Well, this sounds interesting. Square Enix just announced that it’s making a new “episodic adventure game” called Life is Strange with Dontnod Entertainment, the studio that made last year’s stylish beat-em-up Remember Me. I’m curious and tentatively excited.
The game was announced in post on Square Enix’s blog this morning which included a brief description of Life Is Strange’s story along with a few screenshots. It’s set in the fictional town of Arcadia Bay, Oregon. The story begins with high school senior Max Caulfield returning to the town after being gone for five years. Upon her arrival, she discovers that her classmate Rachel Amber has gone missing “under mysterious and rather uncomfortable circumstances.”
That’s never good! Luckily, Max also discovers that she has a newfangled ability to rewind time. Funny how that always seems to work out. So with her new time-warping abilities in tow and newly reunited with her friend Chloe, Max sets out to solve the mystery of Rachel’s disappearance.
Square Enix makes Life Is Strange sound like a breath of fresh air for the publisher that’s taking it in a direction similar to Telltale Games with its acclaimed episodic adventures The Walking Dead and The Wolf Among Us. Much like those two games, the company said that it plans to “release” the new game “digitally as regular episodic content, with each new chapter building and evolving based on the choices you made in previous episodes.”
The images, meanwhile, demonstrate Dontnod’s unique art style that will be familiar to Remember Me fans:
Square Enix said that the game is being planned for PS4, PS3, Xbox 360, Xbox One and PC. The company didn’t give any sort of release schedule, only saying that it will be shown off at Gamescom this week.
Comments
16 responses to “Square Enix’s New Game Is Something Completely Different”
I no longer have any faith in squeenix’s ability to write, or create non-annoying believable characters though.
When you say you don’t think they can write believable characters, presumably you are talking about specific Square Enix development studios, right? Well Dontnod is not a Square Enix studio.
Remember Me certainly had its problems, but I think they produced a pretty good back story and setting for the game: it’s a pitty you needed to find collectables and read through walls of text to get it though. I’m interested in seeing what they do with a more pure adventure game format.
Hmm, certainly something I’ll be keeping an eye on
Remember Me had some good ideas that were ultimately put together poorly to make a below average game. Some may say the devs pulling some variation of Remember Me’s time rewind mechanic and throwing it into another game is a cheap move, but I think it’s great to see them trying to make something fresh with one of their good ideas. An adventure-style game might lend itself better to it. So, I’m also curious and tentatively excited.
Half Life 3 Confirmed
When will the current-gen-only games start being made? I’m looking for some OC that won’t be held back by compatibility issues like Watch Dogs, that game could have been so much more.
As soon as people stop buying them on the older consoles
It will be interesting to see if they can pull off the episodic releases without it seeming like they’ve simply cut a longer game into bits. The Telltale games have great writing which hits the mark with both good characters AND good writing for the episodic format. Each episode needs to flow like a short game while still flowing as a whole episode to episode.
It’ll all depend on their writing staff. It looks pretty though.
This looks amazing!
I enjoyed remember me a lot more than other people did so I’m interested in this game.
Max Caulfield? The lead actor in Grease 2? That’s unfortunate.
The time manipulation parts of Remember Me were the most enjoyable in that game. I hope this takes that and expands upon it.
For the love of god.
PARASITE EVE
Re-boot it!!
Like Now.
@RK
I second this.
I third this.
Remember Me really would have been a heck of a lot more fun as an adventure game rather than an action adventure game. I just hope the writing’s a bit better in this one and it uses the time rewinding as a proper game mechanic, not for a couple of once off puzzles. Episodic content always makes me worried as it’s rarely pulled off well, though it sounds like it’s a story that lends itself to being broken up like a TV series.