With the first episode’s launch a tad over a month away, DONTNOD has released what looks to be an early sequence in their upcoming “Life is Strange 2”
The gameplay starts with the main protagonist, Sean Diaz, getting off the school bus with a friend talking about a party. At this point, it is already clear of the visual improvements that DONTNOD has put into this series. The first game ran on the Unreal 3 engine and there was a stiffness to the animation. While not utilizing a photo-realistic style, “Life is Strange” had a beauty to it that the engine did showcase. The prequel “Before the Storm” by Deck Nine made took full advantage of the Unity engine and brought the look of the series a step forward. “Life is Strange 2” is using the Unreal 4 engine and from the released gameplay the game looks to have to take a step back from “Before the Storm”. The Unreal 4 smoothed out the animation but the look as a whole, particularly the color pallet has lost the depth that the Unity engine brought to the game. For the most part, we see Sean dealing typical teenage stuff: planning to go to parties, dealing with a parent trying to keep them on the straight and narrow, an annoying but lovable kid brother, etc. During these scenes, “Life is Strange 2” is reminiscent of the slice of life teen drama of the original. We also got a look at the game’s HUD interface. Similar to “The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit”, which released earlier this summer for free, the HUD is bare except for the prompts to interact with certain object or characters. It still has a hand-drawn aesthetic, like doodles in a teenager’s notebook. Things do not pick up until the last five or so minutes of the gameplay. Sean is Skyping with a friend when a commotion draws his attention outside. Sean’s brother, Daniel, has gotten into an altercation with their neighbor. Daniel had spilled fake blood for his Halloween costume onto the neighbor’s shirt. Sean gets between the two to try and defuse the situation. The neighbor begins to verbally accost Sean. This is the first big decision for players. Players can choose to defend Sean’s brother or scold him. The demo shows Sean admonishing his brother. This is a typical problem with these narrative-based adventure games. These “moral” decisions always come down to who the player is going to yell at. Situations like these could include more options to give players more choice on how to handle these big narrative crossroads. After scolding Daniel, Sean and the neighbor get into a scuffle. Sean shoves the neighbor to the ground where he proceeds to have respiratory trouble. A cop arrives on the scene and sees the boy on the ground struggling to breathe and the (fake) blood on his shirt. The officer draws his weapon in a panic, ordering Sean to lie down on the ground. Sean’s father comes out to see what is going on and tries to calm the officer down. The officer shoots the father. This is where things get strange (excuse the pun). Some sort of telekinetic blast destroys the area and the officer ends up dead. At this point, Sean grabs his brother and flees the scene. This is where the demo ends. After these 20 minutes, “Life is Strange 2” is looking to be a more serious tale. While the first game did deal with plenty of heavy topics, the sequel is hitting the ground running. The the first episode from this tale of two brothers on the run releases on PC, Xbox One and PS4 on September 27.
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This past week Gamescom was going on in Germany as it does every year. There, developer Supermassive Games announced their upcoming horror anthology “The Dark Pictures”.
“Each game in the anthology will feature a new cast of characters, kicking off with The Man of Medan, due for release sometime in 2019,” says Lucie O’Brien in an article for IGN. Supermassive showed off about nine minutes of gameplay of “The Dark Pictures: The Man of Medan” at Gamescom. “The Man of Medan features a group of divers investigating a World War 2 shipwreck, who then appear to discover horrors buried in a plane wreck at the bottom of the ocean. The player will take control of all five divers in the course of the story,” said O’Brien. The gameplay is reminiscent of the studio’s previous sleeper hit “Until Dawn”. The games not only have a similar aesthetic but gameplay systems as well. “The Man of Medan” will also be the first game in the anthology. Little to nothing is known about the anthology beyond each game being stand alone. According to a report on Variety, Supermassive plans to release two “Dark Pictures” game a year and that Bandai Namco will be publishing the anthology. This brings a few new questions to light. How long are these games going to be? What will the price for each individual game be? What will the quality of each game be? Even, what kind of distribution will be used for this series? These looming doubts could affect sales next year. There are so many unanswered questions about this upcoming series, but the game is looking good from the bit shown at Gamescom. “The Dark Pictures: The Man of Medan” is slated for release next year on PS4, Xbox One, and PC. |
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September 2019
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