Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - Life Is Strange 2 Spoilercast - Kinda Funny Gamescast Ep. 251

Episode Date: December 16, 2019

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What's up everybody? Welcome to your pre-show for The Kind of Funny Gamescast. I'm one of your host, Greg. This is Imran. This is Michelle. This is Raoul. This is John Luke. Hi. I have everyone. You know Imran and I were just the normal clowns who are here all the time. But these guys made Life is Strange 2. All by themselves. Just these three people. Sorry, team. If you didn't know, today is a spoiler cast for Life is Strange 2. It's not yet.

So if you're here going, oh, I didn't realize that's what today was. No big deal. You get the pre-show where we won't spoil Life is Strange 2. when the games cast starts, it's on. But you have a chance to get out of it and do it. I'm going to have, actually, I'm going to bend the rules this time. I'm going to have YouTube chat open throughout the show so I can look over if you have questions, Patrions, about what is going on over that.

But for right now, hi everybody. Hi. Hi. Thank you guys so much for coming out today and making all this time. Nice to be there. Thank you for having us here. So, Raoul, you said, where were you before this? Yeah, this morning with John,

we have been to Pixar Animation Studio, just have a visit. How was that? It was incredible. It's like, we were like children, like it's a dream come true. And just to see the, you know, the big lamp and the balloon. Exactly. We were like, oh, we want to stay here.

We took our tourist picture with the lamp. She smiled. No, it was, yeah, it's awesome. Thank you again for the one who will bring us here. They're not watching, don't know. If they might watch the games, because they ain't pre-show watching. We can say in his name, but because John Lasseter is a big, A little bit shy, so we can mention him.

He's not even there anymore, right? That ended up. I don't know. I don't want to talk about it. When did you guys get in? One hour ago? I just arrived one hour ago. Oh my God, dude.

From New York, we had our plane at 8 this morning, so we get up at 5 or something. I'm a bit tired. I'm sorry, no, that's. If I said, weird things. You'll be like my wife and just drift into the French. I don't know what you're saying. Oh, full of sleep, play.

Imran, how are you feeling? We've been up early too. Yeah, I nearly took a nap between Game's Alien here. Yeah. Like, not an intentional nap, it's just a, oh, I kind of feel myself fading a little bit, but I'm going to try and stay up, but that's just going to make me more exhausted. Sure, yeah. Instead, we did the trite and shoo thing of we ate McDonald's.

Yes. We've been working hard, punishing our bodies, so let's punish it more with bad fast food. I made the mistake of, like, eating half a chicken McNugget, then looking at the other half. I'm like, no, this is awful. You don't want to ask questions. You don't want any ask any questions about that and stuff. So, yeah, it's one of those things.

I'm so excited to talk to you guys about your game. But in the pre-show, we can't talk about your game. I want people, obviously, to look at it. So instead, have you guys been playing anything? Jean-Luc, do you have time to play anything right now? Actually, I'm not playing anything because I don't have time, but I'm planning to play death trending during the Christmas holidays. Sure.

Because, you know, I don't want to play it one or five. two days and then leave it because I'm here in the United States and then take it back. So I will take time at Christmas to play Death Stranding, I think. I really want to. Raoul, what are you playing next? Yeah, I think it was one year. I haven't played anything. I'm happy that the game is finished now.

And yeah, because of the Black Friday on Switch, I have to admit I have bought a lot of little games. The last one is Obradin. Oh, yeah. So, yeah, I will play this one first maybe and Greece. all the things I've Yeah, Oberton, I still haven't played either I got on a switch as well

And like I originally when it came to PC I screwed around with a little bit And I was like, I don't know And then after I played Not her story, what was the one to say? Telling lies from this year And I was talking about it So many people were like, if you loved that

Because I had a cup of coffee And I had telling lies And then I had a notebook And I was taking all my notes So like you would love Oberden If you play it that way I was like crap I got to do that How many times did you spend

Playing Solitaire in Telling Lies? I spent way too much time playing Solitaire and Telling Lies. And that was the... Then when I figured out there was like a time was actually moving. I was like, oh no! I've wasted so much time doing this. I'm actually afraid of that part in telling lies, because I don't know how to play Solitaire. Really? I just missed past me by somehow.

Dude, one of the top three PC games of all time. You just put your child anywhere and you see if it works. Okay. I'm afraid that once I get to the part, like, supposedly there's something different about this version that, like, is part of the overall puzzle. I'm just not going to get it. Like, I'm not going to understand what's different. I don't want to play the game. Michelle, what's next for you?

What are you going to play? So I'm playing a lot of Magic Arena. Oh, okay. Yeah, that's the kind of game that's completely different of what we are doing. No. I was playing Magic a long time ago, just real cards.

Yeah. And then having the new client and playing online, I just got back into it. So it takes me a lot of time. When you guys are working on a game, like Life is Strange, is there any time to play other stuff

to keep, like, a breast of what's happening in the industry or is it just heads down you've got to make your game? I think it's a bit of both. Most of the time it takes a really big part of our time working on the game and I guess that's why I'm playing games like Magic Arena or Overwatch

just to play something completely different than what we're creating. Something you can jump in, jump out of. Yeah, and just really playing something. That wouldn't be work because when we play a storytelling, a narrative game, we're mostly playing it like looking at it for work, like

You take some notes and, oh, yeah, not okay, maybe we could do that. Yeah, of course. Yeah, yeah. So, for example, I've been back to Red Dead Redemption, but there are a lot of very good narrative inside this one, and I couldn't play this while doing Life History. Because you play a narrative game the whole day, testing it, giving some feedbacks when you're home after,

you just don't want to play again the same kind of game. Sure. Yeah, but it's, yeah, it depends. And the team gives us a lot of feedbacks about, the industry also because they are playing a lot so you should just have a look at this one because of this reason extra so we try to stay focused to stay aware of what is in the industry yeah and for me I try to avoid when I'm working on video game like Life Strange 2 I try to avoid narrative games you know sure for example I played

red-eye Red Eye Redemption but I'm not I didn't took it as a narrative game it's more like an action with good story you know for example a game named Detroit Oh yeah, Quantitry. Was released where, yeah, exactly. Was released when we were working on Life Stranglement. And I didn't want to play it while we were writing and not to be, you know, out of, when we were focusing on Life Strangoon, not to be disturbed by stuff. You're focusing on your story and how to tell your story and not having to work. Yeah, I don't want to, you know, I'm like a sponge and I really take a lot of, you know, influence of movies.

You look like a sponge. I was going to say, Jean-Lude. Yeah, I suppose sponge download. And yeah, I don't want to be too much commandee influenced. Thank you very much. And here we go for the shitty fringe. Life is strange too is so much better than Detroit.

I see you moving over there. What's happening? You're trying to. Oh, I'm pretty sure. Oh, yeah, yeah. I think it's possible to ask water. Oh, yeah, you also? No, no.

Just water? Anybody else? Thank you so much. We'll fix it. What are you going to do with the microphones? I mean, I can do that. I'm just going to bring his up. Yeah.

Do we want to push him into? I'll put, I'll push him. Yeah. We go way back, Michelle and I. Don't worry. You can push him around. Don't worry about it. These guys, Raoul, Jean-Luc,

don't push him around. Yeah, we got him in the Lego game, remember that? You did. That was one of my favorite things. We were out drinking, some life is strange, rat party. You didn't play it? No, I mean, you told me that. Oh, yeah.

You never played Lego, and you sent me some. Yeah, I was like, Lego Dimensions is the thing you need to play, and he's like, I don't know, and I bought it for you. Set it to France. developer buying gifts to the no no no it's the opposite way see people got it all wrong they think yeah the journalists are on the take it's the devs there's a reason there's a life is

strange tune it's me and Lego dimensions all right I said you can have Lego dimensions if you make another one they're like all right have to avoid that hot Lego narrative I know right you don't want to cross it over the the portals and stuff you need tests yeah I'm gonna push you in I can come closer to the Mike okay all the time. Don't panic. See? Thank you.

My first time, everybody. So, start from the beginning. Three bit. One last thing. Are you comfortable? Do you want it up a little bit? No, no. I'm pretty fine. I'm the smallest one. He's quite small.

Now, in the chat, Mudognik 96 pipes up, and he has a question for you. But before I get to that, I want you to know that I'm pretty sure he is in the kind of funny community, one of the biggest life of Strange fans. Because we put out the call for questions, and usually that means somebody writes in with one question. He wrote in with one thing, but it's just question after question after question that he has specifically about it.

But before we get to anything about Life is Strange, she's asking, what games are you guys looking forward to next year? Like, we're talking about what you're going to play during break, but when you have a little bit more free time in, I assume whatever's happening next year. Now, I'm not fishing for what's going on. Where is Life is Strange three? I guess we all have the same one. Yeah. The easy one. Last of us two.

Yeah. I can't wait for this one. Yeah. So Last of Us Part 2. I would say cyberpunk. Sure, of course. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Does Last of Us speak to you from the narrative or the gameplay or everything?

To be honest, for me, I think the gameplay of the first one was a lot of like the gameplay of Uncharted series, you know? Sure. Arena, you have to cover, to shoot, and stuff. And it's more like the, for me, the story is unbelievable in the first one. and I really, really want to know what happened to Eli. Yeah, yeah. And I think that what I really loved with the First Last of Us is I'm usually not a really action game or I don't really like that much the Uncharted games.

Yeah. But with The Last of Us, I was so engaged with the story and they managed so well to blend the gameplay and the story that I was really happy to play all the action sequences and the gameplay was really fine with me because I wanted to protect Ellie or I wanted really to advance the story. Sure. And the gameplay blended so well.

was that. Yeah, yeah. I think Last of Us 2 is at the top of my list, I think, for 2020. I got to go play it a couple months ago now. And just the improvements they've made from Last of Us 1, from taking the combat you already know, but then putting it into... You played it. Yeah, yeah.

Way bigger environments and stuff where it is possible to actually have... I'm going to attack the situation this way. It goes wrong. You get out and have a chance to, like, lose them in reposition and come back or have them break off individually and take them that way. Plus, you've got to kill a bunch of dogs. They say you don't have to kill him I'll believe when I see it. I don't trust this Neil Druckman

a second. Because I was killing a lot of dogs. I mean, he famously dislikes dogs. It's true. Every time he sees Portilla, kicks him. Everybody tweeted Neil Druckman. Why do he kick dogs? Don't do that. Please don't do that. You won't understand it. We have a little story of these dogs.

That's what makes it funny. Neil Druckman working really hard on a video game coming up for air and there's 30 people like, why do you kick dogs? Greg Miller says you kick dogs. Oh, and I was, but I'm disappointed because I was waiting a lot for the new game from the guy who did Firewatch. Oh, Camph Santo. Value of the Gods.

Yeah, Valley of the Gods. And I heard that it was postponed. Valve. Yeah. Games go into Valve. They don't come out. Or maybe it will come out in six years. Yeah, exactly.

It's a VR experience we don't expect it. Al-Fly-3. Yeah. Alex. Alex. Yeah. But that's because of that we don't have in the Valley of Gods. And you don't have any helmet to taste it, so you can't play it.

It's maybe the game will make me buy a VR stuff. Wow. Yeah. I really love life life. For the story, basically. Do you guys as creators, like, do you ever entertain the idea of doing something in VR? Or is it? It depends.

I'm not fishing! Yeah, we have worked on something together, but it was after-life strange one. Okay. Yeah, we can't really talk about it. Sure. Yeah, I'm really, I'm maybe the one the most interested in. in the air for sure but I push them to test and yeah I think on a narrative

point of view it's quite incredible what you're going to do and for me it's really a future and I really believe in this media even if it's quite complicated still to test it and to have games or good games on it but yeah it's when you see Valve jumping in

I think it could be a huge change yeah that's going to be people want to do right really on a narrative on the emotional point of view it's crazy or fast you or dive into your universe and a story and so yeah, for sure we will have a look. I just get the quest and it's so cool. It's easy to play.

I tweeted about it the other day. I don't use it as much as I want to. No, don't apologize. I don't get to use it as much as I do. I don't get to use it as much as I do. And so whenever I do put it back on and get back in, it's always that moment of like, I can't believe this is real. I can't believe it works so well.

I had left it with the rush that's been going on in our lives. I think I hadn't used it in like three months. It's just been tucked away. and I was like, I want to play it, but I'm sure it won't have power. It had like 70% of the power still. I was like, oh my gosh. This is such a well-built system.

BKD, what do you got to say? Just a heads up. I have charged it multiple times in those three months. Not the one in my house under my couch. The one at the office, sure. Yeah, yeah. No, I'm talking about the one.

You come to my house again? You charge all my things? I would pay for that service if Kevin came and just charged my controllers and quest just in case I wanted them. Over your closet? What are you doing? What are you doing?

I'm charging all the iPads. Say no more, fam. Walk out. The gentleman lock the door for you anyway. Yeah, my only issue with VR is that I'm really easily sick. I have a lot of motion sickness. Sure. So I need to try the new one if it's better, but even the most simple, basic experience

with the previous headset, I was getting motion sickness really quickly. So that's an issue for me. Yeah. For me, any game where I don't have to physically locomotion around is pretty easy, like, like Beat Sabre or Astrobot, those games worked really well for me. and some others like, oh, this is making me way too sick. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, my wife, Jen, is the same way where she can't do most VR,

but when we brought home the quest and I had her play Beat Sabre, she was okay. So there's hope for you, Michelle. There's hope for you. I think, I would tell you. I would lend it to you. We just stopped the pre-show. We just, the pre-show goes on for an hour while he plays quest. No, we should get into the real show.

Are you ready, Kevin? I can show this doc with you. There really isn't, though, any notes. Oh, I guess you're going to need it for. ads, right? Yeah, sure. All right. Can we pick any question or you choose for us?

Oh, you can talk to the chat if you want, yeah. Okay, yeah, so Obradin is out on Switch, yes. So I can answer this one. I can confirm, I can confirm that you're in. Yeah, I'm not working for them, but it's really cool to play. Are this the developers of Life is Strange? Yes, we are.

Yes, we are. Maybe we can just, so we have worked on the first Life is Strange, on also the awesome adventure of Captain Spirit that was the introduction of Life Strange 2 and Life strange too. And Jean-Luc here is a writer, and we both are the directors. So we share a lot of stuff with Michel. I think that someone really likes your boots, Jean-Gis. Oh, this is Doc Martin stuff. You don't see any brand here. Get that sponsorship. I don't have right to say

the name of the brand. I won't say it. I won't say it's Doc Martin, sorry. Kevin, you're good now? All right. You guys, Jean-Luc, Michel, do you want water? Do you want anything? Oh, I'm fine. And also, if you want something in the middle of the middle of the show just we're a very laid-back show okay shot it out walk off we'll figure it out no professional at all there's nothing professional in any way about this whatsoever except that now we're gonna do it all right everyone's ready Kevin you're ready yeah here we go what's up everybody welcome to a very special episode of the

kind of funny games cast I'm one of your host Greg Miller alongside Imron how many Michelle hi Raul hello and John Luke hi hi you guys know me and Imron we're here on the games cast pretty much every week unless we're traveling or doing something cool. Isn't that right, I'm right? That's right. Yeah, that's right. Don't do anything cool. But these three folks over here made a little game called Life is Strange 2. Yay! Thank you. We're all big fans of it here in the office. Such big fans, we invited you to come to the Gamescast for this

kind of funny games cast, spoiler cast, strictly about Life is Strange 2. So ladies and gentlemen, if you haven't played Life is Strange 2, pause this podcast, pause this YouTube video, go play the game and then come back to it. This will wait. This is evergreen content as the kids say, Kevin. It doesn't go bad. I didn't have two days. You could do it easily. Exactly, yeah. You will want to keep playing it once you start,

which will be one of our main topics of conversation once we get going here. So, before we even get into, before we spoil, spoil, we'll have a top-level conversation for everybody here who just wants to hang out for a second and say hey. Worth pointing out, of course, this episode of the Kind of Funny Games cast is brought to you by Upstart, Trojan, and Quip. And, of course, our Patreon producers,

Fantasy Critic Games and James Hastings. Kevin, is there some kind of usual, do we do, does James Hastings have like a catchphrase or a noise we do? I don't listen to the show. But you know how we have like the Predator, right? You can make something up right now. James Hastings.

James! All right, James, that's your thing now. That's your thing now. Thanks for being a Patreon producer. Fantasy critic games, you got to stick around a little bit longer. All right? Well, we'll get to you eventually. Don't worry about it.

So no spoilers. Imron. How much do you like Life of Strange, too? It went from a game I wasn't probably going to play this year, maybe just like sometime next year, to probably my top three of the year again. Yeah, yeah. Thank you.

What are the second? The one and two? Before there, like, control and, like, Fire Emblem. Okay, cool. So, like, this game is just, like, a notch below those in terms of what I liked personally, but I still really love the game in a way I didn't expect. Thank you.

Thank you. Yeah. Life is Strange 2 for me has a lot of the same Gregisms as Life Strange 1, I think. Whereas when Life is Strange 1 arrived, episode 1, I remember getting it, starting it, and not really being able to make out, what is it? Like, you know what's going? And I remember, I was like, I'll get back to it.

And then let two or three episodes stack up, came back. And that's when it was on. And it was like, I'm playing all these right now. I'm binging it. And Life is Strange 2, obviously, I already knew that. I'd already fall in love with Life Strange. I already fallen in love with, you know, I fall in love with Michelle here.

But it was, okay, cool. I started episode one, and then there was a big gap to episode two, and I started episode two, and I was like, where was I? Wait, who's Sean, who's Dan? And then episode three came, and I was like, did I play episode two? And I looked, and I was like, I did, no, I did. And I let them all stack up getting ready for this.

And so when episode five hit last week, to be able to go in there and play through them all again. You replayed episode one and two? No, but I went and did my scrub through on YouTube of like, wait, remind me of who everybody is. Where did I leave off? The choices I made versus the choices you could have made. But these last three episodes have been that, oh, man, like, I, you know, it's bedtime.

I know it's bedtime, but I'm like, I can squeeze out another chapter. Can't I? I just want to see where this is going. It's only 10 o'clock. I can finish this episode in like, 1230. It's like, yeah, that was good. Yeah, exactly. Exhausted.

Now I need to go to bed. But yeah, it's like, it's yet again, you guys, nailing what you do, but what makes life is strange so special. And I want to talk about that in a non-spoilery. context of, what was it like to have that challenge in front of you? Like, you did Life is Strange one. And I may be speaking just as myself or, you know, internally, or, you know, a games guy on our side of the industry, there wasn't that pressure on you. We didn't know what you were doing. We didn't know what you're setting out to create. So when you finish Life is

Strange, you have this legion of fans, these people, this audience, this community that writes to you. I talk to them at shows, that cosplay about how much this game touched them to have to deal with that legacy moving forward, I feel like would make me go, I'm leaving the games industry. I don't know how to tackle this. Yeah, you're right. We should have done that, maybe. No, it was exactly, like you said, it was a lot of pressure, but it's also, I think we have a lot of conversations, the three together, also with the team, with Crynex, to see why we love

to create this game and why the player is the first one. And I think the first thing we had in mind was to move on ourselves and to try to do something different, but keeping the same DNA. So sometimes some players have been disappointed by this choice. But it's also what we wanted to do as creators and also for the team because it's like three or four years. And doing again the same type of game, it could have been not boring but difficult to be involved. So here we change a lot of things. and we still wanted to create good characters, I hope, and a story that tackle a lot of different themes.

And, yeah, those brothers came out, and for a lot of reasons, we end up with this world trip structure. So, yeah, it was a challenge, but I think it was a good choice. After four years now, we say, yeah, I think it's okay. And I think some players at the beginning was disappointing, but as soon as they jump into the story, like you say,

it takes maybe sometimes two or three episodes to really jump in and know the characters and we want to take care of Daniel and continue, et cetera. So it takes some time. But as soon as you have taken this time, I think it works. And I think that especially now that the five episodes are released, it's even easier to get into it and play them almost back to both. Oh, sure, yeah. Or just having maybe one or two days of pause between each episode, where with the original release, since the game was... It was a complicated game to create. It was a much bigger game that the first one and the production was hard.

And also that's why we had these bigger delays between each episode. It was a bit bigger than we expected. That tends to happen. That tends to happen. So, yeah, it was something that I know that could have been also sometimes too long of a wait between each episode. But now they can just play those episodes and really get into the story like you did, like remembering easily what happened because you played the other. And that was the thing.

I was so shocked. I think even myself, well, first off, when I turned on episode three, and it was like, do you want to load your save? And it was saved in January. And I was like, I, it's been a year. It's been a year. Oh my gosh.

And so to get going with that and finish the game and then go back for trophies. I platinum it. No big deal. Everybody. Kevin, do you want to applaud? Thank you, Kevin. Thank you, everybody. Number 107.

To go back to the beginning and hear the differences in the performance, right? The fact that, oh, right, I forgot how much. much time passed in the story. I forgot how much Sean was wearing that weight. You know what I mean? To go back and have him be a snotty teen. Like, you know what I mean? With no weight on his shoulders, dad's taking care of everything. It doesn't matter. To where we are at the end of the story, which we're not spoiling you. I was like, oh my gosh, I didn't even give it credit for that, right? Like, I think when you can sit there and play them back to back to back to back. It's a different thing. That's something we really, that says when we replayed a bit of episode one, we noticed how much

even the voice acting of Daniel, of course, changed between episode one and episode five. Like the actor, Roman George is a kid. And of course, he grew up over the course of the voice session. So it works with the game since the game takes place over one year. You can hear that he's younger in episode one and older in episode five. You've got more interesting around. Yeah. One thing we did in the pre-show, because, of course, you can go to patreon.com

slash kind of funny games, get the pre-show, the post show, watch us, record the show live. Even with guests, is we didn't talk about what you guys. do on this. That's a failure as my host. We talked about on the pre-show, not on this show. So what is your role on Life is Strange? We want to begin? Yeah. So we are the three of us, we are the co-creators of

Life is Strange 2 and the awesome adventures of Captain Spirits. And I, John Luke, I'm the writer of these three games. Raoul Barbe and Michel Cor are the co-directors of these three games. So to sum up a bit, we work all the three together are really the main story. the main characters.

So with, of course, the team that is in Paris now, it's like 40 people in total, I would say, for the World Game, 50 maybe on this one. And so, yeah, we write the main story, and after Jean-Luc go really in two details, into the story, and after it's how you create the game, so it's more Michel and I, and Michel is also really in charge

of all the artistic direction. And I will be more on the cinematographic aspect, the music also, I pick the songs, etc. And yeah, we share some stuff, we always work together and in end and, yeah, fight together. But, yeah, it's really something, yeah, I think it's interesting to be not only one person at the head of this kind of project because you're always challenging yourself and you don't disagree, of course. So it's interesting to really have to prove why this decision is good or not.

So, yeah, but it's a cool process and it's after three games. We're still, yeah, we're alive. We're not fighting. We did not kill each other yet, so that's okay. Yeah, exactly. We'll see how the next project goes. Is it, I mean, obviously you talk about the fights and the push and pull of this, right? I have to imagine, is that difficult? Do you feel more of an ownership over this?

Because I always feel, you know, finishing Life is Strange One. I remember giving you Michelle crap for it, right? Of like, you say there's two endings, and neither are canon, but the ending I chose just, I was in a truck and we drove away. And then the other ending, there's this epilogue and there's this video. and I'm like, clearly you thought one way. Like, to be on the other side of that where you have your own ideas

of what these characters should do, what their journey should be, but then to meet other people on the team who don't have that journey, don't have that vision and want to change it, is that especially tough? Do you feel like you own the story in a different way?

I mean, it's like Raoul said, we're working also a lot with the team, so we have really a great team working with us on Life is Strange, and we are trying to get every feedback possible and listen to the team, and we are making internal playtest they are reading the stories

they are sending us the feedbacks and we try to take into account where it makes sense, where it works so I guess most of the team is really on board with the vision of the game and the story I think it's more keeping this vision and as soon as we have

chosen the story and this vision we are the three together know what we want to do with this game. So this game was really about education, the brotherhood, et cetera. So when you got, for example, a very good idea from a designer or a narrative designer. But this idea doesn't fit this vision.

We just, we are here to say, yeah, maybe it's the best idea of the video game history. It won't be in this game because it's not the vision. And sometimes it's difficult to have this vision and to keep it. But as we are like three, it's really cool. But of course, you've got some people disappointed, Even ourselves, sometimes it's not really the game we would do alone.

But it's also what I think gives strength to the project is because we add all those visions and be sure that we keep that the main one. Yeah, a lot of discussion. When you're setting off and ready to make another one, you have these ideas, and you talked about, you know, you want to go in a different way, you want to be creatively challenged. Was there a part of you guys, or was there a discussion of keeping with Max, keeping with Chloe? seeing that go to forward? We talked a bit about it,

but since we have those two endings, completely different endings in the first game, clearly we don't want to decide that any of those is a canon. So, I mean, creating a story that works with Max and Chloe after the first game, to make it really great, it would mean making two different games, I think.

Sure. There is also the fact that from the beginning, you know, Max and Chloe was done at the end of the first Life is Strange and and Quay, Life is Strange 2, with the same characters, and maybe a different mood, but with the same character, could have been a little bit forced because we have no more stuff to say about Max and Quay for now, you know?

Yeah. So it would be like, okay, Life is Strange worked really well, you know, with audience and, well, you know, let's make Life is Strange 2 with Max and Play is going to be a fan service game and we didn't really want to do this as a creator. Okay, the story is done. Let's think about something else with the same DNA maybe of the first one, but let's change a little bit yourself. I think, oh sorry, I think really that for those games, tell me if I'm wrong, but I think that we are creating characters for a story. We are not really creating a story

for characters. And I mean, if we have to make another game with Max and Chloe, it will be finding the best story for Max and Croy instead of creating a new game when you're creating the characters that are the best for the story you want to tell. And I think that Sean and Daniel, we created them really to tell this road trip story of two brothers and facing exclusion and all the difficulties they're facing in the United States. So I mean really if we do another game, I think we want to work the same way. It's to create characters that works best for the theme and the

story we have in mind rather than the opposite. I remember when before the storm finished up, there was some messaging from Square Annex that was like, this is the end of the Max and Clovey story. And a lot of people were kind of like frustrated and angry about that. Was any point where you guys reading that and being like, did we make a mistake with this

or with this? Are we steadfast in what you were doing? I don't know. Anyway, at one moment as creator, we know that it's not all brand anymore. You know, it's Square Enix once, so it's their decision. to move on or not.

So before the storm is done by another team and when we see that from far away, but of course we can understand the disappointment of some fans and we always want more when you like some characters. But as personally I think like Jean-Luc say,

at this moment we are we are not anything to say more to the story, to tell anything more to the story on Max and Clay. But maybe one day it would be different. But at this moment it was more, yeah, for us, it was done. So, yeah.

But maybe Skronix could have other plan. I don't really, I really don't know. So it's just to talk about us. And also looking at the reaction of the fans right now. So really in the beginning, a lot of fans of the first game were angry or were really not willing to play Lifestyle and Shoot just because it's not Max and Chloe. And more and more the episode advanced,

and especially right now with episode 5, we see that most of the players were really skeptical and they gave a chance to the game and now they say that, okay, actually I didn't think that I would like those new characters, but I like them. We still have some fans that hate us for not doing Max and Cree. But I mean, Max and Cree is that still exist. They're still the first game.

People can still imagine what's happening to them later. I mean, it's not because we have Life is Shuan Shue and Shun and Sean and Daniel that Max and Chloe doesn't exist anymore so I mean yeah well I mean

wow that's the spoiler I get into that I guess yeah but to put a pin in Max and Chloe I mean I think I was there with you to an extent

right where when it got announced of okay before the storm's coming deck nine's doing that right you guys are working on life as strange too

it's going to be your own thing it was that thing of like oh that's so interesting choice and I want the way of like

I don't know if I want somebody else touching Max and Chloe right I don't know if I want another story around that So to go, and not to mention, I was like, I remember talking about it in Gamescast leading up to the release of before the storm. I was like, no one's asking for this.

I don't need to know Chloe and Rachel Amber's story. You guys told it, I got to, blah, blah. To play before the storm and like, I was like, oh, man, this actually was great. And it's sort of what you're talking about. Life is Strange too, right? No, I don't want that. I don't want that. And you get in there, you're like, all right, this is pretty cool.

In the same way, like the comic book, right? The Life is Strange comic book where you're talking about, like, to choose an ending would be to choose canon, right? If you went and did Life Strange with them again. and I get that. As a comic book fan, I understand the multiverse and I understand infinite possibilities and elsewhere tales

and non-canon, yet, yeah, yeah. So when this dropped and I started reading the comic book, I was like, all right, and then I was like, damn, this is actually really well done as they balance the issues and go between,

but like, what's fascinating is I think that works as a comic book, but wouldn't work as a game. You know what I mean? I feel totally the same. Yeah, and I'm like, they're doing something really cool,

but that's not what you guys do. You guys are making Life is Strange the core titles, right? You're making, what I like to think of as now number two under your belt, this anthology, where if I say it's a life is strange game, I don't think people are going to think, oh, it's Chloe.

Oh, oh, it's Dan. You're right. No, they're going to be like, oh, I get it. It means that you're getting this narrative choice-driven story that has some kind of supernatural vibe to it. I think that's the moment when you can say your quote. Say your quote. What? Which one?

That's the players, you don't give the... Because it's exactly what's happening. It's not my quote. It's a just-weddon... You said it. No, it's not my quote. No, it's a quote I love from just-weddon. You're the creator of Buffy, the vampire.

A lot of stuff. And he said this one is called Give people what they need, not what they want. And that's why he has done the opposites when he made the season with Riley on the Buffy. It's season.

And in season four. Season four. Everyone wants Buffy to be happy with a boyfriend. So, okay, he gives her Riley in the sun

and it's probably one of the baddest season of the worst. Because you don't want Buffy to be happy. It's sad, but you want her to struggle with our life.

No, I've noticed. I've played your games. Yeah. I explained a lot of the last episode to me. So that's, yeah, it's a little bit the same with Life Strange.

If a lot of people want to have some news about Max and Kron. what happened to them, what will be their future together or not, depending on the shows you've made at the end of the first season. But I think whatever the story we could have done, people will be disappointed by this. So we didn't want to take this because we have nothing to say more, I think.

And we don't want to disappoint a fan, so that's why we also change everything to make another game. But you may have some info playing Lefistrange 2 for the one who haven't played yet, so... Yeah, maybe. Some info about those characters. Yeah, just a bit, but again,

it's based on what I did, right? That's my own canon that I keep constructing in my head that I argued with you about it's still correct. It's the same universe, so you can have some historic, some little stuff. See some character. All right, so here's a good point. We're jumping into spoilers now.

If you made it this far, if you made it this far, congratulations. I can't believe you haven't played this game yet. Go play this game. Thank you. It's our seal of it. approval. These men are very tired to reward their hard work.

Yeah, what I want to start with you guys is the fucking balls you guys have, all right? In 2019 and especially woke time, as the kids say, right? And so for you guys to be like we're in France, let's tell this story about these Mexican-Americans

wanting to go back to Mexico talking all sorts of shit about American culture too. Look at you guys, not afraid of anything. Yeah, maybe we won't. We won't leave America alive. Was that, when you guys started kicking around this idea, was there concern about that?

Like, I think that's something we talk about is authenticity and storytelling, right? And people want representation. So for you guys, a bunch of French dudes over there to tell this story, how did you wrestle with that and how did you get it to where it is? I think that the way we work

when we want to create a story is not really start by thinking about the themes or the social issues or, I mean, it's not a checklist where we say, okay, let's make this story, but we need to have that and that and that, those points in the story. It's really started by thinking about this story

of two brothers, talking about family bonds and education. And we knew that we wanted this story to showcase how it is to be by yourself and to be facing all the different exclusion of the real world when you're just, alone, homeless. So working, that's where we started to decide what would be the best character for this story. And we know that Life is Strange is a contemporary game. We know that the franchise takes place most in the United States. So of course we had to look at what's

happening right now in the US, but also everywhere else in the world. I mean the game takes place in the US, but the seams we are talking about in the game, they are quite universal. I mean, you have tons of racism in a lot of every countries you have the far right who is rising everywhere in Europe. There is, we have, you know what's happening in France right now where we have a lot of issues with police brutality and riots. And so, yeah, there is really a climate, a global, global issue that definitely were we thought that it would be really our job, maybe, to talk about those things. in with this story with those two kids who are running away from the police and

who are just by themselves in the world yeah as you we want to to be realistic and if you have the story of those brothers you can't avoid to have some scenes some sequences and I think games is really great to talk also about that is to put yourself in give you a life of one another guy on their shoes yeah Yeah, you can be, I don't know, like a fighter on Mars, killing some ways, aliens, you can be a pilot, etc. It's really cool, that's why we love video games. But also, you can be an half Mexican teenager and you really, I think you can realize a bit what is it to be election. It's not real life, but it could be, I don't know, like just as a player, you will think about it.

And I think that is why we love video games. It's so strong when you ask yourself. question you're in you're facing some people that don't like you for some reason so you just can think about it and that's also what the players are telling us even for the first life you're trying they were happy to be in those situations even if it's a difficult situation it's sad and it's bad extra it's it allows them to think about it to talk about it with their friends with our family etc and yeah I think video games is really great

for that and yeah as a developer we always take care of not giving our Panta view, you know. We don't want to be a listen giver, you know. It's say, okay, that's good, that's bad. You have to think this if you want to be good. Our job is ready to put the player in front of the situation and let him think and experience new stuff I've never seen before

and maybe change his mind in a sort of way. But yeah, we don't want to be the European guy who judges America. It's not our job. We really don't want to. do this. And I think we've got a lot of problems in Europe with the borders and all the police violence, etc. for sure.

And I would say it's more game about just humanity. It's not about USA in particular. It's just the story take place here, but yeah, I think we don't have lessons to give for sure. I was a teenager when 9-11 happened and I lived in the South. So a lot of this game actually ended up ringing

true for me of like just not even like the very extreme situations of people like kidnapping you or whatever, but just looking at you and judging you immediately based on the national culture at the time. So just things like that are seeing people just kind of say or the family at the picnic in the first episode or not picnic at the picnic table. Like that was the kind of thing that I dealt with a lot as a kid of like they look at you and they've already sized you up for exactly what they think you are. Yeah, they put you in a box. Yeah. So I was able to kind of put myself in those shoes very easily

from like first episode on. Cool. Thank you. For me, right, that is what I, you totally nail out. I love about games is being put in situations that I'm not normally in, right? And lots of times that's fantastical and fun. Here it was the opposite of that. And again, I applaud you for doing it. Because I think, you know, in not just 2019, but in 2018, in modern video games, right?

I'm so sick of the fucking toothless responses of like our game's not political. No, no, no, blah, blah. And so for you guys, I remember episode one, like it mentions, Trump. And it was like, whoa, okay, we're going to go there. And to continue down that journey to get to where I was last night in the final episode, right, where I'm having those things in my head as I'm, you know, I'm playing a show on trying to protect Daniel. And I'm like, well, I would just go to the cops. And I'm like, well, I would go to the cops and I, because I'm just a 36 year old white dude who hasn't had these problems. And so to go down, I can see in the game where so many

games make choices, yes or no, black, white, good, bad. And so for it to get to the end where, you know, my ending, similar to my ending with Life is Strange One, the one I chose that I think is my canon, right, was I had them drive. I had him drive through the border, right? Because I had gotten to my breaking point where I'm like, I don't trust anybody. It isn't going to work out. We're right there. We're right there for freedom and to be alone, right? And when I went for it and Daniel jumped out of the car, I was like, ah, not the right choice. I ended up surrendering because, like, I figured that this moral of the story for me was that sometimes it's just not going to work out.

Like this is this country, this is this world right now. Sometimes you just can't win. Yeah. There is no good or bad endings. Not in the fact that it's the good, good ending or bad ending. It's always a bittersweet. Every ending, a little bittersweet because there is no black or white in life that it's not really happening.

It's always this gray area. You can be happy for them for the two brothers up, even if they are separated. Or you can be happy for them even if there are bad guys. but they are together. It's always about this gray area and that's why we wanted to achieve with this multiple... Maybe it's a bit pessimistic, but it's also how it is, that there is really a no-win situation for them because they're facing some systemic oppression that won't go away. Yeah. So you have your ending when you're just fighting it and maybe it's still not the perfect ending for them because they will be separated, Sean will be on the run for all his life.

He seemed like he was just on a beach chilling out. Daniel's under house arrest for 15 years. He still has to look over his shoulder everywhere every time. And if you surrender, you have those unfair 15 years in prison. And you see when he gets out, he's broken. Even if now he's free, he still lost the best 15 years of his life. I thought I got the band ending at first, honestly. I was like, oh, did I mess up?

Yeah, there is not really no good of that. And they are separated again at the end. By choice. They can see each other when they want. It's just that Chen decide to go free on the road. Yeah, I was wondering what, not your interpretation, you wrote the story, what actually happens there, right? Because I see them outside of the woods.

They have the moment, the breakdown, and they get in their cars and go separate ways. It was that thing. Is it just that for what you guys nonverbalely communicate things, that it is too difficult for them to be together, like for Sean to see Daniel, who got to live on the outside? The idea was more like Daniel, I know he has his life, he has a job, he moved. You see in the picture that he moved in a new apartment.

We don't exactly explain if he's in a couple with someone or not, but just he has his own life, yeah. And Sean, he needs to create his own life too. So after losing 15 years in prison, he will just maybe take his car and start traveling again. and who knows, maybe meet some other people. We want also to let that a bit open for also the players to just create Sean story at this point.

What would they do when he's completely free of things he didn't do, but now it's just a free man and he can be by himself? Yeah, because his freedom is quite fresh still, so I think it's the first moment when you're out after 15 years, you just want to have those moments alone, ride and see.

It's more like the broadest. Yeah, the choice, I would say. Yeah, I had the same thing as Imran, where I got my ending. I said, I was like, oh, this isn't the good ending. And then I went and watched it. I'm like, well, this one isn't goody. But getting out of prison. It wasn't taught you guys were here.

I was watching, finishing the YouTube video, and the one where they're both in Mexico working at the body shop. That's it. That's the good one. I should have been a little looser with what I taught Daniel. We'd be down there right now, chilling out. What is cool is also to see that most of the time the players say, my ending was a good one, or at least fit to my own decision.

So it's really cool. This is we don't want to disappoint the player with, okay, it would be that. And I say, no, it's not, it's my character. Because it's weird as creators to see that a lot of players very quickly say they are their own characters. The character from the game are they own them. Yeah. And it was the case for Maxie and Chloe, of course. A lot of people tell us what Maxie Chloe are because now they know them.

even better than us. And it was the same year for Sean and Daniel and I was shocked when I see some YouTubers playing and saying, oh no, my boy, my boy. It's quite emotional and to see that those ending fits

their expectation, it's really cool. Yeah, I mean, that's, I think the power of your games is that people get so attached and so ingrained. And it was that thing of like, you know, my wife was watching the majority of my playthrough. And so, But she went to bed, I think, one night and came back the next night to see me finish.

And she's like, wait, are you being nice to Karen now? I was like, yeah, I've come around, I've come around. Like, I'm not happy with their choices, but she's helping us out of this jam right now. I kind of ended up that way, too, of like, I hug her at the end. I wrote the note to your mom. I was like, ugh. That conversation was, like, extremely powerful, like, when they were sitting in front of the hotel room. Yep.

Because, like, the way I would put this is this game actually put way more tension in me than most other, like, horror or action. Like, I played Resident Evil, in the same week I played this. I'm way more tense by this just like having these conversations of like how do I feel about this person and I was still like pretty pissed off at Karen because Sean was pissed off at her.

Yeah, yeah. And I think that's something that was really important for us the way we how we worked with the character of Karen to let the player have his own opinion about her about our situation. It was, I mean, just to come back to what you said before,

You're right that like you, we are just white dudes and we don't really know much about most of the characters we're talking about. So that's why we... High five for being white. I'll be back again. And, I mean, we were even asking ourselves if we were allowed to tell those stories. But when we did a lot of research, we did some road trip in the United States and we met a lot of people when some hitchhiker, some people we talk to when we were just driving. And we heard some of those stories that were really, yeah,

hearing about their struggles or what's happening that we have no idea, we don't experience it ourselves. Yeah, yeah. We saw that it was important that we found a way to talk about those people in the game. So it's somehow trying to give a voice to some character that some person that don't really have a voice in most of the time in video games. And just to go back to Karen, it was important for us to try to talk about this issue of how motherhood is seen as the holy grail in our modern society.

And we tried to find, to show that in a way that we don't just give, like Jean-Luc said, give our own opinion about it. So you have the opportunity to be angry or not at Karen. And she just explained why she did what she did. and she did hurt a lot, Sean and Daniel, but we also try to explain that it's somehow sometimes a role that's forced on women and you just you can make your own opinion about it.

Sure. And I'm really proud of how it ended up for Karen in both of this episode where I think it's quite subtle where the player can really decide and make his own reasoning about her. Sure. Yeah, and I think that was powerful and I think it spoke to the writing again of who she was that I started off and I was right what you're talking about, right?

motherhood, you're a mother, that's what it is, right? And then to get to the point of, I see what you're doing. I think there's a line that as Sean, I got to say to her, right, where it was just like, I understand you more now. Like, you know, I think when we're saying our goodbye, so it's like, I get it more of what happened to you now. And it's like, okay, we're cool and I can walk off and do this. Yeah.

Like my Sean was still kind of pissed at her, but like he understood what she, like, it was probably for the better than to have her being around to be a crappy mother. Yeah, 100%. Mm-hmm. Yes. Yeah. This is a good chance, everybody, for us to thank our sponsors. So we'll insert the ads here.

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We don't have to worry about it at all. Imra, why did it take you so long to play? For me, it was, because I was still doing news at Game Informer at the time, and I remember writing up the story about their release schedule. Yeah. It was like, it sold the whole thing up until, like, December. I was like, if I start playing now, I'm not going to be able to, like, emotionally attach myself in this game. I'm not going to remember things.

Or it's going to be, like, it happened with you, like, the episodes will just decrue up until I get to the end. So I figured, okay, I'll just wait till the end and do it. Then ended up being December. I was like, oh, this is episode five's out. I should go ahead and play this. And because it was on Game Pass, it was easy to, like, just go through and play the entire thing. But

for me, I wish I had played it at the beginning and just try and, like, hook myself through. But I think the binge I did at the end probably worked out better for, like, the way I attached to the game. Do you guys, how do you, not wrestle with it, but I mean, why episodic? Why do you guys release your games episodic?

Yeah, why? A question we ask ourselves all the time. We have to say that it's really, really difficult. It's more like shipping six games in one year because there was Captain Spirit also. So it's like five episodes and Captain Spirit. So it's like shipping six games one after the other. and it's really, really difficult because as you're working, for example, on episode three, you're finishing episode two that are going to be released, we prepare the motion capture of episode four,

etc, so it's always like, ah, no holidays, you always have a next game to create, etc. But so yeah, it's difficult, so I don't know if we will continue to do that. But on the other hand, I would say it's forced us to be quite effective on a narrative, design, on the character development, even if Jean-Luc is written the world story at the beginning and was a great story, the fact that it's episodic we've got a lot of feedbacks. So, feedbacks about the design, for example, how Daniel is behaving, the power, etc., etc. So it helps us also to polish the stories, the characters, etc. So, and of course we've got more visibility also because you ship six games.

so it's got some good points but as a weight it's it it was a bit longer we know that and it's yeah we didn't expect this production to be so hard so we didn't expect this time between yeah it went longer than you wanted to it was really different from the first season because you know the first season took place in archadabay yep and it's always the same location the same characters but now in life is strange too in every Every episode you have to create new location, new season because it's beginning in the autumn. After that we have winter, spring, summer.

So new location, new character you are going to meet and after that leave aside the road. So yeah, it was more difficult and it took more time on this one. But on the other end, the episodic format allowed us to make some slight adjustment between episodes, you know? If you have some feedbacks of the player, we can make some little arrangement, not to move the world story, but make some little thing to please the community and the player, because for them we are making the game. So it's the advantage and the force. I think the worst is really when you have a player telling us that when we meet Karen, for example and when they didn't know who is Karen anymore yeah the mother and it's

the worst for us because it really means that we have failed because it means that one important moment of the story it's failed because of the weight yeah so I'm happy that now everything is out so you won't have this weight so for sure but also it was interesting on a on a design point of view and a narrative point of view that it's almost exactly the same amount of time it it's it's For example, if you have three months of weight, it means Sean and Daniel have spent three months between the last moment you've seen them.

So it was interesting to have this journey in real time. But, yeah, it doesn't work for the other reason. So it was the only good point. So, yeah, sorry for that, but it was interesting to test it. Sorry. We tried. No, no. It's one of those things of, I remember for other games

where people have told me when I was reviewed. reviewing them and I'd be on top of it and I had to be like at IGN I was writing like the telltale ones and I'd be reviewing walking dead every few months or whatever and so many people like I'm letting them build up I'm letting build up and I remember always being like you're a crazy person like don't you want to discuss this as it happens blah blah blah and then I saw with you guys me fall into that exact same trap of like there's so there's so I'm so much going on and I wasn't I'm reviewing them for this but I'm not like writing the reviews needing to see every permutation in the episode I'm reviewing so I just didn't know it backwards and forward so I didn't understand everybody's things so to let it sit and get there it was I had the same thing thing Imron did, right, of like, finishing it and being like, man, this is clearly, I mean, in my top games of the year. And then you look at, no problem. It's going to get negative here in a second. You look at nominations for awards, right? And you look at all this stuff and not enough people are talking about it because it does

the thing you were talking about of like, you're in the cycle more of an episode's coming out. But I feel like it's harder to have that moment, right? Where everyone's like, oh, my God, have you play at X, Y, and C? If you had to go back, if you had to remake that decision about episodic or not, Would you have released as one game? I don't know. I think for this specific game,

if I could change something, I would just try to delay much more the release of episode one. So we could just have released episode one like five months ago. Sure. Every month. Every other month has something.

Yeah, yeah. It's more like, it feels more like between two seasons of a series. Like when you want to see next season of GameOS. For example, you have to re-watch resume of all the other because it was, so yeah, I think

it was a problem, but no, I think the format is quite cool, at least for this story. I think it's interesting to have those ellipses, the second ellipses between each episode, so no. Okay, okay. Now, this is something I wanted to get into,

because I had it here on my notes, right, I put the characters now, but I also put the locations because that was something I noticed, obviously, with episode two, of how much we were moving around in this, is this similar to what you talked about of leaving Max and Chloe behind where you're like, we want to grow as creators, we want to be challenged, we want to do more, we want to go to all these different environments, because I mean what we're talking about, Seattle, Oregon,

Humboldt County, Nevada, Arizona slash Mexico, like you guys get around in this game. It's a lot of environments to make. I think there was this, like you said, it was a challenge that was really interesting for us, for the team. I mean, for the environment team, it was pretty great for them to work on all these different environments. They were, I would think, a bit tired of doing just one hours and one small city and going back always to the same place. It was a challenge for them. But just for us and for the story, I think that we've been traveling a lot before when we were writing the story. And there is this kind of magic to the size of the United States, the size of your country. And it was really interesting just to have this road trip

feeling to be on the road to see all those different states and seasons because it brings really a you can meet different kind of characters in each state that's as a different vibe and different yeah laws and and and politics and everything so it was really interesting to to have this journey take place over a lot of places so it's it's really a big journey and i mean it's really You can talk about the road trip structure of it. Yeah, it's always, the road trip is really good to fit about, to fit of what Sean is dealing with, you know. In the first episode, you are in Seattle, it's your hometown, so it's your familiar, you know, area. In the second episode, it's winter, you're alone, so you are, because the character are improving, you know, the life, just the two of us.

And after that, they meet their grandparents, so they are, fine. finding a home again. Episode three, the location is surrounded by these big trees. So it's like, you know, a cocoon, you're preserved with this new bunch of characters. In episode four, Daniel is lost. This is there really is a spoiling moment. That's what it's about. That's what it's about.

You should have played by now. In episode four, you have lost Daniel. So Sean is walking through the desert. In just grueling scenes. Yeah. Punishing scenes. Exactly. So, yes, by.

the new location and the new stuff, we're adding a new layer of narration. So it was something good to improve in this episode. Also, it's also a bit selfish. It's because we wanted to talk about all those locations. Because like Michel told, it's incredible. All the west coast of the United States, I don't know the rest of the country. Don't worry, West Coast, Basque. But it's amazing.

like 200 kilometers or many different. Yeah, it's incredible. It's so beautiful. So it will those moments, important moments in the story, we were thinking that it could be great to have

those incredible land and environments around them and to host those sequences. So yeah. And I'm particularly proud of the last episode. I think the environment are incredible. Oh yeah. It's different.

It's Nevada and Arizona. But I think it could even push people to come to visit the US because it's so beautiful here. And I think also that this game is really a lot about talking about what do you do with the rules of society. So we're talking a lot about the outcast, people who are decided to live outside of society. So just traveling and moving around

was a great way for this story to be able to meet all those characters and to show those different way of life. It could be like the drifters in episode three, deciding to have those small job in pot farms or the small hippie commune in episode five of people who just decided to stay in one place but really to not be a part of society anymore. So we had to travel to showcase a lot of those different way of life.

Because I think you can't have this community you have in a way in Northern California, for example. it would be more difficult than in the desert. Sure. And so, yeah, again, the pot farm also is always in one particular place in California. So, yeah, I think it's interesting to show all those aspects of the society. How did you guys come to the decision or, I guess, gain the knowledge about Humboldt County in wanting to go there?

Because I remember it had been, when I wrapped episode two and like the teaser, teased we were going there, it was like the week before I had finished the documentary called Murder Mountain, which is all about it. And I was like, did they just watch, did they watch this? We have seen it after. Of course, we have nearly finished the episode at this moment. Oh, yeah, yeah, I mean like, yeah. That's a good idea.

It doesn't come from this, but we were happy to see it. And we had some stuff we have seen in the documentary. So, for example, all the cars, the wrecked cars, all over the forest. And we were really happy to see this documentary. All the missing persons. Yeah, we wrote on it. But the idea first to come, yeah, when we were traveling, I think at a point I stopped in a town called Eureka.

Oh no, it was Arcata. It's almost the same place. And I was just speaking to people there and I met some guy who told me that he was working in a pot farm and just I discovered almost by chance when I was traveling that this was really the hub for marijuana growing and there was a lot of also still illegal pot farms even if it was legalized.

It was before the law. Even after the law, there was still some illegal boat farm because they don't want to pay taxes or to be... And just talking with those people, it was really interesting to see how most of the travelers were converging to this small city just to find work and with all their cardboard like trimming, like they want to have some trimming work.

So just listening to those people and learning this way of life and how they were just working a few weeks to get money for having a few months just by themselves. That's how we worked the Finn Cassidy and the other characters. Again, it really comes from the story. It's because also we wanted at one moment the two brothers to work to try to win some money during their journey. So we say, okay, maybe they could go to a classic farm, etc. And after it, maybe a pod farm and maybe an illegal one

because illegal means a lot of money and maybe not talking. So for all those aspects It finished in a like illegal pod farm But it's really steps like More step about the characters, Evolution and the story first So it's okay, they need to work to have some money We want to talk about the community aspect

Etcester, etc. So it's step by step that you finish To have this particular episode at this moment And the drifter is something we had seen The beginning we really wanted to talk about Those people train operas And living we really decide to live like this.

Sure. It was important for us to talk about it. I think it was one of the first ideas we had to talk about drifters. And we see, because yeah, we, we, we, we've, Michelle, we discovered a photograph named Mike Brody. And his first art book was named Portrait of a Juvenile Prosperity. And it's, he followed a bunch of drifter, of train hopers during one year. took a lot of pictures with Polaroid camera and we bought the art book and said wow there is a game

to do is they are all young you know and all free and they are living by their own rules sometimes they have babies on the on train but they are raising them so yeah from the beginning when we had this idea of the two brothers living on the road say okay they have we have to meet this kind of people and experience this kind of this new way of seeing life and of living the life. Now, speaking of babies. Yeah. Let's talk about making babies. Sex and video games often not handled well and awkward.

You guys have, of course, Sean loses virginity in this and do it in a very vulnerable, honest, not macho, it all the way that I thought was awesome, right? Like, I think having been with him and again, getting to go on that journey from episode one of just being a dumb kid who doesn't like his little brother and is annoying at his house and is annoyed with everything to having to take care of the brother to then... He rides this roller coaster of being the adult to being a scared kid. And I think it's shown so many different ways and so many different avenues and lenses,

whether it's, you know, when he's driving down to try to get Daniel and he gets, you know, the car gets taken over by the jerks at the, you know, he's parked on their property or whatever, and there you see him, my, my, my, Sean, go super like, no, sir, yes, you know what I mean, like, be a child, obviously. Oh, yeah, you were? That's right. I got beat up, so. Probably it worked out great.

They didn't give me a piece of cake and pushed me on my way. But then also to have it be here, right, this scene, and I've seen, this is one of the few spoilers, if you will, that got, I saw on the internet, is that you guys got so many articles written up of like hey this is a really well done honest intimate moment like was that hard to capture you talk about the Cassidy Cic yeah yeah you you've been in the tent and in real life I'm in a minute I'm gonna say it once or twice tell me tell me about your walkthrough yeah in my place too yeah yeah yeah we I lost my version yeah okay but it was it was or will from the beginning not to be you

Like a movie, like, okay, was it good? Yeah, for me too. It never happened. It never happened in real life, you know. It can be good in real life, but for the first time you're messy, you are making some mistakes, something you want to do like you've seen in movies, in porn or stuff like this. But it's not working like this, you know. And we wanted to have this awkward moment and yes, Sean is an average teenager even if he has

suffer a lot of difficult stuff is not that good and Cassidy is you know she's speaking is her mind and she's not afraid of telling the truth

so yeah when she's telling okay it wasn't good but we have time to practice yeah and I mean what was important for us was to not even just saying that he wasn't that good but just that sex

most of the time it's never like you see in movies or the way society try to tell you that it should be. It's just two people discovering each other and trying to just to enjoy the moment. So it was important really for us to try to showcase that it's something that's natural, but that doesn't have to be perfect, doesn't have to be like pressure. And it was interesting to show that Sean himself. put himself some pressure on his shoulder about that. That why he was angry. Totally. Afterwards, right?

Because that's what we are being told. That you need to be great. You need to be perfect. He's a man. And it's not the point, I mean, in sexuality. And it was interesting to have Cassidy answer that and to show that it was okay. It was just them trying to discover each other and they will do it again. And yeah.

So it was quite interesting to write this scene and to decide how we would make it happen. so interesting to have. I know that it was, we had, of course, to have the motion capture actors to play the scene and to try to have this vulnerability. And I mean, for Rio, the actor playing Sean in the motion capture, we just told him to not do what you usually see in movies. Like, it's not like, let's go by the campfire and it would be great.

Yeah. But I think this whole episode is really about that, about sexuality is one of the subjects, but about freedom and you can choose, and they talk about that very freely. Characters like Anna, Finn, are really free in their mind about that. And I think it was interesting also to talk about that.

It's not only one way of think and see those moments. So, yeah, players, I think, in all the different characters we are in this episode, they can find there. Their own truth. Yeah, and some characters that looks like them or some recognize some moments of their own life. And it's really cool to see some feedbacks about this scene about that.

To see, yeah, I remember. And it was not so good at all. You don't have one way to live your life. There is a lot of ways, and that's what the drifters teaching teaches to Sean. You don't have to be what society wants you to be. Be what you want. Be happy and do what you want to do.

And I think it was also a challenge for us that in this game you are playing a male character. And we really wanted to, for this character, to not be like a standard type of male character. You often see, like, we really wanted to try to show that there are other way of behaving. That's the classical toxic masculinity. Sure. can see in some of the action heroes or sometimes most of the male heroes characters in Hollywood or some movies. Even she's changing a lot recently.

But we were still trying to show that it's okay to show your emotions. We have Sean who is crying often in the game. That it was important for us just to show that you can be yourself, that you don't have to have this facade of a role that sometimes people or society wants to project on heroes. And I think this is what is cool. You talk about crying, so you talk a lot. No, that's why I brought you on the show. Get closer to that microphone, though.

You keep leaning further and further back from the mic. Get up on the microphone. And, yeah, it's interesting when you talk about crying because as it's a video game, it's a different way of telling a story than a movie. So in a movie, you can change a lot from one character to another, to hang your story here. You will stick to Chen and to what is thinking.

It also means that you will be with him, even in the tough moments. and for example the scene after the meeting the guys quite racist guy in the desert when he's just in the car crying saying fuck fuck fuck it's so like emotional it's just you it's something we

those scenes we weren't sure about this for example in particular but it's after writing it and do the motion capture we say okay this is the moment where you really shun like pissed off because he could be disappointed by his choice during this confrontation and also sometimes you just

are pissed off against yourself and crying like this, it was quite strong and yeah those moments we didn't know at the right thing that it will work so it's cool to see that. What about David?

What a you know him stepdush back at it it was so crazy when oh here Karen's come back and she gets out and I'm like okay and I'm like the guy I'm like well it looks like that looks like that looks like David and I was like I missed his name my turn captions on I'm like is this this is David it wasn't until he said stepdo so I was like oh

now I know yeah like now I know who this is because like I thought it was like a character from earlier on that I just forgot about but like oh no it's he looks he looks he looks just similar enough but also completely different for me to just not realize it for a good like minute and a half. It's because of the ponytail. Yeah. And the shirt. Why did you want to bring him back?

Was there a debate about that? Because obviously he's a character you either love, hate, or have some feelings for. Just one thing to precise that it was planned from the beginning of the writing. Because I read some player saying, oh, they listen to us that we wanted Max and Chloe.

So they decided to bring him at the end. No, it was really planned from the real, real beginning of the writing that we would have David. He's been four years. We kept the secret. The secret of this for four years. Even at the beginning, David, we have planned to put in the first episode as a cop.

But in then we thought that it was too early. And we didn't want, you know, in episode one, also Arcadia Bay, there was already some stuff about Life Strange One. So we didn't want to put everything here. So we keep it and we were thinking that in a way it's a perfect place that he would could have been after the terrible events of Lef Strange 1. So yeah, it was interesting. And it's because we wanted to pick the most interesting character of Leif Strange 1,

we take David. The one that the player really really loved the most from the first game. It's David, of course. Of course, that's the one when people say, Ha ha ha ha! Who do we love? David, given us David. We want David, of course.

More realistically, it's the only character that could could be alive in both ending of the game. Sure. Because it was either if the tone is destroyed, it was in the bunker when he was just arresting Jefferson. Yep. And if you sacrifice, Chloe, of course, he's alive. With Victoria and it could, yeah.

It made sense. You know what I mean? For me, it didn't feel weird out of place. It didn't seem like a weird cameo, especially when, as soon as I saw him, I want to know more about it. And then you guys gave me that chance to go into his trailer, talk to him, look around and see my, you know,

based on my ending, the photo of Max and Chloe. I love when we walk over and the diner menus in the frame. And Sean's like, man, must be the best meal of his life. We hung it up over here. Did you like having some news of Max and Chloe? Yeah, of course. Yeah, I thought that was awesome. And I liked David taking us on the journey of where they're at with their relationship.

You know, and the fact that we weren't well together and we weren't for a while. And even him being like, you know, I couldn't reconcile that she just left. That this life fell apart and she took off. But I got there. I did that. And now we're okay. And we talk. And he even gets the phone call from her.

Yeah. And I was like, oh, you're killing me. I love it so much. Did you stay to listen to the phone call? Yeah. Yeah. Of course I did. What are you turning around?

I'm not listening. Oh, no, I didn't even do that. I just stood awkwardly outside looking to the porthole of what's going out of there. Who you talking to? I had the other path of like Joyce being alive. Okay. So that was also equally heartbreaking because I found the Nathan Prescott badge. Like, oh, he really hates that kid because he killed Chloe.

Because I had to kind of remember like, oh, but how would Chloe have died? Oh, yeah, that's what happened. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it was still like a very cool thing connected to is like, oh, that world still exists. And there's like a connection to it. Speaking of references, actually, in episode one, I think Life is Strange 2 might be the only game to reference Minecraft and The Last of Us. Nice job. Nice job, yeah.

Did you guys have any other, like, did you want to throw any other things in? Or was it like, no, Daniel's going to be into Minecraft, Sean will be into the last of the other games? And we're also referencing the Lord of the Rings. Oh, yeah. You can choose between Minecraft, Lord of the Rings, there is The Last of Us.

There are some movies also, other movies, I think, after. During the episodes, when they go to the movies with a father. And in episode five, there is a small hidden Easter egg to Oxen Free. Oh, I missed it. Yeah. Yeah. These are better references than the on the nose. Final Fantasy.

Wow, Spirits Within. And everybody hated this movie, but I don't know. Like, what are you talking about, Max? Why is this happening? This is a cool way to show that Max was weird. Very true. But again, I loved it so much because I think it's weird that in our world, video games referencing other video games is so weird.

It's so bizarre. But when the first time Daniel starts talking about Minecraft, and then when they do the clicker, And I saw Neil, after I played it, I saw like the next week, Neil Druckman tweeted. I'm like, oh my God! Yeah, it was so cool. That's so cool. It was awesome.

But you definitely can't do something about teenagers nowadays without talking about video games. So, yeah. And it's so cool to be able to ourselves to talk about the game we love. But could we reference, if there is a game that make a reference to Life is Strange? Can we reference this game in Life is strange? No, no. It destroys the industry. I'm being told from my producer, Kevin, you guys have to be whisked

away somewhere else. But I have one final question. We can stay more. No, yeah, cancel the four o'clock. No, the question I have for you is, what about did you ever want to wrestle or did you ever want to explicitly say where these superpowers are coming from? And then for this one, for Life is Strange 2, again at the beginning, did you want to turn everything on its head? And that's why I play the person that doesn't have the powers. I would say no and yes. I have a much dumber question At the beginning of episode 3 Sean talks about how he doesn't

He's not good a perspective Was that foreshadowing to him losing an eye Oh I'm surprised There is sometimes some Good links that happens when we didn't even Think much about it So I would say that it was a happy mistake

for the same. Good to know I'm not like super crazy. It's like foreshadowing like this and we say oh you've done that? Oh, okay. Oh yes, it's exactly what we play. That is exactly how I wanted it.

Gentlemen, thank you so much for coming in, number one. But thank you more importantly for making life strange too. Thank you so much. Thank you for a great game and everything. It's so cool to be there. Oh, no, please.

Don't worry about it. You will not be wished away to whatever else you have to do. Imran and I will continue to man the ship. Come give me hugs. I love you. I love you. I'm not.

Thank you. Hey kids, how are you? Thank you. The Life Strange spoiler cast part of this is done, so if you've been plugging your ears for the last hour, like, you can unplug them. And play Captain Spirit. We always forget about this one.

Captain Spirit's free. And Life and Strange, too, is on Game Pass. Like, you have Game Pass at this point if you listen to us at all. Like, just play the game. That's so cool. Thank you very much. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Bye. Bye. What nice thing people are. Thank you. Thank you guys so much for making that happen. Now that they're gone, we can finally talk freely about this. Wow, that game.

This piece of garbage, you know what I mean. What a game though. Yeah, what a fucking fantastic game. Yeah, I'm glad this sounds stupid. I'm glad it's over so that I played it all. You know what I mean? When I got into that thing of like, I'm just going to wait. Yeah.

I missed how great it was as it happened, which I feel like the failing, but then I also feel like I wouldn't have had the same perspective if I didn't. I mean, last thing we talked about like how certain games get weight did more. I'm going to switch to... Sure. It's not as weird. All mics are? Do you want to take the chairs off? No, I don't worry. I mean, we're still... This is still the games cast.

Yeah. This is even... Well, post-show we're probably too late on. You got a game... We'll go to... Don't worry about it. But, like, we're talking about TGA's how, like, some games are more likely to be nominated just because everyone played them. And, like, every outlet's going to have the person who reviewed life is strange. And maybe they fucking loved it, but nobody else, like, played that game. For whatever reason, because there wasn't conversation about it or whatever. But that absolutely needed to have been.

in some of those like... Totally. And that's again, like, and this is not me throwing shade at anybody in particular, anybody, period. It's like why I'm thankful this year

we're doing it after, we're doing our game of the year in January. Yeah. So you have a chance to play through everything. We have a chance to see everything and like the fact that everybody keeps talking about discoleseum or this, you know,

I mean, there's chances for me to actually go in there and touch these things before I get out of it. And this one was typically like, I had to do a game of the year list for another place. Yeah. Like, so I had to get a thing locked this week. So I was like,

okay, I'll play two episodes. and like two episodes was enough for me to tell whether or not I liked it or should it be in the list. And because we're doing this, like, maybe I'll just go ahead and finish it. I'm glad I did because, like, it does get better. It builds on itself. And, like, it does, it makes a more lasting impression at the end of the day. Yeah, 100%.

And I really wish, like, it's hard to tell people, like, if you don't like it at first keep going, because it does, like... Well, I mean, that's how they warm up, right? And I think, you know, they talked about it, and admittedly so, like, you mean, maybe takes two episodes. maybe it takes three to get into the... That was the thing of like, especially for episode one, you're dropped in there and you can't see the force for the trees, right?

Because it is like, who are you? Who's this? What's happening? It's all happening? Are you a whiny, braty kid? I'm not sure. Yeah, it's abrasive to like... It did like a fault,

but by design. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because like you were... The way I thought of it at first is like Sean, who is like a kind of a shitty teenager at first. It's like you're playing as Chloe, and everyone would have kind of hated that at the beginning of life of strange.

Totally. Because she is kind of a dick. She's like a... an empty rebellion, basically. And Sean feels like that at first. So if you're not into that at first, like not seeing why he does the things he does, then it doesn't make any sense

and you might be turned off to that game. Yeah, for me personally, I think one of the things I really dug about it is that we had a lot more Davids in this game, where it was that throughout the adventure, my opinion of you changed. You know what I mean? Like the grandparents in particular,

like when we got to their house, I was kind of like, these people suck. All these rules, you know what I mean? These rules, they're weird. They don't like to, they won't tell us anything about our mom, you know, blah, blah, blah. But again, even though I still feel that way, to get through this thing, get to the end and see the letters you exchange with them. And it's like, all right, they're good people. They're also in a shitty position of their daughter doesn't want anything to do with them.

Or, you know what I mean? Like, there's this whole family dynamic that's all fucked up about it. Have you watched BoJack Horseman, out of curiosity? No. So there's kind of an overarching, I think it's season three. Like the thrust of that season is that the trauma we inherit from our appearance shapes us. So I think Life is Strange, too, kind of does that same thing. Yeah.

Of, like, we're looking at all these generations of people and the way which they pass down what's crappy about their lives to their children. And, like, what's good at, like, what they instill. And, like, eventually it goes from Sean to Daniel in what he's instilling in him, too. Yeah. I kind of, like, I got the same message out of that. That's a great point.

Yeah, yeah. And that's why I think at the end, organically, right, for me and my playthrough, to get to the end where I'm like, I'm going to rush the border, and Daniel jumps out, because I've taught Daniel, like, we're not criminals. We're not going to be bad people. I did say we ended up a spoiler cast part of it, but like, whatever.

Did we? Oh, I didn't notice that. At this point, they're still committed. It's fine. Don't worry. They're fine. It's just weird. There's no way somebody was watching and like, listening.

Oh, spoiler cast is over. He knows. Yeah, but to dive out there, I was like, that sucks. Yeah. And I could see where our, we had that weird, what they call them, the inverse bell curve or whatever, where it's like, we cross paths where I was like, no, I'm going to turn on my own teachings now of like, like, no, fuck this. I'm not going to go to jail for this.

I was really wavering on that one for like a good minute. It's like it has the power one there. They just need to get across the border and they're fine. So like eventually I decided, okay and just surrender because there's no way to get through this without killing people. Yep. Yeah, exactly. I thought about that too.

Yeah, and Daniel's not going to want to do that. Yeah, I think you said it poignantly in the episode and I want to double back but I realized we weren't have all the time of the world. You talked about how like, you know, the anxiety, right? Like how stressful these choices were. And this in a, and I love the choice based games,

you know, the telltales, the whatever, where you go up and you make your choice and your game changes. This is one of the, first ones in a while, I can remember actually pausing a bunch of times. Yeah. Where it was like, oh shit, hit it and think about it. Like, because it's not even just like, yes or no, right? It's always like, do they meet, what that says on screen does it mean what I think it means? Like, are they going to, is it that he's going to go crazy and kill somebody? Or is it

just going to be that we're going to push him out of the way and move? And like, how do you wrestle with those kind of abilities and things? And like, it's also because you're not the one with powers, which is one of the things you mentioned. It's like, as Max, you could, you're more or less deciding what all these things mean. So you're not going to, the other person is not going to, like, fall to interpretation or fail to interpret what you're doing. Yeah. Or what's asking them to do. Here it's like, you're kind of loosely holding a dog by the leash.

Yeah. And you don't know exactly what you're going to do if you say attacked. Shout at the mushroom, by the way. Yeah. Oh, man. That was so sad. Rest in peace. Rest in peace.

I do tell Red was like, I know you like to know if a media kills a dog. Let me warn you. You will not appreciate how it plays out for this puppy. Yeah, which is, I figured it was going to happen the second they let it go out alone. Yeah, yeah, yeah,

I was like, damn it. Just in general, I mean, you guys got enough problems. You've not really to run around this puppy right now. Yeah, God,

what a game. And what a bunch of great decisions. What a great way to see it all unfold. I love the fact that, like they were talking about earlier, right, that it's not life is strange to and it's, you know,

Chloe and Max, but it's also the fact that somewhere in the middle of this, I was like, oh, man, this is a comic book game. I didn't even think about it. Like, I don't, when I think of life is strange, it's always the, her rewind ability is always like,

not even the big gameplay mechanic to me, right? It was just a way to solve one of the problems with narrative choices in games. Exactly. And so for this one to be, no, like, you're not really in control of the power, you are, but you know what I mean? Like, it's not yours.

And on top of that, you're not able to rewind or do something crazy with that. It is the fact that you are there and are you raising a superhero or a supervillain? You know what I mean? How are you? What are you doing those decisions? And like, you know, for me from the comic book,

Flight and Tights world of like him revealing the power to everyone, I was like, oh, God, stop. Because you're not going to be able to stop a kid who has powers from telling everyone that they have powers. Because they want to use it everywhere. Yeah. And like, I remember I played Captain Spirit before I started all this stuff because I just wanted to go through it and like, I assumed it hooked in.

Yeah. And so you know what's going to happen is that Daniel's going to reveal himself to Chris at some point because he saves him from falling. So I'm like dreading. is like, do I scold him when that happens or they tell him he did a good job

like, because he's right you need to save the kid but shut out Daniel. Stop telling everyone this stuff. I ended up hiding it from the grandpa too. Oh yeah, me too.

Yeah, there's nothing weird. It's like one of those obviously knowing where we end up I would play the game differently if I was to go back in time myself and play it again and go through because yeah, I was very much hide it and then like you get to the church

and everyone knows like and you get to mom's like community and everybody knows like oh god all right yeah like whatever everybody knows he's got powers at which point like i always wanted that choice to really pop up interrogation or whatever of just like when you hear the thumping happening outside the room and the cop keeps looking i'm like here's what's happening we i need you help are you about to see how all these crazy coincidences happened yeah when he said like how did all this happen i wanted one of the options to be like you're about to see yeah exactly right yeah but that part was pretty cool too because

I freed end up freeing both like the vigilantes and the... Oh did you? Yes. What happened when they got out?

Because I left them. Really? Like I freed them in there like they had I guess if it was a If I let what's the other guy in the cell attack them

Maybe it would have been different Yeah But they're like Thank you, whatever. Oh interesting. Yeah like I popped up and it was like you know Seek revenge or

I was just like ignore them Let's go. But apparently like that was At least on the Xbox That was one of the less popular choices Was to free them Yeah Like most people either just let them there

or they sought revenge I'm like, that's vindictive, but sure. Again, I mean, like, I think as it's happening naturally in the game with Daniel, I do look at him and I'm like, you're giving off vibes of like serial killer, like bad guy. You're going to become the bad guy here. And like, I wanted to fight against that. So it was the, I don't want to encourage that. I don't want you to do that. Yeah, it's as easy as you go through that game to start seeing him as more of a weapon.

Yeah. Which is like an episode in when, what was named Flynn? Yeah. Or Finn? Finn. Finn starts thinking of that. I'm like, oh shit, I've also been on the same path. I need to back off.

Right, right, right. I didn't realize he was a romance option until later, by the way. I didn't know that at all either. You can apparently kiss him on the log, and he's one of the options when Sean goes to Mexico alone to, like, also be there. Oh, really? Yeah. Wow. That's awesome. I love that stuff. I love when you play through your game and, for me personally, it's always the endings.

Yeah. It's never like those moment-to-moment choices. How could they've gone differently? I was thinking about, like, when I were playing this game, when I was playing the game and we were talking to them about Detroit, the way Detroit does things is like, end of the chapter, here's all the past you could have gone. Yeah, yeah.

And like, I find that much less compelling than... Not knowing. Not knowing. And having just, like, I think that Karen conversation in front of the hotel is probably one of the more interesting branching paths I've seen in a game.

Yeah. Even though it's not showing me what everything... Because I can tell. I can tell I can either be pissy to her or forgive her or chart a middle path. Yeah. And like, the middle path didn't necessarily feel right because that's not how the character would act.

Yeah. So I've never gone through Detroit thinking, how would the character feel about this? Yeah, that's a great point. What is the braves that gets me to most people alive? Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah, I think, you know, what this does so well is lead to this conversation. Because this is always my favorite part about reviewing Walking Dead Season 1 is that I would get it for review and Mitch Dyer would get a code two.

And the next day we'd come in and we'd get our coffees and go into a conference room and shut the door and be like, what happened? What did you do? Oh, my God, that could happen? Like to have those conversations, I think is what's so powerful about these types of games. I do kind of like, I know they said they would, they, episodic was worked for them in this one. I do kind of wonder if a Life History three will be episodic again. Yeah, I don't think it will be. But maybe they would, if they, based on what they know now, and obviously, I mean,

Squares seems happy, obviously with the Life History franchise as it continues to go. I would think maybe they could get the ability not to release it all at once, but do what they're talking about. It's five episodes and it's five months. We're already done with four of them. We're finishing up the fifth right now. It'll be able to go. That would have been the best thing of... Because that was what got telltale in trouble for so long.

Was they're like, all right, we're done with two episodes. Oh shit, everything's on fire. Like, we're going to have to just fix this as we go. I would love to see somebody try to do it. I know this is difficult, but try to do it weekly. Where it would be that you do the same thing, you finish the game, it's episodic, we have them all, and we just do it. And basically, it's life is strange month.

Yeah. I understand that there's, obviously, it's cool to have this many beats. I always talk about it with like when Walking Dead was so hot, it was awesome that Telltale every two, three months was able to have like, hey, we're owning the conversation. There's a big review and sites were happy with traffic and all that jazz. For something like Life and Strange that has this dedicated audience, I do think if you could have it be like, it drops every Tuesday

so you know there's conversations with the water cooler every Wednesday, right? Yeah. You have an hour and a half of two hours. I mean, it's kind of like how Disney Plus is like as an active thing against Netflix, basically. Yeah. Because Netflix puts everything out and we kind of got a binge culture from there. so everyone, if you didn't watch it that first weekend, then everyone's going to spoil a stranger things for you the next day.

But Disney's like, fuck it, just Manalorian once a week. Right. Like, you're going to come back here every week to see this thing. So I think it probably could work for a game, but I think convincing a publisher who's going to be like, why don't we just sell it all at once then is going to be a lot harder. Yeah, you'd hope that people could get swept up in the conversations of the movement. They, oh, I got to do it.

And even if you want to binge it that last week, cool. Yeah. It's not that hard. I just think that's such a better cadence of not forgetting things because it did, you know, he talked about, or I think it was Jean-Luc who's just like, or no, it wasn't, it was Raoul, talking about how, you know, oh, when people were like, wait, who's Karen?

Like, it was very much for me of when it popped back up of like, all right, we, yeah, we don't like Karen, we don't like his mom because I think she left, right? And I was like, for a second, like, did she fake her own death? No, she just left. And it was like, I remember the room, I remember the room being important.

Yeah. Little things like that. It's, well, that was one of those things that actually was aided by me binging it was Yeah, totally. Being able to remember all that stuff. Yeah, no, 100%. That's why I'm so locked in in the last three episodes.

Episodes one and two going through for the platinum and seeing stuff again, help me out a lot today. But it was still like, all right, yeah, okay. What are the grandparents' names? Fuck, I can't remember.

Cassa. How am I going to forget Cass? This is that the other way. In other hand, I kind of like, I do like the fact that there is just a break between those because I would have felt that. I have a friend who he put,

he was playing Aquarium of Time, got to the part where he removed the Master Sword. Yeah. Then for whatever reason, shelved the game for seven years. And then he came back and he's like, this actually was more impactful because like it was the exact same amount of time he was asleep in the game. Oh, wow. I never thought about that. So like for him, it was like he grew up with the game.

Wow. I kind of wonder like, did I miss out by not having that experience? And it's just maybe I didn't miss out. Maybe it's just a different lateral thing. Yeah. But that's fascinating. Yeah. I'm curious how they're designed too. And also like I imagine when they first pitched this, Square Nix of like, hey, we're not doing attractive teenage girl lesbians who are doing an adventure. Possible lesbians. Yeah. I think they have to kiss it away

at the end. Do they? Yes. Because I thought you could have it just be friends. If you want an access to friends. But, who knows. Well, someone knows, but I might be wrong. Who knows? There's no possible way to get the information. But like, if they said instead we're going to do teenage boys

that are Hispanic, I'm sure Square Nix was like, this is not as marketable. Right. I appreciate that they like Wednesday we have a story to tell they have to be like this so we're gonna go ahead with this one and I'm sure like if you insist

we'll see and it did I think it did kind of bite them in the ass because like I do think that game did not have the same meme quality because people did not latch on those characters like they latch on them by our Max and Chloe but I think it's a much better game because they were able to tell that more interesting story

interesting I mean I also think it's just a much better game because of writing's better and production values better sure you know you know you're dealing at this point, you know what you're doing to a better extent this time? Yeah. Interesting. I had really thought about comparing them yet, really. But I do think they had like some balls

on them to actually just go through with it. 100%. No, totally. I agree. I said that in the show. Like you mentioned, someone in the first episode says, this is why we need the fucking wall. Also, hilariously, someone in that first episode says there's politics and everything. As if they're going to be, they were like, yo, we know what you're thinking, there's politics in this. Yeah, yeah. Don't assume there's not.

God bless them. I'm glad they went out there and do that. And then my dog Nick 96, who I want to apologize, too. I complimented in having all these questions we got to zero of them. I did not realize they had to leave spot on at like 3.15 and I apologize. My dog, Nick sex, Max, and Chloe did not need to kiss at the end. So yeah, because I thought that was one of those things that I,

my read on their relationship was that, that Max was attracted. I played it that way. But I thought for us, you didn't have to. Have you read this, by the way? I have not. Because it has the wrong ending. Well, spoilers for this comic, it has both endings. That's the whole point.

Okay. Is that the multiverse is kind of collapsing. upon itself because of what happened in Arcadia Bay. Okay, then I'm going to read that. It's like, it's one of those things I, it reminded me, it's the same way I described before the storm where I started. I'm like, this has no business being this good. I expected this to not be good, and this is good. I digress. Ladies and gentlemen, what did you think of life is strange to let us know? Thanks for sticking out for this spoiler cast. If you're new to kind of funny, we love it.

If you subscribe, we do the games cast each and every week. We do games daily each and every day. And in January, we have a whole bunch of different stuff to announce and change in all sorts of crazy crap like that because that's what we do. Imron. Thank you for your time. Thank you. You were, you just by happenstance fell into this. Yeah.

We started playing it right as I was like, I'm going to do this spoiler cast. Yeah, you're like, you want to have some questions submitted? I'm like, I'll think of some. And it's like, oh, I'm just going to finish daytime. Then you're like, it's game of the year. It's one of my game. I'm like, oh, shit, you got to be on this thing. Ladies and gentlemen, remember, you can support the show by going to patreon.com. You can get the show ad-free.

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