[DE] Thoughts and discussion for DE
Just finished my DE playthrough and I have many thoughts on it. I kind of compiled a 'review' type list of things that i thought were good, not so good, and bad. I mainly just wanted to put my thoughts into words for my own brain, but I'm curious if you all agree/disagree with these things and what your thoughts are on everything
Obviously this will contain SPOILERS.
...................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
Let's start with the good!
- Older Max! I love the way her design looks. She's the same, goofy, socially awkward Max that has just the right amount of touch up to make it believable that she's the same doofus just in an older body. The returning VA is also a HUGE plus!
- Banger soundtrack! LiS games always have great music associated with them. To me, this one is no different. I loved all of the song choices both during the game, and when you got to just sit and chill and have a 'zen' moment.
-Animation and motion capture. I thought the facial expressions of most of the characters was done really well, especially Max. We're in a day and age now where graphical expectations are fairly high, and i was not dissapointed.
- Safi!! More specifically, the VA who plays Safi. The way her VA portrays her feels so real. The way she delivers certain voice lines is clutch. There's a lot more to say as far as her involvement with the actual game, but we'll get to that later.
Moving on to the Not so good. These are things i personally dont feel like they were completly bad, but they really don't feel good either.
- Forgettable NPC's. Outside of Safi and Moses, every other npc feels totally irrelevant. Even then, Safi plays the biggest part with Moses only being a very small side character. Going back to the first LiS game, those NPC's had some weight to them that people still remember to this day. Who could forget Kate? Victoria? Jefferson? Rachel? David? Joyce? even SAMUEL?? All of those people i'm sure bring some sort of memorable moment into your mind. When i look at characters like Diamond, Reggie, Loretta, Yasmin, Amanda, Vihn, even Gwen and Lucas to some degree, like what did they do? you can nit pick a few things about them, but if you were to recall the game a year from now, you'd probably have to go and look to see what most of these characters actually did. A lot of them have cool designs and interesting enough personality, but most never get a chance to shine and thus they fade very quickly into the background. Very disappointing in a LiS game.
- Small map and explorable locations. The whole game takes place at very few different locations. The university, Max's place, and the Turtle. Yup, thats pretty much it. LiS true colors also had a pretty small map, but there was a lot to do in the places that you could run around in. Multiple shops to explore, people to talk to, things of that sort. DE really feels like youre just running from point A to point B without hardly anything to explore in between. While what is there does look nice, i just wish there were more.
- Questionable story telling and pacing. The first 3 episodes of the game are honestly quite good. You get really invested into solving the mystery around what happened to Safi, learning all sorts of new pieces of information that seem like theyr'e going to get really juicy, and then they just... dont? I'll go into this a bit more later on, but man they really fumbled the back half of the game.
- LiS 1 Nostalgia. There are some parts in the game that i thought were really good when it came to covering events from the first game. I was LONGING for a moment when Max would finally open up about Arcadia Bay and what all that meant to her, and when her and Safi had their sit down moment i was really happy. However, other parts of this, i thought were done poorly. Like the storm. Really? Couldn't think of anything more creative than the exact same thing from the first game? And then there's Chloe. I personally am a fan of the Bae ending and having Chloe just written off the way she was... well it leaves a sour taste. Other moments that reflect on Max's past come up but they just didn't have the effect that they should have.
Okay... let's get into, in my opinion, the bad.
- Irrelevant choices. Almost every "major" decision you make in this game has MINOR effects on the story. How can you make a game that is THEMED AROUND CHOICES and make them basically not matter? Like what???? The most that happens is sometimes characters like you slightly more, or slightly less, but only for a short amount of time. Eventually they'll talk to you again. Even the FINALE lacks a choice that feels relevant. To me this is unacceptable in this kind of series.
- Plot holes. Remember the detective? Yeah i guess neither do Max or Moses or ANYBODY ELSE. They just have him explode and say 'yup he's erased from existence' and then NEVER SPEAK OF IT AGAIN. You get a few messages from Moses when he's looking into it, but then he gets spooked and stops. Thats the end of that plot line. Also, how does Max end up with the photo of her pointing a gun at Safi? That event happened before she got her powers back so she wasn't there to witness it. It's very confusing and to me doesn't make sense.
- Episodes 4 and 5. I mentioned this earlier, but holy Sh*t. The fall off in the last two episodes is so real. Not only are they less than HALF the length of the first three, with both of them only being about 90 minutes in length, but the story is just not interesting. I get it. Lucas is a scumbag who stole the work of his previous student, but the entirety of episode 4 is dedicated to 'serving justice' and it honestly just sucks. How did we go from murder mystery to sabotaging a teacher at a bar with like 15 people who are all drunk college kids? who tf are you even 'outing' him to? man what a horrible transition.
- The ending. I don't really get it. Safi dips to go and look for more... power people? what is this, avengers?? If you think that LiS games are good because of the powers, then I don't really think you understand the LiS games. Also WTF IS UP WITH DIAMOND??? There are actually ZERO hints that she has any sort of powers and all of a sudden the game is just like yup, she does.
I feel like I could go on and on about this game, but i think i hit the main points i wanted to cover. I'd like to hear your thoughts on this stuff as well!