«Life is Strange Remastered»: an unnecessary, faulty update
At E3 2021, a graphical update for the first two instalments of the «Life is Strange» series was announced. But was Square Enix able to pull it off? Read our review to find out.
This article was originally published by our content partner «PC Games». To see the original German-language article written by Rebecca Herrmann, [click here] (https://www.pcgames.de/Life-is-Strange-Remastered-Collection-Spiel-73606/Tests/Before-the-Storm-Review-Wertung-Bugs-Square-Enix-1389395/).
The «Life is Strange» series has enjoyed immense popularity for many years. So naturally, there was a lot of buzz when new editions of «Life is Strange» and «Life is Strange: Before the Storm» were announced at E3 2021. Somewhat dated since their releases in 2015 and 2017, a graphical update to the games sounded pretty promising. Now that the «Life is Strange»: Remastered Collection is here, a look at the test version leads to one conclusion: Square Enix needn’t have bothered with this update. Not only are the improvements marginal, but the game is suddenly plagued with bugs and errors that weren’t there before.
The story hasn’t changed at all. «Life is Strange» (linked article in German) puts you in the shoes of Max Caulfield, an 18-year-old photography student. Five years after moving away with her parents, she returns to her old town to study and is immediately faced with a number of problems. One of the things bothering her is the breakdown of her friendship with former best friend Chloe – a relationship she’s keen to rebuild.
Chloe has dropped out of school and got herself into a lot of trouble. On top of that, there’s the disappearance of her best friend Rachel Amber to contend with. Max tries everything to help Chloe and her friends, engaging her newly discovered power to turn back time in the process.
Her new superpower allows her to rerun conversations, influence what happens and steer the course of events in a certain direction. As well as her new power, she keeps having visions of a storm which threatens the city. Of course, we won’t be revealing here what the storm is all about, or whether Max can help her friends.
The prequel «Life is Strange: Before the Storm» (linked article in German) revolves around Max’s best friend Chloe. After Max moves away, Chloe loses her way and gets into all kinds of trouble. Unlike Max, she doesn’t have any special powers, so you can’t take back any of her answers once you’ve given them. In the prequel, you learn more about Chloe, her personality and her friendship with Rachel Amber. With its excellent atmosphere and complex characters, that story is also impressive.
What are the announced changes?
On the gameplay side of things, a couple of puzzles have been slightly modified to improve the flow of the game. The really relevant changes, though, affect the graphics. At least, that’s what was promised previously. In practice, however, these «improvements» are of little consequence. Some of the environment art and character models have been vamped up a little, but you’d struggle to notice the differences without comparing them directly to the original.
Source: PC Games
Improved motion capture technology for lip-synced dialogues and prettier facial animations were also promised, but the difference is barely noticeable in these areas either. The only perceptible change is to the lighting system. This is most noticeable when you look at the characters’ eyes, which are more natural looking due to the new way they light up. That said, this update isn’t particularly relevant either. And due to a misplaced blur effect, some of the cutscenes actually look worse than in the original.
If you want to get a better impression of the graphical differences, take a look at our graphics comparison(https://www.pcgames.de/Life-is-Strange-Spiel-54738/Videos/Remastered-Collection-Original-Remaster-1388767/) (link in German), which displays the technical differences.
Errors, errors and more errors!
So far, so unsatisfactory. And on top of that, here’s where things get annoying. It’s unfathomable how Square Enix has managed to cram so many technical errors – some of them gross errors – into a game that was previously bug free.
Source: PC Games.
The first instalment surprises you right off the bat with an endless list of errors: flickering doors, overlapping text, jerky images and longer loading times than in the original. In addition, the characters spontaneously changed their position in the level, the screen froze, and the game crashed completely on more than one occasion.
You’d be forgiven for thinking that things couldn’t get much worse. However, rather than things improving with the second instalment, even more bugs appear.
You may wonder how that’s possible, and I’m asking myself the same question. The new lighting, while good in «Life is Strange», creates giant white patches on the monitor in «Before the Storm». Subtitles are missing completely in some scenes, with just file names left in their place. Dialogues repeatedly get cut off.
Detailing the ton of other annoyances – big and small – that we encountered along the way, such as the controller disconnecting randomly, would go beyond the scope of this article. Evidently, remasters are the video game world’s biggest challenge right now. In the wake of the GTA trilogy debacle, we don’t have any other explanation for this technical disaster. It’s really disappointing.
How can you screw up a remaster so badly?
The story in the remaster is, of course, still as great as in the originals. No surprises there seeing as it hasn’t been changed. The question here isn’t whether the remaster was needed in the first place, but this: how could something as simple as a minimal graphical upgrade have been screwed up so badly? The marginal improvements don’t even begin to make up for the countless bugs. I’d much rather stick to the original. At the moment, I’m at a loss as to how the developers’ «improvements» have actually managed to make the game worse.
«Life is Strange Remastered Collection» has been available on PC, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X/S and Xbox One since 1 February 2022. The date for the 2022 launch of the Nintendo Switch version is still unknown. If you fancy getting your teeth into some better «Life is Strange» fare, check out our review of «Life is Strange: True Colors» (link in German).
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