Janine "Iris Ophelia" Hawkins' ongoing review of gaming and virtual world style
For me, one of the most exciting pieces of news out of European game industry conference Gamescom this week has been the next project from DONTNOD Entertainment, the team behind Remember Me. Life is Strange is being pitched as a story about teenage girls, relationships, and time travel, and here's why I can't wait to get my hands on it:
Remember Me, which had an amazing female protagonist and was set in a dystopian cyberpunk version of Paris, received mixed reviews at the time. It was a visually powerful game with some clever ideas, but its combat was a major weakness, which is what lead me to write about the much more enjoyable experience of playing it on the easiest difficulty. I even selected it as one of my favorite games of 2013, sandwiched between Saints Row IV and Gone Home. It turns out that the folks at DONTNOD are fans of Gone Home too, and what they've show of their new game definitely seems influenced by Fullbright's seminal "walking simulator".
That comparison sets the bar for the game's storytelling quite high, but there's also a lot of promise in its mechanics. The most interesting and most underused parts of Remember Me were the memory remixing sequences, where lead character Nilin has to alter other peoples' memories to a specific desired outcome which then changes their behavior in a way that helps her progress. In a story about teenage girls messing with time travel, there's clearly a lot of potential for a very similar mechanic to come into play. Hopefully it does, and hopefully players will have the opportunity to engage with that system more often than they did in its predecessor.
You can read more about Life is Strange and check out some screenshots over on Polygon.
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