Playdate: Life is Strange (12/11/2015)

This is the episode where the series sort of took a dive. "Oh I went back in time to save Chloe's dad, but now Chloe arbitrarily ends up in a wheel chair.". It's fucking dumb. I get what the point of it is, but it doesn't mean things had to turn out like that. It just feels super forced.

It would've been much more effective if she TRIED to stop her dad from dying and found out no matter what she did her Dad was always going to die.

The thing that I especially liked about the paralyzed Chloe timeline is that that's the Chloe that Max knew from before her move to Seattle, which died after her father's car accident that caused her to become an angry teen that we know from the real timeline. It helps Max get some closure on that possibility of getting the old Chloe back.

I think the guys will enjoy where David goes from here on out. I think the "asshole" part of his character got complacent by the situation where he was so focused on figuring out what was going on with Kate and the other seedy stuff at Blackwell that he neglected his duties as a father and husband, leading to paranoid stuff like the cameras and such. Obviously, Chloe doesn't help matters on that end, but he still needed a wake up call to figure out his priorities.

I just finished this episode and HOLY FUCKINH SHIIIIIIIIIIIT!

@cikame: Except Max has powers that would probably make it very easy avoid any legal repercussions from her decision.

For me, it would be a tough decision, not because I think letting Chloe decide to end her life is morally wrong (and the legal complications surrounding the matter don't really affect the morality of the decision), but she and Max went through with it without even giving her parents a chance to say goodbye...

Sweet, will watch this later.

@luck702: unfortunately, I think the game of the year discussion wrapped up before this episode

Love this game - fuckin GOTY. Love that the guys are getting into its vibe. The rest of this episode will be AMAZEBALLZ, so I really hope they finish this out next week before the break.

When in Kate's room Alex managed to sneak his 'Oh, Morphine!' joke in under the radar. The first time I've genuinely burst out laughing at a Giant Bomb video then immediately felt bad for doing so.

Bought this game because of this series and not sure I would have if I hadn't seen the past episodes of this series. Thanks guys for playing it and eventually finishing it.

Oh man. They really could've had something here if it wasn't so ham-fisted, contrived, and hackneyed. I still can't tell if it's that the writers aren't very good or if they're not sure what their intended target audience can and cannot pick up on, but boy. I feel like if I was still fourteen or fifteen I would've been totally into this game instead of mostly bored and occasionally annoyed.

I cried. I cried at that fucking scene.

Fuck, videogames. Just.. wow.

@bocckob: the writing is all over the place but mostly bad. When it doesn't sound like the characters are from the wrong decade it sounds really forced and corny.

It doesn't help that the voice acting is pretty bad for everyone other than maybe Chloe. Max especially is really awful at conveying any emotion other than apathy

I'm really enjoying the GBEast guys play through this but the actual game is really poorly executed for the pretty neat premise they set up. I don't get why everyone is gushing non-stop over this.

I had an uncontrollable grin the entire time watching them play through the disquieting scenes. I love seeing other people react to this games plot, especially the GBEAST crew! Keep up the progress!

@bocckob said:

Hackneyed? Can you tell me some games that are like Life is Strange? I would like to play them.

@mems1224: protagonists are sometimes left to be emotion-less enough so as not to influence what the player will naturally feel from what is happening. If Max was showing more than the blatantly obvious and generic emotion to everything then she may well come across as telling the player what to feel and to what degree. You may not like it but that's maybe why they did it like that.

Yeah, I just hope the story up until this point urged them to bring it up last week. Still don't think I've seen another game with nearly as much heart in the last year and I really hope the Devs get some recognition.

@treetrunk: Thats bad game design then. Scenes where she's supposed to be shocked or sad or convey any emotion just fall apart because she looks and sounds like a robot. She isn't a blank slate, they set her up as a character with motivations and a specific background

I love Austin's expressions in this series and him saying Everyday Heroes lol

@mems1224: I love that we live in the time line in which one can reasonably criticize games on the basis of their capacity to convey humanity to its necessary and intended degree. unfortunately we aren't there yet, and the dichotomy between those that can squint and feel and those that see the robot faces and the stilted dialogue is a strong and painful one. certain games, I can handle it.

this one kicked me in the teeth today, I certainly fall in the "love it" camp. I think this game succeeds in spackling over a lot of the hitchy, nonsense, vidjagame robot cracks, even with vinny "fuck immersion" caravella behind the wonderwheel, with some quality human interaction in a medium devoid of it. for the life of me something like fallout four, skyrim, or even Witcher 3, conversations can feel like nothing but flapping formaldehyde faces. the uncanng valley, we're cresting its far peak but some still can't hoof it. its a weird but wonderful side effect of living on the future fringe.

You know, I would have liked to see what would have happened if Max had tossed the keys and also, uh, told Chloe to avoid driving on a certain day or something.

David hooking up with "Nathan Prescott who is the personification of fucking evil" ... where did you guys get that from?

There was some paperwork about Nathan (wrongly) accusing students of drugdealing/use etc. but taking reports like that from students obviously is Davids day to day work. You guys seem very judgy with that character.

@kishinfoulux said:

I mean, the entirety of the The Butterfly Effect is "Welp, that change fucked up the timeline more than I thought it would, but I'll go back and fix it! And now I'll go back and fix that! And now I'll go back and fix that!" The whole movie is him just not accepting that maybe the lives of several people is too big a problem for one person to fix, and it takes him forever to acknowledge that just monkeying around with timelines over and over isn't helping. It got kind of tedious after a while. "Oh this time is childhood crush is a drug-addicted prostitute! This time main character is in jail! This time main character got his arms and legs blown off!" It was a little much. In Life Is Strange, Max has the power to go back and make sweeping changes, but I'm glad that it mostly commits to a primary timeline where you can get to know everyone and it really is about spending time with that Chloe and solving mysteries in that primary timeline, only using the timeline power in short bursts to affect the very recent past.

I can appreciate that they explored the possibility of Max making big timeline changes way in the past once. It took a turn that Max didn't expect, and having to deal with the realities of that one alternate timeline took enough of an emotional toll on Max that she thought "Yeah, but no, that can have too many unpredictable repercussions on the future, let's not do that again." From a story perspective, it lets the devs get back to the present to figure out what's going on with Nathan and the druggings, instead of spending like an entire episode needlessly playing out 5 different ways that fate either conspires to kill William in a different way, or something unfortunate happens to Chloe or her family.

@carpe_dmt: I do like what Life is Strange is trying to do and I'm enjoying playing it but man, the writing, voice acting and awful lip syncing just break it for me.

I'm not a mushy person when it comes to games or movies or tv but it is possible to have good emotional moments that don't break the immersion. I'm just not sure it's possible in games where developers give you choices and a neutral main character. LiS, Mass Effect, Witcher and all those other choose your own adventure type games all kinda have the same problem. Whenever there is an emotional moment it just comes out awkward and robotic and it just falls flat to me.

On the other hand, more focused games like TLOU or Bioshock Infinite(despite the convoluted story) pull off emotional moments because of the excellent voice acting and because the developers treat the characters like actual characters and not blank slates.

I teared up.

That was a heavy episode boys.

@carpe_dmt: I really, really, REALLY would not put Witcher 3 in there then. Because that game absolutely nails it's NPC face tech. Where as the other 2, yeah, absolutely.

Trying to make fun of the drama in this game doesn't lessen it's impact.

I'm not very far into this episode, and I haven't been digging the game up until this point (basically just watching it for the banter), but there's something about this moment that's really getting to me. Seeing someone after being gone for so long, and feeling a sense of guilt over what happened in the past even though you had no control over it, it hits really close to home.

So good on Dontnod for hitting those notes. I'm interested to see if the rest of it holds up, and if it does, I'll definitely buy this game just to throw money their way.

fuck...cant remember the last game that made me cry

I'm not even playing the damn thing

goddamn

GOTY? I'd be ok with that.

Oh boy, I had to stop watching this halfway through and sleep on it before I could watch the rest. A video game has never done that to me before. Not even close. This can't really be GOTY in a year like this, but imagine if it had been released in 2014 when all they could do was shrug their shoulders and declare Shadow of Boredor the winner. Just imagine it. Ugh. Of course haters gonna be hypercritical as always, nitpick shit that really doesn't matter one bit, and declare the game to be crap. It's okay, we're all wrong sometimes.

^ This a million times.

It's a shame they gave in and started saying emoji like the game does instead of emoticon.

NO EMOJI

@bocckob: Sounds like this game kicked your dog. Clearly a boatload of people enjoyed it and your comment is needlessly aggressive.

Yeah there's some silly dramatic stuff in this, but there's no way in hell anybody can argue it's any more hamfisted than any of the films or books this game is based around. Is someone going to make an argument that butterfly effect wasn't heavy handed and on-the-nose about everything? Or that groundhog day wasn't inherently absurd? If you can get over the premise and just go along for the ride it's a lot more entertaining.

@bocckob, @kishinfoulux and @mems1224 : I completely agree with what you're saying.

@treetrunk: There's some companies that do a better job than this: Telltale Games, Quantic Dream, Bioware... You can pick any from their catalogues.

Alex was pretty emotionally invested in this episode, didn't he.

That "I don't know" moment was pretty great.

@geralt: Yeah, Alex seemed especially bothered by that whole scenario. There was just something really funny about Alex yelling "I know what you're up to!" at Chloe through the window.

The guys keep to good balance of being emotionally invested,making jokes and being observant/thoughtful. I love the "team huddle" moments during the tough decisions. When I played through I didn't even think that Chloe was trying to pull one over on Max with the morphine shot.

I'm glad they took a break where they did. At least they had a uplifting moment with Kate, the beginning was depressing enough.

Bought the game because of you guys. Me and my girlfriend really enjoyed it. Can't wait to see you guys finish it.

@treetrunk: Just chill man, you're going way out of your way to make an huge rant over stuff I didn't even say. Don't get so angry over nothing.

@johnymyko: OK sorry you're right I've deleted my comment

Great ep! Can't wait for the next one!

Does anyone know when the next GBE Playdate: Life is Strange is going to happen?

Need more of these, and BEAST in general.

I hope GBE powers through the rest of this in a couple weeks when they come back.

The withdrawal symptoms are hella kicking in. I need to see more. I'm so cereal about this. I'm in two minds as to whether to catch up and pass the crew in the game or wait to see them finish before ploughing through on my own...But the longer I wait the more I want to just zoom through to the finish.

Goddammit game... Goddammit.... That was rough.

I think it hits me a bit harder than most because my uncle died from terminal cancer... When the nurse was here that last day and he was slipping away we all think that she gave him some extra morphine to ease his pain so he could go peacefully. Of course she would never admit to it and we couldn't prove anything, but we thanked her for it. That scene in the game brought back some painful memories, but they handled that situation beautifully.

Hoping this returns immediately - GBeast needs to GO APE this week!