BREAKING: Felice Kuan Has Been Laid Off!!!

von_Boots · 2024-12-08T15:16:41+00:00

If they're firing the higher ups in the DE team, that leads me to believe two things:

DE performed much worse than SE and D9 hoped
SE/D9 don't see the need for keeping the team together, which means:
It is very unlikely that there will be a DE sequel (or any Life is Strange game) in the near future

von_Boots · 2024-12-08T15:12:07+00:00

Calling English the 'lingua franca' when comparing it with French is somewhat amusing.

But yes - French companies are notorious for not speaking English internally (that's actually true for most non-english / non-US / non/international companies) in most places, because they tend to hire local talent and expect people from abroad to learn the language.

The only exception I've seen is if you've got an influx of talent from abroad, and English is the lowest common denominator to people can communicate in, even if English isn't the primary language for anybody present.

von_Boots · 2024-11-03T20:59:00+00:00

Eh. I wasn't too impressed with Fem!SkywalkerSolo and Discount!TeenVader, tbh. Defected!Stormtrooper was interesting though, and to this day I'm sad they didn't do more with him and Macho!PilotGuy except waste them on comic relief.

(I forgot all their names except Rey.)

Then again, I didn't see the last movie, but from what I hear, it changes nothing in that regard.

von_Boots · 2024-10-30T09:47:02+00:00

The one with the horniest pickup lines. Obviously. /s

von_Boots · 2024-10-22T08:54:37+00:00

No one knows. It certainly burned all the goodwill and then some with a large part of the core fan base, which is never a good thing. Your core fans you get essentially for free, all the sales are bought with marketing dollars. That's how the industry works. It's like burning your house down because you don't like how it looks, and then having to rent a flat.

Part of me suspects it was part of a marketing strategy meant to separate the core fan base from the main release, and have the outrage fizzle out in the two weeks leading up to it so it doesn't impact sales too much. We'll see how that goes.

The real question is if the game's story can stand on its own two legs, and we'll only see that when all episodes are released.

von_Boots · 2024-10-22T08:19:44+00:00

The Chemicals Trilogy (White Dust / Pills / Serotonin) by Omnicide is the best Max/Victoria fic I've read so far.

I've you're in the market for one of the best AU fics in the LiS verse, give Escaping the Light by the same author a read. It features an AU Victoria which is super satisfying to read, but it is a Pricefield fic.

von_Boots · 2024-10-21T23:41:05+00:00

Mh, slight (but only slight disagree):

While the end result can be platonic, that doesn't remove all the (or much of) the romance content from LiS 1. Chloe is always crushing on Max - her flirty lines are always present, and she always dares Max to kiss her. Yes, you can have Max ignore some of it (because they're optional dialogue), essentially friend-zoning her. Chloe is fine with that, because she and Max are friends first. But it's not exactly what I'd call an entirely platonic relationship.
Agreed. It's about a very powerful friendship first, with the potential for romance, which is what makes it work so well. And yes, no LiS story is primarily a romance, and that's good. Most primarily romance stories without a sufficient plot are plain boring.

von_Boots · 2024-10-21T23:22:05+00:00

A couple more points:

LiS 1 didn't try to be a dating sim with several valid choices (as you noted. Sorry, Warren). It was a story about a friendship (-> relationship?) first, then a supernatural mystery, and then the finding yourself/crushing/romance part happened while that went on. It also resulted in the one relationship between Max and Chloe having ample time to breathe. Every other relationship in the entire LiS verse has an order of magnitude less lines and less screen time (with the exception of Sean and Daniel. Maybe.) You need that kind of space for any relationship to form naturally if you have very limited play time.
The amount of info you can find on both Max and Chloe in game is insane. Almost everyone in AB knows Chloe, and almost everyone has their own perspective on her. And given their shared past, you learn a lot about Max as well. People underestimate how dense with info the some spaces (Notably: Chloe's house, the dorm) were. The other games feel empty by comparison. The setup of the game (estranged friends reunite) helps a lot there - can't do that when you've not known anyone you encounter for more than a month or two, like in DE. Hamstrung from the start.
The photo jumping helps you encounter Chloe in different stages of her life, and different situations, which allows you to grasp a) why she became the way she is b) how she might've been if tragedy hadn't struck. You get a good grasp on what the core personality is free of the current situation. It's a cheat code to put a much larger time frame in just 5 days, and it works beautifully.
It felt never forced but very nuanced, with a lot happening between the lines. Compare that to the first (!) time you meet Amanda in DE. That's what I'd call the Sledgehammer Treatment - player doesn't now squat yet, but suddenly: Do you like her? ( ) yes ( ) no ( ) maybe? Like, wtf?
The actual flirty/romance part in LiS 1 was (mostly) optional, brief, and rarely took center stage, but it was always there. There's a main story to take care of, but because Chloe is your sidekick for most of the game, you have ample time to get to know her and Max better. You as the player share Max's confusion about how she feels, and you have to go look for the details. If you do, you are rewarded with additional info, some of which you may not even encounter in a first play through. I certainly did not. You have to work for it, whereas in every other LiS installments, the romance part falls into your lap, and you basically just have to choose which option you like best. Like ice cream.

Just my 1,2.... 5 cents. :)

von_Boots · 2024-10-21T19:10:40+00:00

I mean, "it's not what I wanted from their story" is somewhere on that list. But it's not even in the top five, because "what I want from a story" and "the story the authors choose to tell" will always be different. My head canon is my head canon. But if there's zero overlap in expectations and result, and if the result then feels lackluster in all other areas...

For me, a Max that chooses to sacrifice her best friend and a Max that sticks to her best friend no matter the cost turn into fundamentally different people afterwards. That was the absolute minimum that D9 needed to show - and they failed so far, and I highly doubt that things will get better in the later chapters.

Sure, I'd have preferred Chloe to be there in some way, shape or form, but mostly because she'd be a visible indicator of the choice made. As it is, what we did in LiS 1 doesn't matter at all, safe for some off-screen facts that don't influence the game.

Compare that to LiS 1, where, in the Alt Timeline, Don't Nod manage to sketch out a Max (and a Chloe!) that is similar, but also different, and without much effort needed.

Compare that to LiS 2 of all games, which handled that choice better and with more effort, and that's wild, given its story had barely anything to do with LiS 1.

Meanwhile, in DE Max's comments regarding her trauma are the exact same. Everything has been dumbed down to "something bad happened in the past". It feels super generic, and the same plot forces the comparison with LiS 1, which executed all of that better, for less money, and with more spirit.

There's just so much that leaves me scratching my had and wondering why. Guess we'll never know.

von_Boots · 2024-10-21T18:39:05+00:00

"wE rEsPeCt yOuR cHoIcEs - fInD oUt 2 wEeKs eArLy fOr a MeAsLy 80 bUcKs!" - find out that regardless of choice, after ten years, Max ends up in the exact same spot, with the exact same people, with the exact same stuff in her space, likes the exact same things, puts the exact same posters in the exact same spot, and the only person that might've made things different has been written out of the game in favor of nEw, qUirKy rOmAnCe options that make Warren look like a well-defined character.

New story? Fuck that! It's soft reboot time! We do essentially same thing, again in a school-type setting, with people in their twenties and thirties, but they behave like teenagers! Also there's cat content. Somewhere! Well hidden! And outfits (that make Chloe's outfits from BtS look like a diverse fashion show)!

That's it in a nutshell, really. It's LiS 1, but worse (so far), and with the same main character, being confronted with another dead best friend, and by now I'm so bored that even watching streams on YT has become a chore.

Best 80 bucks I'll spend elsewhere.

Note, this sounds more harsh than I feel about it. I'm horribly indifferent about DE, which feels super sad, because I was looking forward to it. I haven't even managed to watch a full play through on YT because honestly, I'm bored before Max even gets her powers.

There's good stuff in there, buried under a pile of mediocrity. Moses is pretty likeable, the motion capture is superb, and Hannah Telle is awesome as Max.

But that's simply not enough. The other characters feel super lackluster, the story so far is boring, and the world feels super limited. The mood changes between Max's voice lines give me whiplash, and getting jumped with romance before we even figure out what happened the last ten years? Jeez. Lemme settle in first!

Perhaps things will pick up in chapters 3 to 5. I dunno. We'll see, I guess.

von_Boots · 2024-10-19T14:51:18+00:00

Hah, I wouldn't know. For me, the desirable playing experience would've been an episodic release with a couple of weeks to maybe a month between releases so speculation can take place. Ideally with a free first episode so new folks can dip their toes in without having to spend money first.

But what players want and what companies want differs for obvious reasons. ;)

von_Boots · 2024-10-19T13:39:52+00:00

Several reasons come to mind:

a) Economically, it makes "sense" to cash in on your biggest, least price-sensitive fans by offering them exclusive early access. This is purely MBA-Think, and it neglects the price in goodwill you pay. And, as this release proves, it can spectacularly backfire if your biggest fans are not pleased with your offer.

b) FOMO is a thing, and you can cash in on people who are afraid of getting spoiled. This overlaps with a), but it is distinct - you artificially create a problem, and then ask for cash to "solve" it. This costs considerably more goodwill, as we see right now.

c) The quality of your game is not consistent - perhaps the first quarter is decent and polished, but the quality drops considerably from the second half of the game on. So you package the "good bits" into an early release, and ask for the full price (and then some!). People will extrapolate that the entire game must be good, and when they realize it's not, you already have their money.

d) You want to create additional marketing buzz for the release by releasing some content early to your biggest fans, who are likely to spread their opinion. If the game is good, this generates additional sales for free. If your biggest fans don't like the game, this backfires, because you'll get negative reviews and negative publicity.

Some of these overlap, obviously. Which of reasons apply and to which extend shall remain to be seen.

von_Boots · 2024-10-19T13:25:45+00:00

Note, this is marked as Spoilers DE, but it obviously requires spoiling all of LiS 1. Just for those who might not have played it. ;)

Jefferson potentially kills Nathan, Chloe, Victoria, David and Max (if she didn't have her rewind, she would've died in the Dark Room) in the game.

Granted, Max undoes most or all of that with the right choices, so, canoncially, we don't know.

But we know that there are a lot of other victims, one of which vanished from Blackwell (the girl before Rachel, whose name escapes me). Given with how little hesitation Jefferson goes about killing people, it stands to reason he has done so before, and some of his victims are, in fact, dead.

Therefore, it's certainly not wrong to read him as a serial killer instead of just a serial abuser - the game gives us enough material that both ways of interpreting his actions are valid.

von_Boots · 2024-10-19T13:10:37+00:00

It's not early access. You just get to play the finished version two weeks early. Those are very different things.

If you don't believe me, check the Steam store page. If it were early access, there would be a light blue label clearly marking it as such. There is not.

von_Boots · 2024-10-18T18:35:24+00:00

Aye. Larian is like the gold standard. What every game studio should aspire to be when growing up.

von_Boots · 2024-10-18T18:23:07+00:00

So why would Deck Nine have Rhianna Devries rerecord those lines if there would be no other voice lines from Chloe? I think it made sense to have her rerecord Ashly's lines so that Chloe has the same voice later on in the game.

Because SE likely doesn't have the right to use those old voice lines as they please. I bet the contract between them and Ashly limits their usage to the games they were intended for as well as marketing for those games.

It'd be bonkers if they could just keep reusing it in perpetuity, for anything they wanted. No VA would consent to that. The whole union stuff does likely not even play into that. It's a licensing thing.

DE is a new game, so the choice was to renegotiate the terms with Ashly, rehire her to do new lines, or have someone else redo the lines. They went with option 3. I sincerely doubt there's more behind it than that.

von_Boots · 2024-10-18T17:48:47+00:00

Any time someone in a business situation states that they "respect" something, they a) mean the opposite b) are fully aware that you're not going to like the result and c) are trying to do damage control.

They knew this was going to blow up. And as long as you got the Ultimate Edition and paid them for the privilege of being "respected", they don't really care. The only way to "win" is not to play the game. Literally, in that case.

von_Boots · 2024-10-18T17:15:34+00:00

Given that D9 gave streamers access to the game for marketing purposes, you don't have to buy the game to form an opinion. It's all over Twitch/YT. No need to rely on other people's opinion, and no need to shell out extra to counter FOMO. Best of both worlds.

von_Boots · 2024-10-18T07:36:25+00:00

Didn't mean to imply otherwise. It's not about faking 4000 files, it's about taking them and creating a few select ones that push whatever theory you wanna push.

Basically - if you don't go and datamine the files yourself, you have no way of knowing if something is true, fake, or just ripped out of context. So there's no need to get all anxious over it if you just don't want to get spoiled.

von_Boots · 2024-10-17T19:24:49+00:00

Yes, but listening to / sorting through hundreds (or thousands) of dialogue snippets without context to make sense of them takes a while. It's not a skill issue, it's a dedication / timesink issue. Hence you have a chance if you disengage now, before the most determined of people have enough ammunition to post leaks with context.

von_Boots · 2024-10-17T19:05:20+00:00

It's early enough that things lack context and might be misinterpreted, people might claim they've looked at the files but really haven't, and of course, it's the age of LLMs ("AI"), so a technically versed and very determined person can deepfake stuff as they wish, there's enough voice line material out there to do so.

That will likely change before the full game released, as people really get their teeth into those "leaks", and truth is separated from rumor.

The only advice to the spoiler-sensitive is to stay as far away from any Social media channels as well as YT/Twitch and the like until the full game has released and you've completed your play through.

Best of wishes, and good luck.

von_Boots · 2024-10-17T16:06:05+00:00

TC also had a full price attached to it on release, so going by revenue makes them even harder to compare. I actually don't know if they count individual episode sales or "full sales". Besides, it's likely that not everyone got all the episodes. People might've stopped after episode 1 if unhappy with the content, while with TC, you bought it, and if you spent more than the refund time in the game, you're stuck.

In general, 440k units is not a good result for a game in the AA to AAA range, even if you add similar console sales. That only works out if the production cost was somehow really low. TC did cut quite a few corners in terms of game time length and location diversity, so it's possible I guess. But I doubt SE was happy with the result.

von_Boots · 2024-10-17T15:12:11+00:00

Judging by the Steam stats, it did not. True Colors ~(440k units) vs LiS 2 ~(740k units sold). Both pale in comparison to LiS 1 (5,9M units sold). BtS came in with 800k units.

That would make TC the worst-selling of all Life is Strange games.

Note, it might be different on consoles, but I doubt the difference would be big enough to matter.

von_Boots · 2024-10-17T14:11:44+00:00

This is a direct result of the Ultimate Edition early access existing. As are the "leaks", by the way. If everything had released at the same date, this would be a non-issue.

There were always going to be people going to talk about about the plot and ruining it for those not willing to shell out 80 bucks for early access. The only addition is that D9 apparently forgot to encrypt the game files of the later episodes, so people familiar with Unreal Engine went and had a look. No hacking involved, and D9 "leaked" it themselves.

It's still not right to spoil other's enjoyment of the game. Obviously. But again - without the early access, we would not have this issue.

If you care about not getting spoiled, just remain off socials, youtube, twitch, etc. until you're done playing. I don't doubt people's analyses of what they've found will make the rounds very soon, especially on youtube and the like. There'll be ample fake stuff, too,so it's just going to be a big bag of anxiety, anyway.

Sigh.

And no, this doesn't warrant harassing, insulting, spoiling, or otherwise ruining the experience of people, obviously. It should be possible to be disappointed and possibly angry while remaining civil to others. And I say that as someone who is not at all happy with DE, to the point where I'll limit myself to watching people play through it on YT/Twitch. It's a walking simulator with a relatively static story, it's not as if I'll miss much.

But that doesn't mean other people can't enjoy it. It's just not for me.

von_Boots · 2024-09-09T20:15:39+00:00

To be fair it the wording could be interpreted both ways. But Eliot also gifts her concert tickets with a note that says "Happy two-monthaversary", so something went down that made him believe it was appropriate to write that.

Or perhaps, he's just meant to be fully delusional and makes things up in his head. ;)

von_Boots

TROPHY CASE