You could even argue it would be better off as linear media, but the finale is suitably arresting and features that traditional, final decision at the end that all the Life Is Strange games have.
Tell me why tv#
At around two hours each that’s the length of a TV mini-series and yet frequently you feel this would work better edited down to feature film length. The game’s biggest problem though is simply that it doesn’t have enough story to stretch across its three chapters, even though that’s two less than the Life Is Strange games (thankfully they are being released a mere week apart, so no long waits this time). Tell Me Why – Tyler and Alyson still managed a relatively happy childhood (pic: Microsoft) That was tedious the first time round and by now has become a predictable cliché in what at times feels like Looking At Things: The Game. This is also yet another Dontnod game that has you slowly exploring someone’s slightly dishevelled house, while poking around in their cupboards and staring at the knick-knacks on their fireplace. The telepathy is easily Dontnod’s least interesting superpower and doesn’t really factor into the gameplay at all – Tyler and Alyson might as well be using radios for all the difference it makes, a fact that even they comment on in the dialogue.
The final hour or so is very compelling but the build up towards it is meandering and often… boring. Unlike the previous games, Tell Me Why feels linear even when it’s not and that’s exacerbated by the fact that the plot is overly simple, and often lacks direction. Tell Me Why’s narrative branches out in a similar manner to Life Is Strange, with several widely different outcomes possible, but while you’re playing it seems less obvious why and how. Especially as many more ordinary decisions have to be taken with an equal lack of context and information.
If that’s meant to be an illustration of how our view of the world is based on little more than faith and arbitrary assumptions then it’s an interesting point but it does make for some frustrating gameplay. The problem with making such decisions though is that you’re given very few facts to go on and most of them end up being essentially gut instincts. Ultimately though it’s not Tyler or his return which is the focus of the story, as the themes of memory, grief, and the mental health of his mother become increasingly dominant. So while the first chapter gives the impression that the whole game is going to revolve around whether or not Tyler is accepted by his small town community, that’s really not the case.Īlthough Tyler does face a few bigoted encounters they’re portrayed as being out of ignorance rather than malice and you’re given the option of how you deal with them. When he does so the exact circumstances of his mother’s death are very quickly put into question, as the game explores how unreliable memory can be and how people can construct or alter it to suit their needs. The story opens when the pair are 10, with an attention-grabbing prologue in which a young Tyler admits that he has killed his mother because she tried to kill him, and then picks up 10 years later as Tyler returns to his home town in Alaska for the first time. In Tell Me Why you play as twins Alyson and Tyler, the latter of who is transgender.
The other commonality in Dontnod’s adventures is that the protagonists are always from a marginalised group, giving leading roles to the sort of characters that almost never get a look-in when it comes to mainstream video games. It may simply be the fact that this is an Xbox exclusive, as otherwise the set-up is almost identical: young adults discover they have superpowers (telepathy in this case) and rather than donning a cape and fighting crime they attempt to solve their own much more personal problems. Given how little connection there was between Life Is Strange 1 and 2 we’re not sure why this wasn’t just called Life Is Strange 3. Tell Me Why continues that journey, while being even more progressive in terms of plot and characters. From their earliest days with Remember Me they’ve been fascinated with the subject, even as they’ve become best known for Life Is Strange and their, in many ways superior, take on the Telltale adventure format. Somebody at French developer Dontnod is really obsessed with the concept of memory and how we are our own unreliable narrator. The new game from the makers of Life Is Strange features gaming’s most prominent transgender character and a murder mystery in rural Alaska. Tell Me Why – the truth is not what you might remember (pic: Microsoft)
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