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thebardyspoon posted:Yeah you have to as a game dev pretty much, won't want people around doing nothing. Probably had a couple ideas percolating/being pitched over the last year and then have decided on one to go into pre production. We know that Deck Nine originally pitched a narrative adventure project to Square-Enix in 2016 before they were given BTS, some fragments of which probably made it into True Colors or whatever this other game is.
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Oct 14, 2021 23:36
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Larryb posted:Out of curiosity, how did a 17 year old who’s clearly just starting out manage to get hired to do a song for a Life is Strange game? 17 year olds are cheap and all it takes is for someones kid to follow them on tik tok or something similar. WhiskeyWhiskers posted:Not to poo poo on a 17 year old, but they don't have a particularly strong voice yet. I can't imagine Katy would have had much trouble performing to a similar standard. Its a very odd choice because it makes Alex seem very amateur. Which would be like, 100% absolutely fine, but the game also wants you to think she could absolutely just pack things up and become a successful musician at the end of the story and its really, really weird. Paul Zuvella fucked around with this message at 11:51 on Oct 15, 2021 |
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Oct 15, 2021 04:02
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Speaking of oddities, how exactly did Alex get out of a pitch black mine while injured and having no light source? We just see the memory of Jed leaving her dad and 6 other men to die and then suddenly we cut to Alex leaving via an exit.
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Oct 15, 2021 05:45
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Larryb posted:Speaking of oddities, how exactly did Alex get out of a pitch black mine while injured and having no light source? We just see the memory of Jed leaving her dad and 6 other men to die and then suddenly we cut to Alex leaving via an exit. And then walk at least three miles to town. It's just "time to wrap up the game" things. lunar detritus fucked around with this message at 06:54 on Oct 15, 2021 |
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Oct 15, 2021 06:50
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I think the whole idea there is that Alex is using her empathy aura vision to light her path out of the mine.
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Oct 15, 2021 09:05
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Well, beat the game, and it was a little concerning how close they tried to follow the original LiS concept as well as seemingly to just lack that essential quality the Dontnod games have. I've said a lot of things about LiS2 and Tell Me Why but they were both significantly more memorable in general then what I just finished. Some part of it is the music, which never really connected with me as all the soft spoken acoustic guitar stuff sort of blended together in my memory. Another part was feeling like you barely get to know the people despite spending 5 episodes around the same cast. It felt like a single episode of LiS2 had more character development going on then this entire game. As far as the reactivity, seems like a fair amount but not nearly as much as I expected. It all seems to build to some flags in chapter 5 but otherwise is just there for flavor. I may be wrong and a 2nd playthrough could be completely different, it just gave the impression that not too much would change. My biggest complaint is it seems like they didn't really know how they wanted the game to develop. The whole thing with the falling/rising star on Alex's hand seemed really cool because Act 1/2 it really felt like you could take two very different attitudes to the games choices, hopeful and looking to a better future, or angry and spiteful at the world. Then later it feels like her personality is set by the game and you get no options otherwise. The special power in general sort of gets an 'upgrade' later on, but you only get 2 chances with it which are pretty telegraphed for what it'll do. In general, a pretty good story but a somewhat confusing game. The puzzles were as bare bones as it gets and there was just way less character interactions then I expected. I know there's the whole "choose your romance target" but the game never really made it feel like you got any time to connect with that person 1 on 1 beyond Act 2's scenes. Also, for an open world game they built and designed an huge area that you only get to walk around like 1/4 of it, so.....why? edit: Just want to note that the mo-cap was incredible, and my first thought after seeing it all was drat I hope DeckNine checks out LA Noire and just makes a massively better version of that whole concept. pentyne fucked around with this message at 09:56 on Oct 15, 2021 |
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Oct 15, 2021 09:35
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I enjoyed this game, but I think it had a lot of issues, mostly around the pacing and the character development which has already been discussed at length. It was certainly better than Tell Me Why imo. I thought the superpower was very cool, if somewhat poorly utilized. You get two big decisions with it in the whole game and it's not like a moral choice, it's just a coin flip about whether it works or not and this isn't examined at all in the text. My biggest issue with it all though was the setting, it was such an unbelievably campy world which I guess might work for some people but it's just not at all what I was after. It felt like an 80s kid flick where the big bad company is here to shut down the community center and the youths have to stop it, except the youths were all grown adults. I've been to the Rocky Mountains, these sorts of towns only exist as nightmare tourist traps. You don't just have people running indie record stores and renting out loft apartments. I think the game tries so hard to make you fall in love with this place, going so far as making deciding whether or not to stay the climax of the whole story but I just didn't care at all about this fake rear end Disneyland village. I thought the game looked really nice. It had some excellent character animations, so much so that I felt like the acting of the models actually outdid the voice performances in some of the scenes which I've never seen before, certainly not in this style of game. It's always good to see the LiS games improve visually game after game after a decade of playing Telltale games.
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Oct 15, 2021 11:05
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Beartaco posted:I enjoyed this game, but I think it had a lot of issues, mostly around the pacing and the character development which has already been discussed at length. It was certainly better than Tell Me Why imo. I thought the superpower was very cool, if somewhat poorly utilized. You get two big decisions with it in the whole game and it's not like a moral choice, it's just a coin flip about whether it works or not and this isn't examined at all in the text. I can see where you're coming from, but funnily enough I actually rather liked this aspect. This game (as well as LiS 1, imo) just really commits to its vision and its moments, unafraid of coming off as cheesy or pretentious. It feels refreshingly genuine and earnest in a way that I don't often see in games, or really a lot of media. Hell, the very end you've got a grown man breaking down crying because you tore into him and unearthed his trauma. That moment certainly wouldn't have landed as well as it did for me if the game hadn't kept up that same tone and earnestness from the beginning. I do agree about the power, though. It was a fun way to flesh out the characters a little more, but it could've been used a more in big ways. In fairness I did agonize a fair bit over the first decision (to the point where I restarted when I was almost finished already to choose differently), but the game never really takes a firm position on it. At the end it boils down to a somewhat limp "intrusively loving around with people's emotions is alright sometimes I guess", it would've been nice if there'd been some more opportunities with a more consistent thematic through line. Still, overall very much enjoyed the game. Hell, it somehow managed to make me think about moving to live in a quaint mountain town, even though I know I'd absolutely hate it  .
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Oct 15, 2021 13:25
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I think there's enough evidence in the text of the game to support reading Haven Springs as either an idyllic mountainside village or a cursed tourist trap. Like the town is supported entirely by Typhon to the point where they can essentially buy off the council to approve more operations, the record store never turns a profit and only exists because it's owned by some rich old lady, the town literally disposes a bunch of undocumented workers in order to keep its economy going, and once the mining industry is gone the only source of revenue it'll have left is a tacky weed dispensary. There's no single character who says "this is messed up and unsustainable" except perhaps Diane herself, but there's enough to suggest that Haven will not and cannot last forever, if you want to be pessimistic.
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Oct 15, 2021 14:26
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As much as I wanted the game to go into the socio-economic impact of what ending actually means for everyone there, it makes sense that it just glosses over it. They wanted to story to be about Alex, and to actually make that stuff pay off would require so much work that its not really reasonable to expect it. Towns completely hosed though, literally every business in that place is doomed.
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Oct 15, 2021 15:52
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Paul Zuvella posted:As much as I wanted the game to go into the socio-economic impact of what ending actually means for everyone there, it makes sense that it just glosses over it. They wanted to story to be about Alex, and to actually make that stuff pay off would require so much work that its not really reasonable to expect it. I think I said this before in the thread but I 100% thought that the final major choice was going to include that factor into consideration. Get justice and gently caress over Haven or let it go to preserve the town
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Oct 15, 2021 15:58
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exquisite tea posted:I think there's enough evidence in the text of the game to support reading Haven Springs as either an idyllic mountainside village or a cursed tourist trap. Like the town is supported entirely by Typhon to the point where they can essentially buy off the council to approve more operations, the record store never turns a profit and only exists because it's owned by some rich old lady, the town literally disposes a bunch of undocumented workers in order to keep its economy going, and once the mining industry is gone the only source of revenue it'll have left is a tacky weed dispensary. There's no single character who says "this is messed up and unsustainable" except perhaps Diane herself, but there's enough to suggest that Haven will not and cannot last forever, if you want to be pessimistic. The more I think about it, the more I feel my decision to leave with Steph at the end was justified. It might be able to hold out for a few more years at most but unless they find another financial backer Haven Springs is basically running on borrowed time now (though given the outbreak of Covid the following year I’m not sure how long Alex’s music career would last either). So much like Max, Alex’s actions technically helped destroy the town (only in a different and less immediate way in this case). Larryb fucked around with this message at 16:16 on Oct 15, 2021 |
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Oct 15, 2021 15:59
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After sleeping on it I definitely think they had the makings of a great game but something/someone happened (Covid I assume) and they delivered a truncated version of it. I didn't really feel like there was any complexity or ambiguity about "doing the right thing" that would make the ending hit harder like for the other games. There was really no major decision to make where the core concept is "you can't save/help everyone" and some major consequence hits. I think maybe 1 extra in depth conversation per main cast character, like something focused on their struggles and their life/role in haven would've gone a long way into creating a stronger connection to the town. If the original was Twin Peaks, this felt like the the NBC show that ran a year afterwards desperately trying to capture the magic but also trying to appeal to a wider crowd. Still had some really good moments, but seemed to not quite understand how to embrace/use the "town as a character" theme or make good use of the supernatural aspect beyond a handful of what felt like gimmick moments.
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Oct 15, 2021 17:32
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Truncated is a good word for it. If it was in written format, it feels more like a short-story than a proper novel - there's very little in the way of twists and turns, more reminiscent of a Scooby-Doo cartoon: "Who's the villain behind the mask?" *pulls it off* "Why it's The friendly bar-keep!" Maybe it's the cost of making their world - everything is so complex and well-made, you can tell a lot of love and care was put into creating the town of Haven and the characters. But going through the amount of locations, it feels kind of... small and intentionally economical. An example to illustrate this: Alex's memory in their house before the dad leaves. He just so happens to have his clothes in a pile on the floor. Because they're poor? Maybe, but there's clearly an upstairs of the house, so the more likely reason is that the scene would flow better if he could just pick the stuff up from the ground... and they wouldn't have to show an upstairs at all. Both the limited scope of the mystery and the quaint, small town feeds an impression of the world as very small. Basically the polar opposite of what you felt in the first game (as unfair as that comparison is).
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Oct 15, 2021 18:04
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yeah the further i get away from it the more shallow it feels. i dont think greater playtime is intrinsically better, especially in a genre where i want to see a lot of variable paths, but episode 4 was basically nothing. the production quality was high so i get wanting to make it a full game but the story and setting couldve been consolidated into 3 eps like before the storm. definitely felt like them doing a small town setting was a reaction to people preferring 1 to 2, but by episode 3 you've seen everything. arcadia bay felt a lot bigger. here you had basically the big main street/park zone, and then the bar, alex's room, record store, weed store, and flower shop were all single rooms off that. putting alex's room in the bar feels like an economical choice for sure. and those places are where you spent like 80% of the game. and then there was the mine, and like three more rooms in the last episode 1 had the big school exterior and parking lot, the hallways, classrooms, the dorm exterior, the dorm interior and bedrooms, chloes house and all those rooms, the diner, the rv, the junkyard, the barn, all the dreamscapes, the pool, apocalyptic arcadia bay, the dark room, probably some others i am forgetting or were added in before the storm. maybe i'm misremembering but it feels like every episode had a unique zone to explore even while the characters stayed the same. and getting to explore all the characters bedrooms added a lot of characterization opportunities for the larger cast without having to put everyone in every scene Super No Vacancy fucked around with this message at 18:50 on Oct 15, 2021 |
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Oct 15, 2021 18:47
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I imagine when the remasters drop its going to spark a lot of comparison between TC in a more critical way, especially a 1:1 comparison to LiS because it feels like Force Awakens did to A New Hope. Modern, new, with some great creative bits, but ultimately held back by trying to imitate a prior smash success. Weirdly it seems like DeckNine kind of dropped the ball in combining the "everything in the same week" with the "tons of stuff happens offscreen via text" of 1 and 2. Act 3 intro would have vastly benefited from a fmv montage of Alex settling in, getting closer to the townsfolk, hanging out with Steph, Ryan so that when it starts up a few weeks after act 2 you feel like you saw her life play out for that timeframe.
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Oct 15, 2021 19:12
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I still enjoyed the game and most of the characters overall to be fair but it’s kind of ironic that they made this game seem like a big open world thing when it ended up actually being slightly smaller than LiS1 Arcadia Bay. On top of some of the chapters feeling a bit short, a lot of the endings felt really abrupt as well (I think only 2, 4, and 5 really had something I’d consider a proper stopping point). Maybe some montages set to music like LiS and BtS had could have worked better. Also after Wavelengths I feel like this game could have used a few more one on one scenes with Alex and Steph as the two of them actually had a fair bit in common. As has been mentioned before, it feels like this was going to be a bigger game at some point but the pandemic resulted in them truncating it a bit and some details being changed along the way (for example, the game was originally supposed to take place in 2020 and there’s a sign you can find at the festival that still lists said date). Larryb fucked around with this message at 19:46 on Oct 15, 2021 |
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Oct 15, 2021 19:43
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Covid definitely did impact the development of True Colors. The actors have said that they were filming from home using camera rigs for the entire final chapter and a lot of material ended up going unused. I think despite all those drawbacks, it did ultimately deliver more than not. Definitely better than LiS2, kinda trading back and forth in my mind with BTS. I think to appreciate this series though you kinda have to acknowledge that Life is Strange 1 was a lightning-in-a-bottle kind of phenomenon unfettered by any expectations or genre conventions of what came before it. There's so much in that game that could have gone absolutely screwball wrong if just one or two things were a little bit different (and I guess many people ended up feeling that way about it anyway) that it's unlikely to see anything so thematically dense in a video game ever again. It's also just like, accidentally genius at so many points if you've ever thought really deeply about the game that you can't even ascribe any form of intentionality to certain aspects. No games have attempted to tell that dual narrative coming-of-age story meets Mulholland Drive again because how can you even set out to do that on purpose. exquisite tea fucked around with this message at 20:04 on Oct 15, 2021 |
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Oct 15, 2021 19:59
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Here's hoping now they have the expensive mo-cap stuff all set up and installed they can get at least 1 more Life is Strange game out before the 10th anniversary of the original. Depending on sales/reception I can kind of imagine Dontnod doing another episodic adventure narrative game they expect is treated as the "true" spiritual successor to LiS.
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Oct 15, 2021 21:20
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pentyne posted:Here's hoping now they have the expensive mo-cap stuff all set up and installed they can get at least 1 more Life is Strange game out before the 10th anniversary of the original. Depending on sales/reception I can kind of imagine Dontnod doing another episodic adventure narrative game they expect is treated as the "true" spiritual successor to LiS. Well they already made Tell Me Why which is basically a LiS game in all but name (they also made Twin Mirror more recently but I haven’t heard a lot of good things about that one). I wouldn’t expect them to come back to the series anytime soon if ever though. Incidentally, how did Square come to have complete ownership of the franchise? Did they come up with the concept for the original game and then hired DontNod on to make it or was it DontNod’s idea but they gave up most of the rights as part of the publishing deal?
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Oct 16, 2021 02:06
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Because thats how publishing works. They paid for the game to be developed, they get to own all of or a portion of the IP. You dont pay people to develop IPs and then just let them gently caress off and keep all the future money.
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Oct 16, 2021 02:32
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Paul Zuvella posted:Because thats how publishing works. They paid for the game to be developed, they get to own all of or a portion of the IP. Makes sense, also apparently DontNod was in bad financial shape at the time and Square was the only company willing to let them do the game the way they wanted (for example, some of the other places they pitched it to wanted them to make Max a guy for a variety of reasons): https://www.gamespot.com/articles/other-publishers-told-us-to-make-it-a-male-lead-ch/1100-6424577/
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Oct 16, 2021 02:43
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lmfao. Can you imagine how loving poo poo LiS would have been with a male lead? Literally would have had to have been a completely different story.
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Oct 16, 2021 03:03
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Dontnod was a special kind of crazy where they just would loving refuse to compromise the vision for the sake of potential sales. It worked to their benefit 1x time but they were chasing that same feeling with their other games and not quite getting there. Very much a studio in need of competent project managers to rein in the worst excesses.
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Oct 16, 2021 03:35
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Do we know what's going on with that remaster of 1? Honestly I wasn't super impressed by the trailer they put out, especially after playing True Colours. Does the delay mean they're doing more work on it?
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Oct 16, 2021 04:33
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Beartaco posted:Do we know what's going on with that remaster of 1? Honestly I wasn't super impressed by the trailer they put out, especially after playing True Colours. Does the delay mean they're doing more work on it? The screenshots on the Steam page look better than what we were shown in the trailer so I’m assuming it’ll be more like the latter. And yeah, probably (also the facial mocap in TC was great in my opinion so hopefully they can do the same for the remasters)
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Oct 16, 2021 05:04
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pentyne posted:I think maybe 1 extra in depth conversation per main cast character, like something focused on their struggles and their life/role in haven would've gone a long way into creating a stronger connection to the town. I strongly agree with this. I just didn't really care at all about Steph or Ryan. Then the game made me give one of them a rose and I was like, can't I just give it to the old lady with alzheimers? She's the one character I really liked. She had a really sweet little side story and probably the most impactful decision in the whole game with her daughter.
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Oct 16, 2021 06:37
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Beartaco posted:I strongly agree with this. I just didn't really care at all about Steph or Ryan. Then the game made me give one of them a rose and I was like, can't I just give it to the old lady with alzheimers? She's the one character I really liked. She had a really sweet little side story and probably the most impactful decision in the whole game with her daughter. You don’t actually have to give a rose to anyone, but if you don’t the roof scene afterwards will default to whoever you chose to distract Diane (and even choosing the hug option at the end of said scene will cause the game to treat it like you sealed the deal as far as getting into a relationship with one of them goes). There is a way to stay single in this game but unlike every other entry it requires a few extra steps for some strange reason (hook up with Ryan, make sure he doesn’t believe you at the meeting in Episode 5, and then don’t forgive him when he comes by your apartment to apologize afterwards). Larryb fucked around with this message at 12:15 on Oct 16, 2021 |
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Oct 16, 2021 12:13
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Larryb posted:You don’t actually have to give a rose to anyone, but if you don’t the roof scene afterwards will default to whoever you chose to distract Diane (and even choosing the hug option at the end of said scene will cause the game to treat it like you sealed the deal as far as getting into a relationship with one of them goes). Are you sure? The game literally would not let me progress without giving a rose to either Steph or Ryan. I walked around trying to figure it out for a while, what was I supposed to do?
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Oct 16, 2021 16:01
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Beartaco posted:Are you sure? The game literally would not let me progress without giving a rose to either Steph or Ryan. I walked around trying to figure it out for a while, what was I supposed to do? You might be forced to if you actually pick up a rose first
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Oct 16, 2021 16:06
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Yeah you can't pick up the rose and then not give it to anyone.
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Oct 16, 2021 16:07
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The section basically starts you with your cursor over the roses! What am I going to do, not pick up an item in an adventure game?
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Oct 16, 2021 16:09
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exquisite tea posted:Yeah you can't pick up the rose and then not give it to anyone. I meant you don’t actually have to pick up the rose at all (which I can confirm from a recent playthrough)
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Oct 16, 2021 16:19
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Beartaco posted:I've been to the Rocky Mountains, these sorts of towns only exist as nightmare tourist traps. You don't just have people running indie record stores and renting out loft apartments. I think the game tries so hard to make you fall in love with this place, going so far as making deciding whether or not to stay the climax of the whole story but I just didn't care at all about this fake rear end Disneyland village.
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Oct 16, 2021 21:20
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Flesnolk posted:good luck being LGBT like Steph in small town Colorado irl I liked that Wavelengths went into how isolated Steph feels in Haven. Izzy just saw it first.
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Oct 16, 2021 21:46
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Flesnolk posted:Media romanticisation of SmaLl TOwNs is really loving annoying in general. These are awful places where you go to die, not some amazing quirky wonderland, and good luck being LGBT like Steph in small town Colorado irl Same thing with farmers. Average age is like 60 and most of them only cling on because they have 3-5 children that are out working 30 hours a week for "chores" from age 10 and up. The big thing about small communities is that if you are an insider, it's great (if you like small communities i.e racism and tons of govt corruption). But then once you aren't, it's hell, and something as simple as "going to college" in a lot of those places is seen as a betrayal. There was a touch of that in everything going on related to Haven. You'd see those posts about locals complaining about "out of towners", the Ice Cream couple struggling with their business, the new diner owner super nervous about opening up, and the phone call from the staffing agency worried about the mining company. I think they leaned too hard into making the game less miserable then the previous iterations and lost a lot of what would have made for a much better story. Some people who are welcoming, and the people who aren't. A much clearer picture that its basically a company town that would pay scrip if they could. There was just a lack of context for the reality of Haven and everything was just "small town values are great" for 90% of the game. I wish, wish they had the balls to make a bad end with the town council confrontation. The problem is that it's so connected to Alex basically weaponizing her powers for the first time there's no middle ground, she'll always make him confess. The previous options with Char and Pike weirdly contradict each other wrt to power usage for the "trust Alex" outcome, so it's not like they can reward or penalize power use like LiS2 did. It's weird but the game was just a little bit too optimistic/happy in general
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Oct 16, 2021 22:24
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Don’t think there was a real chance of that happening, especially with so much of the criticism around LiS2 centering on the general pessimism of that story and a minor backlash against the dark room end scroll at the end of BTS. It might have made for an intellectually more interesting narrative, but not one central to Alex’s personal development as feeling like she belonged somewhere.
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Oct 16, 2021 22:46
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exquisite tea posted:Don’t think there was a real chance of that happening, especially with so much of the criticism around LiS2 centering on the general pessimism of that story and a minor backlash against the dark room end scroll at the end of BTS. It might have made for an intellectually more interesting narrative, but not one central to Alex’s personal development as feeling like she belonged somewhere. Besides it ain’t exactly completely happy if you look at the big picture, Haven’s more or less dead in the water now that its major financial backer is gone and even if Alex chooses to leave I’m not sure how long her music career is going to last considering what happens in the real world the year after this game takes place. There’s still a fair share of the tribute to human misery this series is known for but I’ll admit it plays things a bit safer than some other installments. Speaking of, LiS2 kind of went too far in the other direction in my opinion but I still enjoyed both games for what they were.
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Oct 16, 2021 23:14
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The ending of this did feel a little rushed, like all of a sudden “whoops, time to wrap things up, places everyone!” Although what bothered me most was the reveal at the end that Alex’s dad just happened to come to work at the mines in Haven and was one of the miners who died. I felt that was a bit of a stretch, and an attempt to add more emotional impact to the end of the game, when it really could have been excised entirely and nothing would have changed. All the inclusion of that did was leave me scratching my head saying “really?”
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Oct 17, 2021 20:06
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man nurse posted:The ending of this did feel a little rushed, like all of a sudden “whoops, time to wrap things up, places everyone!” As I saw someone else mention earlier, an easy to miss detail is: Gabe came to Haven Springs specifically trying to follow threads on where their dad went. Alex and Gabe both ended up in Haven because that's where their dad died, it wasn't just a coincidence, although they didn't realize that when they settled down there.
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Oct 17, 2021 21:16
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