Note on spoilers: The previous
article on LIS tried to avoid spoilers. This article will still try
to avoid them. A note will be provided in advance of crucial
information. On another note, this series will probably extend to
either four of five articles, and next week's will examine the plot
of the first three episodes instead of the game-play.
Looking back at the first article (even
though it was less than a week ago) there is a strange mixture of
regret, astonishment, and confusion.
Let's begin with the regret.
The preceding article was written after
completing the first episode of Life Is Strange, Chrysalis,
and on reexamination, it appears the article downplayed the game's
strength. Though I criticized the quality of the episode's dialogue,
and the character models for their unresponsiveness, I enjoyed it.
Though there has never been any numerical rating yet on this blog, it
may aid readers to know I consider the game an eight out of ten after
the first three episodes. As subjective as this be, hopefully it
will illustrate my current stance on Life is Strange. It's strengths
of a strong protagonist, an interesting (if undeveloped out) cast,
and a myriad of difficult decisions to make, outweigh the negative
aspects so far.
And the astonishment, after having
completed episodes two and three, of seeing the expanding development
of what Life is Strange dared to do. It approached delicate
topics without introducing them only for shock, it elaborated on
Max's power allowing her to expand her options, and raised the stakes
in the conclusion of Episode Three: Chaos Theory.
Yet the threat of disappointment hangs
over the series because it has increased expectations and taken
risks, but still fails in some basic fundamentals. Not just the
dialogue, but some of the character construction. The weakness in
some areas of the game, cause me to question whether the risks the
writers have made can be concluded satisfactorily.
The conversation remains at the same
level as the first episode, including phrases worth banging one's
head against their desk, but becoming reasonably intelligent at
times. Not brilliant, but serviceable. As a side note, Life is
Strange received an M rating from the ESRB for blood, sexual
themes, strong language, use of drugs, and violence. I don't mention
this to judge or discourage anyone from playing it. I mention it
because it doesn't seem to warrant the rating, except for the strong
language. Maybe some people don't believe language ever deserves an
M rating, but the among of it awkwardly forced into the characters
mouths, just to make the setting seem darker and more serious is
hilarious. The writer seems to have decided more swearing makes a
story more mature, and in this it disappoints, just as the attempts
at including high school slang do.
While some games of the new
point-and-click genre, such as Gone Home (which I strongly
disliked), are criticized for weak game-play (and sometimes all
walking simulators), Life is Strange keeps altering the puzzles
enough to keep the player engaged. Ultimately all the puzzles are
fetch quests, which involve locating the right items and then
activating them on the right spots. They aren't difficult, but the
developer tries to introduce ingenuity to each puzzle.
The worst puzzles in episodes Out of
Time (II) and Chaos Theory (III) are either too simple and
therefore boring, or they don't make sense. In one scene, Chloe is
shooting at objects and she always misses. To save bullets Max
rewinds a few seconds and tells her to aim up, down, left, or right.
In another puzzle, Chloe becomes trapped in a dangerous situation.
Max works to free her, but her effort has a negligible effect, and
Chloe frees herself (or at least that is how it appears).
But these are negated by interesting
puzzles. Max watches a crowded dinner for three minutes and then
goes back in time and tells Chloe what happened, picking the correct
option from four choices. Max engages in conversation with a cop, a
drug dealer, and a bully in one location, learning information from
one, rewinding, then using the discovered information to convince
another to divulge a secret. In a third scene Max breaks open a
door, and sets off an alarm, but then walks through, rewinds time
while inside the locked room until the door is fixed, and opens it
from the inside with no alarm.
A few rules about time travel.
Conversations are forgotten by others, but crucial information
necessary to unlock hidden dialogue options is remembered by Max.
Any object that Max picks up remains with her even if she rewinds
past the point where she picked it up. And Max stays where she is,
not where she was, while all other persons and objects move back to
where they were. This last ability allows Max to hold off danger
indefinitely as she tries to solve a puzzle.
But these puzzles and conversations
highlight the flaw of time travel in a game. In Life is Strange,
Max is only able to rewind at certain predetermined points, and
occasionally (without any explanation) is prevented from rewinding at
all. For instance, at one point Chloe and Max find five thousand
dollars. Max has to convince, and upset Chloe by telling her to give
it back to the owner. But using the ability to turn back time, Max
should be able to maneuver Chloe so she never even finds the money.
This is bothersome, until one realizes that only having two choices
for major decisions is simplistic as well, and then one learns to
live with it.
Here is a break from the big issues to
consider two minor annoyances. One, Max lives in a dorm on a
prestigious private high school campus. But none of the students
ever lock their door. Even when they break curfew and sneak out in
the middle of the night. A lazy contrivance so Max can snoop in
rooms. And no one ever protects their computer with a password.
Again, so Max can read everyone's email. This flaw is highlighted by
the one time someone does have a password and Max has to discover it.
Disappointment time. In spite of the
general interest the game creates, it seems to insist upon a number
of cliché characters, and obvious villains. One classmate is a
spoiled rich bully, who deals drugs, and is a maniac psychotic
killer, none of which is an exaggeration, because Max literally stops
him from killing someone and a she reads a report a psychologist
wrote labeling him deranged. It's impossible to not see him as a
villain. There is also Chloe's stepfather, a security guard at the
school. The writer may have wanted him to seem like a war veteran
who cares about safety too seriously, while still being sympathetic,
but he appears so blind to basic human behavior and views every
suspicious action as a sign of guilt. He is not sympathetic, but a
dumb as a rock and unstable as well.
And then there is the mean girl squad,
who are devious and malicious ninety percent of the time, but then
the writer has them show a sympathetic yet troubled side which comes
out of nowhere.
These characters; the bully, the guard,
and the mean girls, are the antagonists. The writer has no subtlety
for character creation. And yet, as one that enjoys a good story, I
wonder if it is all a trick. I've irrationally begun to suspect the
nicest characters of being the true villains, because one expects
there to be subtlety and misdirection in a plot. But it is not a acceptable deception. The antagonists are so villainous, any attempt to redeem them is not in character and unacceptable.
Back to awesome. Max earned some new
powers in episodes 2 and 3. The first is pretty basic, the ability
to briefly freeze time. But the other is definitely a spoiler: Max
accidentally used a picture of her to travel back in time to the
moment the picture was taken. Then she changed the past, was thrust
back into the present, only the present was changed. Not the most
original idea with time travel. Pretty common in fact, but it will
become a transitional element for the game.
So how is it after three episodes?
Better than it was, increasing tension. But of course, like most
novels it relies on everything holding together for two more
episodes, and providing a satisfactorily ending.
A few questions to consider going
forward:
Why does Max have her powers? (and so
many other questions about them as well)
What does her vision of a tornado
bearing down on Arcadia Bay portend?
Are the antagonists really the
antagonists?
And what is going to happen with Max's
new ability to travel back in time using pictures?
Life Is Strange
Series:
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