On the whole, games almost always tell stories of people with power.
That doesn't mean that protagonists don't start off weak (like Link in Legend of Zelda or really any RPG), or aren't presented as powerless. But as a general rule, video game narratives are power fantasies, requiring main characters to grow increasingly badass through inhuman strength, abilities, or literal superpowers.
One of the many boundary-pushing accomplishments that sets apart Life is Strange 2 (which just released its final episode this week) is its commitment to telling the story of a person who grows only more disenfranchised.
The brilliance of 'Life is Strange 2' lies in the details
Image: dontnod
As we wrote in our reviews of the game's earlier episodes, Sean Diaz's story begins with tragedy. He and his little brother Daniel are forced to go on the run after his Mexican immigrant father is killed in an instance of police brutality. Throughout the five-episode arc, he faces homelessness, poverty, racism, xenophobia, drug lords, disability, and border police.
Unlike the previous Life is Strange, he's not even the one given special powers, with his brother Daniel's telekinesis often presenting itself as yet another obstacle he's powerless to control.
Many times in the final three episodes, the designers commit one of the cardinal sins of traditional video game design: They force the player to do nothing. It's completely counterintuitive since nearly every mainstream game is designed to make players feel like rulers of their virtual worlds.
...Forcing you to make choices in a world determined to stripe you of your rights and freedoms.
But in Life is Strange 2, you find yourself waking up in a hospital bed after losing an eye, completely confined. You can't move or get up, and are able to only look around at objects and wait patiently until a nurse shows up. It's in these small, meditative details that DONTNOD shows just how quietly revolutionary their game is, taking risky swings that somehow almost always land.
The reason most games rely on powerful protagonists is because power allows for more variety in gameplay. The more abilities you have, the more you can manipulate and shape the world to your liking. But Life is Strange 2 turns this convention on its head, speaking volumes by forcing you to make choices in a world determined to stripe you of your rights and freedoms.
The gameplay doesn't necessarily suffer for it, either. At first, things like the drawing mechanic (you just move around the left stick to make Sean sketch) seem ineffectual and unnecessary. But then, after losing his eye, the game permanently vignettes the left side of the screen to communicate Sean's newly impaired vision. The simple sketching mechanic becomes harder, more frustrating, disempowering.
Life is Strange 2's thoughtful minutiae add up to make it one of the best games of the year, and one of the only mainstream games to ever successfully address the lived experiences of the oppressed.
Disenfranchisement comes in many different forms
Image: square enix
It isn't just Sean. Most of the people the Diaz brothers meet along are people in situations that video games rarely explore with any depth or meaning: a gay teen who endured conversion therapy, a little boy who lost his mom and must navigate his father's alcoholism alone, a whole group of "trimmigrants" working illegally on a pot farm to try and escape troubled backgrounds.
More often than not, these representations are nuanced, avoiding the trappings of tacked-on diversity that plagues mainstream video games. While overflowing with sentimentality, Life is Strange 2 also mostly avoids the ham-fisted cheesiness that undercut the previous game's more emotional moments.
DONTNOD's bravery and unprecedented willingness to wrestle with the thorniest issues of the day can't be overstated.
At a time when mainstream games insist on being "apolitical" to appease the worst factions of their player base, DONTNOD's bravery and unprecedented willingness to wrestle with the thorniest issues of the day can't be overstated.
In the final episode, Daniel and Sean finally reach their goal, the border wall to Mexico. Its looming intimidation is only heightened by the fact that you're seeing it from a child's perspective — this massive, insurmountable physical structure representing even more massive, insurmountable social issues.
Daniel struggles to wrap his mind around both. Do they have a wall like this on the northern border too? he asks. The question carries all the naive poignance of youth that has not lived long enough in the world to accept its inexplicable prejudices as a norm.
At its core, Life is Strange 2 is a choose-your-own-adventure game that questions what choice even means within power structures designed to rob you of your agency. Many of the core decisions revolve around how you teach Daniel to handle those disempowering power structures: Is it fuck the police and live on the outskirts of society, or compliance and assimilation for the sake of staying within the relative safety of civilization?
Achieving yet another feat most games struggle with, the various endings in Life is Strange 2 show how there is no right or wrong answer to that impossible question. No matter what you do, there's no happy ending. But also, because humanity finds a way regardless, there's no wholly bad ending either.
There are only the choices we can live with, and the loved ones that help us survive the fallout.
You can play all five episodes of Life is Strange 2 on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC, or Mac now.
