Life Is Strange 2
PC, PS4, Xbox One
Its biggest problem is that, after a confident start, the writers don’t seem to know exactly where the story is going
Developer Dontnod Entertainment
Publisher Square Enix
Format PC (tested), PS4, Xbox One
Release Out now
We may have bid farewell to Arcadia Bay – and, for that matter, to Max and Chloe. But the opening episode of Dontnod’s sequel puts us on familiar ground. Phoenix’s Lisztomania, one of a miserly selection of contemporary pop songs, gets us off to the best possible start. Then we’re into a conversation between two teenagers about sex, drugs and pop culture that is somehow clumsy and perceptive all at once. The world, as before, appears to be locked in a perpetual lateafternoon glow. All the major players are introduced, before we get our pivotal tragedy, and the sudden awakening of latent supernatural powers. But from then on, until an unexpected late-game cameo, Life Is Strange 2 walks a very different path to its predecessor.
That in itself is no bad thing. For all that players grew attached to Life Is Strange’s central pair and its setting, a clean break is a smart choice – not least with the first game’s canonical ending providing a rare sense of finality in a genre usually keen to keep its options open. And yet the tale of Latino-American brothers Sean and Daniel Diaz never lives up to its promising opening. In exploring the immigrant experience in Trump’s America (the first episode is set just before the 2016 presidential election) it’s a story that is timely, resonant and sometimes powerful, and it certainly isn’t shy about its politics. For that, the French developer deserves credit. But telling a story with courage is not the same as telling one with conviction.
Its biggest problem is that, after a confident start, the writers don’t seem to know exactly where the story is going. That is, at least, in keeping with the experience of the Diaz brothers, who find themselves on the lam after an explosive altercation involving a hostile police officer leaves them as America’s most wanted. Sean is a socially awkward 16-year-old thrust into the role of guardian to brother Daniel, a bratty nine-year-old with telekinetic powers. The road trip that follows is episodic in every sense. In each three-hour instalment, we’re introduced to a new setting and a new cast of side characters before the two are forced to move on as their journey takes them closer to the Mexican border and their ultimate destination: their father’s home town of Puerto Lobos.
This whistle-stop tour of America’s west coast has its moments, not least the colour and variety of its settings: from the boys’ home in downtown Seattle to their grandparents’ place during a cold Oregon winter, through a hippie commune among California’s forests and a tiny secluded community making art from junk in the Arizona desert. As in the first game, there are plenty of opportunities to stop, sit and take in the beautiful scenery. Where Max used these moments to take stock, or occasionally indulge in a bit of photography, Sean, an artist, gets the chance to observe his surroundings and sketch them. You use the right stick to look up, hold a face button to focus and then put pencil to paper by waggling the left stick. Pause a while longer and he’ll add more details, and even a fantastical flourish or two.
These provide a more lasting memento of your trek than most other interactions. With a few exceptions, we don’t spend long enough with the other characters to get attached to them, with most only existing to either be nice or nasty to Sean and Daniel. Such thinly sketched support places more of the drama on the shoulders of the brothers, and it’s not long until it becomes a burden. There’s an authentic blend of affection and antagonism in their relationship, though Daniel’s mood veers between sweet and obnoxious a little too often. As if aware of this, Dontnod keeps finding ways to separate the two, centring Sean’s experience at the cost of what would appear to be its prevailing theme. As it asks us what kind of guardian we’d be, and what lessons we’d like to pass on, it only reminds us that this idea was explored more effectively in The Walking Dead’s final season. Here, it’s not clear until the final episode what your choices are even building towards.
It also struggles to make effective mechanical or narrative use of Daniel’s telekinesis. Where Max’s temporal powers made sense for a character obsessed with preserving moments in time while yearning to change the past, it’s hard to divine what exactly the boy’s powers are supposed to represent. They’re most often used as a convenient way to up the dramatic stakes: Daniel’s abilities either get the brothers into trouble and/or magically get them out of it. And if the scenarios are contrived, the dialogue rarely picks up the slack. Too often, it sounds like the script didn’t get beyond a first draft: during one late-game exchange, a border cop tells Sean, “You’re facing a shitload of years between bars.”
Still, if the words don’t always convince, Dontnod has some success in evoking the difficulties facing oppressed minorities in the US. An early encounter with a hostile convenience store owner sets the tone, but it’s a confrontation in the Nevada desert that hits hardest, as a frightened Sean is accosted by two racist locals and we’re forced to decide whether to remain defiant in the face of horrendous provocation or to give in to their humiliating demands. There’s little nuance in its depictions of prejudice – the bigotry the brothers face always comes from cartoonishly bad people – but in the moment it’s hard not to feel shaken and sobered.
Alas, moments like these are too few and far between. This is an ambitious and well-meaning game that does wonders for representation in a medium that undoubtedly needs more stories about people of colour; that some will play this and feel seen makes this a worthwhile endeavour alone. It doesn’t, however, excuse its failings. Its heart is in the right place, but its feet are not – and when you’re walking a new path, that’s always going to be a problem.