With the overwhelming success of Telltale Games’ many franchise-based games (The Walking Dead, The Wolf Among Us, Minecraft: Story Mode, etc.) and the rising popularity of titles like Firewatch, Night in the Woods, and Gone Home, the narrative-driven adventure game that was once popular in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s has found a comfortable home in the present. At the heart of this renaissance is Dontnod’s Life Is Strange, a game that was lauded by critics for its compelling characters and skillful exploration of issues like cyberbullying, neglectful parenting, and suicide. After releasing an excellent free demo prequel, The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit, in June, Dontnod is gearing up to release Life Is Strange 2 later this month.
Michel Koch, Life Is Strange 2’s co-game and art director, explained that the Dontnod team intended to take a similar approach to navigating difficult subject matter while writing and developing the sequel. “[Our goal is] to talk about relatable characters that are facing real-life issues,” Koch said.
The first Life Is Strange follows Max, a freshman in college, as she investigates the disappearance of a fellow student and reunites with a childhood friend; The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit follows Chris, a young boy who struggles with being the child of an alcoholic, abusive father. Life Is Strange 2, on the other hand, will follow Sean and Daniel Diaz — two brothers aged 16 and nine respectively — as they flee Seattle and head towards Mexico following a violent confrontation that happens in their front yard.
Their relationship will set the stage for the thematic issues that will recur throughout the game. Though the first Life Is Strange can be interpreted as a coming-of-age story, Koch explains that Sean and Daniel’s story will be more than that. “[While] Life Is Strange 2 has the coming-of-age [theme] as a part of the main story, it’s more a story about education where you have Sean...who is in charge of educating his younger brother, Daniel,” Koch said. Dontnod excels at writing nuanced and revealing relationships between its primary characters — Max and Chloe, Chris and his father — so players can expect the same emotional depth in Sean and Daniel’s brotherhood.
Unlike the first Life Is Strange and The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit, which both took place in contained environments — the small town of Arcadia Bay and Chris’ household, respectively — Life Is Strange 2’s characters will be traveling a lot. The story conforms to what Koch describes as a “road trip structure,” a linear mode of storytelling that allowed Dontnod to grant new characters shorter cameos and spend more time exploring the diverse cultural makeup of the West Coast. “Traveling from Seattle to Mexico is a long journey where you can cross the real world and four different states in the United States, which allowed us to talk about a lot of different places and different social issues, because all of those different states have also different rules,” Koch said.
Lastly, this is a Life Is Strange game, so encounters with the supernatural are sure to bear a heavy influence on the story as well. Life Is Strange’s Max realizes that she can reverse time; The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit’s Chris discovers that his imagined superpowers are more real than he might’ve thought. New powers will debut in Life Is Strange 2, though Koch was wary of revealing too much of his hand. “The supernatural elements, the powers, are basically a part of the DNA [of Life Is Strange],” Koch said. “I cannot say much about Life Is Strange 2, but there are definitely supernatural elements...that will have an impact on the story setting for Sean and Daniel.”
If you haven’t played a Life Is Strange game before, The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit is a good place to start — it’s free to play as a downloadable “demo” of Life Is Strange 2 (though the game works wonderfully as its own self-contained vignette). Koch assured that actions each player takes in The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit will also have visible consequences on their story in Life Is Strange 2.
Life Is Strange 2 will be released Sept. 27 on PC and is available to download.