Review: Life is Strange 2 - Ep. 2

Summary: 4.0/5.0

In this episode, Sean must guide Daniel in managing his new telekinetic powers, while still keeping the pair of them fed, healthy, and sheltered. The episode is slower than the first in terms of action, but continues to meet DONTNOD’s high standard for exploration and narrative/character development.

• Developer: DONTNOD

• Genre: Narrative Adventure

• Release Date: January 24, 2018

• Platform: PS4 (Also available on PC & XBOXONE)

• Price: $39.99 for Complete Season

Narrative

By the time this episode begins, Sean and Daniel have been on the road for a while (with their trusty sidekick Mushroom, of course). The introduction to this episode takes place in an abandoned cabin before the brothers reach their next destination of Beaver Creek. Since Sean is on the run and wary of the people he encounters, even his grandparents, it makes sense that a lot of insight into his relationships is gained through his sketchbook, but we also get some tangible character development through dialogue and commentary on the environment. This episode has a few extra sustained relationships to explore throughout the episode, aside from only Sean and Daniel’s. However, there are still plenty of quiet moments between the brothers. This episode strikes a nice balance between those relationships between both Sean and Daniel and the brothers and the outside world. In addition, the game assumes that the Sean will continue making similar types of decisions as in episode 1 in the time between episodes. This allows the player to see the more lasting consequences of the example Sean sets for Daniel. We also see how the strain of raising Daniel affects Sean, who is still a kid himself.

Mechanics

The main difference in mechanics between Life is Strange 2 and the original game is that in this story, you aren’t the one with supernatural powers. Life is Strange allowed you to rewind and replay conversations over and over again to explore the immediate outcomes of your choices. In this game, you don’t have that ability, so you would think that decisions carry more weight. However, since Daniel is the one with powers, the majority of your decisions only have indirect consequences. This means that individual decisions don’t feel as significant, but it also means that the consequences are much less predictable. This is as realistic and interesting as it is frustrating, but it isn’t new to the franchise either. The original Life is Strange had plenty of unintended consequences, but it wasn’t as noticeable because you have more agency over your actions as Max than you do over influencing the actions of Daniel through Sean.

Characters

This episode introduces Sean and Daniels grandparents, reunites the player with Captain Spirit, and even features a few other characters we may meet again later. However, since Sean and Daniel are still fugitives and for some reason staying with their only relatives at the only place the police might think to look for them, the episode mostly focuses on the grandparents and their neighbors.

The Reynolds and their home are exactly what you’d expect when asked to picture rural white grandparents. Claire and Stephan are fairly stereotypical - Claire is the more religious of the two, but they both attend church on Sunday, Claire struggles to keep the house clean while Stephen keeps putting off the chores to work on his model trains, etc. They seem to want to take Daniel in as a surrogate for the daughter that abandoned them, frustrated that Sean is part of the deal, since he’s old enough that he doesn’t necessarily need someone to raise him at this point. The relationship is strained due to a number of factors - the abandonment of Sean and Daniel’s mother, the refusal of Claire and Stephen to at least acknowledge the validity of Daniel’s curiosity about her, the circumstances of their father’s death, Sean and Daniel’s status as fugitives, and the fact that the children are hiding Daniel’s mysterious supernatural ability to move objects with his mind. However, it’s still sweet and a relief to see that the only family Sean and Daniel really have is risking so much to shelter them, even if everyone knows that it can’t be permanent.

In the face of everything else, this episode focuses heavily on reminding the player that Daniel is a child, one who is still developing a sense of right and wrong in a world where he has no parents and supernatural powers. And watching that develop is fascinating, especially when Daniel meets Chris, aka Captain Spirit. It’s almost painful to see how badly Daniel wants a normal friendship, and how he handles his power with Chris, who is obsessed with superheroes, is incredibly sweet. I’m excited to see how Daniel’s personality develops under these circumstances, especially after watching these interactions with Chris.

Technical

This episode had many more noticeable bugs than the first episode. While some players reported serious technical issues that interfered significantly with gameplay (inaccessible environment areas, lost save data, etc), the bugs in my play-through were superficial. I noticed several instances of objects disappearing from specific viewpoints, or Sean walking through objects. There were also a few points where dialogue (particularly with Claire) sounded as if she were far away, and there were no captions, so I missed that dialogue entirely. However, since it’s much easier to fix technical bugs in a patch than it is glaring narrative or character development problems, this didn’t weight as heavily in our rating.

Conclusion

This game certainly still has my attention. I do sometimes miss the direct agency of previous games, but I really appreciate the mechanic of influencing another character’s behavior, which I haven’t seen explored in other games. At this point, I trust DONTNOD to provide a rewarding narrative experience, and these first two episodes have certainly laid a great foundation for that.