Vasari

Life is Strange: Tween Peaks

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Nono, it's just that I couldn't resist reading the spoiler because it wasn't obvious how these two would compare... but anyway I already forgot what it said but maybe I'll get the game.

 

[edit]Or, well, more likely not as it's not on Steam.

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I purchased episode one in the thanksgiving sale and really like the first 1.5 hours. I'm chalking up most of the awkward writing to teenager-ness and really like the depiction of an insecure girl in a new environment.

Trying to play it with the wife present, I don't think she is very engaged thus far. I think I should let her control it but wonder if right stick camera controls would get in her way. Really torn between the accessibility of fixed camera angles vs being able to examine these wonderfully detailed spaces.

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Nono, it's just that I couldn't resist reading the spoiler because it wasn't obvious how these two would compare... but anyway I already forgot what it said but maybe I'll get the game.

 

[edit]Or, well, more likely not as it's not on Steam.

 

There's an anime of it if you're interested. It's a visual novel, so as medium shifts go, you're not losing too much. I didn't care for it, but I wanted it to be something it wasn't, everyone else I've heard loved it.

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I didn't want to double post, which is why I didn't post anything when I finally got around to finishing the last episode. Then again I reaally wanted to double post, so thanks for necro-ing the thread. Also I didn't really know what, or how, or even if I wanted to share what i'm about to say, but i'll come to that later

 

The quality of LiS has its ups and downs, all the way to the final scene, but I kinda love it for it's weird, almost amateurish at times, inconsistency. I didn't hate the ending either, and I now include it among my favourite games.

 

So I stopped playing for a while (over 2 weeks) after the first section of Chapter 4, partly because I realised that I was binging and needed to instead focus on finishing work that I had been procrastinating about, but mostly because the actual contents of that first section had drained me.

 

This section struck a specific chord in me, more than any game, or even any other piece of literature, or media that I can remember (with few exceptions). Probably more than any other section of Life is Strange as well, but to me that's a pointless differentiation.

 

My experience is vastly different from that of Max and Chloe (obvs), but there are enough similarities in this section that for the first time in my life that I can think of, it felt like a story was written specifically *for* me. I have a sibling who became disabled (uncontrollably violent epilepsy and intellectual impairment so that he is unable to either communicate or understand communication) at a very young age (I'm not much older), and whose condition has declined over the past 20 years (with recent improvements at least). This stuff is an inescapable part of my identity, whether I admit it, or want it to be or not. I've never been placed in the situation of deciding whether someone should be euthanised, but it's a topic i've dwelt on many times, and also fully expect to be required to make eventually.

 

Even the fantastical time travel aspect of the situation in Life is Strange really resonated with me. It highlighted the incredible feelings of guilt and responsibility you have for things ostensibly outside of your control, as well as exploring all those fantasies you have about how things would be different (but not necessarily "better") if different choices had been made. The financial toll it takes on the rest of the family, and all the other little details that went into these scenes were also 'appreciated' by me. For the first time it felt like someone else in the world (the writers) was empathetic to my situation, rather than the other way around.

 

Life is Strange also gave me the fantasy of experiencing the informed and concious consent of a loved one who chooses assisted suicide. It was painful, and harrowing, and I still tear up even thinking about the scene, but it's something I needed to experience, even when I didn't realise I needed to.

 

There's a lot more I probably could write, but it's difficult finding the right words, and kind of weird being this open with a bunch of people (admittedly the IT forum crowd are pretty cool!). I wanted to write a letter of thanks to DONTNOD, for giving me these experiences, and showing the empathy they did, but I don't have their direct contact details, and don't have a twitter to tweet them with or whatever. So I thought I'd share my thoughts here instead.

 

For me the lows of LiS don't detract from the emotional 'high' points that it reaches, the spoilered section being one of many. Life isn't perfect anyway, life is strange...

i'm sorry

 

I need to finish watching Steins;Gate now as well.

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I wrote up a piece on the blog I contribute to as part of our 'best of 2015':

 

http://www.arcadianrhythms.com/2016/01/ajs-best-of-2015-best-game-with-ashley-burch-in-it/

 

Re-reading it I really wish I had spent more time editing it but overall I think it says what I wanted it to say.

 

I find it interesting that you say episode four stumbled. The very end felt a bit twisty for the sake of being twisty, but overall four was my favorite by a large margin. The first three episodes were very slice-of-life, they established lots of characters, but there wasn't really a "main plot". Four was where the game picked a focus (murder mystery) and stuck with it for a while, and we get the benefit of doing so with characters we know from the first three episodes worth of setup.

 

I agree five was a mess (for so many reasons), but what didn't you like about four, besides the twist?

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4 threw out the ending of 3 in the most predictable way. As 3 came to a close I knew they were going to undo it in 4 because there was no way they could have stuck to that. I then felt that the rest of the episode was busy trying throw stuff into the mix (around the murder mystery conceit) to try and make the twist seem significant.

 

4 wasn't bad (I liked it) but taken as the build up to episode 5, I could see how it was going to mess things up.

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I finished this a couple of days ago and I really enjoyed most of everything up until episode 5. I thought I was going to despise this dialogue because I heard so many bad things about it, but it doesn't really come off as forced to me the way Juno does. It seems to be fitting of the handful of teens I've come across the past two years. Meme speak, dorky phrases, and nerd obsessions all are about par for the course. The "hella" thing is annoying but it seems true to life to adopt some dumb slang just for fun and it's not like Chloe is unaware of it (or the writers) as it is mentioned a few times in a joking manner. I don't know if you've ever watched any teen dramas like Skins (the better one, UK at least) or Degrassi (mostly bad) then this is all about par for the course with dialogue, but I'd rate it pretty high up there.

 

If anything maybe sometimes Max felt way more adult past her years in terms of emotional intelligence than I personally think she should be, but who knows, I'm sure it's not unheard of. Ashly Burch did a great job as Chloe, although her little girl Chloe voice was terrible. At least there's only a handful of lines there. Otherwise her performance is a big part of me getting on board with her, plus I feel like I see a lot of teen me in her.

 

I'm also glad to play one of these new fangled choice cinematic adventure games with actual puzzles that are often clever, even though they are easy, and no cheesy quick time events in sight.

 

I wish more games were somewhat down to earth like this, I've liked shades of this idea since way back in the time of Willy Beamish, one of my favorite games in childhood.

 

Unlike many people, I was completely on board with

the story all the way up to the Jefferson reveal. Very little qualms and I suppose the creepy teacher is very predictable to some (or easy) I was sucked in. I didn't expect him because all of the thoughts I had of him being a creep preceded my knowledge of Rachel Amber missing in terms of the game so I quickly just thought of him as the arrogant hipster misogynist teacher. Perhaps people who watched trailers for the game knew about the missing girl, but I had no idea that was an element of the storyline when starting and if I did see it in a trailer I had completely forgotten. The red herrings are good enough and I applaud the game for not really letting me know what is actually going on until the big reveal. I still didn't know what to do with all these fragments until the bunker was found.

 

Plus while it is a bit weird to put Jefferson as Nathan's mentor or new father figure, I do like how they made it so all of the notes from Mr. Jefferson misled you to think it was Nathan's father in on everything. You notice later he stopped signing his name but since Mr. Jefferson used a similar tone to Sean Prescott, I think nothing of it. It is all sort of a rip off of the room in Dragon Tattoo, but thankfully not as gruesome.

 

I was really into the time travel puzzles since I'm the kind to rewind and want to see all the choices, since I played Walking Dead and Wolf Among Us a couple of times just to see what happens. I like being able to choose my options and just to play with the game and learn more about the characters through different avenues. It also helps you decide if you want to like them, since I generally wanted Max to be jerks to bullies and authority figures unconditionally but some characters did win me over.

Victoria never did though and it was fucking amazing to just have Max curse her out at the party and put down everything about her, including her photos. Maybe I'm a bit too thrilled with that stuff but it felt good. I also didn't warn her because either way she didn't give a shit. I will try again on my second playthrough to be nice the whole game and see if Max will be more persuasive.

 

I found the solution to the pipe bomb puzzle in the school to be pretty clever as well as using rewind to enhance your stealth in the pool area.

 

Some of the licensed music choices were amazing, although I wish they would have picked a better Bright Eyes song. The licensed music otherwise really enhanced a few moments for me.

 

It's a shame episode 5 played out the way it did, it kind of killed a game I would have loved to just sort of good.

While Jefferson babbling his master plan at the beginning was pretty lame, it wasn't terrible. The whole nightmare sequence was just a mess to me and killed all of the emotional impact of the ending stuff that takes place instantly after. It needed to either be completely cut or just truncated. I feel like they felt they needed some filler because they sort of told almost all of the story by the end of episode 4 and were kind of stuck because of how episode content needs to apparently be wrapped in even portions. There are maybe a few instances of things I liked, mostly closer to the beginning with the backwards talking first scene, giant squirrels, and texts from Pompidou, but the rest just fell apart.

 

I get that the point is to show all of Max's insecurities but it seems like it went way overboard and just made all random characters hate her and judge her. Warren and Stanley were way out of place there. The whole flashlight dodging part in the lockers just needed to be deleted, it was so bad. I just wanted it to end. It was tedious and often unfair because you might get stuck rewinding in the middle of being caught and somehow you can't rewind out of it so the game just knocks you back to some checkpoint because the designers obviously knew this was something that could happen. I liked the original use of this mechanic in the locker room chase, thinking it was a fun way to Metal Gear, but they killed it for me. Also this part was extremely uncomfortable for me because you keep rewinding and you keep hearing people say awful and inappropriate things over and over. It didn't seem particularly clever for everyone to shout "bitch" and "whore" at Max every few seconds and the references some of the characters made to her getting horny about something or other I found to be way inappropriate (especially with one of the things Warren said). Why is this at the end of the series?

 

Then the whole section with evil Chloe manipulating people and talking shit was just pointless, I don't know what they were trying to do other than to convey doubts about her character, but Max knows her from forever ago and I think multiple times in the game she showed she is a true friend despite being difficult. I guess the importance was to show the good times right after, but I was so fucking annoyed with the length of the nightmare that I just ran through that whole section because it replayed a bunch of dialogue I had already heard and I wanted to get back to the main storyline already.


I have no idea why Dontnod made these decisions here because it seems almost universally hated. I also chose the crappier of the endings first thinking that a tornado wouldn't just completely kill everyone so I was taking that risk. But nope it was just some bizarre short scene of them driving through a presumably dead town and never looking back. Way too abrupt and dissatisfying and not at all what I meant to do, I wish they would have deleted it. The other one was nice and probably canon in the developer's mind and I wish I had seen that first. Oh well.

 

Either way though, I had a good time overall and I'm definitely going to play it again to see what happens when I make all of the alternate choices and how it impacts later episodes. Also I saw at the end there were a few different ways to solve puzzles so I am going to see what I was missing there too. Very cool. Although

I'm going to be sad to let Kate die. I rewound until I said the right thing of course. I really felt for her on that part and it made me tear up. The fall was shocking and her pain felt very real to me, despite of course I have never been in her situation. So awesome.

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Sorry for the bump here, just bringing up the deer again. Major deer spoilers:

 

I think I didn't say this in the original message but I thought the deer was Rachel manifesting herself as Max's spirit animal, mainly because of the scene where she's looking on when Max and Chloe dig up the body.

 

Turns out this is right according to the commentary and the deer is Rachel Amber's spirit. I have to play again to see what her presence means in a few scenes because I forget all the places the deer appeared but it's kind of cool. One big thing they note in the commentary is when you first see the deer in the junkyard when you chase her to take her photo, the deer is actually standing on the spot where Rachel Amber is buried.

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