As for life is strange 1. I agree with you on the dark tone and I loved it. The heavy borrowing of Twin peaks trope and setup really gave it a unique style. My only problem about this game like many, is the undoing of all of your choices as Max by the end with the dreaded Bay over Bae ending. It's a whole game based on the butterfly effect but aside from that rushed nightmare sequence it seems like most of your choices won't matter much once the credits start rolling. Don't get me wrong. It is tonally coherent. It's a lesson to max, It teaches her to live by her decisions in life. Her power matches her personality, always second guessing herself which also mirrors what a first time player might want too. That's why believe Deck Nine didn't get the memo on many of the themes of the first game but keep rethreading the major narative beats of this first game without thoroughly understanding their meaning in the context of this first game. Which is exactly why every Deck Nine game feel so derivative. Weak and lazy. True colors clearly borrowed a lot from Don'tNod's ideas from their previous and future games including twin mirror (surprisingly). But they still don't understand the why things are how they are.
I think the video does a perfect job explaining what LiS1's other choices were for, even if they "didn't matter." But fully agreed about True Colors. And Alex's power has huge moral/ethic questions that they failed to explore.
As a native English speaker you did fine, quite honestly you speak better English than most Americans lol. Edit: btw 73% of people chose Chloe if I remember right but Chloe is a god tier character no matter the pov you take.
Don’t nod are extremely good at telling stories and most of the gameplay is focused on relationship building and repairing that someone you haven’t seen in forever. D9 are more into gameplay than story, as referenced in tc. They’re more ‘fun’ you could say. De was just a massive failure to d9’s business and it shows cuz of reviews on steam. Lis 1 will never die and will go on til new fans find it. It was kinda funny how you absolutely ripped into Chloe despite not understanding her issues. Which is fine I respect it I don’t hate Chloe cuz I understand her the most. Lis 2 was terrible and boring bcuz of the pacing and overall character building or relationship even. There were good parts and just very boring, especially the end part. I loved Alex from tc, prolly bcuz of her personality and traits.
Personally, I prefer Deck Nine over Dontnod. Dontnod's understanding of tone and genre have always been their saving grace, but their inability to put together an actual _fun_ game will always be their Achilles heel. Deck Nine on the other hand seems more focused on creating an actual videogame intent on making the player think and participate than simply telling a story. Honestly, Dontnod should be making films instead of games. From a developer's perspective, Life is Strange 1 & 2 are filled with so many bad choices that would make most industry writers faint. The switch from telling a thematic story to a strict murder mystery might rub some people the wrong way, but as a _videogame,_ it was the only choice. Life is Strange 2 proved that the vast majority of people aren't gonna shell out the money to pay for 12 hour interactive movie with little to no engaging gameplay.
Note: holy shit I wrote a lot. Be warned. Also: this contains spoilers for all games. Edit: this is part 1 - I had to put part 2 in a comment bc RUclips was being annoying Even BTS got the essence of LIS way better than TC or DE. Chloe's relationship with Rachel was toxic but beautiful, and like LIS1, you could break apart the deuteragonist's secret-keeping, toxic family. Although BTS didn’t have powers, I think the game still worked because LIS was never really about the powers in the first place - they were only ever used as a storytelling tool. And no, the game wasn't perfect - it copied LIS1 a little too closely and didn’t have the same choices between the world and the 1 person the protagonist cared about most - but it didn’t shy away from LIS's darker themes (kidnapping, drug abuse, toxic relationships, physical violence, how young girls get taken advantage of, etc.) and managed to show the nuances of relationships and how far people are willing to go for love. TC is where the series began to go downhill imo, but I also don’t think it was a bad game. It still had some dark themes (corruption, family trauma, environmental destruction, and mental illness), but it didn’t go far enough in its criticism. The closest it had to a toxic relationship was Alex's relationship with her long-dead parents which the game forces you to interpret one way and which she always heals from in the end. Speaking of the end, the choice between staying or leaving is way too hopeful and hardly has any downsides compared to the last choices in all 3 of the previous games. The decision to either forgive or not forgive Jed seemed like way more of an interesting final choice, but it went nowhere. At least with that one, you could choose to keep a grudge for the sake of Gabe, or you could be "the bigger person" and forgive. That at least would've had the same theme of clinging onto the person most important in your life or deciding to move on. But again, this choice went nowhere, and there was no foreshadowing in previous choices. Another issue I have with TC is the powers. In LIS1 and 2, powers have major downsides. Max's causes the tornado that wipes out Arcadia Bay, and Daniel loses control and endangers the people around him. Although Alex's powers start as a problem with her carrying all the negative emotions of the people around her and lashing out as a consequence, later that problem just kinda... disappears. Alex becomes the superhero and gets to live the dream life of her choice. And don’t get me wrong, I don't think TC was a horrible game by any means, even with its issues. My main problem with it is that it shouldn't have been a Life is Strange game. Although LIS2 focused on a largely different cast of characters, it still had the same themes and similar choices. TC just didn't. (Also I have to recommend the spinoff book *Life is Strange: Steph's Story,* because I think it does way more justice to the series than TC. It focuses on Steph's toxic, codependent relationship with her ex - then girlfriend - Izzie, and delves into the effects the storm had on the few survivors. It features some beloved characters from the spinoff comics and delves into the main conflict of LIS: to choose between the 1 person in the world most important to you or letting them go, also freeing yourself from their toxicity. It's really good and hella underrated.)
Alas, then we get to DE... and oh boy. I don't even know where to start on this one. Unlike TC, which I think was generally a good game but shouldn't have been in the series, I don't even think DE is a good game. It's full of plot holes, the characters are overwhelmingly shallow, the plot was confusing as hell, and of course, no decisions from the other games mattered in any meaningful way. All the genuinely interesting plot points in episodes 2 and 3 were dropped in the later chapters for a confusing Avengers x LIS1 ripoff, completely missing the point of LIS. As I said earlier, powers were never the focal point of LIS. The whole point is that there aren't heroes or villains (or at least, very few)- just a bunch of flawed humans who do flawed things. While there are certain sections that require making the "right" choices (preventing Kate from committing suicide, the backtalk scenes in BTS, being honest to get more money from Esteban, etc.), overall most of the choices have no right answer. Trying to shoot Frank would make Chloe happy and prevent him from taking the gun, but it also makes later dialogue with him more difficult. Telling Rachel the truth about her father (can) allow her to meet her real mom, but it also ruins their relationship forever. Teaching Daniel to play by the rules results in less harm to others, but also results in Sean and Daniel breaking apart. On the other hand, the choices in DE don't have that complexity (and for that matter, neither do many of the decisions in TC). Refusing Alderman will result in Moses trusting Max more, and nothing between Max and Alderman will change. Telling Safi to go on stage as herself has no negative consequences. Rushing Safi or talking her down both result in Yasmin getting shot. Nearly all the choices either lead to the same conclusion or have clear good and bad outcomes. There is no nuance, and it makes replays pointless. Why go back and make the wrong decisions if they will only make your life harder without any benefit? Why play the game at all if it'll always end the same? The choices are black and white or meaningless, Max is the hero and Safi is the villain, Moses is your unproblematic friend, and Lucas is a piece of shit. Not to mention we never even learn why characters do the things they do. Why did Yasmin cover up Lucas' plagiarism? Why did Gwen cancel Safi's book deal? How was Gwen the one to cancel her book deal if it was actually Yasmin? What caused the storm? Why did the timelines combine? How did Max shoot Safi in the original timeline if we never see her do so? Where did Alderman go? Why did Lucas even plagiarize in the first place? WHAT IS GOING ON?! And of course, we have the antagonists. The way Jefferson and Jed's true intentions were revealed was dramatic and intense. Both were major reveals with enough foreshadowing to catch on replays but not too much as (for most people) to suspect them beforehand. The moment the camera shows Jefferson's face or the moment you realize Jed's true intentions are shocking. And to add on to those crazy moments, both the character's lives are at stake, with Max having just been drugged causing her time travel powers to fail and Alex nearly getting shot and falling down the mineshaft. But in DE, it's like, "y'know that guy who's already on the suspect list and acts incredibly fishy? Yeah, turns out he plagiarized Maya's book." Maya, a knockoff Rachel Amber we never get invested in because nobody cares about her except Safi who only mentions her over halfway through the story. Oh, and get this: the way you find out? Not by a dramatic reveal of Lucas putting Max's life at stake or killing Safi- no, it's by READING 1 FUCKING SHEET OF PAPER. Talk about anticlimactic. To D9's credit, I do think they tried to write a story about a toxic, codependent relationship (between Max and Safi), but Safi just ended up as a villainized, underdeveloped, less interesting, more confusing copy of Chloe. A couple choices reflect choosing between Safi or the university, like keeping Lucas' secret he's filing a restraining order or telling Safi, but most don't, and those that do feel off because you're just choosing between villains. Safi is also a character who's already incredibly hard to empathize with, her being secretive about her powers, her revenge tour that hurt innocent people, and her literally shooting her mom. Her humanity- her grief over Maya's death, the way she begs for Max to kill her after she hurts people and realizes what she's done, how she struggles to find herself since she's spent so much time pretending to be other people to play the roles those around her want her to be- all of that is ripped from her in favor of a supervillain arc. A supervillain arc that goes nowhere because the ending is always the same. And we can't talk about DE without talking about its dark themes... or the lack of them. The main conflict - covering up a professor's plagiarism - is nowhere near as horrific of an act as previous games' villains. I mean, Mr. Jefferson drugged girls, took vulnerable pictures of them in a creepy bunker, and then killed them or drove them to suicide. James Amber kidnapped a woman and was planning to ruin the life of another man to get a drug dealer to murder her. The police officer shot and killed Esteban because of his race, the convenience store owner kidnapped and threatened Sean because of his race, and the cult refused treatment for a little girl for her illness, brainwashed Daniel, and forced one of their own members, Jacob, to go through conversion "therapy" after they found out he was gay. Even Jed left several miners behind to die, was willing to kill Gabe and could've killed Alex, Ethan (a child), and Ryan (his own son!) to keep his secret had they not been so lucky, and attempted to kill Alex later when she got too close to figuring him out. Then, in DE, Lucas... plagiarized a book. He plagiarized it from a student, which I'm sure he knew would upset her, but also which he likely had no way of knowing it would actually lead her to suicide. And then Yasmin covered it up for no reason, and Vinh went with it because he desperately needed a job and didn't even know the full truth. And yes, plagiarism is bad; I'm not arguing with that. But compared to the atrocities of previous LIS villains (even compared to some characters who didn't end up being the main villains: David was still fucked up for abusing Chloe and putting security cameras everywhere, Victoria was still in the wrong for nearly pushing Kate to commit suicide and bullying other students, Eliot sexually harassed Chloe and physically threatened her, Mac physically attacked Gabe and blamed him for his own insecurity, etc.), it just doesn't compare. The reason I like previous games so much is because they present the player with all the horrors in the world and force the player to stare them in the face. It forces the player to empathize with the victims, see why and how such horrible things happen in the real world through a piece of fiction, and asks the question: what would you do? LIS has never been a liberal utopia, and that's the point. Without talking about or showing the world's problems, how can you criticize them? And how can you begin to fix them? Personally, as a hardcore leftist, I don't want LIS to take place in this hippie world. I want it to be as fucked up as ever, with actual criticisms of actual sociopolitical issues. I want LIS to discuss these issues in all their atrocity because ignoring them and living in a fantasy world won't make them go away. To be clear, yes, there were some good parts to DE. I liked Moses and Gwen a lot, and Safi could've reflected Max's own journey in LIS1 if D9 had focused on her character growth rather than the origin of a supervillain that comes out of left field. The plot twists at the ends of episodes 2 and 3 were done pretty well, and at least for the most part (random sexual innuendos and OOC comments about Chloe and Warren aside), Max felt like herself. But overall, DE just felt like a copy of LIS1 without any of the same underlying themes. It's a hipster small town murder mystery with 2 love interests (1 female and 1 male), a character who dies in the 1st episode but is then revived, a villain reveal at the end of ep4 (Yasmin), a nightmare sequence in ep5 (on a side note-that was real? What was that all about??), a crazy best friend, a missing girl, the storm, and of course, a superpowered Max. But none of these things were ever at the heart of LIS. Instead of Chloe, a complex character with good and bad traits who goes through her own character arc to become a more selfless person, the game forces Safi onto you- a confusing character whose character arc is cut off in favor of turning her into a Marvel supervillain. Then, the only downsides to Safi and Max's powers were the storm and the university-wide possession which both just disappear once the plot no longer requires them. Instead of a gripping conflict between ethics and family, DE is a boring, pointless game that puts way too much emphasis on the powers and way too little on the characters. Honestly, I'm pretty nihilistic as to what the next sequel will entail.
Omg this video deserves more views!
Damn you REALLY hate Chloe. Can't relate but I respect it 😂
Also I never touched the Remastered version and it looks craazy. I understand why Max is so snatched in Double Exposure now.
As for life is strange 1. I agree with you on the dark tone and I loved it. The heavy borrowing of Twin peaks trope and setup really gave it a unique style. My only problem about this game like many, is the undoing of all of your choices as Max by the end with the dreaded Bay over Bae ending. It's a whole game based on the butterfly effect but aside from that rushed nightmare sequence it seems like most of your choices won't matter much once the credits start rolling. Don't get me wrong. It is tonally coherent. It's a lesson to max, It teaches her to live by her decisions in life. Her power matches her personality, always second guessing herself which also mirrors what a first time player might want too. That's why believe Deck Nine didn't get the memo on many of the themes of the first game but keep rethreading the major narative beats of this first game without thoroughly understanding their meaning in the context of this first game. Which is exactly why every Deck Nine game feel so derivative. Weak and lazy. True colors clearly borrowed a lot from Don'tNod's ideas from their previous and future games including twin mirror (surprisingly). But they still don't understand the why things are how they are.
I think the video does a perfect job explaining what LiS1's other choices were for, even if they "didn't matter." But fully agreed about True Colors. And Alex's power has huge moral/ethic questions that they failed to explore.
I bow down to this take. In fact, I hesitate to even call it a take because it's mostly just the Truth!
Sorry if I slurred my words in the video. I am a French speaker and my English is not fluent.
Also, I'm poor and can't afford a good mic.
As a native English speaker you did fine, quite honestly you speak better English than most Americans lol.
Edit: btw 73% of people chose Chloe if I remember right but Chloe is a god tier character no matter the pov you take.
@@justsomeguy9700 thank you! Much appreciated
@@Yannickispoor ofc, I didn't even hear a French accent tbh but that might be the diversity of culture in my area
Tu rigoles j'espère. Juste respire et ralentis tout ira bien. T'es génial continues.
@@justsomeguy9700That's in the remastered version. In the original 48% of players chose to save Chloe
Don’t nod are extremely good at telling stories and most of the gameplay is focused on relationship building and repairing that someone you haven’t seen in forever. D9 are more into gameplay than story, as referenced in tc. They’re more ‘fun’ you could say. De was just a massive failure to d9’s business and it shows cuz of reviews on steam. Lis 1 will never die and will go on til new fans find it. It was kinda funny how you absolutely ripped into Chloe despite not understanding her issues. Which is fine I respect it I don’t hate Chloe cuz I understand her the most. Lis 2 was terrible and boring bcuz of the pacing and overall character building or relationship even. There were good parts and just very boring, especially the end part. I loved Alex from tc, prolly bcuz of her personality and traits.
Life Is Gay
Personally, I prefer Deck Nine over Dontnod. Dontnod's understanding of tone and genre have always been their saving grace, but their inability to put together an actual _fun_ game will always be their Achilles heel. Deck Nine on the other hand seems more focused on creating an actual videogame intent on making the player think and participate than simply telling a story. Honestly, Dontnod should be making films instead of games. From a developer's perspective, Life is Strange 1 & 2 are filled with so many bad choices that would make most industry writers faint.
The switch from telling a thematic story to a strict murder mystery might rub some people the wrong way, but as a _videogame,_ it was the only choice. Life is Strange 2 proved that the vast majority of people aren't gonna shell out the money to pay for 12 hour interactive movie with little to no engaging gameplay.
Note: holy shit I wrote a lot. Be warned. Also: this contains spoilers for all games.
Edit: this is part 1 - I had to put part 2 in a comment bc RUclips was being annoying
Even BTS got the essence of LIS way better than TC or DE. Chloe's relationship with Rachel was toxic but beautiful, and like LIS1, you could break apart the deuteragonist's secret-keeping, toxic family. Although BTS didn’t have powers, I think the game still worked because LIS was never really about the powers in the first place - they were only ever used as a storytelling tool. And no, the game wasn't perfect - it copied LIS1 a little too closely and didn’t have the same choices between the world and the 1 person the protagonist cared about most - but it didn’t shy away from LIS's darker themes (kidnapping, drug abuse, toxic relationships, physical violence, how young girls get taken advantage of, etc.) and managed to show the nuances of relationships and how far people are willing to go for love.
TC is where the series began to go downhill imo, but I also don’t think it was a bad game. It still had some dark themes (corruption, family trauma, environmental destruction, and mental illness), but it didn’t go far enough in its criticism. The closest it had to a toxic relationship was Alex's relationship with her long-dead parents which the game forces you to interpret one way and which she always heals from in the end. Speaking of the end, the choice between staying or leaving is way too hopeful and hardly has any downsides compared to the last choices in all 3 of the previous games. The decision to either forgive or not forgive Jed seemed like way more of an interesting final choice, but it went nowhere. At least with that one, you could choose to keep a grudge for the sake of Gabe, or you could be "the bigger person" and forgive. That at least would've had the same theme of clinging onto the person most important in your life or deciding to move on. But again, this choice went nowhere, and there was no foreshadowing in previous choices.
Another issue I have with TC is the powers. In LIS1 and 2, powers have major downsides. Max's causes the tornado that wipes out Arcadia Bay, and Daniel loses control and endangers the people around him. Although Alex's powers start as a problem with her carrying all the negative emotions of the people around her and lashing out as a consequence, later that problem just kinda... disappears. Alex becomes the superhero and gets to live the dream life of her choice.
And don’t get me wrong, I don't think TC was a horrible game by any means, even with its issues. My main problem with it is that it shouldn't have been a Life is Strange game. Although LIS2 focused on a largely different cast of characters, it still had the same themes and similar choices. TC just didn't.
(Also I have to recommend the spinoff book *Life is Strange: Steph's Story,* because I think it does way more justice to the series than TC. It focuses on Steph's toxic, codependent relationship with her ex - then girlfriend - Izzie, and delves into the effects the storm had on the few survivors. It features some beloved characters from the spinoff comics and delves into the main conflict of LIS: to choose between the 1 person in the world most important to you or letting them go, also freeing yourself from their toxicity. It's really good and hella underrated.)
Alas, then we get to DE... and oh boy. I don't even know where to start on this one.
Unlike TC, which I think was generally a good game but shouldn't have been in the series, I don't even think DE is a good game. It's full of plot holes, the characters are overwhelmingly shallow, the plot was confusing as hell, and of course, no decisions from the other games mattered in any meaningful way. All the genuinely interesting plot points in episodes 2 and 3 were dropped in the later chapters for a confusing Avengers x LIS1 ripoff, completely missing the point of LIS. As I said earlier, powers were never the focal point of LIS. The whole point is that there aren't heroes or villains (or at least, very few)- just a bunch of flawed humans who do flawed things. While there are certain sections that require making the "right" choices (preventing Kate from committing suicide, the backtalk scenes in BTS, being honest to get more money from Esteban, etc.), overall most of the choices have no right answer. Trying to shoot Frank would make Chloe happy and prevent him from taking the gun, but it also makes later dialogue with him more difficult. Telling Rachel the truth about her father (can) allow her to meet her real mom, but it also ruins their relationship forever. Teaching Daniel to play by the rules results in less harm to others, but also results in Sean and Daniel breaking apart. On the other hand, the choices in DE don't have that complexity (and for that matter, neither do many of the decisions in TC). Refusing Alderman will result in Moses trusting Max more, and nothing between Max and Alderman will change. Telling Safi to go on stage as herself has no negative consequences. Rushing Safi or talking her down both result in Yasmin getting shot. Nearly all the choices either lead to the same conclusion or have clear good and bad outcomes. There is no nuance, and it makes replays pointless. Why go back and make the wrong decisions if they will only make your life harder without any benefit? Why play the game at all if it'll always end the same? The choices are black and white or meaningless, Max is the hero and Safi is the villain, Moses is your unproblematic friend, and Lucas is a piece of shit. Not to mention we never even learn why characters do the things they do. Why did Yasmin cover up Lucas' plagiarism? Why did Gwen cancel Safi's book deal? How was Gwen the one to cancel her book deal if it was actually Yasmin? What caused the storm? Why did the timelines combine? How did Max shoot Safi in the original timeline if we never see her do so? Where did Alderman go? Why did Lucas even plagiarize in the first place? WHAT IS GOING ON?!
And of course, we have the antagonists. The way Jefferson and Jed's true intentions were revealed was dramatic and intense. Both were major reveals with enough foreshadowing to catch on replays but not too much as (for most people) to suspect them beforehand. The moment the camera shows Jefferson's face or the moment you realize Jed's true intentions are shocking. And to add on to those crazy moments, both the character's lives are at stake, with Max having just been drugged causing her time travel powers to fail and Alex nearly getting shot and falling down the mineshaft. But in DE, it's like, "y'know that guy who's already on the suspect list and acts incredibly fishy? Yeah, turns out he plagiarized Maya's book." Maya, a knockoff Rachel Amber we never get invested in because nobody cares about her except Safi who only mentions her over halfway through the story. Oh, and get this: the way you find out? Not by a dramatic reveal of Lucas putting Max's life at stake or killing Safi- no, it's by READING 1 FUCKING SHEET OF PAPER. Talk about anticlimactic.
To D9's credit, I do think they tried to write a story about a toxic, codependent relationship (between Max and Safi), but Safi just ended up as a villainized, underdeveloped, less interesting, more confusing copy of Chloe. A couple choices reflect choosing between Safi or the university, like keeping Lucas' secret he's filing a restraining order or telling Safi, but most don't, and those that do feel off because you're just choosing between villains. Safi is also a character who's already incredibly hard to empathize with, her being secretive about her powers, her revenge tour that hurt innocent people, and her literally shooting her mom. Her humanity- her grief over Maya's death, the way she begs for Max to kill her after she hurts people and realizes what she's done, how she struggles to find herself since she's spent so much time pretending to be other people to play the roles those around her want her to be- all of that is ripped from her in favor of a supervillain arc. A supervillain arc that goes nowhere because the ending is always the same.
And we can't talk about DE without talking about its dark themes... or the lack of them. The main conflict - covering up a professor's plagiarism - is nowhere near as horrific of an act as previous games' villains. I mean, Mr. Jefferson drugged girls, took vulnerable pictures of them in a creepy bunker, and then killed them or drove them to suicide. James Amber kidnapped a woman and was planning to ruin the life of another man to get a drug dealer to murder her. The police officer shot and killed Esteban because of his race, the convenience store owner kidnapped and threatened Sean because of his race, and the cult refused treatment for a little girl for her illness, brainwashed Daniel, and forced one of their own members, Jacob, to go through conversion "therapy" after they found out he was gay. Even Jed left several miners behind to die, was willing to kill Gabe and could've killed Alex, Ethan (a child), and Ryan (his own son!) to keep his secret had they not been so lucky, and attempted to kill Alex later when she got too close to figuring him out. Then, in DE, Lucas... plagiarized a book. He plagiarized it from a student, which I'm sure he knew would upset her, but also which he likely had no way of knowing it would actually lead her to suicide. And then Yasmin covered it up for no reason, and Vinh went with it because he desperately needed a job and didn't even know the full truth. And yes, plagiarism is bad; I'm not arguing with that. But compared to the atrocities of previous LIS villains (even compared to some characters who didn't end up being the main villains: David was still fucked up for abusing Chloe and putting security cameras everywhere, Victoria was still in the wrong for nearly pushing Kate to commit suicide and bullying other students, Eliot sexually harassed Chloe and physically threatened her, Mac physically attacked Gabe and blamed him for his own insecurity, etc.), it just doesn't compare. The reason I like previous games so much is because they present the player with all the horrors in the world and force the player to stare them in the face. It forces the player to empathize with the victims, see why and how such horrible things happen in the real world through a piece of fiction, and asks the question: what would you do? LIS has never been a liberal utopia, and that's the point. Without talking about or showing the world's problems, how can you criticize them? And how can you begin to fix them? Personally, as a hardcore leftist, I don't want LIS to take place in this hippie world. I want it to be as fucked up as ever, with actual criticisms of actual sociopolitical issues. I want LIS to discuss these issues in all their atrocity because ignoring them and living in a fantasy world won't make them go away.
To be clear, yes, there were some good parts to DE. I liked Moses and Gwen a lot, and Safi could've reflected Max's own journey in LIS1 if D9 had focused on her character growth rather than the origin of a supervillain that comes out of left field. The plot twists at the ends of episodes 2 and 3 were done pretty well, and at least for the most part (random sexual innuendos and OOC comments about Chloe and Warren aside), Max felt like herself. But overall, DE just felt like a copy of LIS1 without any of the same underlying themes. It's a hipster small town murder mystery with 2 love interests (1 female and 1 male), a character who dies in the 1st episode but is then revived, a villain reveal at the end of ep4 (Yasmin), a nightmare sequence in ep5 (on a side note-that was real? What was that all about??), a crazy best friend, a missing girl, the storm, and of course, a superpowered Max. But none of these things were ever at the heart of LIS. Instead of Chloe, a complex character with good and bad traits who goes through her own character arc to become a more selfless person, the game forces Safi onto you- a confusing character whose character arc is cut off in favor of turning her into a Marvel supervillain. Then, the only downsides to Safi and Max's powers were the storm and the university-wide possession which both just disappear once the plot no longer requires them. Instead of a gripping conflict between ethics and family, DE is a boring, pointless game that puts way too much emphasis on the powers and way too little on the characters. Honestly, I'm pretty nihilistic as to what the next sequel will entail.