When Life is Strange first launched, the industry was deep in the golden age of Telltale adventure games. Just months prior Telltale had wrapped The Walking Dead: Season 2 and The Wolf Among Us, and it was well into one of its best entries to date, Tales From The Borderlands, while simultaneously releasing the widely anticipated Game of Thrones series. By January of 2015 we were pretty damn inundated in episodic choice-driven narrative adventures. Life is Strange could only succeed by proving it had a story worth telling, and the tools to do it in a wholly different way than what was already on the market, and that’s exactly what it did.
The Life is Strange series is far more than meets the eye. It constantly deepens the stakes, characters evolve in response to their circumstances in meaningful ways, and deciding whether or not to rifle through a friend’s room can mean life or death. It’s not just linear storytelling either, Max’s rewind mechanic in Life is Strange was an excellent way of returning agency to players who had become used to Telltale’s ticking clock on decision making. As exciting as that mechanic was, the prequel, Before The Storm, developed by Deck Nine, illustrated that the series had a strong foundation in its characters and world even without the supernatural elements. It doubled down hard on creating well-rounded characters who spoke and felt like real people you actually cared about. That’s what makes the Life is Strange series so successful, and it’s a success that continues in the newest entry, The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit.
Check out the full video feature above to find out what we're expecting from Life is Strange 2 after our experiences with the series so far. The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit is available now for free on PC, Xbox One, and PS4. Life is Strange 2 is arriving with the first of five episodes on September 27.