutes trying to figure out which one I should take. Eventually I decided to
sacrifice Chloe (though I would've preferred the wording "Save Chloe" and "Save Arcadia Bay"), mostly for three reasons: 1) although there were a lot of assholes in the town, there were also way too many innocent bystanders, 2) Chloe herself had accepted her fate and denying that would've not completed her character arc in my opinion, and 3) Chloe was right in that it felt she was "destined" to die, when practically every reality had her die in some form or another, and the only reality in which she lived was so obviously fucked from a physical and moral standpoint that it was obvious she just wasn't meant to live.
I actually really liked that ending, and I was surprised so many people felt it was weak. I think it was very meaningful. I know some people complain that it "undoes" everything you do, but I think it makes sense as to why that's the most "correct" way of doing things. It kind of closes the circle across all 5 episodes for me, because I realized that the whole game was essentially Max trying to defy reality and refusing to accept Chloe's death. Then reality fights back. At every turn Chloe is fucked. If she doesn't die from Nathan, she'll die by train, or die by tornado, or die by Jefferson. Max then just goes all out and tries to change everything from the very "beginning" when her dad dies, and yep she dies in that reality too.
It's at Episode 5 where the hopelessness unravels. Episode 3's "photo time jump" was such a big leap, and in Ep 5 she had to make tons of them. She needed to constantly jump across realities just to "advance" an inch. Even the "best" timeline where she wins the contest, Jefferson gets arrested, and she's basking in the glory of everyone admiring her work, Max firmly believes the timeline is not fixed because the tornado still flattens the town and kills Chloe. Even in the best outcome the world is fucked. By the time you finally make it with Chloe out of harms way at the light house I realized this was just wrong. It wasn't satisfying. Yes, I saved Chloe, but the cost was enormous and the time leap abuse was just too much.
It's about that old adage about how the only winning move is not to play. It's not about the story of some intrepid hero who saves the world by changing little things about time, it's about the finality of letting go. She has all this power, and over the course of a week she's tested physically, mentally, and morally, and she goes through hell and high water to do what she genuinely believes right. But at the end of the day, fate and time and the "proper" order of the world is still there. After Max decides to let Nathan kill Chloe in the bathroom and after seeing how everything else unraveled, I thought "yeah, this actually was the best outcome all things considered". After the murder, Nathan rats out Jefferson, which means his plan and the "Dark Room" get discovered, the incident with Kate becomes obvious once they go over the photo binders so she gets the help she needs instead of getting bullied, etc. Things don't work out for a universally happy ending, but with the way all the plot threads concluded in that reality, I really felt like it was the most natural. It's not about Max just going back in time to that bathroom that she's just "undoing" what she did throughout the game, it's her having finally realized after everything that has happened that the original, most natural "timeline" was simply the objectively "correct" one. It just took her all that time to finally come to terms with that.
It's at Episode 5 where the hopelessness unravels. Episode 3's "photo time jump" was such a big leap, and in Ep 5 she had to make tons of them. She needed to constantly jump across realities just to "advance" an inch. Even the "best" timeline where she wins the contest, Jefferson gets arrested, and she's basking in the glory of everyone admiring her work, Max firmly believes the timeline is not fixed because the tornado still flattens the town and kills Chloe. Even in the best outcome the world is fucked. By the time you finally make it with Chloe out of harms way at the light house I realized this was just wrong. It wasn't satisfying. Yes, I saved Chloe, but the cost was enormous and the time leap abuse was just too much.
It's about that old adage about how the only winning move is not to play. It's not about the story of some intrepid hero who saves the world by changing little things about time, it's about the finality of letting go. She has all this power, and over the course of a week she's tested physically, mentally, and morally, and she goes through hell and high water to do what she genuinely believes right. But at the end of the day, fate and time and the "proper" order of the world is still there. After Max decides to let Nathan kill Chloe in the bathroom and after seeing how everything else unraveled, I thought "yeah, this actually was the best outcome all things considered". After the murder, Nathan rats out Jefferson, which means his plan and the "Dark Room" get discovered, the incident with Kate becomes obvious once they go over the photo binders so she gets the help she needs instead of getting bullied, etc. Things don't work out for a universally happy ending, but with the way all the plot threads concluded in that reality, I really felt like it was the most natural. It's not about Max just going back in time to that bathroom that she's just "undoing" what she did throughout the game, it's her having finally realized after everything that has happened that the original, most natural "timeline" was simply the objectively "correct" one. It just took her all that time to finally come to terms with that.
Anyway, I was just typing what came to mind so forgive me if some of that sounds like random rambling, but I really felt the ending I chose was one of the best conclusions to any game I've played. It was just the right amount of bittersweet. If they can keep up this kind of quality for Season 2 I'm definitely on board!
LurkerPrime
Member
Was just about to post this.
CitizenCope
Member
My thoughts exactly. Just finished it. I was expecting huge disappointment out of episode 5 just by passing by some reactions over the last few months.
So good! Glad I finally gave it a try.
RedAssedApe
Banned
After finishing the commentary...mind blown.
Mr. Jefferson is Billy Riggins from Friday Night Lights
Mr. Jefferson is Billy Riggins from Friday Night Lights
Just finished episode 2. Ending part was telegraphed way in advance, even then, could still sense the impact on the characters in the game so it was still great. Music is really top notch in this game as well.
Really enjoying my time with it so far, does it get even better?
Really enjoying my time with it so far, does it get even better?
Ya, I had a pretty similar interpretation and wrote about it too.
I honestly thought it was one of the best video game endings I've ever played, and I hope it will be remembered well even though the reception is mixed right now.
I chose the opposite ending.
I've meddled so much in time that I felt morally obligated to continue on with the abuse of power that I chose to wield. I destroyed the town from the beginning trying to fix every problem, and now I can ultimately fix the final destruction by wielding that same power. No, this time I'm going to accept the destruction and let events unfold with out my intervention. Enough meddling.
Phenomenal game.