Life is Strange 2 - Episode 2

Disclaimer:  This blog contains major spoilers for the “Life is Strange” series of video games.

"Previously on Life is Strange..."  I loved the way it did the recap this time.  In earlier games, it just showed you scenes from previous episodes, but this one presented it as if Sean is repeating an old legend, with sketches of wolves standing in for the main characters.

It opens with a scene reminiscent of Luke’s training on Dagobah.  Reach out with your mind young Padawan!  Let the Strange flow through you.  At one point Sean compliments Daniel by saying, "You'll be moving cars soon."  I knew right away this was foreshadowing, and it pays off at the end of the episode.  It's nothing big, but it's little touches like this that I love about the writing.  Some people will find it cheesy, but I like it.

And let’s get this out of the way… Mushroooooooom!  Nooooooooo! I had a feeling the puppy wasn’t going to stay with them for the whole season, but I’d hoped they’d find a new home for it somewhere.  And as far as I can tell, Mushroom’s demise can’t be prevented – it isn’t related to any of your choices.  Suddenly I miss being able to rewind time.  

Nice job, writers, you’ve just guaranteed that I’ll never convince my wife to play this game.  You know, if the first game's final choice had come down between "Sacrifice a Puppy" and "Sacrifice Arcadia Bay", I wouldn't have even had to think about it, the town would have been toast.

Granted, LiS1 also had the ability to kill a dog (on two separate occasions), but it was always a choice, not a foregone conclusion like in LiS2.  I’ll say it again, I don’t like tragedies.  And yet, I love the LiS series despite how depressing they can be at times.  I just feel that tragedy has to have a purpose.  If you’re just killing off characters to be “edgy” or to attract viewers, then you’re not really an artist.  You’re probably not even an adult.  Most teenagers go through a “death is cool” phase, but you’re supposed to grow out of it before you become a professional writer.  

But sometimes tragedy makes a story stronger.  This has been the case with the LiS games so far, and Mushroom’s death is no exception.  And "eaten by a cougar" is a pretty badass way to go, I suppose.  Daniel’s reaction to it really shows off his Anakin side, and the kid’s potential is terrifying.  Daniel, have a Chock-O-Crisp bar.  You’re not you when you’re angry.

We finally get to see how it ties in with Captain Spirit.  So, Sean and Daniel take a detour from their planned trek to Mexico, and instead stay with their grandparents for a while.  Captain Spirit's main character, Chris Eriksen, is their next door neighbor.  We get to see Captain Spirit’s climax again from a different perspective.  The whole side plot about Chris and his abusive father looks like it's going somewhere, but I don't know if this game will actually come back to it.  Sean and Daniel leave town at the end of the episode, and I don't see why they would return to this town.

At the Christmas tree lot, Sean runs into another bigot.  This one doesn't seem to be specifically racist - he seems to include Sean when he says things like "We have to take care of our own kind, first" - but he looks down on what he considers the lower class.  The game is actually pretty good at representing a variety of people with varying opinions.  I still think that bigots are going to decry this game as having a SJW message, but I really don't think they go overboard with it. 

Yeah, the kids run into their share of racists and other jerks.  But just looking around where I live, the story doesn’t seem far-fetched at all.  I’d like to say I can’t imagine people acting like this in real life, except I know they do.  I’ll personally never know just how accurate the game’s portrayal of bigotry is, because of my own privilege.  I love that the game lets me step into someone else’s shoes and experience life from their perspective, even if that perspective isn’t always pleasant.  I wish I could get certain other people to play this game, but the people who need this sort of revelation would never be interested.  

And we get more clues about Sean and Daniel’s mom.  This is a Chekov’s Gun that definitely will be resolved by the end of the season.  The game is still vague on why she left or what exactly is wrong with her, but she does know her kids are on the run.  And the kids have her P.O. box address.  

And here come the police, time to move on!  It reminds me of the Incredible Hulk 1978 TV series – a fugitive with uncontrollable powers (which manifest when he’s angry) hitchhikes from small town to small town, often finding himself in the position to help others.  Then Rod Serling’s head pops up, chewing his upper lip as he says, “Oh, and one other thing… did I mention this fugitive is a 9 year old boy?”  But I’m also reminded of Marvel’s Runaways, with a dash of Stand By Me.

I can’t help but worry that the final choice of Episode 5 will be “Sacrifice Daniel” or “Sacrifice Everyone Around Him”.  I can just see something really bad happening (maybe they find their mom, but she gets killed too), and Daniel completely losing control of his emotions as he destroys everything around him.  Then Sean will have to choose between letting Daniel get all his rage out (regardless of who else dies in the process), or killing Daniel himself.  Just a big ol’ mashup of the climaxes of Carrie, Firestarter, and X-Men 3.  It would be in keeping with LiS’s tradtion of both endings being somewhat tragic, but I hope I’m wrong just because...well, damn that's dark.

It still feels like not enough is happening in this game.  I’m trying to decide if that’s really true, or if it’s just because I’m not connecting with the characters as much as in the previous games.  In BtS, I didn’t mind just riding the rails with Rachel, or working on my truck, or just walking around campus, because I liked being Chloe.  And I do like Sean and Daniel, just not so much that I want to watch them walking through the forest all day.  It does bring up some memories of my childhood, when my brother and I would explore the woods around our house.  So I can relate, but it still doesn’t make me love it.

*sigh* You know what?  Scratch all of that last paragraph.  I have got to start judging this game on what it is, not what it isn’t.  I don’t tolerate it from other reviewers, so I’m refuse to be guilty of it myself.  Not every game can be tailor made to my tastes, and if it were bad enough that I wasn’t enjoying it, I’ll play something else.  And I am enjoying LiS2.

Control-wise, I’m a little worried about “Feature Creep”.  One of my favorite things about LiS1 was the simplicity of the controls.  You approach any interactive object, and a list of button presses appears on the screen.  The only other thing you needed to know in LiS1 was how to use the shoulder buttons to control time.  BtS was even simpler since it didn’t have time travel.  Captain Spirit made it a little more complicated again – you could hold down one of the shoulder buttons while interacting with certain objects to use your pretend super powers.  LiS2 also adds a couple of new functions.  Specifically, you have a button that makes it easier to find your brother, and another button to call his name when you can’t find him.  (And suddenly I’m reminded of the “Jason” button from Heavy Rain.)

So far, not too complicated.  But combined with the sketching talent (which is way more complicated to use than the talents in previous games), and the more robust inventory and money system, I do worry that future games in the series will gradually lose the simplicity that I love so much.  I mean, I love PS4’s Spider-Man game, but it takes a lot of fingers.  Not only does every button do something, but sometimes you have to hold down combinations of buttons to do other things, and after a while I just long for the days of Pac-Man.

However, it appears I was wrong about sketching being one of the achievement methods.  Only one of the first episode’s trophies was connected to sketching, the rest were about finding collectibles.  I don’t mind the sketching so much now that it’s mostly optional.  I’m not usually a big achievement hunter, but if I love the game and the trophies aren’t too difficult, I’ll try to collect them all.   I got the plats for LiS1 and BtS, so I’ll probably do it here, too.  I absolutely adore how this series lets you jump back to specific scenes after you finish an episode, so you can pick up your missing trophies.

I think I was also wrong about Daniel's powers being wind based, it looks like it's just a more general telekinesis.  In the first episode it always looked like he was lifting things using wind, but now he just looks like your standard Jedi.

And for those of you sick of hearing me talk about Life is Strange (hi, Chris!), this will be my last entry for a little while, since episode 3 doesn’t have a release date yet.

My Choices: