life is strange episode one now free

[BloatedGuppy]

See, the game DOES get demerits when it starts with a splash screen that explicitly states that your choices and action affect the outcome(and then they totally don't).

They do affect outcomes. What you're suggesting is that the game promised you a variety of different endings, and it only really offers 1.5.

Again, I'm not sure where this fantasy of video games offering wildly divergent end points came from. I've been playing a long, long, long time and the only true "multi-end" experiences were either incredibly short games with extremely low production values, or games that played 100% linear until the end point then you got to pick a flavor. Telltale games, and by the same token Life is Strange, allowed a somewhat-user-tailored experience from chapter to chapter, and then a fixed outcome or very slightly modifiable one. Somehow, this manifests complaints that "User choices don't matter", which is gamer-ese for "User input has no effect on the experience", which is...quite frankly...utter nonsense. It's just a new riff on the old "It's not even a real game" gibberish that haunts the gaming community every time a new game comes out that contains more walking than pewing.

 

[Areloch]

See, the game DOES get demerits when it starts with a splash screen that explicitly states that your choices and action affect the outcome(and then they totally don't).

They do affect outcomes. What you're suggesting is that the game promised you a variety of different endings, and it only really offers 1.5.

Again, I'm not sure where this fantasy of video games offering wildly divergent end points came from. I've been playing a long, long, long time and the only true "multi-end" experiences were either incredibly short games with extremely low production values, or games that played 100% linear until the end point then you got to pick a flavor. Telltale games, and by the same token Life is Strange, allowed a somewhat-user-tailored experience from chapter to chapter, and then a fixed outcome or very slightly modifiable one. Somehow, this manifests complaints that "User choices don't matter", which is gamer-ese for "User input has no effect on the experience", which is...quite frankly...utter nonsense. It's just a new riff on the old "It's not even a real game" gibberish that haunts the gaming community every time a new game comes out that contains more walking than pewing.

Thing is, it didn't NEED "wildly divergent endings". It should have, however, an ending that did not actively override every single action you had in the game.

You have ending A) In which your choices didn't matter at all, and ending B) In which your choices didn't matter at all. The ultimate outcome, the consequences of all of your actions, is a binary choice that completely overrides everything you did before it across every episode. Basically, don't pull a variant of "It was all a dream". That catches flak in TV and movies when it happens, and it deserves to catch flak for it when it appears in games too.

Even if we merely got some scenes showing "Where they are now" which would be modified based on the choices you made leading up to the ending would have completely changed how the ending came across and actually made your choices feel significant.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

You have ending A) In which your choices didn't matter at all, and ending B) In which your choices didn't matter at all. The ultimate outcome, the consequences of all of your actions, is a binary choice that completely overrides everything you did before it across every episode. Basically, don't pull a variant of "It was all a dream". That catches flak in TV and movies when it happens, and it deserves to catch flak for it when it appears in games too.

Even if we merely got some scenes showing "Where they are now" which would be modified based on the choices you made leading up to the ending would have completely changed how the ending came across and actually made your choices feel significant.

Again, this is not a perspective I understand in the slightest. My choices "felt significant" because they shaped the experience I had playing through the game. I didn't require a coda afterwards giving me a pat on the back for raising my Diner Faction or getting my photography to level 8. I got an ending that was dramatically resonant and thematically appropriate to the game that preceded it. That's a decent ending. That they felt compelled to add a 2nd, stupider ending to assuage the "GAMES MUST HAVE MULTIPLE ENDINGS" crowd is, frankly, unfortunate.

This game up during ME3 too, where a small portion of the audience hated the ending because "their choices didn't matter" as opposed to "because it was unintelligible rubbish". Again, one's choices throughout that trilogy shaped their experience. What the fuck were people expecting? If the third game had completely reshaped itself based on choices during the first two it would have been about 15 minutes long.

My GF and I both played through Walking Dead and Life is Strange simultaneously. We made some very different choices. Despite our games ending up in roughly the same spot, we had very different experiences along the way. Sounds like "choices mattering" to me, honestly. It's like suggesting the entirety of Die Hard had no meaning because the ending came down to a binary choice between Sgt. Powell shooting Karl or not shooting Karl. It's as if that's ALL the movie was! That single binary choice! The rest of it didn't even matter! We should have had 11 hours of codas, showing what became of everyone!

There's a place in gaming for completely viewer directed experiences...they're called "sandboxes" or "emergent gaming". If you want any kind of directed story, the player has to accept that their authorial input is going to be GREATLY limited, and ultimately the needs of the story must override the need of the player to feel like they're writing it, or the story is going to be hot garbage. That games like Mass Effect or Walking Dead or Life is Strange impart the illusion of plot control as much as they do is, frankly, remarkable. It's something to PRAISE them for. Instead we whinge and moan because at the end narrative points converge so the story ends semi-intelligibly.

 

[Areloch]

You have ending A) In which your choices didn't matter at all, and ending B) In which your choices didn't matter at all. The ultimate outcome, the consequences of all of your actions, is a binary choice that completely overrides everything you did before it across every episode. Basically, don't pull a variant of "It was all a dream". That catches flak in TV and movies when it happens, and it deserves to catch flak for it when it appears in games too.

Even if we merely got some scenes showing "Where they are now" which would be modified based on the choices you made leading up to the ending would have completely changed how the ending came across and actually made your choices feel significant.

Again, this is not a perspective I understand in the slightest. My choices "felt significant" because they shaped the experience I had playing through the game.

I guess I just want the ending to actually tie to what happened in the game. Like I mentioned, it's pretty much a "It was all a dream" ending on both sides because they both completely undid what you had done before, and those endings are lambasted in every other form of media too because it's lazy.

That they felt compelled to add a 2nd, stupider ending to assuage the "GAMES MUST HAVE MULTIPLE ENDINGS" crowd is, frankly, unfortunate.

I can agree with this. I think it wouldn't have felt as lame if it was just one ending(It was all a dream or no) and just stuck with it. That they gave us 2 endings that felt equally is invalidating to prior choices just makes the whole thing come off as worse.

This game up during ME3 too, where a small portion of the audience hated the ending because "their choices didn't matter" as opposed to "because it was unintelligible rubbish".

Whynotboth.jpg

My GF and I both played through Walking Dead and Life is Strange simultaneously. We made some very different choices. Despite our games ending up in roughly the same spot, we had very different experiences along the way. Sounds like "choices mattering" to me, honestly. It's like suggesting the entirety of Die Hard had no meaning because the ending came down to a binary choice between Sgt. Powell shooting Karl or not shooting Karl. It's as if that's ALL the movie was! That single binary choice! The rest of it didn't even matter! We should have had 11 hours of codas, showing what became of everyone!

Well, last I had watched Die Hard, it didn't start with a splash screen indicating that my viewing experience has a direct, lasting impact on the choices and consequences in the story.

There's a place in gaming for completely viewer directed experiences...they're called "sandboxes" or "emergent gaming". If you want any kind of directed story, the player has to accept that their authorial input is going to be GREATLY limited, and ultimately the needs of the story must override the need of the player to feel like they're writing it, or the story is going to be hot garbage. That games like Mass Effect or Walking Dead or Life is Strange impart the illusion of plot control as much as they do is, frankly, remarkable. It's something to PRAISE them for. Instead we whinge and moan because at the end narrative points converge so the story ends semi-intelligibly.

Personally, to me? It's the pretense of that splash screen. That sets up a complete folly of a notion and then dashes it utterly at the end. If they hadn't fronted the "Whoaaaah man, everything you say and do will impact the story with lasting consequences!" and then at the end goes "Yeah....it didn't, actually. At all. Sorry about that", it would have simply been a lazy storytelling trope. No better or worse than what had been done before(and given, as you point out, it's at least thematically consistent, I think it'd be a lot easier to give it a pass in this case).

But nope, it goes "It' matters!" and then at the very end pulls away the curtain and goes "Ha ha, it never mattered at all!".

Either stick with it mattering, or don't put up the pretense that it does, basically.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Personally, to me? It's the pretense of that splash screen. That sets up a complete folly of a notion and then dashes it utterly at the end. If they hadn't fronted the "Whoaaaah man, everything you say and do will impact the story with lasting consequences!" and then at the end goes "Yeah....it didn't, actually. At all. Sorry about that", it would have simply been a lazy storytelling trope. No better or worse than what had been done before(and given, as you point out, it's at least thematically consistent, I think it'd be a lot easier to give it a pass in this case).

But nope, it goes "It' matters!" and then at the very end pulls away the curtain and goes "Ha ha, it never mattered at all!".

Either stick with it mattering, or don't put up the pretense that it does, basically.

The specific statement made is...

"Life is Strange is a story based game that features player choice, the consequences of all your in game actions and decisions will impact the past, present and future. Choose wisely".

Nowhere in that does it say "lasting consequences", promise a choice of many endings, or suggest the player's actions will reshape the narrative. It says there will be "consequences" to choices. And there are.

http://life-is-strange.wikia.com/wiki/Choices_and_Consequences

Or if you prefer a less official source:

https://www.reddit.com/r/lifeisstrange/comments/38dw5g/life_is_strange_list_of_choices_and_consequences/

The only argument being made is "since the ending always comes down to the same events, all previous choices cease to matter", which is a rather nihilistic view of existence in general and an absolutely fucking absurd charge to level at a narrative based game.

 

[Areloch]

Personally, to me? It's the pretense of that splash screen. That sets up a complete folly of a notion and then dashes it utterly at the end. If they hadn't fronted the "Whoaaaah man, everything you say and do will impact the story with lasting consequences!" and then at the end goes "Yeah....it didn't, actually. At all. Sorry about that", it would have simply been a lazy storytelling trope. No better or worse than what had been done before(and given, as you point out, it's at least thematically consistent, I think it'd be a lot easier to give it a pass in this case).

But nope, it goes "It' matters!" and then at the very end pulls away the curtain and goes "Ha ha, it never mattered at all!".

Either stick with it mattering, or don't put up the pretense that it does, basically.

The only argument being made is "since the ending always comes down to the same events, all previous choices cease to matter", which is a rather nihilistic view of existence in general and an absolutely fucking absurd charge to level at a narrative based game.

Spoiler

Well, I guess it'd be more accurate to say that if you save the town instead of Chloe, the choices never happened at all as far as literally everyone and everything is concerned aside from Max. They only merely cease to matter if you save Chloe.

I just feel tossing everything out is lazy/bad writing, and the ending sours what came before it. It's obviously not an uncommon opinion and it's hardly an stance unique to games.

But it doesn't bother you like it does me, and that's completely fair.

 

[felbot]

oh boy free garbage! what a steal!

seriously though I wont play this hipster crap even if you paid me for it.

 

[Headdrivehardscrew]

I have no interest in playing as a lesbian teen girl with blue hair.

I've come to strongly dislike Telltale games. I think Gone Home is an overrrated POS bait-and-switch.

Going into playing Life is Strange blind, I was at first reminded of both Telltale and Gone Home, until it eventually started to dawn on me that Life is Strange is quite fresh. It does feel like a well-made David Cage Telltale indie title, but one with a lot of heart and soul in it.

Even if some of the writing, the characters, the set-ups rub you the wrong way, I strongly suggest you go get the free first chapter and take it for a spin until you can truly judge it on its own merits. You don't have to go deep. Just start it up and see where it takes you.

For me, it did a couple of things. One of them being nudging me into just being able to go with the flow and let music I'd otherwise switch away from immediately touch me somewhere deep inside, like a one-foot purple dildo. That's rare for a game, especially one where I expect nothing but the worst.