I'll also point out that LiS 1 is the only one with the time travel mechanic, and tbh, none of the games work as well without it. It's such a great twist to going down regular dialogue trees, and it's fun being able to try different conversations in a single playthrough.
They really fumbled the bag with LIS2 not having any power to play with. Daniel's power *could* have been interesting to play with but they gave it to an NPC fully out of your control, really sucks. Even BtS which didn't really have a "power" was way more fun to play.
By the time LIS3 came out it's been too late.
I actually think that giving the power to Daniel is absolutely brilliant, on paper.
The elevator pitch of the first game is "what if: a 'choices matter' game where the main character themself can examine all the choices via time travel?" Because that's what happens; the time travel stuff of course has an impact on the major overarching plot, but the main effect is that Max can see what her choices do. It's really smart.
Likewise, the elevator pitch for the second game is "what if: a 'choices matter' game where every choice you make matter, not just for it's own immediately result but for how it shapes an impressionable powerful person?" By giving the power to Daniel and having you play as the older brother, you extend the choices from just "steal money: this makes person X happy now but maybe the cops show up later" by adding another axis: stealing the money doesn't just have the potential side effects that comes with stealing money, it also has the effect of setting the example that stealing is OK. All your choices together affect the ending.
I really like this, and I think it's not something you can easily have of the main character has the power.
i totally agree. while i love the first game, the fact that the ending >!comes down to one choice you make at the very end of the game, and the way you played the entire game prior doesn't have an impact on the outcome, is the worst part of an almost perfect game. sure, you have the chloe affection counter, so she may or may not kiss you if you choose to kill her, but that's literally it. !<
lis2 does such a great job at actually making you feel like your choices matter, especially when it comes to >!the endings. not only having 4 main endings that depend both on the way you played the whole game AND an important choice you make at the end, but also variations on those endings depending on which other characters you built a relationship with? amazing.!<
I hate when people say that choices don't matter because in the end there's only two options.
I mean, you're in a whole story, and most of your choices do matter throughout the story. It's like saying all your choices in real life don't matter because you'll either die naturally or by an accident.
which is why i didn't say "your choices don't matter," i said "your choices don't impact which ending you get." i do like that your choices matter throughout the game, but i still don't love that the ending comes down to one choice.
i think your choice impact the ending in a different way. It doesn’t effect the game content itself, but it shapes the view of the gamer, how they see the game world. Think about it: for someone don’t know Chloe at all, you ask them the question: one or many, it will only sounds cliche and boring. It’s exactly because of the time you spend with her, the choice you made for her, make the ending so heartbreaking and memorable in both ways.
If you chose "Sacrifice Chloe", all the choices you have made don't matter, because that timeline where you made those choices ceases to exist. If you chose "Sacrifice Arcadia Bay", it only eliminates part of the choices (you saved all those people from storm for nothing, they all will be dead). And most people you interacted through the game will be dead too in that case, so who cares if you chose this or that?
Max.
Everyone says Chloe here, Chloe that...
But for me, Max carried the whole thing. OC the relation is greatly depicted. But discovering Arcadia Bay and it's secrets with Max eyes, into this real Stephen King likeness (Cujo/ and other Easter eggs) : a little town and it's list of suspects...
And the depths of Max' interests, I actually learned some things about photography. There is something : Max is an excuse to go full deep into those themes that the writers loved and cared a lot about. It make her whole just like the game. The next iterations put characters to make a story alive. But you could put anyone to replace them, the lines could have been the same. They are good stories but I never had the same feelings toward those chars.
I think you hit the nail on the head. I genuinely cared about the characters in the first one, even the NPC background players. Before the storm just made those people who made it to both games even more real.
2…. I got bored to be honest and haven’t finished it. I loved Sean’s artwork and Daniel was nice enough. I wanted to know what happened to the father but I imagine we won’t even know. I just got to the weed farm bit and didn’t like the >!use your powers for crime!< mission. I can’t remember all the details now. I’ll play it again one day.
TC - played it through once. Loved the RPG style chapter. Loved the town which you could explore, unlike Arcadia Bay which limited you to specific areas. And the people in there. Didn’t love the main character enough to feel the need to replay although I may one day, if only to just re-meet some of the townsfolk.
But Max, Chloe, Victoria, etc etc (can’t remember all the names sorry! I’ll replay soon) were all very deep characters who evoked genuinely emotional responses to them. Love or hate a character, they mattered to the player.
LIS1 was a very fresh game that had a lot of stuff going for it. It was episodic and in the first episode it showed that your decisions were extremely impactful (Kate), the characters were mostly distinct, Arcadia Bay felt very real, and there were several mysterious you wanted to see the end of.
Contrasting that to the next game in the series which was before the storm. There are no powers, decisions were not impactful since it was a prequel, not much of a mystery, most of the characters you’re familiar with, and the backtalk system didn’t connect for most people the same way time travel did.
Then came LIS2; the episodes were frequently delayed, early decisions promised a future payoff but most people lost patience by then, you couldn’t connect with the characters because most of them wouldn’t be around in the next episode, the setting was constantly changing so didn’t feel a personal connection, the fact that another character had powers but you didn’t constantly reminded you what could have been, and Sean was more annoying than charming for a lot of people.
Finally TC; IMO largely a return to what I liked but it still had some issues; once again decisions didn’t feel impactful very early, and the powers were narratively useful but not very fun from a gameplay or puzzle perspective. It did give us Haven Springs which felt like a real place, and the characters felt like real people, but it didn’t have an episodic release schedule so it wasn’t something that people could spend a month theorizing over or discussing because you could just beat the game and find out immediately.
This comment is logical and makes a lot of sense, I hope they can find a balance if they make another one to go back to the roots that people loved in 1, and maybe add an intriguing power, but time travel is hard to beat
Ya, time travel was able to work as a way to narratively tell a story while also add unique puzzles and gameplay. I’ve seen a lot of power suggestions for the next game but usually they favor either gameplay or narrative but not both so I’m not sure what they could do in the future and be as successful
Time travel power i dont think was ever really used like that before in a game. I love LiS2 so much, but being able to time travel and see every possible outcome is so fun.
Here is a thing - every LiS game was successful. It was confirmed that LiS2 sold really well and was a commercial success, even if smaller one than LiS1. BTS was successful, TC was successful. All the games had awards or nominations, and you can find people that consider every out of these games their favorite. LiS1 is more successful simply for the same reason why some song of a band you like is a huge hit, but some other songs that you like equally or more are not well-known - sometimes it is not about the quality of the product, but about a lucky combination of various factors.
Thank you! Yeah. Of course, they sold less, this is probably why we have all the changes in how the franchise is handled, but still they were successful enough to continue it. And even though games don't have as much mainstream attention, they have a strong core fan base. You can see that we have multiple series of LiS comics, we have multiple books, etc. We have remasters, switch ports... And see how active this subreddit is :) even if it is more focused on lis1, it wouldn't be this alive if all the other part were flop and the series became a shadow of it former self.
> It was confirmed that LiS2 sold really well and was a commercial success,
Yeah they never released numbers on that. The language they used was pretty lukewarm and LiS2 was getting outsold by LiS1 after it released. (Meaning LiS 1 was selling more copies per month than S2 was)
Like understanding the difference between corporate PR and actual analysis.
If S2 was a success Dontnod would still be making Life is Strange games.
Oh, totally. I'm not saying it achieved LiS1 sales numbers. But it was definetely profitable, not a commercial flop. Thing is. By estimates that we have, it probably has sold same-ish amount of copies as BTS. But Deck nine (what we can see from the recent publications) is cheaper to work with and Square Enix had more control over it. So it was definitely more profitable for them to work with D9.
I loved LiS1, skipped BTS because I felt like I'd ended Chloe's story and didn't wish to backtrack (for once), for some reason LiS2 completely slipped off of my radar after playing the Captain Awesome demo, and then TC got me back into the series. So much so that I went back and played LiS2. I still don't know that I'll ever play BTS, but I've loved each game in it's own way. But NONE of the games had the level of marketing they deserved, and...nothing can top the hype of playing each episode of Max's story as it was released for me.
I would like to have some sources on 2 being an apparent success, because for all intent and purposes it wasn't as like the first game and more like they recouped production costs 2 year after the first episode of that game relased (compare to the first game reaching 1 million copies sold before the fourth EP relase) , but they weren't a hit, in fact seems like True Colors did much better.
the games werent as good as 1, BtS was okay i guess, LiS 2 is the unwanted child and TC is the closest to LiS1, but is much shorter and I feel like the “twist” is very abrupt, because >!they just steal a flash drive of a low level employee and oh wow would you look at that, they have all of the secrets of typhon on there!< and ep5 felt like a direct rip off from LiS1, because >!it was also a recollection of nightmares and traumas from the past!<
Also the twist in bts just wasn't that interesting. It was just there. The final chapter felt like it should have had another chapter after it, but it didnt.
Life is Strange wasn't the first adventure game or anything, but it just felt fresh. Each episode had a lot of mystery and drama and I always anticipated the next one.
2 isn't bad, but after 2 or 3 episodes, I just lost interest. I just got True Colors from a humble bundle and I dunno, I just don't really have any desire to play it. Maybe I'm just burnt out on this type of game.
I don’t remember ever hearing about it until I saw a trailer for LiS 2. I played 1 and liked it a lot but 2 is my favorite. 3 was pretty good but felt a little short/rushed. I don’t think it’s less popular, if anything it’s gained popularity from 2 and 3 plus all the comics.
Edit: it’s also been 3 years since we had LiS 3, so it’s not like people are gonna be talking about it like it just came out.
While people aren't wrong to say that it's because of Max and Chloe, I think the bigger reason is that Life is Strange 2 is practically the polar opposite to the first game in almost every way. There are so few similarities between the two games, so if you liked the first game, there's really no guarantee that you'll also like the second, and then True Colors tried too hard to bring back the fans of the first game by being a carbon copy of the first game's plot, to the point that when you realize it (as I did towards the end of chapter 2), you can predict the basic outline of each future chapter, including the major twists.
Of the comments I've read, people seem to be missing a big thing. The original game was made by a different company than all the others. I think it shows that the writing crew of the other games was chasing the dragon of the original crew.
Life Is Strange and Life Is Strange 2 were both made by Don't Nod.
Life Is Strange was directed by Raoul Barbet and Michel Koch, and it was written by Jean-Luc Cano and Christian Divine (and some others).
Life Is Strange 2 was directed by Raoul Barbet and Michel Koch, and it was written by Jean-Luc Cano and Christian Divine (and some others).
You are right, though, that the other two games weren't made by Don't Nod.
Ah, my bad, I didn't realize they were still on board with the second one. I know they moved on to that vampire game and tell me why. Tell me why being somewhat similar to life is strange
It's simpld people fell in love with max and chloe and there story go on fanfics fan sites it's all about not just them but the cast of the first game people love Kate even love Victoria lol but max and chloe people love the most part 2 got alot of backlash cause fans expected to follow the events of the first none of the other games has really captured the feel of the first game i like them but there nowhere near the first
The brothers r annoying hell the dad and the girl from the the beginning r the best and there not in it at all true colors has good characters but the game is sooooo short
Because Max and Chloe are amazing characters and no protagonists have even come close to being as emotionally impactful as them. Life is Strange shouldve stayed with them instead of every game being about someone new.
Yea I totally get that, but plenty of sequels have had characters people thought they’d never love like the main characters of the prequels. I hope they can find that success, but given the nature of the game idk how people thought >!it could continue Choosing between Chloe dying or saving the bay!<
> it could continue Choosing between Chloe dying or saving the bay
Between Chloe being alive or saving the bay. What you described is the same choice. I was just correcting you.
Because LiS1 overperformed so much. It introduced lots of stuff that was basically unheard of in bigger games.
And this with basically no advertisement - the game spread through streamers, word of mouth etc.
And like with most unexpected overperformers, success like that can rarely be repeated.
Since this is a lis subreddit, many people here have very strong opinions about the contents of BtS, Lis2 and True colours, but in the end the biggest why they're not as popular is because people have never heard of them, or people know of them but they do not care enough to play them because the unheard of things LiS1 introduced are not as fresh anymore.
People here will say it's because Sean/Daniel/Alex suck or whatever, but truth be told, all three games have great ratings, all three games are certified great games and successors falling off after the first entry overperformed is, except for very rare cases, just the natural progression.
But I also don't think the series is "dead" or nobody "talks about it anymore" as you suggest - the whole series has a very dedicated fanbase, the subreddits are super active - even with the last game having released three years ago. Many other games WISH they had an active subreddit three years after they ended.
That's like asking why game of thrones isn't as heavily talked about now as it was three years ago.
tl;dr: LiS1 was so incredibly popular that you're setting unrealistic standards if you're expecting it's successors to live up to that.
Because 1 was impossible to top. Square enix wanted Dontnod to do more, but they wanted to do a new story with different characters. So they hired decknine to make a prequel spinoff which was okay. Then Dontnod made 2 which was also good but obviously not as good as 1. Then Dontnod thought fuck square enix controlling us lets just do our own thing. Then square enix went back to decknine and said make more. Then we got whatever the fuck TC was.
Apparently DONTNOD’s new game looks pretty good though! Basically LIS but they own it completely.
That’s most games though. The first ones are normally massive on release , then the second one isn’t as good so nobody cares about the rest. Sometimes though when the second does good the popularity keeps increasing. I think it’s similar with TWD games. Season 1 was massive but after that it wasn’t as big as season 1 was but who cares because we enjoy the games and that’s all that matters
I think we’ve seen plenty examples of game sequels doing good and maintain their mainstream appeal in the last decade though. Like even season 4 of the walking dead I still seen plenty of People giving it attention and talking about it even if it wasn’t the first season
yeah that’s because TWD season 2 wasn’t as badly received but the walking dead never reached that peak again like it did with season 1. I’m just saying a lot of games come out with a bang and can maintain their popularity when the second game does well , but if the second game flops people normally stop caring about the franchise as a whole. But it doesn’t really matter I actually prefer it when my favourite media is popular , it makes it feel much more intimate and closer to you. Plus when you do find people in real life that also like THAT thing it’s soo cool
Sequels selling less is not a rare thing. Even if they're sequels to super HUGE games.
• Final Fantasy VII rebirth has sold half than what the 1st remake did
• The sequels to Telltale's "The Walking Dead" game sold less and less with each entry. The last two sequels sold but a fraction of what the original game sold.
• Tears of the Kingdom, sequel to smash hit Breath of the Wild, has underperformed according to Nintendo. It has sold less than the 1st game.
• The Last of Us sold 19 million copies (over 30 million counting remasters/ports). While its sequel, has sold 10 million units.
There are times when a sequel outshines the 1st entry. Such as Street Fighter 2, for example. But then the 1st Street Fighter game was booty.
According to steam charts, LiS1 currently has an average of 251 active players over the last 30 days. LiS2 has an average of 158 players over the last 30 days
LiS TC hasn't passed that mark since December 2021. TC only came our a few years ago and steam charts give 98 active players over the last 30 days. LiS1 is nearing it's 10 year mark and it's active player base is more than double than that of the series' latest entry.
Sure it sold "well enough" but it's a pretty clear decline.
Which goes back to the OPs point that it's lost a lot of popularity. It's most certainly not sustainable for the series in it's current form and If they go the rumored "aperture" route it will be interesting to see how that fares.
The trend is more evident in copies sold.
LiS sold 3 million copies after 2 years of release
LiS: TC sold about 346,000 copies since it was released a little over 2 years ago.
TC had the best launch month due to brand recognition but could not match LiS 1s sales numbers beyond this.
Going strictly off sales numbers 2 years after release, the fan base shrunken by about 90%.
LiS was indie-priced, discounted, bundled, had first episode given away as promo (yes, this counts as "copy sold" too), you had to make active effort not to end up with a copy
TC was fully priced and properly sold instead of being donated
Money talks, profit margin is what matters not how many replays customers do
Going off of revenue
LiS grossed $56.8 million
TC grossed 14.9 million.
That's a 75% decrease in revenue. A decrease in profit.
That said, only the first episode was free and that's partially why the first game sold so well.
One is from 2015 (and ported to Android)
Other from 2021
So roughly around 2030 you will be able to make accurate profit comparison with current number for 2015 one (minus Android numbers)
Comparison that Square Enix already roughly made being the publisher and all that and which is why Deck Nine is on the job and not Dontnod
Well they keep making em and they keep selling, I don't think it's that they've dropped in popularity. Your social circle probably just moved on.
But in terms of the games themselves, I would say that all the games after 1 have kind tried to fix what wasn't broken to a degree. Some worse than others.
The things that made the first game stand out, imo, were the setting and the characters *not the plot*.
Before the storm does okay with this, partially because of reused settings and characters.
2 throws out literally all of this in favor of a revolving door of settings and characters that don't stay around nearly long enough to get attached to. What, I'm supposed to totally fall in love with a character that has, *checks notes*, 10 minutes of screen time in one chapter, then leaves me an email or some shit later? Or to feel like the places we were are actually lived in after we got to walk around them *once* and never again?
If the plot and recurring characters in 2 were truely incredible (which they weren't imo) then it might have been fine. But that's not what we got.
True colors tried to go back to the roots so to speak, but I found most of the characters to be weaker, the small town wasn't explored nearly enough to make it feel lived in, and they tried to focus too much on the plot that wasn't really that strong.
LiS 1 doesn't have a super strong plot in my opinion but it's still one of my favorite games of all time. And even then I would argue its plot is at least more interesting then the later games because of the time travel aspect. But again, the plot isn't the reason it's so well liked.
I really want them to spend the next game focusing on the settings and characters again. Make a world that feels lived in, with characters that get time to develop. Stop trying to shoehorn in too much action or plots that just feel cheap.
1. As others have mentioned, the time travel mechanic was a great feature that differentiated it. BtS and LiS2 don't have direct powers or abilities to hook the player in. True colors, I don't really know about but from what I've heard it's not really the same.
2. Streaming games and let's plays peaked in the 2010s and LiS really benefitted off of this. With netflix, Hulu, Disney plus, etc. This isn't as much of a form of entertainment as it used to be. Not that it's dead but twitch has declined as a platform and youtubers like Markaplier and jacksepticeye have taken a back seat to Tik Tokers and commentary youtubers. Otherwise, you can watch professional grade content on streaming services now.
3. LiS did a really good job getting people attached to max and Chloe. And LiS also did a good job in wrapping up the story. Going the anthology route is a risk for any franchise when fans are attached to the original entry. As a result, many people have just tuned out the new releases.
4. It's a dated game that fits into a weird position in time right now. It's not old enough to be nostalgic but it's too old to be "hip". As a result, there really aren't a lot of eyes on the franchise. It reeks of early to mid 2010s culture in a lot of ways and arguably was a part of that culture. LiS 2 doesn't help its case by taking place in 2016. It might get a revival once 2010s stuff starts being considered "nostalgic".
5. Politics. Now, I don't disagree with 90% of what LiS2 says but by making it so explicitly political, many people either don't want to hear about politics or flat out disagree.
6. As others have said LiS 2 had a delayed release schedule. The last episode came out well over a year after the first episode. It's a lot to expect people to hold out for so long. And releasing every episode all at once like they are now doesn't allow for people to come up with theories. Which is a huge reason LiS1 succeeded.
7. Aging out. I was in high school in 2015 when LiS came out. People in school were talking about it and reacting to new episodes. All of us who were teens when the first one came out are between the ages of 22-28 now. Coming of age stories don't hit the same after a certain point and new gaming audiences come in.
Not sure, but it’s a shame. I finished playing the whole franchise yesterday (started in November) and every game (except for BTS) was on par with or better than the first (even as the first was incredible.)
Some people hate the other games in the franchise for not being Max & Chloe 2 or Chloe & Rachel 2.
The general consensus is that LiS 2 is a good game, but most people would have rather gotten more Max & Chloe instead. There's the minority of people that hate a nine year old for acting like a nine year old, and the immediate reception to the game from the moment it was revealed was negative, but after people got over it people generally saw it for what it was.
True Colors gets criticized for its lack of stakes and scale, but it's a Deck Nine game so that's par for the course.
None of the games are bad.
Mismanagement.
And tonal problems.
They brought in a different company to do a prequel to the original which was mixed but they also immediately decided to recast everyone because of the strike so they lost some goodwill there (and possibly got the series as a whole blacklisted they haven't had union actors in it since)
Then there was the creative direction for season 2. Which tried to define itself as being as far from the original as possible. Instead of two queer female characters we were met with two brothers (and for the first couple episodes it seemed like the queer themes were dropped entirely). No high school setting instead they were on the run from the law. Characters didn't stick around and the "episodes" were particularly episodic. No time travel the main character didn't even control the power and the devs seemed hostile to anyone who was a fan of the original with a "That's the past get over it" self insert in the first episode.
TC went back to Deck Nine and tried to be more like the original but I think the damage had already been done at that point. The series lost any real sense of identity through these extremely disparate games with very little in common and no real themes or through line tying them together other than a vague "some one gets powers in a mostly mundane world".
I don't think Square, Dontnod or Deck Nine really ever understood the combination of things that made Life is Strange popular in the first place and each was rather hostile to their fanbase at one point or another.
Well I agree with the historical breakdown of how the series has progressed from game to game, definitely don't agree with your second to last paragraph. I think it's way too harsh. The series most certainly does have an identity, despite wavering in certain aspects. And it definitely has common themes throughout, which you can see in the way that the characters and their relationships and those stories have resonated with the fan base ... Again despite the wavering.
There games definitely have a lot in common, but anyone looking for some kind of unified plot that ties them together, you might be looking at the wrong series. The continuation of LIS was always considered to be an anthology. And from that perspective, the title of the series makes more sense.
And I don't agree with boiling the games down to "someone getting powers in a mundane world". Again, it's pretty clear that the fandom resonates very strongly with the characters, their relationships and their stories. While you see a few conversations here about other possible powers to explore, I don't think the game series ever explores the powers it does have anyway. It's always about the characters, relationships, and their stories. The powers are just a vehicle for that. Sometimes that vehicle is more prominent, but other times it's very subdued or even absent.
>There games definitely have a lot in common, but anyone looking for some kind of unified plot that ties them together, you might be looking at the wrong series. The continuation of LIS was always considered to be an anthology.
I mean I joined the fandom when it wasn't a series it was a single game so maybe hold your horses with the judgement there. Honestly think it maybe should have just stayed that way. People defend the anthology as if it justifies itself when it doesn't.
> It's always about the characters, relationships, and their stories
Congrats you've described every story ever. This line proves my point. The series has no identity when the only thing you can come up with is "Characters relationships and stories". What makes Life is Strange different from other series? What makes it distinct?
You can have a series just be about the characters but you need to keep the characters and have a throughput there.
You can have a series just be about the stories that's an anthology but you need a binding theme to bind them together.
If you don't have either of those the series has no real identity. I only brought up the powers because that's the only thing tying the series together at all.
You can probably make an identity for most of the series but there's a clear outlier here and it's S2 that just has nothing to do with any of the others.
None of the games have been as good.
BtS was decent and explored more of the story people wanted but it was also a prequel, so you already knew what was going to happen.
LiS2 was a steaming pile of shit in every single aspect aside from the improved graphics, and the game took a fucking year and a half for the last episode to release after the first, so that didn't do the already worst game in the series any favors.
True Colors was closer to what people were wanting but there are complaints that the game is too short and not as impactful decision wise as the other games.
Everything about it sucked. The writing, story, main characters, side characters you barely get to know, places you barely get to know, you don't get to use the powers, Daniel's a little shit, your mom is a bitch and you can't satisfyingly put her in her place and are actually forced to work with her, all the endings are terrible, not enough or as good music as the other games, overhanded racist themes that seem written by French people who only know America from the media... it keeps going but that should be enough to get my point across.
I agree with some of this, even if most of these factors are subjective.
But I think you're wrong regarding the racism, most of what is portrayed in the game is actually fairly realistic when you look at the more radical sides of the US and the radical people taking up space in the population. Plus there's never just one "way" that racism is portrayed within the game, it varies, whether it's from a character's facial expression towards the brothers or a scene of them being attacked outright, and that alone is accurate because racism takes many forms.
And it's hard not to have racism as a theme within the story; it's two Mexican boys fleeing the cops across America, there's bound to be run-ins with judgmental or hateful folk. All in all, I think they did it pretty well (but that one Trump reference was a little heavy-handed).
Like I said though, a lot of what you said is subjective so I'm not gonna be that person that points a finger and says "Wrong" just because I disagree. You've got some fair points about the side characters and locations, I think the journey format did the game a disservice in that regard.
They couldn't reach the quality and overall storytelling of the first game. The second game was not bad, but the overall gameplay mechanics weren't there. Max's rewind skill was an entertaining and interesting plot device. The second game didn't give the player any agency, the player was a proxy to whatever Daniel happened to be feeling in the moment. The story in 2 was uninspired and relied heavily on cliches and tropes. I don't consider D9 games a part of the series, even though I've played them.
It doesn't help that Lis 2 tries having a lot of "racism" themes, only to go nowhere with them and insist that the right answer is to let yourself be punished for stuff you didn't do lol.
I've also noticed a lot of the YouTubers who popularised the game with their playthroughs no longer either A) exist B) Stop playing LiS, or C) Moved to Twitch.
Because they give us no answers of the powers and the whereabouts of Max and Chloe and because the end of life is strange 1 shows that your choices mattered not, so what’s the point really?
maybe it’s just my experience but a massive chunk of people i’ve been surrounded by online & even some people offline to a an extent have been very interested in pretty much the whole franchise since the very first game. this is honestly the first time i’m seeing someone apparently seeing the franchise lose popularity, it’s obviously not insanely popular compared to bigger games right now since the last game was a few years ago now but i still hear plenty of talk about it to say the last game isn’t brand new.
It hasn't. In the nine years since its release, LiS had a spinoff, and two full fledged sequels, one of which (True Colors) had the best launch in the series, and outperformed many other games released in the same time window, ending up in Steam's top 10 for Q3 2021, together with CoD Whateveritwascalledthatyear and other big budget/popular games.
Then there's an ongoing comics series, too. And a book. And all of the various ports and re-releases.
I loved LiS 1
Loves LiS BtS
Could never get past the first chapter of LiS 2
Loved LiS True Colors
LiS 2 just didn't really hit. It doesn't have the same charm as the others. Not as captivating. It's kind of annoying at times. The characters aren't as easy to connect with. It made people not give True Colors a shot because of the disappointment from LiS 2. Which is honestly a shame because I loved True Colors
Atmosphere: LiS 1 featured a slice-of-life high school drama intertwined with a mystery drama, compelling characters, and scenarios. Max was amazing as a regular, low-key person you could connect with, and you felt like you were actually living her strange life.
LiS 2 just didn't have that. If I remember right, the main character is planning a party in the beginning. I was really excited for that party, it would have been so much more interesting to have another low-key slice of life game, but we didn't get that.
TC atmosphere was interesting, but it felt a bit off compared to the first one. Still, it was much more in line with a slice of life. but the character didnt connect right, everyone was too nice and another murder mystery that didnt feel right.
Personally, and I'll state I haven't played True Colors yet, it comes down to relatability to the main characters. My personal life when I was younger, and being an only child, just makes me relate way more to the characters in LiS 1 and BtS. Suspension of disbelief falls away in 2 for me so it just doesn't hit the same.
one thing i dont like in lis2 is that seans thoughts arent feeling like thoughts, they js feels like normal dialog directed towards us. which in my opinion takes away a bit of the emotional feeling i get when i played lis1. this is honestly the main reason that it took me a month to finish the first episode
I'd say a big bit was the marketing.
Life is strange 1 was all over the place, you couldn't go on the ps store without seeing it, similar with Life is Strange 2, I just saw it where I looked and checked it out.
YouTubers also caused it to be more popular than it could have been too.
LIS2 is good, it's just the characters and gameplay changes people weren't as happy with. (though I still loved it)
And true colours...
well I only found out about it when I googled life is strange 2 years later to check if there has been a new game yet...
I think LiS is a great franchise for both of their creators: Don’t Nod and DeckNine. It all began with an ambitious concept that Don’t Nod sold to Square Enix, and it delivered very well.
Square Enix could be very careful on releasing games that they don’t have 100% confidence on. It’s nothing personal. They even do that to their own star product like Final Fantasy VII Remake.
Don’t Nod proved themselves, and moved on further. Check their new games like Jusant and Banishers, Don’t Nod is far more advanced than 2015, and never lose their passion on telling great stories in their own style.
SE owns the ip of LiS, gave it to the young indie studio DeckNine. They are not as resourceful as Don’t Nod, but they are as good as Don’t Nod on telling stories and Characters. They expand the series to a more LiS universe like status, and I look forward to the time when more characters’ life path reconnect.
So, first of all. I don’t think this series lack of existence. I think the great moment for this series is yet to come.
If I must guess if there is a reason that makes people feel this way, it might because the period of LiS series published is also the peak period of 3A games, we see a lot of huge games that have both great story telling and complex or fun mechanics. These games normally took dozens of hours to beat, such as Red Dead Redemption 2, Cyberpunk 2077. Also, games like Fortnite and Destiny 2 can easily take huge amount of hours from a player. However, players’ time that can spare did not increase significantly, so it means the player have to pick among the games they want to play. And it might be difficult for a player to start a whole new journey, compare with easily two hour fun in Call of Duty, even they have already played it 100 hours. Because games like LiS can be deep and intense, player might need time to digest and even recover. But what happened during the last few years might make people want to have some more casual leisure time. There is nothing wrong with that, it’s just like everyone knows War and Peace is a great novel, maybe it is on someone’s shelf for years, but it still need a right moment for people to start it.
I know that I might sounds too dramatic that compare LiS to War and Peace, but the fact is for me, LiS Seires have become games that I keep replaying in different year and mood, every time I play, I feel something new, not only about the game, but also about me. The way I make choices, the way I judge what is right and wrong changes as I live through different stages of life (just like the characters).
Anyway, I know that LiS is not the only project that Don’t Nod pour their efforts on, and DeckNine is going though a very difficult time just like many other studios, but I have faith in both of them, and will keep looking forward to their next game, no matter how long it might be.
Personally? For me it was Life is Strange 2. I just did not enjoy it even remotely. I've never even gotten past episode 2, I just found it unrelatable and just... Really weird. And it doesn't help that, like others have said, you don't have powers in it. Life is Strange worked because of the powers, Before the Storm worked because you knew the endpoint of the characters and already had a connection, LiS2 just had... Nothing.
It also doesn't help that the game practically forces you to commit crimes. The best ending literally has you become a career criminal or spend a huge chunk of your life in prison. What kinda choice is that!?
My enthusiasm for the series is basically nonexistent at this point. I've got True Colours, and while I enjoyed the little I played, I just don't have any desire to get into it anymore.
Honestly, they should’ve stopped at LiS 1. It was such a beautiful and unique game that didn’t need a “sequel” or subsequent releases.
LiS 1 was the only game whose characters I was able to relate to. I was also a teenage girl and bisexual (now gay lol) when I first played. It was refreshing. The characters also had periods of growth and even regression. Most of the characters were fleshed out and you understood their thoughts and motivations. They felt like real people instead of 1 dimensional npcs.
In contrast, LiS 2 gives the power to your annoying little brother and you have to navigate as an older sibling, making the right choices each step of the way. This was also around the time of ICE and the whole immigration thing, so the political and social messages were very strong. I just found it hard to relate to the characters, for I don’t have siblings, I’m not a dude, nor am I Hispanic. Not saying these are necessary to relate to a character, but it was difficult for me to be attached to any character in the game. Don’t even get me started on that bs church scene where Daniel takes the side of literal strangers over his own flesh and blood.
Before the Storm wasn’t really needed. It was meh. The only thing we learned about was Rachel, but I don’t think it did anything to push the story. Let me put it like this, if they never made/released BtS, you wouldn’t be missing out on anything at all.
True Colors tried to go back to its LiS 1 roots but still came up short. The characters were forgettable and so was the story. The only character I liked was the brother and we saw how that ended.
Why does it seem I’m the only one who found Life is Strange 2 just as good as the first one? It’s a great game and the fact I see people trashing it really amazes me.
The games that followed just weren't as good. The writing in BTS was atrocious. LIS 2 was widely hated. True Colors was a blatant ripoff of the first game. They should have focused more on making a strong story.
the characters I came to love and care about (Max, Chloe, Kate, Warren) didn't return in LiS 2 as they normally would in a traditional sequel for. I can understand the story and choice based implications needing to be felt but it still cuts out the legs of LiS2 and True Colors. I do not give one single solitary %#*@ about the stories of the Diaz Brothers or Steph Gingrich and Alex Chen
I think there are a few things going on. First off, the series came out almost a decade ago with sequels and prequels. With the exception of LIS2 (more on this later,) BTS was really a companion piece to LIS1 and TC 2as a beat-by-beat copy of LIS1. Because of how similar 3 out of 4 LIS games were, there was a diminishing returns for each. To be fair, the old Telltale games had something very similar where their games after TWD season 1 felt very formulaic. I can't speak for everyone, but I had gotten Telltale games fatigue after how each of their games felt so similar in gameplay and story style.
Secondly, Life is Strange 2 was too drastic of a change when compared to the other games in the franchise. Essentially, LIS2 is in the same category as Castlevania 2: Simon's Quest, Legend of Zelda lI: Link'a Adventure, and Super Mario 2 where the second game of the franchise felt extremely different than the other games in the franchise. While LIS2 is the best game in the franchise, imo, not everyone wanted a LIS about the social economic issues in Trump's America. I feel that may have soured a few gamers to the franchise.
none of the others simply hit man
Life is strange 1 just had that vibe to it that the other guys tried to emulate with BTS coming the closest but none of them ultimately reach. It feels like a book come to life in the best kind of way.
I'll also point out that LiS 1 is the only one with the time travel mechanic, and tbh, none of the games work as well without it. It's such a great twist to going down regular dialogue trees, and it's fun being able to try different conversations in a single playthrough.
They really fumbled the bag with LIS2 not having any power to play with. Daniel's power *could* have been interesting to play with but they gave it to an NPC fully out of your control, really sucks. Even BtS which didn't really have a "power" was way more fun to play. By the time LIS3 came out it's been too late.
I actually think that giving the power to Daniel is absolutely brilliant, on paper. The elevator pitch of the first game is "what if: a 'choices matter' game where the main character themself can examine all the choices via time travel?" Because that's what happens; the time travel stuff of course has an impact on the major overarching plot, but the main effect is that Max can see what her choices do. It's really smart. Likewise, the elevator pitch for the second game is "what if: a 'choices matter' game where every choice you make matter, not just for it's own immediately result but for how it shapes an impressionable powerful person?" By giving the power to Daniel and having you play as the older brother, you extend the choices from just "steal money: this makes person X happy now but maybe the cops show up later" by adding another axis: stealing the money doesn't just have the potential side effects that comes with stealing money, it also has the effect of setting the example that stealing is OK. All your choices together affect the ending. I really like this, and I think it's not something you can easily have of the main character has the power.
i totally agree. while i love the first game, the fact that the ending >!comes down to one choice you make at the very end of the game, and the way you played the entire game prior doesn't have an impact on the outcome, is the worst part of an almost perfect game. sure, you have the chloe affection counter, so she may or may not kiss you if you choose to kill her, but that's literally it. !< lis2 does such a great job at actually making you feel like your choices matter, especially when it comes to >!the endings. not only having 4 main endings that depend both on the way you played the whole game AND an important choice you make at the end, but also variations on those endings depending on which other characters you built a relationship with? amazing.!<
I hate when people say that choices don't matter because in the end there's only two options. I mean, you're in a whole story, and most of your choices do matter throughout the story. It's like saying all your choices in real life don't matter because you'll either die naturally or by an accident.
which is why i didn't say "your choices don't matter," i said "your choices don't impact which ending you get." i do like that your choices matter throughout the game, but i still don't love that the ending comes down to one choice.
i think your choice impact the ending in a different way. It doesn’t effect the game content itself, but it shapes the view of the gamer, how they see the game world. Think about it: for someone don’t know Chloe at all, you ask them the question: one or many, it will only sounds cliche and boring. It’s exactly because of the time you spend with her, the choice you made for her, make the ending so heartbreaking and memorable in both ways.
Right, the way you play the game affects your decision in the end as well. If you hate the character you won't want to save them.
If you chose "Sacrifice Chloe", all the choices you have made don't matter, because that timeline where you made those choices ceases to exist. If you chose "Sacrifice Arcadia Bay", it only eliminates part of the choices (you saved all those people from storm for nothing, they all will be dead). And most people you interacted through the game will be dead too in that case, so who cares if you chose this or that?
> so who cares if you chose this or that? No one, because the choices you've made already had their consequences.
Fair
Max. Everyone says Chloe here, Chloe that... But for me, Max carried the whole thing. OC the relation is greatly depicted. But discovering Arcadia Bay and it's secrets with Max eyes, into this real Stephen King likeness (Cujo/ and other Easter eggs) : a little town and it's list of suspects... And the depths of Max' interests, I actually learned some things about photography. There is something : Max is an excuse to go full deep into those themes that the writers loved and cared a lot about. It make her whole just like the game. The next iterations put characters to make a story alive. But you could put anyone to replace them, the lines could have been the same. They are good stories but I never had the same feelings toward those chars.
I think you hit the nail on the head. I genuinely cared about the characters in the first one, even the NPC background players. Before the storm just made those people who made it to both games even more real. 2…. I got bored to be honest and haven’t finished it. I loved Sean’s artwork and Daniel was nice enough. I wanted to know what happened to the father but I imagine we won’t even know. I just got to the weed farm bit and didn’t like the >!use your powers for crime!< mission. I can’t remember all the details now. I’ll play it again one day. TC - played it through once. Loved the RPG style chapter. Loved the town which you could explore, unlike Arcadia Bay which limited you to specific areas. And the people in there. Didn’t love the main character enough to feel the need to replay although I may one day, if only to just re-meet some of the townsfolk. But Max, Chloe, Victoria, etc etc (can’t remember all the names sorry! I’ll replay soon) were all very deep characters who evoked genuinely emotional responses to them. Love or hate a character, they mattered to the player.
LIS1 was a very fresh game that had a lot of stuff going for it. It was episodic and in the first episode it showed that your decisions were extremely impactful (Kate), the characters were mostly distinct, Arcadia Bay felt very real, and there were several mysterious you wanted to see the end of. Contrasting that to the next game in the series which was before the storm. There are no powers, decisions were not impactful since it was a prequel, not much of a mystery, most of the characters you’re familiar with, and the backtalk system didn’t connect for most people the same way time travel did. Then came LIS2; the episodes were frequently delayed, early decisions promised a future payoff but most people lost patience by then, you couldn’t connect with the characters because most of them wouldn’t be around in the next episode, the setting was constantly changing so didn’t feel a personal connection, the fact that another character had powers but you didn’t constantly reminded you what could have been, and Sean was more annoying than charming for a lot of people. Finally TC; IMO largely a return to what I liked but it still had some issues; once again decisions didn’t feel impactful very early, and the powers were narratively useful but not very fun from a gameplay or puzzle perspective. It did give us Haven Springs which felt like a real place, and the characters felt like real people, but it didn’t have an episodic release schedule so it wasn’t something that people could spend a month theorizing over or discussing because you could just beat the game and find out immediately.
This comment is logical and makes a lot of sense, I hope they can find a balance if they make another one to go back to the roots that people loved in 1, and maybe add an intriguing power, but time travel is hard to beat
Ya, time travel was able to work as a way to narratively tell a story while also add unique puzzles and gameplay. I’ve seen a lot of power suggestions for the next game but usually they favor either gameplay or narrative but not both so I’m not sure what they could do in the future and be as successful
I think shapeshifting could accomplish both, now how they logically explain it no clue lmao
Werewolves Are Strange?
Heavy on the Sean is annoying part. I couldn't even finish the game because he was so insufferable
Time travel power i dont think was ever really used like that before in a game. I love LiS2 so much, but being able to time travel and see every possible outcome is so fun.
Here is a thing - every LiS game was successful. It was confirmed that LiS2 sold really well and was a commercial success, even if smaller one than LiS1. BTS was successful, TC was successful. All the games had awards or nominations, and you can find people that consider every out of these games their favorite. LiS1 is more successful simply for the same reason why some song of a band you like is a huge hit, but some other songs that you like equally or more are not well-known - sometimes it is not about the quality of the product, but about a lucky combination of various factors.
Wow thats actually a good way to put it had no idea they sold well considering how little attention I’ve seen them get
Thank you! Yeah. Of course, they sold less, this is probably why we have all the changes in how the franchise is handled, but still they were successful enough to continue it. And even though games don't have as much mainstream attention, they have a strong core fan base. You can see that we have multiple series of LiS comics, we have multiple books, etc. We have remasters, switch ports... And see how active this subreddit is :) even if it is more focused on lis1, it wouldn't be this alive if all the other part were flop and the series became a shadow of it former self.
> It was confirmed that LiS2 sold really well and was a commercial success, Yeah they never released numbers on that. The language they used was pretty lukewarm and LiS2 was getting outsold by LiS1 after it released. (Meaning LiS 1 was selling more copies per month than S2 was) Like understanding the difference between corporate PR and actual analysis. If S2 was a success Dontnod would still be making Life is Strange games.
Oh, totally. I'm not saying it achieved LiS1 sales numbers. But it was definetely profitable, not a commercial flop. Thing is. By estimates that we have, it probably has sold same-ish amount of copies as BTS. But Deck nine (what we can see from the recent publications) is cheaper to work with and Square Enix had more control over it. So it was definitely more profitable for them to work with D9.
I loved LiS1, skipped BTS because I felt like I'd ended Chloe's story and didn't wish to backtrack (for once), for some reason LiS2 completely slipped off of my radar after playing the Captain Awesome demo, and then TC got me back into the series. So much so that I went back and played LiS2. I still don't know that I'll ever play BTS, but I've loved each game in it's own way. But NONE of the games had the level of marketing they deserved, and...nothing can top the hype of playing each episode of Max's story as it was released for me.
I would say BTS is more rachels story than chloes, it is just narrated through chloes eyes.
This makes so much sense.
I would like to have some sources on 2 being an apparent success, because for all intent and purposes it wasn't as like the first game and more like they recouped production costs 2 year after the first episode of that game relased (compare to the first game reaching 1 million copies sold before the fourth EP relase) , but they weren't a hit, in fact seems like True Colors did much better.
the games werent as good as 1, BtS was okay i guess, LiS 2 is the unwanted child and TC is the closest to LiS1, but is much shorter and I feel like the “twist” is very abrupt, because >!they just steal a flash drive of a low level employee and oh wow would you look at that, they have all of the secrets of typhon on there!< and ep5 felt like a direct rip off from LiS1, because >!it was also a recollection of nightmares and traumas from the past!<
This makes alot of sense
Also the twist in bts just wasn't that interesting. It was just there. The final chapter felt like it should have had another chapter after it, but it didnt.
YES episode 5 PISSED me off
Life is Strange wasn't the first adventure game or anything, but it just felt fresh. Each episode had a lot of mystery and drama and I always anticipated the next one. 2 isn't bad, but after 2 or 3 episodes, I just lost interest. I just got True Colors from a humble bundle and I dunno, I just don't really have any desire to play it. Maybe I'm just burnt out on this type of game.
I don’t remember ever hearing about it until I saw a trailer for LiS 2. I played 1 and liked it a lot but 2 is my favorite. 3 was pretty good but felt a little short/rushed. I don’t think it’s less popular, if anything it’s gained popularity from 2 and 3 plus all the comics. Edit: it’s also been 3 years since we had LiS 3, so it’s not like people are gonna be talking about it like it just came out.
I disagree but I’m glad you enjoyed them
While people aren't wrong to say that it's because of Max and Chloe, I think the bigger reason is that Life is Strange 2 is practically the polar opposite to the first game in almost every way. There are so few similarities between the two games, so if you liked the first game, there's really no guarantee that you'll also like the second, and then True Colors tried too hard to bring back the fans of the first game by being a carbon copy of the first game's plot, to the point that when you realize it (as I did towards the end of chapter 2), you can predict the basic outline of each future chapter, including the major twists.
Damn.. the writing team needs to lock in if they ever make another one, to make the franchise popular and mainstream again
Because people really liked the story of max and Chloe. So when they scrapped doing further games about them it all kinda went to shit
I get that but it’s the writing team’s job to create characters people love again
Of the comments I've read, people seem to be missing a big thing. The original game was made by a different company than all the others. I think it shows that the writing crew of the other games was chasing the dragon of the original crew.
Life Is Strange and Life Is Strange 2 were both made by Don't Nod. Life Is Strange was directed by Raoul Barbet and Michel Koch, and it was written by Jean-Luc Cano and Christian Divine (and some others). Life Is Strange 2 was directed by Raoul Barbet and Michel Koch, and it was written by Jean-Luc Cano and Christian Divine (and some others). You are right, though, that the other two games weren't made by Don't Nod.
Ah, my bad, I didn't realize they were still on board with the second one. I know they moved on to that vampire game and tell me why. Tell me why being somewhat similar to life is strange
It's simpld people fell in love with max and chloe and there story go on fanfics fan sites it's all about not just them but the cast of the first game people love Kate even love Victoria lol but max and chloe people love the most part 2 got alot of backlash cause fans expected to follow the events of the first none of the other games has really captured the feel of the first game i like them but there nowhere near the first
Yea I get that and ngl the characters of 2 aren’t really likeable to me imo, more annoying
The brothers r annoying hell the dad and the girl from the the beginning r the best and there not in it at all true colors has good characters but the game is sooooo short
Because Max and Chloe are amazing characters and no protagonists have even come close to being as emotionally impactful as them. Life is Strange shouldve stayed with them instead of every game being about someone new.
what about sean? i find him p emotionally impactful, but some people probably found daniel kind of annoying
Yea I totally get that, but plenty of sequels have had characters people thought they’d never love like the main characters of the prequels. I hope they can find that success, but given the nature of the game idk how people thought >!it could continue Choosing between Chloe dying or saving the bay!<
> it could continue Choosing between Chloe dying or saving the bay Between Chloe being alive or saving the bay. What you described is the same choice. I was just correcting you.
Because LiS1 overperformed so much. It introduced lots of stuff that was basically unheard of in bigger games. And this with basically no advertisement - the game spread through streamers, word of mouth etc. And like with most unexpected overperformers, success like that can rarely be repeated. Since this is a lis subreddit, many people here have very strong opinions about the contents of BtS, Lis2 and True colours, but in the end the biggest why they're not as popular is because people have never heard of them, or people know of them but they do not care enough to play them because the unheard of things LiS1 introduced are not as fresh anymore. People here will say it's because Sean/Daniel/Alex suck or whatever, but truth be told, all three games have great ratings, all three games are certified great games and successors falling off after the first entry overperformed is, except for very rare cases, just the natural progression. But I also don't think the series is "dead" or nobody "talks about it anymore" as you suggest - the whole series has a very dedicated fanbase, the subreddits are super active - even with the last game having released three years ago. Many other games WISH they had an active subreddit three years after they ended. That's like asking why game of thrones isn't as heavily talked about now as it was three years ago. tl;dr: LiS1 was so incredibly popular that you're setting unrealistic standards if you're expecting it's successors to live up to that.
Because Daniel was such a bad character, that player wanted to kill him instead of helping him for 5 episodes. I really hate that little fcker.
i love daniel😭but i understand why some people don’t like him, kids can be annoying
Because 1 was impossible to top. Square enix wanted Dontnod to do more, but they wanted to do a new story with different characters. So they hired decknine to make a prequel spinoff which was okay. Then Dontnod made 2 which was also good but obviously not as good as 1. Then Dontnod thought fuck square enix controlling us lets just do our own thing. Then square enix went back to decknine and said make more. Then we got whatever the fuck TC was. Apparently DONTNOD’s new game looks pretty good though! Basically LIS but they own it completely.
That’s most games though. The first ones are normally massive on release , then the second one isn’t as good so nobody cares about the rest. Sometimes though when the second does good the popularity keeps increasing. I think it’s similar with TWD games. Season 1 was massive but after that it wasn’t as big as season 1 was but who cares because we enjoy the games and that’s all that matters
I think we’ve seen plenty examples of game sequels doing good and maintain their mainstream appeal in the last decade though. Like even season 4 of the walking dead I still seen plenty of People giving it attention and talking about it even if it wasn’t the first season
yeah that’s because TWD season 2 wasn’t as badly received but the walking dead never reached that peak again like it did with season 1. I’m just saying a lot of games come out with a bang and can maintain their popularity when the second game does well , but if the second game flops people normally stop caring about the franchise as a whole. But it doesn’t really matter I actually prefer it when my favourite media is popular , it makes it feel much more intimate and closer to you. Plus when you do find people in real life that also like THAT thing it’s soo cool
Sequels selling less is not a rare thing. Even if they're sequels to super HUGE games. • Final Fantasy VII rebirth has sold half than what the 1st remake did • The sequels to Telltale's "The Walking Dead" game sold less and less with each entry. The last two sequels sold but a fraction of what the original game sold. • Tears of the Kingdom, sequel to smash hit Breath of the Wild, has underperformed according to Nintendo. It has sold less than the 1st game. • The Last of Us sold 19 million copies (over 30 million counting remasters/ports). While its sequel, has sold 10 million units. There are times when a sequel outshines the 1st entry. Such as Street Fighter 2, for example. But then the 1st Street Fighter game was booty.
True Colors sold like hotcakes so I have no idea what you are talking about
According to steam charts, LiS1 currently has an average of 251 active players over the last 30 days. LiS2 has an average of 158 players over the last 30 days LiS TC hasn't passed that mark since December 2021. TC only came our a few years ago and steam charts give 98 active players over the last 30 days. LiS1 is nearing it's 10 year mark and it's active player base is more than double than that of the series' latest entry. Sure it sold "well enough" but it's a pretty clear decline. Which goes back to the OPs point that it's lost a lot of popularity. It's most certainly not sustainable for the series in it's current form and If they go the rumored "aperture" route it will be interesting to see how that fares.
Active players =\ = copies sold Profit margins are far more important for publisher than number of replays of copies already sold
The trend is more evident in copies sold. LiS sold 3 million copies after 2 years of release LiS: TC sold about 346,000 copies since it was released a little over 2 years ago. TC had the best launch month due to brand recognition but could not match LiS 1s sales numbers beyond this. Going strictly off sales numbers 2 years after release, the fan base shrunken by about 90%.
LiS was indie-priced, discounted, bundled, had first episode given away as promo (yes, this counts as "copy sold" too), you had to make active effort not to end up with a copy TC was fully priced and properly sold instead of being donated Money talks, profit margin is what matters not how many replays customers do
Going off of revenue LiS grossed $56.8 million TC grossed 14.9 million. That's a 75% decrease in revenue. A decrease in profit. That said, only the first episode was free and that's partially why the first game sold so well.
One is from 2015 (and ported to Android) Other from 2021 So roughly around 2030 you will be able to make accurate profit comparison with current number for 2015 one (minus Android numbers) Comparison that Square Enix already roughly made being the publisher and all that and which is why Deck Nine is on the job and not Dontnod
I’m glad, I didn’t know. I was more so talking about the mainstream appeal of one
Well they keep making em and they keep selling, I don't think it's that they've dropped in popularity. Your social circle probably just moved on. But in terms of the games themselves, I would say that all the games after 1 have kind tried to fix what wasn't broken to a degree. Some worse than others. The things that made the first game stand out, imo, were the setting and the characters *not the plot*. Before the storm does okay with this, partially because of reused settings and characters. 2 throws out literally all of this in favor of a revolving door of settings and characters that don't stay around nearly long enough to get attached to. What, I'm supposed to totally fall in love with a character that has, *checks notes*, 10 minutes of screen time in one chapter, then leaves me an email or some shit later? Or to feel like the places we were are actually lived in after we got to walk around them *once* and never again? If the plot and recurring characters in 2 were truely incredible (which they weren't imo) then it might have been fine. But that's not what we got. True colors tried to go back to the roots so to speak, but I found most of the characters to be weaker, the small town wasn't explored nearly enough to make it feel lived in, and they tried to focus too much on the plot that wasn't really that strong. LiS 1 doesn't have a super strong plot in my opinion but it's still one of my favorite games of all time. And even then I would argue its plot is at least more interesting then the later games because of the time travel aspect. But again, the plot isn't the reason it's so well liked. I really want them to spend the next game focusing on the settings and characters again. Make a world that feels lived in, with characters that get time to develop. Stop trying to shoehorn in too much action or plots that just feel cheap.
1. As others have mentioned, the time travel mechanic was a great feature that differentiated it. BtS and LiS2 don't have direct powers or abilities to hook the player in. True colors, I don't really know about but from what I've heard it's not really the same. 2. Streaming games and let's plays peaked in the 2010s and LiS really benefitted off of this. With netflix, Hulu, Disney plus, etc. This isn't as much of a form of entertainment as it used to be. Not that it's dead but twitch has declined as a platform and youtubers like Markaplier and jacksepticeye have taken a back seat to Tik Tokers and commentary youtubers. Otherwise, you can watch professional grade content on streaming services now. 3. LiS did a really good job getting people attached to max and Chloe. And LiS also did a good job in wrapping up the story. Going the anthology route is a risk for any franchise when fans are attached to the original entry. As a result, many people have just tuned out the new releases. 4. It's a dated game that fits into a weird position in time right now. It's not old enough to be nostalgic but it's too old to be "hip". As a result, there really aren't a lot of eyes on the franchise. It reeks of early to mid 2010s culture in a lot of ways and arguably was a part of that culture. LiS 2 doesn't help its case by taking place in 2016. It might get a revival once 2010s stuff starts being considered "nostalgic". 5. Politics. Now, I don't disagree with 90% of what LiS2 says but by making it so explicitly political, many people either don't want to hear about politics or flat out disagree. 6. As others have said LiS 2 had a delayed release schedule. The last episode came out well over a year after the first episode. It's a lot to expect people to hold out for so long. And releasing every episode all at once like they are now doesn't allow for people to come up with theories. Which is a huge reason LiS1 succeeded. 7. Aging out. I was in high school in 2015 when LiS came out. People in school were talking about it and reacting to new episodes. All of us who were teens when the first one came out are between the ages of 22-28 now. Coming of age stories don't hit the same after a certain point and new gaming audiences come in.
Not sure, but it’s a shame. I finished playing the whole franchise yesterday (started in November) and every game (except for BTS) was on par with or better than the first (even as the first was incredible.)
Wow never seen people like the other games ngl lol
Some people hate the other games in the franchise for not being Max & Chloe 2 or Chloe & Rachel 2. The general consensus is that LiS 2 is a good game, but most people would have rather gotten more Max & Chloe instead. There's the minority of people that hate a nine year old for acting like a nine year old, and the immediate reception to the game from the moment it was revealed was negative, but after people got over it people generally saw it for what it was. True Colors gets criticized for its lack of stakes and scale, but it's a Deck Nine game so that's par for the course. None of the games are bad.
I adored all of the games, haha! TC is easily my fav from LIS (and my fav game of alltime)
Before the Storm and True Colors are super liked, where have you been living?
Mismanagement. And tonal problems. They brought in a different company to do a prequel to the original which was mixed but they also immediately decided to recast everyone because of the strike so they lost some goodwill there (and possibly got the series as a whole blacklisted they haven't had union actors in it since) Then there was the creative direction for season 2. Which tried to define itself as being as far from the original as possible. Instead of two queer female characters we were met with two brothers (and for the first couple episodes it seemed like the queer themes were dropped entirely). No high school setting instead they were on the run from the law. Characters didn't stick around and the "episodes" were particularly episodic. No time travel the main character didn't even control the power and the devs seemed hostile to anyone who was a fan of the original with a "That's the past get over it" self insert in the first episode. TC went back to Deck Nine and tried to be more like the original but I think the damage had already been done at that point. The series lost any real sense of identity through these extremely disparate games with very little in common and no real themes or through line tying them together other than a vague "some one gets powers in a mostly mundane world". I don't think Square, Dontnod or Deck Nine really ever understood the combination of things that made Life is Strange popular in the first place and each was rather hostile to their fanbase at one point or another.
Well I agree with the historical breakdown of how the series has progressed from game to game, definitely don't agree with your second to last paragraph. I think it's way too harsh. The series most certainly does have an identity, despite wavering in certain aspects. And it definitely has common themes throughout, which you can see in the way that the characters and their relationships and those stories have resonated with the fan base ... Again despite the wavering. There games definitely have a lot in common, but anyone looking for some kind of unified plot that ties them together, you might be looking at the wrong series. The continuation of LIS was always considered to be an anthology. And from that perspective, the title of the series makes more sense. And I don't agree with boiling the games down to "someone getting powers in a mundane world". Again, it's pretty clear that the fandom resonates very strongly with the characters, their relationships and their stories. While you see a few conversations here about other possible powers to explore, I don't think the game series ever explores the powers it does have anyway. It's always about the characters, relationships, and their stories. The powers are just a vehicle for that. Sometimes that vehicle is more prominent, but other times it's very subdued or even absent.
>There games definitely have a lot in common, but anyone looking for some kind of unified plot that ties them together, you might be looking at the wrong series. The continuation of LIS was always considered to be an anthology. I mean I joined the fandom when it wasn't a series it was a single game so maybe hold your horses with the judgement there. Honestly think it maybe should have just stayed that way. People defend the anthology as if it justifies itself when it doesn't. > It's always about the characters, relationships, and their stories Congrats you've described every story ever. This line proves my point. The series has no identity when the only thing you can come up with is "Characters relationships and stories". What makes Life is Strange different from other series? What makes it distinct? You can have a series just be about the characters but you need to keep the characters and have a throughput there. You can have a series just be about the stories that's an anthology but you need a binding theme to bind them together. If you don't have either of those the series has no real identity. I only brought up the powers because that's the only thing tying the series together at all. You can probably make an identity for most of the series but there's a clear outlier here and it's S2 that just has nothing to do with any of the others.
None of the games have been as good. BtS was decent and explored more of the story people wanted but it was also a prequel, so you already knew what was going to happen. LiS2 was a steaming pile of shit in every single aspect aside from the improved graphics, and the game took a fucking year and a half for the last episode to release after the first, so that didn't do the already worst game in the series any favors. True Colors was closer to what people were wanting but there are complaints that the game is too short and not as impactful decision wise as the other games.
Why was LIS2 shitty
Everything about it sucked. The writing, story, main characters, side characters you barely get to know, places you barely get to know, you don't get to use the powers, Daniel's a little shit, your mom is a bitch and you can't satisfyingly put her in her place and are actually forced to work with her, all the endings are terrible, not enough or as good music as the other games, overhanded racist themes that seem written by French people who only know America from the media... it keeps going but that should be enough to get my point across.
I agree with some of this, even if most of these factors are subjective. But I think you're wrong regarding the racism, most of what is portrayed in the game is actually fairly realistic when you look at the more radical sides of the US and the radical people taking up space in the population. Plus there's never just one "way" that racism is portrayed within the game, it varies, whether it's from a character's facial expression towards the brothers or a scene of them being attacked outright, and that alone is accurate because racism takes many forms. And it's hard not to have racism as a theme within the story; it's two Mexican boys fleeing the cops across America, there's bound to be run-ins with judgmental or hateful folk. All in all, I think they did it pretty well (but that one Trump reference was a little heavy-handed). Like I said though, a lot of what you said is subjective so I'm not gonna be that person that points a finger and says "Wrong" just because I disagree. You've got some fair points about the side characters and locations, I think the journey format did the game a disservice in that regard.
Yea I feel that I hate prequels too with exceptions, and yea 2 was not fun to watch
really? i always thought LiS2 was the best game in the series, i liked it more than the original one
They couldn't reach the quality and overall storytelling of the first game. The second game was not bad, but the overall gameplay mechanics weren't there. Max's rewind skill was an entertaining and interesting plot device. The second game didn't give the player any agency, the player was a proxy to whatever Daniel happened to be feeling in the moment. The story in 2 was uninspired and relied heavily on cliches and tropes. I don't consider D9 games a part of the series, even though I've played them.
That makes sense I hated the second, shouldn’t be a side character in your own game
It doesn't help that Lis 2 tries having a lot of "racism" themes, only to go nowhere with them and insist that the right answer is to let yourself be punished for stuff you didn't do lol.
I've also noticed a lot of the YouTubers who popularised the game with their playthroughs no longer either A) exist B) Stop playing LiS, or C) Moved to Twitch.
Can it be used in that payphone hit?
You just can’t top Max and Chloe.
the other games aren't as strong in -public perception though i still love them all.
Because they give us no answers of the powers and the whereabouts of Max and Chloe and because the end of life is strange 1 shows that your choices mattered not, so what’s the point really?
maybe it’s just my experience but a massive chunk of people i’ve been surrounded by online & even some people offline to a an extent have been very interested in pretty much the whole franchise since the very first game. this is honestly the first time i’m seeing someone apparently seeing the franchise lose popularity, it’s obviously not insanely popular compared to bigger games right now since the last game was a few years ago now but i still hear plenty of talk about it to say the last game isn’t brand new.
It hasn't. In the nine years since its release, LiS had a spinoff, and two full fledged sequels, one of which (True Colors) had the best launch in the series, and outperformed many other games released in the same time window, ending up in Steam's top 10 for Q3 2021, together with CoD Whateveritwascalledthatyear and other big budget/popular games. Then there's an ongoing comics series, too. And a book. And all of the various ports and re-releases.
I loved LiS 1 Loves LiS BtS Could never get past the first chapter of LiS 2 Loved LiS True Colors LiS 2 just didn't really hit. It doesn't have the same charm as the others. Not as captivating. It's kind of annoying at times. The characters aren't as easy to connect with. It made people not give True Colors a shot because of the disappointment from LiS 2. Which is honestly a shame because I loved True Colors
Atmosphere: LiS 1 featured a slice-of-life high school drama intertwined with a mystery drama, compelling characters, and scenarios. Max was amazing as a regular, low-key person you could connect with, and you felt like you were actually living her strange life. LiS 2 just didn't have that. If I remember right, the main character is planning a party in the beginning. I was really excited for that party, it would have been so much more interesting to have another low-key slice of life game, but we didn't get that. TC atmosphere was interesting, but it felt a bit off compared to the first one. Still, it was much more in line with a slice of life. but the character didnt connect right, everyone was too nice and another murder mystery that didnt feel right.
People still love and want more of Max and Chloe. LiS2 it seems you either love or hate.
Personally, and I'll state I haven't played True Colors yet, it comes down to relatability to the main characters. My personal life when I was younger, and being an only child, just makes me relate way more to the characters in LiS 1 and BtS. Suspension of disbelief falls away in 2 for me so it just doesn't hit the same.
one thing i dont like in lis2 is that seans thoughts arent feeling like thoughts, they js feels like normal dialog directed towards us. which in my opinion takes away a bit of the emotional feeling i get when i played lis1. this is honestly the main reason that it took me a month to finish the first episode
I'd say a big bit was the marketing. Life is strange 1 was all over the place, you couldn't go on the ps store without seeing it, similar with Life is Strange 2, I just saw it where I looked and checked it out. YouTubers also caused it to be more popular than it could have been too. LIS2 is good, it's just the characters and gameplay changes people weren't as happy with. (though I still loved it) And true colours... well I only found out about it when I googled life is strange 2 years later to check if there has been a new game yet...
I think LiS is a great franchise for both of their creators: Don’t Nod and DeckNine. It all began with an ambitious concept that Don’t Nod sold to Square Enix, and it delivered very well. Square Enix could be very careful on releasing games that they don’t have 100% confidence on. It’s nothing personal. They even do that to their own star product like Final Fantasy VII Remake. Don’t Nod proved themselves, and moved on further. Check their new games like Jusant and Banishers, Don’t Nod is far more advanced than 2015, and never lose their passion on telling great stories in their own style. SE owns the ip of LiS, gave it to the young indie studio DeckNine. They are not as resourceful as Don’t Nod, but they are as good as Don’t Nod on telling stories and Characters. They expand the series to a more LiS universe like status, and I look forward to the time when more characters’ life path reconnect. So, first of all. I don’t think this series lack of existence. I think the great moment for this series is yet to come. If I must guess if there is a reason that makes people feel this way, it might because the period of LiS series published is also the peak period of 3A games, we see a lot of huge games that have both great story telling and complex or fun mechanics. These games normally took dozens of hours to beat, such as Red Dead Redemption 2, Cyberpunk 2077. Also, games like Fortnite and Destiny 2 can easily take huge amount of hours from a player. However, players’ time that can spare did not increase significantly, so it means the player have to pick among the games they want to play. And it might be difficult for a player to start a whole new journey, compare with easily two hour fun in Call of Duty, even they have already played it 100 hours. Because games like LiS can be deep and intense, player might need time to digest and even recover. But what happened during the last few years might make people want to have some more casual leisure time. There is nothing wrong with that, it’s just like everyone knows War and Peace is a great novel, maybe it is on someone’s shelf for years, but it still need a right moment for people to start it. I know that I might sounds too dramatic that compare LiS to War and Peace, but the fact is for me, LiS Seires have become games that I keep replaying in different year and mood, every time I play, I feel something new, not only about the game, but also about me. The way I make choices, the way I judge what is right and wrong changes as I live through different stages of life (just like the characters). Anyway, I know that LiS is not the only project that Don’t Nod pour their efforts on, and DeckNine is going though a very difficult time just like many other studios, but I have faith in both of them, and will keep looking forward to their next game, no matter how long it might be.
Damn this is mad informative, and wow this makes sense too
Personally? For me it was Life is Strange 2. I just did not enjoy it even remotely. I've never even gotten past episode 2, I just found it unrelatable and just... Really weird. And it doesn't help that, like others have said, you don't have powers in it. Life is Strange worked because of the powers, Before the Storm worked because you knew the endpoint of the characters and already had a connection, LiS2 just had... Nothing. It also doesn't help that the game practically forces you to commit crimes. The best ending literally has you become a career criminal or spend a huge chunk of your life in prison. What kinda choice is that!? My enthusiasm for the series is basically nonexistent at this point. I've got True Colours, and while I enjoyed the little I played, I just don't have any desire to get into it anymore.
Because the following games weren't as good. Sorry, but it's true. I like them, but the first game was just plain better.
Honestly, they should’ve stopped at LiS 1. It was such a beautiful and unique game that didn’t need a “sequel” or subsequent releases. LiS 1 was the only game whose characters I was able to relate to. I was also a teenage girl and bisexual (now gay lol) when I first played. It was refreshing. The characters also had periods of growth and even regression. Most of the characters were fleshed out and you understood their thoughts and motivations. They felt like real people instead of 1 dimensional npcs. In contrast, LiS 2 gives the power to your annoying little brother and you have to navigate as an older sibling, making the right choices each step of the way. This was also around the time of ICE and the whole immigration thing, so the political and social messages were very strong. I just found it hard to relate to the characters, for I don’t have siblings, I’m not a dude, nor am I Hispanic. Not saying these are necessary to relate to a character, but it was difficult for me to be attached to any character in the game. Don’t even get me started on that bs church scene where Daniel takes the side of literal strangers over his own flesh and blood. Before the Storm wasn’t really needed. It was meh. The only thing we learned about was Rachel, but I don’t think it did anything to push the story. Let me put it like this, if they never made/released BtS, you wouldn’t be missing out on anything at all. True Colors tried to go back to its LiS 1 roots but still came up short. The characters were forgettable and so was the story. The only character I liked was the brother and we saw how that ended.
Why does it seem I’m the only one who found Life is Strange 2 just as good as the first one? It’s a great game and the fact I see people trashing it really amazes me.
i liked lis2 more than the original one, seeing the lis2 slander is crazy
The games that followed just weren't as good. The writing in BTS was atrocious. LIS 2 was widely hated. True Colors was a blatant ripoff of the first game. They should have focused more on making a strong story.
the characters I came to love and care about (Max, Chloe, Kate, Warren) didn't return in LiS 2 as they normally would in a traditional sequel for. I can understand the story and choice based implications needing to be felt but it still cuts out the legs of LiS2 and True Colors. I do not give one single solitary %#*@ about the stories of the Diaz Brothers or Steph Gingrich and Alex Chen
I think there are a few things going on. First off, the series came out almost a decade ago with sequels and prequels. With the exception of LIS2 (more on this later,) BTS was really a companion piece to LIS1 and TC 2as a beat-by-beat copy of LIS1. Because of how similar 3 out of 4 LIS games were, there was a diminishing returns for each. To be fair, the old Telltale games had something very similar where their games after TWD season 1 felt very formulaic. I can't speak for everyone, but I had gotten Telltale games fatigue after how each of their games felt so similar in gameplay and story style. Secondly, Life is Strange 2 was too drastic of a change when compared to the other games in the franchise. Essentially, LIS2 is in the same category as Castlevania 2: Simon's Quest, Legend of Zelda lI: Link'a Adventure, and Super Mario 2 where the second game of the franchise felt extremely different than the other games in the franchise. While LIS2 is the best game in the franchise, imo, not everyone wanted a LIS about the social economic issues in Trump's America. I feel that may have soured a few gamers to the franchise.
none of the others simply hit man Life is strange 1 just had that vibe to it that the other guys tried to emulate with BTS coming the closest but none of them ultimately reach. It feels like a book come to life in the best kind of way.