Life after Life is Strange has been a little spotty for Don’t Nod. The five games they’ve released since Life is Strange 2 have seen mixed reviews. Despite this, people generally agree that Don’t Nod is in a class of their own when it comes to narrative experiences and the “choose your own adventure” style of gameplay. This is a big reason why their latest effort, Lost Records: Bloom & Rage, has received significant attention.
Lost Records: Bloom & Rage puts players in the shoes of Swann Halloway, seeing two very different times in her life–at age 16 and age 43. Tape 1 game begins with her as an adult reluctantly on the phone with her mom as she’s back home in the fictional town of Velvet Cove, Michigan after a promise made to her friends to reunite 27 years ago. When she sits down at the bar, she begins to remember the summer of 1995 and how it changed her life. As you progress through the story, you jump back and forth between 1995 and 2022, shaping the narrative as you go.
It’s an interesting way to have the story unfold, but it takes a while for the narrative to grip you due to how chaotic the scripted transitions are (among other more subjective reasons). One moment, you’re at the bar in first-person with Swann, and the next moment, you’re a teenager back in the third-person walking simulator style Don’t Nod is known for. The game makes it clear from the get-go that Swann isn’t typically good with people. Whether it’s with a conversation with her mom on the phone or with the bartender with her as a middle-aged adult, or whether it’s with her new friends as a kid, the dialog choices the player gets for how to make Swann answer made it hard for me to both resonate with her and shape her into the person I wanted her to be. It’s these choices that separate Don’t Nod’s games from everybody else’s.
Some people might have a hard time resonating with the game’s protagonist.
I’m a 36-year-old Asian-American male, and I have my reasons as to why it was hard for me to have any empathy for Swann. I’m not going to explain anyone’s life story nor am I here to boost my own, so I’ll just say I can’t imagine what life would be like for a person who had trouble making friends until they were 16. Swann at 16 is a timid girl who has a lot to learn about self-love, but she also must’ve been strong to go that whole time without having friends.
The bonds she eventually creates with the other three main girls she meets in the game (Autumn, Nora, and Kat) are the real meat and potatoes with Lost Records. The Max and Chloe vibes from the original Life is Strange are definitely here, but the fact that there are now three friends is a huge difference.
It’s obvious that the developers want you to pick a favorite, but I couldn’t do that. I resonated with Autumn a lot as I respected her drive and keen sense of responsibility. Nora isn’t a bad character either; she has a lot of punk in her, but you can tell she has charisma that’ll take her places. Then there’s Kat, and while she was my least favorite, she was the one that I never wanted to disappoint. In my attempt to play the balance game between these friends, the stats at the end of the tape showed that none of the three thought too significantly of their friendship with my version of Swann, and that sucked. Even with all that known, a gameplay nuance gets in the way of friendship being the focus the developers likely intended.
Swann is a cinephile, and you’ll spent a lot of your time recording your friends upon first meeting them. yeah, awkward.
Swann and her camcorder are inseparable. Throughout the sections of the game where you play as 16-year-old Swann, you’ll constantly be filming your surroundings for your digital scrapbook. You’ll be filming your friends, your pet, nature, birds, bugs, and all sorts of stuff for Swann’s various collages that pretty much serve as the game’s collectibles. It takes a while to get a handle of things at first, because the game throws a lot of recordable objects and environments at you. The problem is that even if you plan on taking the time to film as much as possible, if you make one wrong selection, you can have the story move forward without any warning, thus missing opportunities to film.
Still, this is a narrative Don’t Nod game, and these games are about relationships. It just so happens that Swann has a relationship with her camera. It’s kind of what defines Swann’s childhood, and it made me wonder why she doesn’t have it later in her life.
Having gone through the entire first tape (what Don’t Nod is calling these episodes) after eight hours of play, I’m surely invested in the story, but it took too long to get there, and when you do–it’s over. The fact that the second tape isn’t coming until mid-April doesn’t make it any easier. It just makes it hard to recommend the game right now, especially at $40. That’s a lot to pay for what’s essentially half a palette cleanser.
An interactive Tamagotchi isn’t enough to make the first tape worth $40 on its own.
In a bunch of ways, Lost Records represents an interesting return to form for Don’t Nod. Not only is it their first “choose your own adventure” kind of game since 2020’s Twin Mirror, but it’s also their first episodic piece since Tell Me Why–also released in 2020. It wasn’t developed by Don’t Nod, but Life is Strange: True Colors saw a lot of success critically due to not having an episodic release format. There’s a lot of risk involved here, because even if you have players invested with the first episode, there really is no guarantee that they’ll get the second to conclude it–especially with it being nearly two months away.
To help combat this, at least for PlayStation 5 owners, the game is included as a Day 1 download for PlayStation Plus Extra subscribers. Still, is it enough to warrant your time playing the first tape and then waiting a few months for the next tape? That’s a hard sell right now considering what’s available. The ideal move here is to probably wait until Tape 2 comes out before giving it your time. Still, it’s tough to understand why Don’t Nod didn’t just decide to just release both tapes at once whenever both were ready.
Life after Life is Strange has been a little spotty for Don’t Nod. The five games they’ve released since Life is Strange 2 have seen mixed reviews. Despite this, people generally agree that Don’t Nod is in a class of…
Life after Life is Strange has been a little spotty for Don’t Nod. The five games they’ve released since Life is Strange 2 have seen mixed reviews. Despite this, people generally agree that Don’t Nod is in a class of their own when it comes to narrative experiences and the “choose your own adventure” style of gameplay. This is a big reason why their latest effort, Lost Records: Bloom & Rage, has received significant attention.
Lost Records: Bloom & Rage puts players in the shoes of Swann Halloway, seeing two very different times in her life–at age 16 and age 43. Tape 1 game begins with her as an adult reluctantly on the phone with her mom as she’s back home in the fictional town of Velvet Cove, Michigan after a promise made to her friends to reunite 27 years ago. When she sits down at the bar, she begins to remember the summer of 1995 and how it changed her life. As you progress through the story, you jump back and forth between 1995 and 2022, shaping the narrative as you go.
It’s an interesting way to have the story unfold, but it takes a while for the narrative to grip you due to how chaotic the scripted transitions are (among other more subjective reasons). One moment, you’re at the bar in first-person with Swann, and the next moment, you’re a teenager back in the third-person walking simulator style Don’t Nod is known for. The game makes it clear from the get-go that Swann isn’t typically good with people. Whether it’s with a conversation with her mom on the phone or with the bartender with her as a middle-aged adult, or whether it’s with her new friends as a kid, the dialog choices the player gets for how to make Swann answer made it hard for me to both resonate with her and shape her into the person I wanted her to be. It’s these choices that separate Don’t Nod’s games from everybody else’s.
Some people might have a hard time resonating with the game’s protagonist.
I’m a 36-year-old Asian-American male, and I have my reasons as to why it was hard for me to have any empathy for Swann. I’m not going to explain anyone’s life story nor am I here to boost my own, so I’ll just say I can’t imagine what life would be like for a person who had trouble making friends until they were 16. Swann at 16 is a timid girl who has a lot to learn about self-love, but she also must’ve been strong to go that whole time without having friends.
The bonds she eventually creates with the other three main girls she meets in the game (Autumn, Nora, and Kat) are the real meat and potatoes with Lost Records. The Max and Chloe vibes from the original Life is Strange are definitely here, but the fact that there are now three friends is a huge difference.
It’s obvious that the developers want you to pick a favorite, but I couldn’t do that. I resonated with Autumn a lot as I respected her drive and keen sense of responsibility. Nora isn’t a bad character either; she has a lot of punk in her, but you can tell she has charisma that’ll take her places. Then there’s Kat, and while she was my least favorite, she was the one that I never wanted to disappoint. In my attempt to play the balance game between these friends, the stats at the end of the tape showed that none of the three thought too significantly of their friendship with my version of Swann, and that sucked. Even with all that known, a gameplay nuance gets in the way of friendship being the focus the developers likely intended.
Swann is a cinephile, and you’ll spent a lot of your time recording your friends upon first meeting them. yeah, awkward.
Swann and her camcorder are inseparable. Throughout the sections of the game where you play as 16-year-old Swann, you’ll constantly be filming your surroundings for your digital scrapbook. You’ll be filming your friends, your pet, nature, birds, bugs, and all sorts of stuff for Swann’s various collages that pretty much serve as the game’s collectibles. It takes a while to get a handle of things at first, because the game throws a lot of recordable objects and environments at you. The problem is that even if you plan on taking the time to film as much as possible, if you make one wrong selection, you can have the story move forward without any warning, thus missing opportunities to film.
Still, this is a narrative Don’t Nod game, and these games are about relationships. It just so happens that Swann has a relationship with her camera. It’s kind of what defines Swann’s childhood, and it made me wonder why she doesn’t have it later in her life.
Having gone through the entire first tape (what Don’t Nod is calling these episodes) after eight hours of play, I’m surely invested in the story, but it took too long to get there, and when you do–it’s over. The fact that the second tape isn’t coming until mid-April doesn’t make it any easier. It just makes it hard to recommend the game right now, especially at $40. That’s a lot to pay for what’s essentially half a palette cleanser.
An interactive Tamagotchi isn’t enough to make the first tape worth $40 on its own.
In a bunch of ways, Lost Records represents an interesting return to form for Don’t Nod. Not only is it their first “choose your own adventure” kind of game since 2020’s Twin Mirror, but it’s also their first episodic piece since Tell Me Why–also released in 2020. It wasn’t developed by Don’t Nod, but Life is Strange: True Colors saw a lot of success critically due to not having an episodic release format. There’s a lot of risk involved here, because even if you have players invested with the first episode, there really is no guarantee that they’ll get the second to conclude it–especially with it being nearly two months away.
To help combat this, at least for PlayStation 5 owners, the game is included as a Day 1 download for PlayStation Plus Extra subscribers. Still, is it enough to warrant your time playing the first tape and then waiting a few months for the next tape? That’s a hard sell right now considering what’s available. The ideal move here is to probably wait until Tape 2 comes out before giving it your time. Still, it’s tough to understand why Don’t Nod didn’t just decide to just release both tapes at once whenever both were ready.
by Danreb Victorio
