For a top-line, absolutely no spoilery bit of guidance as to whether you might enjoy Life is Strange 2: Episode 1, it’s as follows: If you enjoyed the first season or the Captain Spirit mini-sode, you will be right at home. If you did not, it’s far more of a gamble and depends on why those games didn’t appeal to you. 

The tone, the story, and the cast of characters are different to season 1 so if Chloe and Max specifically weren’t your cup of tea it’s worth trying again. If the storytelling systems, the basic setup of teens and supernatural phenomena or the aesthetic rubbed you the wrong way, then it’s a far harder recommendation, particularly with the addition of a frustrating and lengthy sketching minigame. 

If you haven’t played any of Life is Strange or its spin-offs, I’d say it’s worth downloading either Life is Strange 1: Episode 1 or The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit. Both are set in the same universe and both are free, so you can get a sense of how the story choices and light puzzling work. Of the two, Captain Spirit gives you a better sense of the mood this season as brothers Sean and Daniel Diaz venture far from home.

I’ll dig a bit deeper to unpack those points, not giving spoilers per se, but the following is stuff to avoid if you want to go in truly knowing next to nothing and if you haven’t watched the “Seattle” scene the devs put out recently. 

The game’s main themes are ostensibly brotherhood and caretaking/caregiving. Sean finds himself needing to look after his little brother as they head south from Seattle with only the barest provisions. The choices you make not only shape the character of Sean and his story, but they have knock-on effects on Daniel. 

But given this is only the first episode, any far-reaching consequences from the first leg of your journey are a way off. Instead, though taking care of Daniel (and Sean) formed the bulk of the experience, episode 1 was perhaps most notable for its current political concerns.

Life is Strange season 1 often felt like it could have taken place at any point from the early '90s to the present day. There was a slightly unreal, Instagrammy nostalgia to its high school drama, despite the modern tech and social media platforms. I’ve talked elsewhere about how reminiscent it was of various types of fanfiction and original fiction (and I don’t mean that as a slight—it’s a fascinating community of writers finding their feet and finding themselves so it can be particularly apt for teen stories). 

Life is Strange: Before the Storm was set earlier still and offered up another round of familiar flashpoints for teen activity—a school play, for example, or a rowdy gig at an abandoned sawmill.

But season 2, at least as far as episode 1 reveals, is resolutely anchored to the present. It has some of the familiar Instagram filter aesthetic touches, and sometimes ventures into teen fiction tropes—most notably using the main character, Sean Diaz’s ability to draw, as shorthand for the character being sensitive and creative. But the broader themes are topical and overtly referenced—this is a game which takes on systemic and individual racism, includes references to Trump’s wall, and whose catalyst for action is racial profiling and police brutality.

Episode 1 currently exists in a vacuum so it’s impossible to know how the game will navigate those waters over the course of a season. I’m cautiously excited to see a developer tackle the subject and to begin with a strongly sympathetic portrayal of the boys at the centre of the drama. 

But I also remember that although I loved season 1, it definitely hit some duff notes and sometimes felt like it was forcing the player towards particular emotions by leaning hard on melodrama. That makes me a little wary as to what’s to come (even though I don’t doubt the studio’s sincerity). I’m therefore keen to read other perspectives on how these themes are handled, not least because Dontnod is a French rather than American studio. I’d want to know from other people whether it rings true or whether it throws up problems I haven’t considered. I’d also like to play a couple more times to figure out how much I like the balance of predetermined events and personal choice.

Broadly, though? The awful sketching minigame aside (seriously, I had to switch to a controller for those segments to even work, waggling the left stick around for minutes on end to reveal a drawing), it’s a confident opening episode with protagonists it’s easy to root for. 

Welcome to the latest guest article from Edge on PC Gamer, where we occasionally feature PC gaming-related articles from the long-running magazine's recent history. This was originally published in Edge 312 in October 2017, and is republished here with the Edge team's permission.  

The opening credits of Life Is Strange see Max Caulfield put in her earbuds as she walks Blackwell Academy’s corridors. She is soundtracking her life (we’ve all done it at some point), the star of her own show. And the thing about being a teenager is that you’re absolutely, devastatingly certain that the entire universe really does revolve around you. It’s not a selfish thought – not even a conscious one. You’re convinced that everything you say or do carries enormous cosmic weight. Make a mistake, and it’s the end of the world. In Max’s case, that melodramatic statement has a particular ring of truth to it.

Dontnod’s affecting tale tapped into that self-consciousness and wove it into a videogame mechanic. While the studio had played with the idea of time travel and manipulation before, in its debut game Remember Me, it found the perfect setting in Life Is Strange. After a scuffle with a bully in a bathroom leaves her former best friend Chloe Price bleeding out on the tiles, the traumatic event triggers a change in Max: she finds herself suddenly able to rewind time. Preventing Chloe’s death is, obviously, her first act, and a heroic one. Over the course of five episodes, this new ability and its applications mean Max’s story builds from teen drama to apocalyptic horror. But Max’s power also, wonderfully, becomes a much more quotidian part of her life. Regret and perfectionism are both distinctly teenage and videogamey concepts. Imagine, as an 18-year-old, you were suddenly given the power to redo almost anything at will – every embarrassing situation, every awkward conversation. Of course you would take the opportunity to min-max adolescence. 

For Max, it’s about reducing her percentage chance of total social mortification: if she is mocked by a bully, it’s easy enough to hit rewind and steer the conversation in a less humiliating direction. For us, it is at least partly about the promise of a ‘good’ ending, the implication now packaged in with every game involving branching narrative and dialogue choices. Make an effort to cheer up Max’s struggling friend, selecting, rewinding and re-selecting options until satisfied with your level of control over the situation, and the secret expectation is that you will be rewarded for your philanthropy somewhere down the line. A situation in the very first episode calls more pointed attention to the fuzzy morality of Max’s fun new power. Taking a closer look at a classmate’s binned pregnancy test sees her caught red-handed by its furious owner. Respecting Dana’s privacy by not looking doesn’t get you in trouble. But you can rewind time after having already nosed your way into her affairs, meaning you’re still in the know and nobody’s any the wiser. You’re even rewarded for it later: your illicit info allows you to carefully broach the subject and Dana praises Max’s remarkable intuition, confiding in her. A regular chronokinetic Mother Theresa, our Max.

And in case the butterflies everywhere – bathrooms, Max’s journal, UI prompts reminding you that your actions will have consequences – weren’t a dead giveaway, these choices resonate. The little things web, like cracks in glass, into bigger pictures. That all-important rescue of Chloe gives rise to the main thrust of Life Is Strange: Max and Chloe’s friendship revived around the supernatural happenstance, and strengthened by their investigations into missing Arcadia Bay resident Rachel Amber. But mini-arcs set in motion develop and offer more choices and changes in the world as time goes on. Arcadia Bay and its denizens feel alive, despite iffy lip-syncing and some instances of questionable dialogue, because of the little things. Accidentally break a snowglobe in episode one, and it can still be seen, sad and smashed, in episode three. Choose to tamper with train tracks later – one of several ways to rescue the perpetually unfortunate Chloe – and a tourist you bump into in the next episode laments being stuck in town because of it. Graffitiing a wall, tampering with a guest list, signing an anti-surveillance petition: all of it affects Max’s home in subtle but visible ways, and all of it makes Arcadia Bay feel like the small town it is supposed to be. So do the moments in which you’re not really doing anything. The sleepy seaside locale is filled with opportunities to watch the world go by – to reflect upon the choices you’ve made thus far, and how they might unfold. Getting up from a convenient seat must be done with the press of a button, so flocks of swallows, Max’s inner thoughts and an atmospheric soundtrack often provide nebulous enough reasons not to, at least for a little while. Sitting on a bench outside the dormitories where squirrels play; laying on Chloe’s bed in the cold morning light to hear the full length of a song; perching on packing boxes and watching dust dance in an empty room full of memories. Few games offer this kind of contemplative downtime, and even fewer in this much style. 

These are not deep internal monologues about whether Max should have had the waffles instead of the pancakes, mind you. Early on in Max’s story, a vulnerable friend of hers attempts suicide. Having frittered away much of your time-bending stamina – the limitations of which, admittedly, never really make sense – on experimental stunts, as teenagers and videogame players are wont to do, you’re unable to stop her using Max’s powers. How convincing your argument for her life is depends on how much attention you’ve been paying to her while hammering those ‘good ending’ platitudes. And there’s no fail-safe: screw it up, and she dies. Her presence is erased from the ongoing story. Candles and flowers appear at her dorm room door. It is, effectively, your fault. Many assumed the outcome was a single, preordained result until they were shown the percentage split of player decisions at the end of the episode. The fact that you’re able to prevent the worst outcome means that if it happens, it is all the more shameful. 

Sometimes, Life Is Strange seems to suggest at this point, there is a right thing to say. Perhaps it is a kind of problematic fuel for the rest of the playthrough, in which your socially anxious efforts to keep everyone happy are reframed and redoubled – then thwarted by several rug-pull moments where it becomes increasingly clear that there is no correct answer, no matter how many times Max hits rewind. Exploring all the available paths of certain conversations often results in realising you must simply pick between two less-than-ideal outcomes, each with unknown and far-reaching repercussions. Meanwhile, a supposedly superhero moment in episode three prompts a heartbreaking twist that, again, holds Max and her powers accountable for her well-meaning meddling. Although the decision it leads to ultimately doesn’t matter – the timelines converge again regardless of your actions – it still feels like it means everything. In the grand scheme of things, it does. Chloe’s card is irrevocably marked, and the more you try to scrub that mark away, the more you realise Max’s superhuman efforts to save her best friend – or, according to your decisions, lover – are ripping apart Arcadia Bay. All that teen angst and timeline-tinkering has somehow manifested a very real tornado. Meanwhile, there’s only one, awful timeline in which the book on Rachel Amber’s disappearance can be meaningfully closed.

Everything leads up to this choice-based, time-bending game’s knowingly contradictory message: don’t mess with fate. While it is subtler in the early episodes, episode five’s nightmare sequence hammers it home. Here, a truly ‘no win’ dialogue choice is masterfully unsettling, as is the bluntness with which Max’s doppelganger addresses her doe-eyed original and the player’s motivations in one fell swoop. “Thought you could control everybody and everything, huh?” she mocks. “I only wanted to do the right thing,” you might reply. “No, you only wanted to be popular,” retorts the other Max. “Your big plan was to trick people into thinking you give a rat’s ass.” Life Is Strange’s greatest achievement is that despite their cringeworthy memespeak and wooden facial expressions, by the story’s end, you do care about the residents of Arcadia Bay. It makes the inevitable final decision you must make, faced with a cataclysmic storm and the realisation that you may have done more harm than good, all the more difficult.

But if you’ve been paying attention, there is only one choice to be made. It is borne out by its ending – a beautifully scored, lengthy and sentimental sequence. The alternative, meanwhile, is a hurried consolation prize whose very existence seems to undermine what Life Is Strange has been trying to say for five episodes. There’s a sense that Dontnod felt pressured to provide players with the level of immersive agency to which they have grown so accustomed, despite its game making an occasionally flawed but often rather elegant meta-case against altering a narrative according to one’s wants and whims. It’s a shame, then, that it couldn’t find the strength to make its final point a mandatory one. But provided players are mature enough to bear out a wonderfully introspective arc to its logical conclusion, Life Is Strange is one of gaming’s greatest coming-of-age stories, no matter how old you are. The quintessential teenage epiphany is once again posited to the modern, Telltale-coddled player of choice-based games: perhaps the whole world doesn’t revolve around you, after all. 

After a few weeks of teasing, today Life is Strange developer Dontnod released a proper reveal trailer for the long-awaited follow-up Life is Strange 2. The trailer (above) focuses on protagonists Sean and Daniel Diaz, 16- and 9-year-old brothers respectively, who head to Mexico after fleeing their home in Seattle. 

"The game will this time focus on brotherhood alongside the need to guide and educate your younger brother whilst simultaneously coming of age yourself," Dontnod said in a blog post. "As with previous games in the series, Life is Strange 2 will tackle a host of issues that all of us can identify with and that will cause moral dilemmas and require much soul searching. These themes come together most powerfully in the way Daniel will develop depending on the lessons you teach him and the role model you decide to be." 

Life is Strange 2 will feature "an entirely new cast of characters," "numerous new settings," and "a new original soundtrack" by French composer Jonathan Morali, who scored the original game. Dontnod also mentioned "a sudden and mysterious supernatural power" connected to the incident that drove the Diaz brothers from their home. You can get another glimpse at the incident in the teaser trailer released earlier this month: 

Life is Strange 2 will be released in five episodes. The first episode will be out on September 27. In the meantime, you can play The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit, a short free teaser which adds context to the latest trailer.  

Life is Strange 2 will land in September, said Andy in the wake of E3. Back then, a 20-second teaser showed off some nice music, a launch date—September 27—and a old, battered rucksack. The latest short shows a wee bit more than that. But not by much. 

Have a gander:

Aggressive superpowers, Officer Matthews, and an incident at Lewis Avenue. What could it all mean?  

"We are almost ready to share the details on the next step in the award-winning Life is Strange series: an incredible new 5-episode story from original Life is Strange developers, Dontnod Entertainment," explains publisher Square Enix in an email. "We’re excited to tell you that we will be revealing Life is Strange 2 to the world on August 20th, right before Gamescom begins."

And so we wait till the 20th, then. In the meantime, read Pip's words on its The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit sandwich chapter. 

Back in my day (where we navigated the world using a paper booklet called an A-Z and dinosaurs roamed free), The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit would have been a disc demo nestled on the front of our magazine. These days it’s a free download over on Steam and acts as an interactive teaser/mini episode to draw you in for Life is Strange 2. 

Captain Spirit is the alter-ego of 10-year-old Chris. Chris lives with his dad and loves the world of superheroes and supervillains. It’s both a playspace and a respite from the scarier or more difficult elements of his life, like dealing with the impact of his father’s drinking.

I can’t speak to how realistically Dontnod have explored that strand of childhood trauma. Instead I’m evaluating the experience as someone looking to lose themselves in another person’s story, exploring their world.

Captain Spirit plays similarly to the original Life is Strange in that you walk around the 3D environments and choose how to interact with various objects. There is some light puzzling where you can find keys to unlock doors or set up a play scene in the garden to act out a superhero encounter. 

Both the presentation and references planted around the world tie Chris’s experience to the broader Live Is Strange-iverse. You’ve got the indie folk soundtrack and clusters of slow-panning establishing shots which build a similar mood to the earlier game, and then there are mentions of Blackwell Academy and of teens who hop on freight trains to more directly reference the preceding games. But, those moments aside, Captain Spirit tells its own story, and it’s one which feels very hit and miss. 

Watching Chris play with toys—particularly when he’s talking to a teddy dressed as a superhero sidekick via walkie talkie—is charming. The game also sometimes lets you press E to perform an action in character as Captain Spirit so the imaginary world and the real one bleed into each other in a small but meaningful way—I was reminded that I still pretend I’m a basketball player when I dunk balled-up waste paper into the bin and celebrate accordingly.

Chris’s father’s drinking affects pretty much every aspect of the experience. Sometimes it’s achingly sad and effective. Generally these were moments where the devs used a lighter touch like the ability to play Chris as a kid who takes on household tasks because his father can’t. The game also sets up a sense of menace and of unpredictability in the house which meant getting Chris to play one of his mother’s records felt like a real gamble in terms of whether it would lead to a confrontation with his dad. 

But other options feel like they come from an adult directing the action and not a vulnerable and resourceful kid. The game also tends to be heavy-handed when it wants to provoke emotion. Take the basic setup for example: it’s the Saturday before Christmas and Chris’s dad has absolutely pinky-promised they will go out and get a real pine tree. 

A child dealing with a heavy-drinking parent at Christmas is low-hanging emotional fruit, so the supporting fiction needs to work hard to “earn” or contextualise that emotion instead of piggybacking off it. Without getting into spoilers, I’d say it’s only partially successful in that. 

The game is capable of provoking anxiety or empathy, but it often tips into mawkish territory. This is a problem which marred several episodes of Life is Strange, so it’s not a surprise. But Captain Spirit has far less time to cultivate relationships with the characters; it’s easy to feel overtly manipulated, and harder to overlook abrasions. 

There’s one last caveat here which relates to my experience of the first Life Is Strange. Part of the appeal of Life is Strange was the personal resonance of the story of Max and Chloe. They were important to me in a way that was never dimmed by the game’s flaws. That wasn’t true of Captain Spirit for me, but players with a stronger affinity for the story of Chris and his dad will likely be less irked by the elements which left me cold. 

Square Enix announced today that episode 1 of Life is Strange 2, the sequel to the five-part adventure that, like life itself, is messy and uneven but still kind of brilliant, will be out on September 27.

Almost nothing is known about the new game, including where (and when) it's set and who will be in it. The Life is Strange website still features the Deck Nine-developed Before the Storm prequel, and there's no Life is Strange 2 listing as yet on Steam. Square Enix did confirm that the PC release will be coming along with the console versions, however. 

One thing we do know is that the game will be connected to The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit, a demo set in the same universe "that contains links to the brand new story and characters of Life is Strange 2." That's coming on out June 26, and will be free.   

Dontnod said on Twitter that more information about Life is Strange 2 will be revealed in August. If I had to guess (and I do), I would expect that to come during Gamescom, Europe's big game show, which runs August 21-25 in Cologne, Germany. 

Dontnod, the French indie studio behind Life is Strange and upcoming vampire RPG Vampyr, is working on multiple unannounced games, according to a report from French site Le Figaro. 

The report (translated by a ResetEra user) says Dontnod is working on one unannounced title and in talks with "a leading industry publisher" about two more. In other words, one game is in development, and the studio has two other game ideas seeking publisher backing. Take that with a grain of salt, though; game ideas die on the vine all the time, so there's no guarantee they'll actually be made. I've reached out to Dontnod for clarification and will update this story if I receive a reply. 

The report also mentions the narrative adventure game Dontnod teased last year, which Bandai Namco is publishing. As previously reported, the unnamed game will be set in a fictional US city and focus on investigation. Dontnod said more details will be provided this year, so it's possible we'll hear more about these alleged mystery projects at the same time. 

One thing we know for sure is that Dontnod's next game, Vampyr, finally has a firm release date: June 5. The studio has paved the way to its long-awaited launch with a series of in-depth dev diaries, and more recently a blood-soaked trailer.  

Literature’s had a pretty good run, much of it without any fancy graphics and animations and particle effects to bolster the words. Games love text too. Text is cheap. You can paint a picture of galactic chaos or epic history in about the same time it takes to type ‘and then something cool happened’, without having to spend the next week designing armour and creating 3D characters to act it out. Yet despite centuries of practice, most games still haven’t worked out how to present all this (which let’s face it, is often there more for the writers’ satisfaction than our actual enjoyment) in a punchy, satisfying way. What works? What doesn’t? Let’s take a quick look at some of the ways games have handled books, letters, codexes and more. 

Deus Ex: Human Revolution

Even when you don’t affect a world that much, it’s nice when it pretends. News stories are one of the best and cheapest ways to both highlight your achievements, and reframe them in interesting ways, from acts of heroism to outright terrorism. Human Revolution wrapped them in one of the sleekest packages for this—the Picus Daily Standard. At once a chance to see what was taking place out of your sphere, and see the effect of your adventures on the world. While even a few years later, the futuristic look feels distinctly retro compared to iPad news apps, to say nothing of whatever direct-brain interfaces we’ll likely have by the time of Deus Ex’s dark not-too-distant-future, Picus keeps it pretty, keeps it punchy, and above all, keeps it brief. 

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided

Ah, but when it comes to eBooks, things aren’t so smooth. Look at this. Even the original Kindle would wince at these datapad layouts, complete with non-slidable panels, slow refresh rate, poor quality fonts and typography, and non-consistent use of glows. Sure, it’s readable, but it’s hard to imagine anyone wanting to, even before factoring in that in the wasteful future of Deus Ex you apparently need a new device for every Wikipedia entry. The crappy quality of this design only stands out more amongst Mankind Divided’s otherwise superbly rendered future, where everything you encounter seems to have emerged fully formed from the brain of a maverick product genius. This, meanwhile, feels like a first attempt at customising Twine. 

Fallout 4

In the not-too-distant future, who needs books? We’ll have computers! Specifically, ghastly green teletype machines that would be tolerable for simple acts like opening doors, but could be much more of a nightmare if the cast of Five Nights At Freddy’s occasionally popped up for a jump-scare. The horrible font. The clackering of the text. The endless pages that try their best  to tell stories of post-apocalyptic horror, despite being locked in an interface that would make even a hardened wasteland explorer decide that whatever happened probably doesn’t matter that much. Even accounting for the 50s vibe of the rest of the game, these are hideous technological throwbacks that knife their own storytelling in the back. The closest they come to being appropriate to the setting is that in using them, the living definitely envy the dead. 

Skyrim / Ultima

What’s an RPG shelf without a few strangely short books that probably don’t need hundreds of pages and a stiff leather jacket? While RPGs have always been wise enough to realise that most players will accept this deviation from reality, it’s still interesting to look at the differences between these two great franchises. Skyrim for instance clearly assumes that all of Tamriel’s readers are half-blind—or possibly playing on a television screen—leading to very slow-paced tales on glorified flashcards. Ultima meanwhile wanted you to squint. But at least Ultima had the advantage that unless a book was specifically screaming ‘crucial plot element’, it was most likely to be flavour, sparing you tediously flicking through shelves in the hope of finding a boost to one of your skills. At least both franchises keep their tongues firmly in their cheeks, whether it’s The Elder Scrolls’ obsession with the Lusty Argonian Mage, or Ultima’s fine line of joke books, occasional explosive booby-trap pranks, and the revelation that wise Lord British, founder of Britannia’s favourite story is “Hubert the Lion”. Can’t sleep without it, apparently... 

Mass Effect

A controversial one here, perhaps, but Mass Effect is one of the games where the built-in Codex arguably makes the world less enjoyable. The game does a fantastic job of introducing everything that’s actually important without relying on it as a crutch, with the dry writing and endless unlockable pages of SF guff coming across as homework rather than a gripping read. Do we really need to know, for example, the origins of every last whiffle-bolt supplier on the Citadel? No. It’s just not that important. Save it for the design bible and tie-in books.

While there are a few interesting flourishes, including Codex entries based on what the universe thinks rather than necessarily the actual truth, the Hitch-Hiker’s Guide To The Galaxy it is not. And ironically, it shows the difference itself, in the form of Mass Effect 2’s fantastic Shadow Broker DLC and the unlockable files within, which actually do give you a chance to peer at your party’s dirty little secrets. Jack’s secret love of poetry. Miranda’s online dating life. Tali’s repeated installation of a suit tool called ‘Nerve Stim Pro’. Oh, the blackmail opportunities...

Dishonored 2

Dishonored is a great example of how just a little thing can really annoy. Its text isn’t difficult to read, the font is pretty well chosen, if not exactly conveying the sense of a written document in the same way as many other games with this level of texture and detail, but does it really have to sway back and forth while you’re reading? There’s a time for ambient animation to breathe life into a scene, and a time to make the player feel slightly sea-sick. No. Scratch that. True for the first, not so much for the second. Swish… swish… it’s an effect applied to all the menus and other data screens and really contributes to making reading the lore an unpleasant experience. A shame, because that lore is actually interesting. Dunwall and Karnaca are two of gaming’s best cities, and their depth and backstory is fascinating. If you can stand to actually read it.

The Longest Journey and Life Is Strange

I'm bundling these together because they do the same basic concept—the primary text in the game is our main character’s diary. This serves several purposes, including offering a potted version of the story if you dip away for a while and forget things, but most importantly giving us a direct look inside their head. It’s a technique that only works if you actually like the main character, but fortunately that’s not a problem for either series and its charismatic leading ladies. In particular, it’s a way of bridging the gap between our perception of the game, as an untouchable god-figure, and theirs, as someone for whom all these moral decisions are actual life-changing events. Simply seeing the game from that perspective is enough to make everything carry that much more weight, and it doesn’t hurt that they’re fun reads too.

The Witcher 3

What separates The Witcher from most in-game codexes is its sense of character, with everything being described from the perspective of in-game poet, lover and occasional sidekick Dandelion. The nature of the game also rewarded taking the time to dip into the Codex, given that for a travelling monster-slayer, knowledge is power, and never took away from the fact that while us as players might not know our drowners from our necrophages, Geralt himself was always able to be a reliable source of information and provide the condensed version.

Realms of the Haunting

Here’s a retro classic, sadly not helped by the low-resolutions of the mid-90s. Nothing damages the mood of an otherwise well-made document like peering at it through a letter-box and finding it more poorly compressed than an old JPEG from a lost Geocities page. It’s not quite as bad blown up to full screen though, and even with its technical problems, it demonstrated how to write documents that actually fit the world and contributed to the lore without feeling like extracts from the design bible. Most took the form of letters between the characters, their identities not always immediately obvious, and turning the relatively simple battle between good and evil at the heart of the story into an epic tale of Faustian deals, ancient cults, doomed love, and a deep mythology stretching between multiple worlds. The visual look certainly didn’t hurt, with everything presented as aged pages, hand-drawn maps and messily scrawled journals. And if you didn’t like them, you got to burn several of them as part of a puzzle. Splendid.

The Neverhood

Of course, if you really, really want to make sure nobody misses your game’s lore, there’s always the Hall of Records—aka The Place Where Basically All The Game’s Backstory Is, as carved onto the walls of a corridor that takes about five minutes to trudge through even if you ignore all of the words. Oh, and when you get to the other end? You have to walk back, obviously. You know it’s good stuff when even a game’s own wiki states, and we quote, “it is suggested by most not to read all of it.” Truly great literature. Who could ask for anything less?

But of course, these are just a few cases. Which games have convinced you to pause saving the world to flick through a good book, and when has that background just been so much blah? It’s fun to get lost in backstory, just as long as the writers aren’t too obsessed with their own lore.

This article was originally published in PC Gamer issue 312. For more quality articles about all things PC gaming, you can subscribe now in the UK and the US. 

Whether you’re switching radio stations in GTA or trekking across epic mountains in The Elder Scrolls as a choir serenades you, music and games often go hand in hand. A soundtrack can make or break a game’s success, even more so when it’s emotionally and narratively driven. It can tacitly evoke a character’s turmoil or elation, immersing us in the story with a vividness that visuals alone could never achieve. 

Adventure games have been the de facto example of this. In 2015, Dontnod’s Life is Strange launched, hooking in over 3 million players. Months later, Oxenfree saw Night School tap into the supernatural, while Firewatch was a successful debut for Campo Santo. 

All three are considered fan favourites, and while their success is attributed to their storytelling, it’s their soundtracks that have allowed them to flourish. I spoke to the music creators behind these adventures to find out what goes into crafting an acclaimed auditory accompaniment. 

“[Musical] scores are 50% of the experience, and I definitely think that with games,” explains Night School Studio cofounder Sean Krankel. “When you look at it, it’s the one part of the game where one vision can come to fruition without too many other things breaking it. In a game, you’ve got mechanics, art, animation, technology, you’ve got all these things that have to work together and if one doesn’t work, the whole system sort of breaks.”

Oxenfree’s soundtrack was created by musician C. Andrew ‘scntfc’ Rohrmann, who pieces together electronic nostalgia with a darkened, brooding intimacy. Depicting a group of teenagers who disturb something ancient and mysterious, the music for Oxenfree needed to feel eerie while also steering clear of horror tropes. “I feel like I was able to find that creepiness in other musical concepts. There’s plenty [of] ‘creepy’ in old recordings, so let’s just really accentuate that sort of thing,” he explains. “I made it a part of the music writing. It wasn’t like ‘music is written and now let’s make it sound old’. Some of that stuff was recorded to 50-year-old tape machines.”

Like a lot of games, Rohrmann didn’t have much to work from in terms of the game itself. Music in gaming often comes before the story is finished, meaning most music supervisors and musicians have to create a soundtrack from a few key points. One sheet of the story and a little bit of concept art was all Rohrmann had to work from, but, as Krankel explains, it allowed the musician to have more of a hand in the design of Oxenfree. “You know those weird tape loop things where you end up interacting with the timeline background track? That was an idea that we had worked on in the creative brainstorms super early on that wouldn’t have been in the game without him,” Krankel says. 

“A lot of the game doesn’t sing until everything is in and unfortunately for Andy [Rohrmann], a lot of his stuff comes in last because it’s the stuff that’s supporting the rest of the experience. Andy had to work sort of blind for the first half of the game. He gave us a large buffet menu of a lot of ingredients to work with and it would be like ‘this is thematic of something frightening or melancholic’ just to create tension, and that became this big bucket of tools to work with. Our general aspiration would be, if every second could be scored perfectly to what the player is doing, that would be awesome. But that’s kinda difficult.” 

While Rohrmann was able to integrate his musical ideas into the story and design of Oxenfree, Chris Remo didn’t really have a choice. As both a designer and the composer of Firewatch, the Campo Santo team member says it was often difficult to navigate his multiple roles. “When we had to put out the trailer and straight up had to write some music for it, that was so valuable because it gave me this baseline,” he says. “The vibe of the soundtrack ended up changing from that original trailer but it was a starting point and that was incredibly valuable.”

Remo describes Firewatch as “70% to 90% atmosphere,” believing that to be “ideally true” of most games. When embarking on a soundtrack in gaming, Remo says that the crucial thing is to “holistically understand what your game is about”. 

“No matter how satisfying a game’s systems are, no matter how gripping the plot is, or how relatable the characters are, plot and characters and world are things that other forms of creative work can also achieve,” he continues. “Game mechanics are very specific to games. The thing that you get when you marry interactive systems and mechanics with those other elements that are not unique to games, like worldbuilding, character, plot and visual representation of those things, the thing you get is a really specific form of atmosphere that is unique to games.” 

The Firewatch soundtrack is an almost jarring collection of both acoustic and electronic elements, with the feeling of isolation at its core. Due to its popularity, Campo Santo went on to release the soundtrack on vinyl but, as Remo continues, it was never his intention to have the soundtrack front and centre. “So much of my effort on the game was on the design side and making sure that all of the elements meshed between the story, the game design, the atmosphere, that’s really the point of Firewatch – the marriage of those things,” he says. “So I saw music as more of a tool to achieve that goal rather than a standalone suite of music unto itself. It was important to me that the music never distracted you. This is where being a designer on the game was intrinsic to how the soundtrack worked.” 

One team that wasn’t so involved with the design aspect of the game but were intrinsic in securing its success is Feel For Music, which worked as music supervisors on Life is Strange. “A lot of the starting place with that was about trying to get that emotional and human feel to the whole thing,” explains Feel For Music’s Ben Sumner. They nailed this human feel with tracks from the likes of alt-J, Syd Matters and Bright Eyes – songs that evoke that intense navigation of impending adulthood, much like the game’s characters.

“The thing that’s gone down well is the fact it’s different from a lot of other videogame music,” Sumner continues. “The idea of having an acoustic, folk-y type sound, there’s not any other games that spring to mind that have such a strong identity with that kind of sound. The focus on narrative for that game lent itself well to having an emotive, simple acoustic kind of sound.” 

Sumner says a lot of the team listened through a lot of the songs while they were making the game, allowing them to test which tracks were working and which weren’t. “They had this drive for it to have a specifi c sound that was emotional. They thought a lot about lyrics and how that played in with the storyline, what happened at the key points in the game and the main characters,” Sumner adds. “Music can be the last thing thought about but the fi rst thing complained about. Some of the best scores are ones you don’t notice, they sit there and help enhance the mood but don’t take the spotlight.” 

While the composers and music supervisors on Oxenfree, Firewatch and Life is Strange perhaps never intended for their soundtracks to become as renowned as the games themselves, it’s not surprising that players have formed intense connections to the music. “The thing that you’re left with is this crystallised emotional experience and music is just a huge part of that,” Chris Remo says. “When so much of the value and the emotional impact of the medium does come down to atmosphere and tone, it only makes sense that music is going to mesh with that closely and powerfully in almost a multiplicative way. That’s a powerful thing and I don’t think there’s any substitute for it.” 

[Note: this article contains spoilers for Life is Strange and the first two episodes of Before the Storm.]

While Life is Strange mixed supernatural mystery with teen angst, Deck Nine's prequel Before the Storm has taken a more true-to-life approach, concentrating on protagonist Chloe’s relationships with those around her. In the first two episodes we've been introduced to a younger version of the character with considerably less blue hair dye (voiced by Rhianna DeVries) during a turbulent period of her life—her father was killed in a car accident, her best friend Max has left for Seattle, her mom is dating an unemployed ex-military douchebag, and she's dangerously close to being kicked out of Blackwell Academy. 

Chloe at age 16 is utterly alone—until Rachel Amber crashes into her life.

In the original Life is Strange, Rachel was the enigma that drove the storyline, the missing girl whose absence stirred up the town of Arcadia Bay and brought its secrets to light. But in Before the Storm she's not a plot point. Voiced by Kylie Brown, Rachel's unabashed confidence, dubious motives, and intense relationship with Chloe provide the game’s heart.

With the third and final installment 'Hell is Empty' due on December 20, we caught up with Kylie Brown to talk about the experience of recording Before the Storm, what she would like to see happen to Chloe and Rachel, and how the game has changed her life.

PC Gamer: I just watched the new trailer for Episode 3. How are you feeling given that this is the last time Life is Strange fans will ever see Rachel Amber?

Kylie Brown: It’s kind of a bittersweet thing because this is kinda the last time there will be the hype for an episode. So I’m so excited to see it, but it’s sad! It’s coming to an end, and we all know what Rachel’s fate is. It’s so sad, but it’s been a journey.

How did you get involved with Life is Strange: Before the Storm initially?

Initially, oh God! It’s been a few months, I think the process started in February, and I didn’t even know what I was auditioning for. It had a codename. I can’t remember what it was but I’ve called it Mike before, Project Mike—it was filled with codenames. My character wasn’t even Rachel, it was like Rebecca, I believe. 

When I first went in to the audition I walked into the room and there’s just a microphone. I’m not used to that! It was just Phil [Bache, voice-over director] and a mic, and I didn’t know the protocol for this but it was cool, I could literally just read the lines off the page. So I did that but I wasn’t prepared... I walked in, he gave me a few moments to go over the lines and I did it and thought, "I’m not getting this, that was horrible and I had no preparation." It was all over the place. And then I got a call back.

How do you find the process of voice acting different from traditional acting. Is it more challenging?

I feel like they’re both challenging in their own ways, but they are completely different. When I go to set to film on-screen, you have a call time to be there for hair, wardrobe, makeup, mics—it’s a process until you actually get to set. With voice acting, which caught me completely off guard, I just have to have clothes on [laughs]. It’s such a free experience and I’m so grateful I got to take part. It’s a lot faster as they have a quota of how many lines they want you read per hour, so voice acting they have an A and a B, where you say your lines two different ways and then you move on.

Did you know anything about Life is Strange before taking on the role?

I had never heard of it before now, but Life is Strange has literally changed my life, and I’ve told other people that I’m so thankful that is has come into my life. I get messages from people saying how much strength it’s given them in their life and their sexuality, and that’s such an amazing thing. I’m so grateful to have this opportunity where young girls or young guys that are just like, 'hey, this means a lot to me.' Just because of everything that’s happened, I absolutely love this game. I mean it’s my first big thing, and I’m glad that this thing has an impact on people’s lives in a positive way.

How did you find Rachel’s voice? Did Deck Nine give you much direction or were you free to explore the character for yourself?

Her voice is my voice [laughs]. No, but I didn’t have to do much to find her voice, it was mostly just connecting with the material or being in the emotion. A lot of the time Phil had me in a very sultry voice, so that’s where she lived mostly. A lot of the time he would look at me and I knew something mischievous was going to be coming, and he would say, 'Do that thing that you don’t like to do, but I like you to do because you’re good at it and it works,' and I’m like, goddammit, cause that means being sultry. Bring on the sexy voice!

What were your first thoughts of Rachel from your research and play through of the first game?

When I started doing that research and finding out who she was and how much of an enigma she is and how amazing she is, that’s when the pressure came. I started freaking out cause my main concern was like, 'The fans are not going to like me.'

Rachel is such a polarizing character, people don’t know whether to trust her or not.

I know! I don’t know how to answer that, I just—I love Rachel! I’m biased, I trust her, I love her. She’s a hurt person who’s going through something that none of us wanna go through. Like, you’re in high school and you might have found the love of your life, and you’re finding out that your dad’s been cheating on your mom with your real mom... so her entire life has been a lie. So she’s hurt, and people say she’s a traitor or she cheats or she’s not trustworthy. 

Everything leading up to her finding out about her father, she’s been nothing but googly-eyes towards Chloe. Yeah, she likes to play games, but she is a drama queen! Then after she finds out about her dad, wouldn’t it tear you up? Wouldn’t that tear you up to pieces where you’re not thinking clearly? I don’t see her as not trustworthy, I just see her as broken. The same as Chloe.

When you played through the original Life is Strange, in the infamous Bae vs. Bay decision, did you choose to save Chloe or Arcadia Bay?

I got so much hate for this! I chose B-A-Y, because I just think very logically like, if I kill her I get to save all these families and children. There’s this one phrase from that movie The Wanted with Angelina Jolie that I apply to all my videogames now, and it’s "Kill one, save a thousand," and that’s what I thought about—but people still hated me for it!

What aspects of Rachel’s character or personality did you connect with the most?

I mentioned this recently while doing a Twitch stream with Katy [Bentz, Steph in Before the Storm] and some of the other voice actors that I had really bad anger issues as a kid. It’s something I still have but I have learned to keep inside, and it’s seldom now, but when I was a kid a lot could set me off. So, sad to say I guess that’s a part of Rachel I connect with. I mean I didn’t get physical, I didn’t throw any salad bowls. I didn’t start any fires!

The development of Chloe and Rachel’s relationship has quite obviously meant a lot to the Life is Strange fanbase and LGBTQ gamers. What have you found the fan response to be like so far? Is it what you expected?

Oh my gosh, the fan response has been incredible. Everybody is so nice, I have not gotten a single hate message, which I was almost expecting! But it’s like a family, and I have never seen a fandom like that, so I’m honored that they have accepted me as their Rachel and I know I say that a lot but it’s true, I am. It was nothing like I thought it would be, or that it would be so big… because I didn’t know what it was!

At what point did you know what it was?

Literally the second day of recording, and it wasn’t even [Deck Nine], it was Rhianna that told me! She like pulled it up on her phone and showed me everything and I was like, 'Oh man.' What I mean is that I obviously played Life is Strange and researched Rachel before recording so I knew what it was, but I didn’t know what it was, how big it was, until Rhianna showed me this fandom page she was on and I only then realized what I was getting into—and it kept getting bigger and bigger. I thought it was big right off bat, then suddenly the trailer’s out, and it’s produced by Square Enix, then it’s worldwide, then we might be going on panels to talk about this thing. Next thing I know I’m nominated for an award [Best Performance Golden Joystick] out in the UK. I mean, what? 

If you could choose how Rachel’s story ends, what would you like to see happen?

You know what I just thought of, I think it would be so cool if Deck Nine did dual storylines. Like you play as Chloe, depending on if you’ve played with Chloe and Max or Chloe and Rachel, now you have to decide if you want to go to LA with Rachel or stay with Max, and then whatever you decide you can get to go on adventures and whatnot, with different obstacles they have to overcome. I think that would be super cool if they did that! And then I don’t die!

Do you know how [Before the Storm] ends?

I actually don’t know how it ends. I mean, I know what occurs with my storyline. They only give us our script for our lines, after that I don’t know what happens. Nothing else. It’s very top secret.

What has been your favorite scene from Before the Storm so far?

I love the witty comebacks Chloe has, but for Rachel my favorite scene has to be the one under the lamppost. Well, I guess that might be everyone’s favorite scene [laughs].

Personally, mine was The Tempest scene.

Oh my god, that was a challenge for me. I’m familiar with Shakespeare, I’m familiar with iambic pentameter, but I hadn’t done it in a really long time. I thought the scene was just going to be your typical drama club version of The Tempest, and Webb [Pickersgill, co-game director] was like 'Yeah so we need this in iambic.' So I told him I would brutally attempt this because it’s not gonna go well.

You did a fantastic job.

Thank you. That was a challenge to do, but it was a great scene and a lot of fun, but the one on the street, right before they kiss, has to be my favorite so far in the series because it’s so grounded and so real. They’re at their most vulnerable in that moment, because they’re first giving in to their feelings for each other. I think that’s the moment when Chloe and Rachel become 'Amberprice', because everyone is rooting for it and now Chloe and Rachel have accepted it and are moving forward with it.

I know you can’t give away anything, but can you sum up what we can expect from Episode 3 'Hell is Empty' in three words?

I have to think about it, because as I said I only know my half of it, but honestly I’ll say 'things get crazy'. Because they really do!

Life is Strange: Before the Storm Episode 3 will be out on December 20.