Life is Strange

I just love how the fire metaphorizes everything, and the song choice is perfect.

Switch port for the Remaster has been delayed till later this year. Other versions still set for Feb 1st.

Alright, I've caught up with pretty much all of the series in the past couple weeks (with the exception of Wavelengths, which I'll get to soon enough).

Just finished True Colors (the only one I'll talk about here), which was pretty good, although I'll confess that I was left somewhat unsatisfied by the ending, which was admittedly my own fault I screwed up my relationship with pretty much every character except for Ducky (and Steph, who sides with you no matter what, but I romanced her, so there's that). I second-guessed myself with Eleanor and told Riley about her condition, and while I don't think that was the wrong choice, it certainly didn't help my situation. I definitely screwed up with Charlotte and Pike - I took away Charlotte's anger (pretty much on a coin flip) and then regretted it almost instantly, which scared me out of taking away Pike's fear, even though I had wanted to take a hard line against Typhon. So then Ryan sided against me, and while I wanted to forgive him, I think I missed the opportunity for that - I'm guessing you have to go downstairs? Damn it, I thought that would end the game, so I went to roof first. They really should give you notice on that sort of thing.

So yeah, all and all, good game, but damn if I didn't screw up. A bit short, too - hopefully if they make another it'll be longer.

Edit: Okay, looking into it further, I think you only get the opportunity to forgive Ryan if you romanced him? Damn it, I fucked up majorly. If I just hadn't taken Charlotte's anger...

Edited by KarkatTheDalek on Jan 24th 2022 at 1:43:41 PM

So, I've just finished True Colors. It didn't have as much an impact on me as the first one, but I guess I'm getting used to this type of game, so nothing ever will. Overall I think it was a nice game. LiS2 still beats it in terms of meaningful choices, but otherwise I think I like True Colors better. Maybe I'll even replay it some time (I've been through at least 3 playthroughs with LiS1, 2 with Before the Storm, but I've never got myself to replay LiS2 yet).

However, I felt the ending a bit... underwhelming. Alex gets shot and falls down a mine shaft, then... she walks out with minor injuries, makes a big speech, Big Bad is broken, happy end. Then you get a final choice that, at this point, feels completely pointless and inconsequential. At least you can see how each of the characters feel towards you based on previous choices, but the only one which has any significant bearing on the ending is who you romanced.

They tried to make the superpower more meaningful gameplay-wise than in 2, which they did, but it was by far not as interesting as in 1. I think that this whole idea is just getting old. It worked once, they try to tweak it over and over, but it will never be as good as the first one. Making any more games would just become a case of Sequelitis (maybe it already is). Which brings me to...

...another game: Twin Mirror, made by Dontnod, released not long after True Colors. It has a similar gameplay style than the LiS games, and an eerily similar setting to True Colors. My is that at the beginning Dontnod was going to make True Colors, but eventually Deck Nine was chosen, so Dontnod went along to make a spinoff of the same idea. The game is rather short and tge story doesn't make as much of an oomph, at least they managed, by being free of the constraints of Life is Strange conventions, make a gameplay that's, if not completely original, but at least more interesting and fun than any of the LiS games after the first one.

As for my choices, I managed to have everyone except Eleanor at my side at the end. I knew the majority would romance Steph, but I decided to choose Ryan anyway. At the end I decided to stay, and compared to previous games, I didn't even replay the last scene just to see what happens if I make the other choice, because I felt that it really doesn't matter.

N/A

Edited by FOFD on Dec 28th 2023 at 8:26:43 AM

I decided to replay LIS 1 for the first time in like eight years.

(Speaking of, has it really been eight years?)

I'm pretty sure I rejected Warren harder than I did the first time. I didn't even hug him in the last episode. I don't even hate Warren, but not even bugging him put me in with like 4% of other players.

It felt harder to save Kate this time. I didn't remember what dialogue options were required, but I know I did it without help before. This time I looked up a guide just to be safe. Can't risk Kate.

Getting David kicked out of the house felt worse now that I know how the story ends. Still did it.

The biggest difference is that this time I sacrificed the Bay. The first time I sacrificed Chloe. Sorry everyone else. The only one I really don't want to risk is Kate, but this time I saved Chloe - I think the fact that I played it over the course of a week and not almost a year helped me choose her.

Nazi symbols found in the next Life is Strange game are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to toxic culture at developer Deck Nine, including abusive leadership, encouraged crunch, especially by Square Enix London, and allowed bullying by people asking for more representation.

Another one bites the dust. It really seems like the video game industry is going down the drain these days - though, of course, that people are more willing to speak up about toxicity at work now is good.

While I have conflicting feelings over flagging Nazi dogwhistles in a game like Life Is Strange where real-life issues and problems often are meditated on or referenced in the plot ^note I don't feel the examples mentioned further down in the article truly indicate malintent, and nothing more was said on them beyond "they appeared and somebody asked management to remove them and management was slow doing so." and contractual inability to sell your game on its bisexual themes ^note  if your best effort to sell your idea to me is "look at how heterosexual/bisexual this is, totally a trailblazer" you've lost me, I don't really watch heterosexual love stories either, and shipping in franchises that aren't really about romantic relationships is cancerous to me , it is a long article describing some pretty toxic work practices and hurt feelings as a result.

Low pay and promotions and crunch I'm sort of apathetic to as a member of the working class. I get it, but... another day another societal problem with abusive industry standards we willingly sign ourselves up for until it doesn't work out for our work/life balance. Everybody's fine with CEOS buying Ferraris until they realize the CEO isn't buying them a Ferrari.

It's the Zak Garris part of this that sounds damning, but everything about the Garris portion of the article sounds like a lot of "he said, she said, but she definitely said." It doesn't paint in him a particularly good light, but I get the impression from this article that its more about his creative inflexibility and poor managerial skills than any genuine wrongdoing. Mind these are a bunch of anonymous sources throwing their testimony into a damning article against a company you and I have never worked a day at. I'd say a lot of shit about my employer on IGN too if anybody cared.

Other things I had to reflexively feel some way about:

• I'm curious what transgender character Garris felt needed removal from True Colors, and if there were any other characters he felt that way about. I've been listening to True Colors Steph's Story, reading the comics, playing the games. It's sort of... sort of difficult to imagine a creative in this series deciding a transgender character needed to be removed. It's not impossible mind and I don't believe in contractual immunity for any demographic, but it's... its definitely odd.
• They didn't want a scene of Alex getting drugged because it would be triggering as a metaphor for date rape and the game "didn't have time to analyze Alex dealing with being deceived by a man she trusted." This is one of those approaches/reactions I don't necessarily agree with but, then, I'm not a female. What they did go with though seemed like a rehash of the Jefferson twist to me, and I'll note in their interest of being sensitive to groups of people, I feel kind of bad for white male audience members who can see from a mile away they're probably going to be the villains of these stories at worst (Jefferson), or depicted as lesser (Warren, Ryan) or unstable (Elliot). I guess turnabout is fair play.
• There was "lack of transparency during the investigation." In every company I've worked for investigations by default are not supposed to be transparent so that the people involved or accused don't retaliate against their accusers.

Too bad for Deck Nine though if this sticks. I liked having a "backup studio" for Life is Strange and similar titles.

If this doesn't blow over I'm glad at least Life Is Strange is still in Dontnod's hands... ah shit, they had crunch/sexism accusations too, didn't they.

Edited by FOFD on Apr 5th 2024 at 2:56:39 PM

Who's we?

Cause I definitely didn't sign up for any of that shit.

Who is this "everybody" you're talking about? Is it just so you have a strawman? Cause that's what it sounds like.

Nobody cares if a CEO buys a fancy car, in a vacuum. People care that an industry abuses and exploits its labor while rewarding CEOS to levels wildly beyond the value of what they produce.

Edited by ArthurEld on Apr 5th 2024 at 2:53:53 AM

I'm gonna say a developer of LIFE IS STRANGE putting Nazi dogwhistles in the game is so damn weird, I'm having difficulty processing it.

Yes, this is very sureal. I mean this is a series that has had LGBTQ+ protagonists (or at least, protagonists who you can choose to be LGBT+ and the game in fact seems to expect you to choose so) from the start, a second game about immigrants and condemning racism, a third game continuing the trends, and now for this to be revealed? These are one of the last series I'd expect this to happen.

Like I said, I want to know where the dogwhistles were. It could be that they were in the game to illustrate prejudice in the setting. I didn't see any information on what form this took beyond "the number/symbol was in there" and the people the article mentioned reporting it didn't seem sure it was intentional either.

I would hope that's what it was for, or was just a bizarre accident. It's too disheartening otherwise.

-shrug- The Ferrari is metaphorical and I'm not going to argue our different life experiences over a video game company.

This isn't as surprising as it sounds. A big company can have a lot of people, including arseholes. And it can be a real problem if management side with the latter.

Paizo had a similar issue. Lots of creatives who wanted to make Pathfinder as diverse as possible; execs who completely missed the memo, and just wanted to be Edgy D&D™ (and were awful to diverse members of their team).

The article makes it sound like they were somehow hidden in the code as Schmuck Bait?

My understanding from the article is that they weren't sure about the first one, but then they kept piling up. This would suggest that there was enough of a pattern that they'd at least have liked an investigation, which is perfectly reasonable.

Naturally we can't see the evidence ourselves, but as they^*Ian Fleming say; once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action.

The issue seems to be less that there was going to be a date rape analogous scene, and more that it was there for the sake of being there. After all, LIS itself had this, but it served the plot; here it did no such thing, as demonstrated by the fact that it was easy to switch out for the villain simply inviting the protagonist to the place where he betrays her without any change in the plot.

This is a strange take. Do you also have the same concerns about Hans Gruber? Darth Vader? Walter White? 90% of CSI villains?

Straight cis white men as villains very rarely raise an issue because there has never been an issue of them being pigeonholed as villains (note that the above list are opposed by mostly white heroes, aside from Walter, a Villain Protagonist). Even with the assumption of good faith, it's rather a silly argument.

Also, Ryan being depicted as lesser? He's a full blown Love Interest in the story, even if he loses out by virtue of Steph having an existing fanbase.

Edited by Bisected8 on Apr 5th 2024 at 12:40:16 PM

Yeah, I just still think it's surprising that an LIS game of all things was the first main stream example of this coming to my attention.

Also, there's some creepy stuff going on with Warren, but he's mostly portrayed positively, so it's strange to use him as an example of how the white male characters are all awful people or even lesser. Yes he's given less focus as a love interest than Chloe, but to be fair the story is mostly about her, frankly it's surprising that he's an option at all, though I don't think it's in any way an issue that he is.

Edited by king15 on Apr 5th 2024 at 11:44:26 AM

I think that regardless of political issues, the Life is Strange franchise is dead because of how much it suffers from Sequelitis. I mean, I've played the first game and the prequel multiple times, and I still love the story and the characters and everything. The biggest issue is how Serious Business some fans think which is THE RIGHT ending. As for the second game, I remember the plot, I loved the character interactions, but I could never get myself to replay it. Probably it's because of the terrible pacing it has, which is fine for the first time when everything is new and interesting, but is not too replay-friendly. Still, I think that story quality had already degraded from the first game. Then there is True Colors, which is the one I've played most recently, yet I don't even remember the plot, that's how generic and uninteresting it is. All I remember is how I could see the the twist from a mile away. Even though I loved the atmosphere, I just don't care enough about the story itself, or even the characters.

I don't expect a sequel to be any better. When they make a sequel because the execs expect it instead of because they have so good of a story made, that never ends well. There being political dissent within the company is just topping on the cake. But it isn't good for creative process, that's for sure. Politics never is.

I admit, I would love more Warren/Max scenes or the idea Warren and Kate hooked up if she survived.

But to quote Pam from True Blood regarding vampires when she asked what kind of loyalty I felt to other white men, I go, "*scoff* None." It's not a community I care to be part of because the people who use it as an identity that needs to be protected or taken pride in are all assholes. I am American and that can be anybody.

Besides, it's not like the games are ever lacking in likable white dudes (see Warren). It's just the power dynamics means that the Big Bad is probably one and even then, its mostly cultural blinders that make this noticeable.

Max's principle is a real POS for example.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Apr 6th 2024 at 5:49:01 AM

It's a game that I unironically think needs a third Max game. The comics show you can do it.

And the RIGHT ending is because the game deliberately made a Sadistic Choice.

They wanted to move on but there were still just too many leftover elements.

There are works where you can see who is a good or bad guy just by looking at their demographics, but LIS, at least the first game and the prequel, are not among them. Besides the aforementioned Warren, the drug dealer is also a good guy (the other drug dealer, on the other hand, is not). Or the gardener who might be weird but also a nice guy. There is also the principal who is a black guy and quite a jerk.

Even the second game, despite some of those cartoonishly portrayed racist white men, has a diverse set of both pro- and antagonists. For example, there is that black cannabis farmer, who might not be outright evil, but still an antagonist. Same for that policewoman. Or the preacher chick who is clearly evil. In contrast, there are the boys' grandparents, from their mother's side, so they are white, and also nice guys and also religious so you don't even have the one religious person a bad one.

I don't think that Max's story can be continued. With the ending made as is, you'd have to pick one and canonicalize it, so there is a good reason the creators don't do it. Each sequel asks you what choice you made and builds the world from that. I haven't read the comic, but what I know about it, it seems more like an offshoot fanfic than an official sequel.

I'd say a sequel would be Max would have use her powers again and then Chloe and the town is back.

Or she's in an alternate reality. You can then have Max say which she chose.

You know...cheat.

But I also wanted another Before The Storm too.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Apr 6th 2024 at 6:48:51 AM

I mean, they wouldn't have to canonise an ending. They could pick an ending to follow (probably the bae one) and just say that this is the story that happens if you pick that ending, the other ending is still valid (other events would have taken place, it's just that those aren't what the new game is exploring). Like what they did with the Dragon Age (another series of video games with player choice) Comics: they followed certain choices ( such as Alistair being made king) but it was presented as just what happened if you made those choices: if you made different choices something else would have happened (they just haven't made comics about that).

So while I don't think the franchise absolutely needs a new Max game (though one would be welcome), it could make one without canonising an ending.

Well speak of the Max and she will appear

https://www.gamingbible.com/news/life-is-strange-3-aperture-appears-online-178089-20240122

It probably won't happen but it would be awesome.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Apr 6th 2024 at 7:02:09 AM