Square Enix has just announced the brand new release date for the Life is Strange collection earlier today, which bundles in both the original Life is Strange, and prequel adventure Life is Strange: Before the Storm. Both games will receive visual upgrades and enhancements to both characters and environments, as well as a complete lighting overhaul via a brand new game engine.

There’s even brand new facial capture animation throughout the Life is Strange: Remastered Collection, so Max and Chloe’s original adventure, and Chloe and Rachel’s prequel series will look as good as possible on last-gen and new-gen machines alike next year.

This is the perfect starting point for anyone who’s yet to experience the Life is Strange series, or for anyone who played the original series years ago and wants to revisit Arcadia Bay. The Life is Strange: Remastered Collection launches early next year on February 1 for PC, PS4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch, and will be available via backwards compatibility for PS5, Xbox Series X, and Xbox Series S.

The Life is Strange: Remastered Collection was originally scheduled to launch earlier this month, alongside the brand new Life is Strange: True Colors, before being delayed out of 2021 entirely. True Colors follows the adventures of brand new protagonist Alex Chen, and it’s the perfect way to whittle down the weeks until the Remastered Collection arrives. Head over to our full Life is Strange: True Colors review to see why we rewarded Square Enix’s latest with a 4.5/5.

There’s even a Life is Strange TV show in the works, and earlier this month it added Shawn Mendes in a producing role.

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As shared in The Last of Us Subreddit (opens in new tab), fans of the apocalyptic action game are being reminded of a pretty clear reference to the game in chapter 2 of Life is Strange 2. 

In the narrative adventure, brothers Sean and Daniel – who are running away from home – find themselves strolling through the forest when the younger of the two spots a strange-looking fungus growing on a nearby tree. Daniel, having spotted the mushroom-clad tree, notes to his brother “uhh… you see that? Looks like a Clicker…” Sean then starts making a clicking noise replicating the infected found in The Last of Us and scaring his younger sibling.

Life Is Strange 2 has a cool TLOU reference from r/thelastofus

As well as being referenced in other games, Naughty Dog’s influential survival horror game is also hiding its fair share of references which can be found in our The Last of Us 2 Easter eggs list. Primarily those from other Naughty Dog series like Uncharted, Crash Bandicoot, and Jak & Daxter. 

As for Life is Strange, the next game in the series has been revealed to be Life is Strange: True Colors. This will be the fourth game in the series after the original Life is Strange game, its prequel Life is Strange: Before the Storm, and Life is Strange 2. It’ll also be developed by Deck Nine, not original developer Dontnod, after rumors that the original studio had moved on from the series.

Can’t get enough of Dontnod’s choice-based games? Find out if you’ll enjoy their latest release with our Tell Me Why review. 

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Twin Mirror follows investigative journalist Sam Higgs, who returns to his hometown following the death of his best friend and begins to unravel the town’s “dark secrets” while grappling with past trauma. It sounds similar in tone to the studio’s previous efforts, Life is Strange and Life is Strange 2, but Twin Mirror bucks the episodic nature of those games and goes for “one complete narrative experience.” Twin Mirror also tells a more real-world story without any supernatural elements.

The new trailer shows some of the ways you’ll use Sam’s deductive skills and Mind Palace technique to study crime scenes and produce results. “Sam’s Mind Palace represents his inner world,” Twin Mirror director Florian Desforges told GamesRadar (opens in new tab) in June. “It’s a place of refuge where he can access memories and reconstruct scenes from real life… What I can tell you without spoiling too much is that we experience Sam’s Mind Palace, in our own interpretation, via various gameplay phases serving different narrative purposes.”

Twin Mirror is Dontnod’s first self-published game, co-produced with Shibuya Entertainment. Its PC release is a timed exclusive on the Epic Games Store, with a wider PC release coming a year later.

For what to play right now, these are the best games of 2020 (opens in new tab) so far.

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Warning: some light story spoilers ahead

In the opening hours of Life is Strange 2 as Sean, you go from getting ready for a party and deciding whether to swipe your dad’s beer, to being forced out onto the streets with your little brother under your care. After a confrontation leads to their father being shot by a police officer, the two brothers set off on a journey into the unknown. But, as you soon discover throughout the narrative adventure, that’s easier said than done. After all, Sean is just a kid himself, but he’s suddenly forced to become a guardian and mentor to his little brother, and has little time to process his own feelings of grief. In the shoes of Sean, Life is Strange 2 gives us a glimpse into the many challenges young people might face when they no longer have a place to call home.

We Will Be Heard

“In terms of our collaboration, Square Enix approached us,” Paul Brocklehurst, the head of Centrepoint’s helpline tells me. “They were looking for UK-based charities that tie into the issues raised in Life is Strange 2. We had a chat with them, played the game, and nearly snapped their arm off [to collaborate] because I think the game speaks so much to a lot of the challenges our young people face.” 

Through the storytelling in Life is Strange 2, and in our role as Sean, we’re able to gain some insight into how it might feel to be a young homeless person with no one to turn to. Throughout the story, and the experiences you go through, I constantly found myself feeling very reluctant to trust any characters who appeared to offer Sean  any assistance. After experiencing so much hostility directed towards the two young Diaz brothers, you’re constantly on edge and Dontnod does well to establish an ongoing tension throughout the narrative that makes you truly feel unsafe in what is often a very hostile environment. The tense atmosphere and emotive portrayal resonated with those working at Centrepoint, who had seen and heard of experiences like Sean and Daniel’s first-hand. 

“What we see a lot is that people at a very young age are all of a sudden having to make major decisions about what’s safe or not, who to trust or not, where they’re going to stay at night,” Brocklehurst explains. “It has a massive emotional and mental health impact as well that I think is captured well in the game. You see that Sean’s getting very frustrated very early on, because he doesn’t really have the time to process the death of his father, he’s too focused on ‘how are we going to get through today?’, and that mirrors a lot of what we see with people calling us saying they’ve been kicked out or they’ve run away from home.” 

Difficult choices 

“This game really resonated with us despite some of the differences in culture [since Life is Strange 2 is set in America],” Centrepoint’s senior direct marketing officer Becca Cousins tells me, “because it gives people a very slight window into the very very difficult and complex decisions and experiences that young homeless people go through, which we thought was very powerful. And it means we can kind of draw awareness to what young people are going through in the UK and that we do have services and a helpline (opens in new tab) where we can offer advice, which is something Sean and Daniel didn’t have access to.” 

In the first episode, you’re presented with the choice to steal a tent, some candy bars, and an adorable hoodie for your brother, and these choices make it difficult to discern what is right and wrong, or if there even is a clear cut “right choice.” Lead writer Cano explains that they hoped players would feel that the right choice isn’t so well defined. “Some people will say that if you are stealing something, you’re a thief and you’re bad,” Cano continues, “But when you’re doing this in the shoes of Sean, you’re stealing not for you, but because your little brother is hungry and because it’s cold. So yeah, what am I going to do? Am I going to let him suffer or let him have it. No, I’m going to steal. It’s the same in real life. It’s not always black or white, it’s always grey.”

Telling a story 

Sean and Daniel’s story has such an impact because it enables you to take part in the experience directly, reacting to the narrative’s unfolding events not as an observer but as an active participant. Just as we’re given a window into the brother’s experiences, it’s through real young people’s experiences of homelessness that the We Will be Heard campaign hopes to raise awareness about just how prevalent the issue of young people at risk of homelessness is within the UK. 

We Will be Heard aims to highlight that over 22,000 young people will be at risk of homelessness this Christmas. Street art will be shown around London depicting silhouettes of young people and their stories, as well as portraits of some of the young people affected with elements of their stories shown. Those who wish to take part can also sign a petition (opens in new tab) for the campaign.

Just as Life is Strange 2 is able to highlight so poignantly in its story, many people in the real world are but one event away from losing everything they have ever known. Dontnod treated the story with the respect and research it deserves because the studio understands that its games are able to transcend sheer entertainment and can be used as an educational tool.

“As developers, as creators, we have a responsibility to do it well,” lead writer Cano affirms, “so every subject we are dealing with in Life is Strange or Life is Strange 2, we do a lot of research for, we contact people who are facing these situations in their real life to be as accurate as possible. To be the most honest and sincere. Because for us, even if it’s our baby and it’s a video game, some people are facing these situations in their real life – in their everyday life – so we can’t talk about it lightly. We have to be responsible. And yes, it’s a massive responsibility, but it’s the kind of game we are making and it’s important for us to do it well.” 

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Those who played the first game know that Chloe and Max had a falling out when Max moved away. After losing her best friend, Chloe found new friendships (some of them not necessarily being the healthiest) and a new view on life. It looks like Before the Storm will explore those days, letting players decide how the young girl’s past ultimately plays out.

Check out more of our E3 2017 (opens in new tab) coverage and stayed tuned for more news as the convention ramps up over the next few days!

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She can sign Ms Grant’s petition against surveillance cameras on the school campus; she can ask a boy about his elitist Vortex Club; she can use her newly discovered power to pretend she knows something about skateboarding. Or she can sit down on the edge of the fountain and just take a minute to think.

“This day has been so insane,” begins her internal monologue as she takes a seat, and the camera cuts to show her surroundings from different angles. The focus slowly shifts to highlight a statue or some trees and then back to Max again. “Everything is happening too fast. And none of it makes any sense.”

We’ve all been there. Sometimes it feels like life is pushing in at you from all sides and there’s no room left to breathe. Sometimes you just need to stop and try to process your current drama to free up some mental space. Sure, we’re not all dealing with time-travel paradoxes or whatever, but pain is relative.

While we (hopefully) recognise the need to pace ourselves in our own lives, videogames often ignore these contemplative moments in favour of near-constant action. Of course, the recent rise of the ‘walking simulator’ has brought us the opposite: games that are all contemplation. But some of the most effective games alternate high-energy sequences with moments of calm.

In some games, taking a breather feels jarring, at odds with the high-stakes drama. If Mass Effect’s Shepard is the galaxy’s only hope against the Reapers, does she really have time for fetching items and flirtation? Probably not. But in Life Is Strange, time is Max’s biggest asset. If anything bad were to happen as she gathers her thoughts, she could just turn back the clock and set things right.

Nothing ever actually does happen in these periods; you can leave Max with her own thoughts long after her audible monologue is finished, as the music loops and the same small scenes play out around her. We’re used to this kind of incongruity in games, moments where the narrative suggests that time is of the essence but nothing actually happens without input from the player. Life Is Strange just sets these moments apart.

Each episode contains a few of these opportunities, when Max finds herself alone and comes across a place to unwind. The fountain, with its coins thrown for wishes, makes an appropriate place for her to sit down and think about her ability to change things that don’t go her way, but the other locations probably feel more familiar from our own lives: a bed, a tree stump, a swing.

The monologues vary depending on Max’s surroundings and progress through the story: she might think about what she needs to do next, reflect on recent events or even replay childhood memories. They’re not so insightful that you can’t finish the game without them, but they’re more natural than the snippets you hear when you tell Max to look at things, and, thanks to the voice acting, are more engaging.

With the digital distractions central to our modern lives – Facebook, Twitter, games that occupy just enough of our attention to drown out the voices around us and the ones in our head – it feels like some of us actively avoid being alone with our thoughts. But if this game, with its message about the futility of wishing for things to be different, leaves you with anything at all, let it be a new Max-like habit. Every now and then, stop what you’re doing. Close this website, pocket your phone, and then, for as long as you need, just think. [But do actually come back again after – Ed.]

This article originally appeared in Xbox: The Official Magazine. For more great Xbox coverage, you can subscribe here (opens in new tab).

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