This review contains spoilers

In 2015, Dontnod Entertainment developed an award-winning episodic video game following Max Caulfield, a time-controlling high-school senior in the fictional town of Arcadia Bay, Oregon. This video game became the base for many “Life is Strange” fandoms which includes cosplay, fanfiction, fan-art, and so much more.

In 2019, Dontnod Entertainment finally released “Life is Strange 2,” an adventure game that follows Sean and Daniel Diaz, two brothers who run into trouble in their hometown and decide to go on the run to their father’s hometown, Puerto Lobos, Mexico. Daniel, however, discovers that he has telekinetic powers and is able to lift, throw, and destroy things with his mind.

Daniel’s powers are not the only issue throughout this game. The storyline also includes important issues surrounding racism, sexuality, and difficult life decisions.

At first, I was disappointed and dissatisfied with the layout and the speed of the game. It felt too long and rhetorical. In the first episode, players are introduced to the point of view of Sean, and through Sean, we meet Lyla, Esteban, and Daniel as main protagonists. Life takes a turn for the worst when Esteban, Sean and Daniel’s father, is fatally shot by a police officer, but the officer mysteriously dies afterwards. Sean and Daniel take off from their hometown of Seattle, Washington, to escape the questioning and interrogations. Sean cuts off everybody in his life to protect both him and his brother’s safety as well as the friends’ safety. However, this episode is full of just walking through the woods, with the occasional action scene, and it felt like it simply dragged on.

As the story progresses throughout the game, more and more life-altering decisions come up and life gets stranger as my enjoyment of the game began to grow. Sean and Daniel deal with running, hiding, fighting, loss and above all, surviving. As they travel across the states, they meet friends, enemies, and even their own family members.

It took me until episode three to truly be invested in the game. Throughout the first two episodes, I felt bored. There weren’t as many choices to make, and I felt that the cutscene to play-time ratio was off, but by the time I reached the third episode, I was actively playing more, and I was so invested in the storyline and character development that I could barely pull my eyes from the screen. For example, Sean and Daniel were tense towards each other in the beginning and Sean was a bit too snappy with his little brother for Daniel just finding out that he lost his father, but as the storyline went on, they grew closer and more supportive of each other, despite the couple moments of bickering.

After hours of playing, I became attached to each character, even the smaller characters like Finn, Penny, Cassidy, and the whole farm group because of the help and support they gave the brothers, as well as the option to kiss Finn. I, of course, went for it, and it made my heart flutter with happiness that Sean was letting himself open up.

Life surprisingly gets even stranger when Sean is given the option to follow Finn’s plan to break into their bosses safe and steal the money (of course as I was playing as Sean, and I chose to go for it.) The plan goes wrong, and multiple people are either dead, injured, or in the case of Daniel, missing.

Episode four is focused around getting Daniel back from a cult-like church where you have many options that can change the timeline of events. At the end of episode four, Daniel and Sean are officially reunited and back on their way to Puerto Lobos, Mexico.

Depending on how the first four episodes were played, the fifth episode can be very different for each player. With seven possible endings, there’s a good chance that I will be playing through the full game again to make different choices that impact the game differently and, hopefully, end on a happier note.