Life is Strange 2: Episode 5 Xbox One X Review

Life is Strange 2 has reached its end. With Sean and Daniel's adventure coming to a finish with multiple endings but not without having some profounds choices littered throughout. The episode is light in areas to explore and requires a lot of interaction with random items to get an understanding of what happened between episodes 4 and 5. But it's during the finale and how Sean raised Daniel that things come together and either end with a somber note or a massive explosion.

Taking place weeks after episode 4 Sean and Daniel are living with their mother in a small isolated community called Away. The people here are friendly and prefer isolation. Either to escape the scars of their past life or to start anew. The characters introduced here are short-lived but give enough information for you to draw an understanding of who they are. But honestly, after 4 episodes of characters, these serve as the least impactful and I was more excited when existing characters were brought up in either easter eggs or through dialogue.

The amount of items you'll have to interact with does become annoying. You can avoid all of these but it's required if you want to understand how Daniel and Sean have been living the past several weeks. And shows how these characters have grown close to this community. This is a common system in the Life is Strange franchise but it can get really annoying. Especially seeing a short video of Sean and Daniel getting close with the community would've been a lot more profound than interacting with several objects telling me what they did.

Episode 5 does have some profound choices that affect the ending of the game. But most of them either reinforce what you've already done or want to make up for. Like if you wish to repair your relationship with Karen, you're given the chance here. Also, it's here that Daniel's morality comes into being.

Since episode 1, Sean has been raising Daniel. Molding his perception of how to use his powers and how to act. Whether to be afraid of them, using them correctly or to dominate others. This is where episode 5 shines. The consequences of your actions are incorporated into Daniel as he starts to decide how to tackle certain choices. Whether its hurting people or saving them.

The finale is where everything comes together. Despite Sean making the choice, Daniel is the real decision-maker. With his morality level determining what of the 7 endings you'll get. Each one a profound reflection of the brothers' bond.

The gameplay has remained the same. You make choices with the face buttons, explore 1 area teeming with items that make reference to past episodes and even the original Life is Strange, and occasionally collect items. The skip option still hasn't improved though. There are long stretches of dialogue and cinematics that cannot be skipped, which can be annoying when you want to collect the item in a certain area.

The pace of episode 5 has been altered compared to previous games in the series. Before I was expecting just 1 serious choice but the episode does attempt to litter some minor ones. It does reflect the ending but not in a profound way. Just in small detail.

This episode is much more stable than episode 2. However, there's a game-breaking glitch that kept triggering during the sculpture process. After completing the sculpture Daniel needs to speak to Sean to progress but each time my game would lock up. Daniel would not speak and I would have to restart the file.

The voice-acting is still exceptional. Sean played by Gonzalo Martin and Roman Dean George as Daniel sell their performances. Especially during the ending. However, the lip-syncing is way off. You can see the character models just their jaw at an inconsistent rate compared to what is being seen. And once you notice it it's hard to ignore, especially when the face models are close up.

There was 1 thing that I found profoundly vexing about episode 5 and that no option existed for Sean to go free or explain himself. Playing through the various episodes it was clear that Sean was digging this hole deeper and committed a lot of crimes but considering the event that sparked everything wasn't his fault it seems odd that an ending reflecting that wasn't available. This entire journey was caused because a cop killed his dad and it seems unfair that Sean has to take responsibility for that. Seeing that Sean suffers in every ending, being dubbed a criminal in all of them in some way, it seems that Dotnod went for overall shock value for all the endings.

Life is Strange 2 does offer a lot of emotionally charged endings. Having the decisions you've made coming into reality in the form of Daniel. The number of items you'll have to interact with to understand everything can become vexing. And the areas you'll explore are pretty bland compared to previous locations. It also annoying that Sean ends up suffering, either leaving his home forever or in some other situation where he takes responsibility for those actually responsible. The endings do offer plenty of variety and encourage replayability and emotionally charged moments but most of them require taking logic out. Life is Strange 2 Episode 5 succeeds in making you think about every choice Sean has made leading up to this moment.

Adam Siddiqui,
Senior Editor, NoobFeed
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