Ten years ago, Life is Strange emotionally ruined me as a sixteen-year-old experiencing it as it released episodically. While its dialogue very much reflected the age of its developers trying to mimic the voice of an edgy, hormonal teen, its storyline otherwise outshone this and every episode left me reeling over the fact that I would have to wait another month or so to find out what happens next. In short, despite the eye-rolling teen slang embodying a parent trying to mimic their moody teenage child (stop trying to make ‘shaka brah’ happen, DON’T NOD), Life is Strange really resonated with me as a teenage girl. Ten years later, DON’T NOD’s latest release, Lost Records: Bloom & Rage, tells the story of a group of adults who were once childhood friends, reflecting on the best summer of their lives. As a twenty-something-year-old who has also lost touch with most of the childhood friends they once spent their summers with, once again I felt as though Lost Record’s premise would be one I could relate to. Unfortunately, I don’t think Max “wowser” Caulfield herself could relate to some of the nonsensical decisions and dialogue choices that these characters make.
Split into two “tapes”, Lost Records starts with 43-year-old Swann returning to her sleepy rural town to meet with her former childhood friends. While the conversations start with reminiscing about their summer together 27 years ago in 1995, the group haven’t just returned because they missed each other (in fact, the way these characters meet feels like they were never friends at all); a mysterious parcel has arrived, addressed to “Bloom & Rage”, the band they briefly formed that year.
While Life is Strange hit the ground running with the revelation of Max’s time reversal powers, Lost Records kicks off with… nothing. The game mostly takes place in the past, as the present day group reflects on their history together through flashbacks, with their voices occasionally echoing through to narrate over or comment on these scenes. We’re introduced to Swann as an awkward teenager, facing the hardships of moving to another town and leaving behind all of her… well, she doesn’t actually have any friends. She does, however, have a brand new camcorder gifted to her for her birthday. So we start the first hour or so by filming her room, going outside and filming some more bits, and also asking people in the most creepy way possible if we can film them too! While we’re in the process of filming the town and the occasional discarded piece of trash, we run into trouble with the local unreasonable bully, who has decided that we must have been filming them without their consent! This argument somehow goes from 0 to 100 extremely quickly, a statement which can actually be applied to most of the arguments throughout the game that seemingly come from nowhere, with characters overreacting to the smallest of things in order to force some drama. Luckily, some teenage girls who were in the area overhear the ruckus and step in, one of which being the younger sister of said bully. After the situation settles, they introduce themselves as Kat, Autumn and Nora, social rejects just like Swann… well, maybe not quite as strange as Swann.
The storyline then proceeds to slog along for the next six hours of Tape 1, showing the group doing all kinds of cute and fun things throughout their summer, including discovering an abandoned witch’s hut to hang out in (surely this won’t have any repercussions at all later!) But while we’re moving from one heartfelt scene of the girls camping together or producing music to another, what isn’t happening is an overarching plot to get attached to. By this point, Max was well on her way into investigating a local serial killer. Swann, on the other hand, has littered one forest and has probably inhaled an ungodly amount of abandoned house mold. In fact, we don’t even find out about the mysterious parcel until a couple of hours in; Swann and Autumn’s adult counterparts just keep alluding to the “thing” that happened that summer. In fact, we hold onto “the thing” for the first six hours with absolutely no clue as to what it refers to because they also frustratingly decide not to open the damn box until the end of the game. Imagine Stephen King’s IT starting with the adults reminiscing about that “thing” that happened 23 years ago, but we don’t find out about the killer clown until six hours later, first going through several scenes of the children hanging out together and doing absolutely nothing, not even gracing us with a personal subplot for these characters.
Being consistently teased with “the thing” wouldn’t have been so frustrating had Lost Records not been so long, or if more context to “the thing” had at least been trickled in earlier on to give us some crumbs to scavenge off while the writers try to hold back all the interesting parts of the plot until the last possible moment. And by the time the key story beat is finally dropped at the end of Tape 1, it’s too late and so unbearably unimpressive that I wished any paranormal elements had just been left out and the game had just focused on a coming of age tale, as it so clearly wanted to do.
On top of this, despite spending six hours with these girls, I barely knew anything about them. I knew about their interests and aspirations for the future, but absolutely nothing about their personal lives aside from the fact that Kat’s sister is dating the local sociopath bully – they totally deserve each other by the way. Life is Strange took care to make sure we learnt a little bit about all of its characters, even the school bully, Nate. And while this wasn’t enough to excuse some of their actions, it made them feel just a little more fledged out.
Lost Records shares Life is Strange’s strange character choices, with some characters reacting in a really unnatural way to certain events. In Life is Strange, it always confused me why Max cut contact with Chloe, even after her dad had died, it just came off as completely inhumane to not send so much as a letter. And this carries on in Lost Records where the adult counterparts of the group do not seem to care much about each other at all. Your relationship level with them as children also affects whether they stick around to find out what’s in the box or not, which to me just blows my mind as, despite their relationship with Swann, this doesn’t mean they weren’t close friends with any of the others in the group. Or maybe I just care more about my friends than these people do, I wouldn’t even behave this way around ones that I haven’t spoken to since I was a child. This also reflects in general conversations, for example in one scene Autumn asks Swann to help her pack her things. This involves following instructions such as “can you grab my toothbrush” and having to deduce which toothbrush is Autumn’s out of our friends’. Getting the wrong toothbrush negatively affects our relationship with Autumn which is the most ridiculous concept – Autumn, how about you get your head out of your own backside and just tell us which toothbrush is yours?!
The core gameplay elements consist of Swann’s filming hobby and the dialogue choices we can make. The filming could have been a nice addition to the game had we had an actual editing mechanic to create our own videos, which Swann alludes to doing. Instead, cutscenes end with Swann having to walk around the area and film specific objects, and once we’ve done that we’re allowed to move on, or we can stay and film extra objects. In the editing room, we can only reorder and shorten clips to create videos. We can’t even add music. This makes Swann’s “talent” of film creation feel really disingenuous, as our friends will excitedly ask to see the video we’ve been putting together and it’s just a collection of random clips stringed together, which they’ll compliment as though we’ve made something remarkable.
While Life is Strange’s choices had us paranoid about even forgetting to water our plant in case it led to a character’s death later on, Lost Record’s choices are mostly boiled down to dialogue selection which mildly affects our relationships with our friends. In fact, there were so many scenes throughout the game that would have made an excellent choice, but it feels like we’re working for the plot rather than creating it ourselves. There were large segments towards the end of the game that consisted of just watching cutscene after cutscene with very little input from the player. It felt very much like the developers actually just wanted to create a film, shouldering the player away from having any real impact on the story.
The concept of the adult group’s voices filtering in through to the flashback scenes to narrate and comment on them also interferes greatly with what’s going on in that scene. As you walk around to explore and examine objects, there will often be conversations going on at the same time. Either Swann will be talking to someone else in the room or area, or the group will be talking amongst themselves. The problem here is that their adult counterparts will also be commenting on whatever your examining, so there’s an overlap of conversations going on at the same time. This is further exacerbated by the characters in-scene also talking over one another, sometimes two different conversations will be happening in the scene itself, with the adult voices overlapping into this as well. Not only is the constant flurry of layered voices extremely overstimulating while you’re also trying to take a look at objects and items of interest, but it also means you can’t focus on one conversation and actually listen to what’s being said. My colleague who wrote an impressions piece on Tape 1 described the experience as being akin to Hellblade, a game with a protagonist suffering from psychosis, which is the perfect way to describe how playing Lost Records feels like sometimes.
There’s also the case that Swann as a character just isn’t likeable and I think this mostly boils down to who this game’s target audience is. While Life is Strange could be played by a teenager despite its “shaka brah’s” as well as adults, Lost Record’s story is one clearly aimed at adults so that they too can reminisce about their childhood. But this also means that the behaviours of these teenagers do not feel relatable at all. While the likes of Stephen King and the Duffer brothers are masters at writing children’s dialogue in a realistic and likeable manner, this is one of DON’T NOD’s major flaws and it’s more prominent in Lost Records than any of their previous work due to its lack of a plot. Swann and her friends’ behaviour comes off as really disgusting and they seemingly never learn from this, especially in Tape 2 where we witness the destruction that they’ve done to the beautiful forest hideout they discovered, leaving their litter absolutely everywhere and vandalising what they can. This then extends to the town’s small businesses, which they feel entitled to trespass, vandalise and disturb the customers of. While they do face the consequences of their actions, there is never any growth there; they never admit to fault and simply believe they’ve done nothing wrong. It’s difficult to relate to a coming of age story when it feels as though these characters never come of age because they don’t grow from their experience. This even extends to the characters as adults who, depending on your choices as a child, can’t even come together in honour of someone who has passed away.
On top of this, Lost Records also has some poor voice performances, especially as the actors try to take on the voices of teenagers, which most of them seem to really struggle with. The most notable performances with this issue were Swann and Nora’s, while Swann’s voice acting would come off as far too child-like for a teenage girl coming of age, reminding me a lot of certain anime voice acting styles, Nora’s was overly expressive in a caricature way.
Despite its name and story moments focusing on the girls creating their own band, Lost Records can’t even hold up Life is Strange’s legacy of having a great soundtrack. While I still have most of Life is Strange’s soundtrack in my playlist, none of Lost Records’ licensed indie tracks stood out to me at all and I couldn’t even remember one if I tried.
The one thing Lost Records actually has going for it is the visuals, which are by far some of the best I’ve seen this year. It finds a lovely balance between realism and artistic design, still having a signature look while crafting gorgeous realistic looking scenes with some impressive motion capture on the facial expressions. I love how the present day and the past scenes contradict each other, with the present day looking far more realistic while the past is absolutely filled with colour, reflecting the rose tinted glasses the characters have while reminiscing on their childhood summer. One thing I will note is that for some reason, the motion capture on the facial expressions doesn’t look as good in the present day scenes as it does in the 1995 scenes. I’m not sure whether this was a deliberate choice or not to make the present day look even more dreary, but it is a strange one if so.
It’s safe to say that, as someone who was hoping that Lost Records: Bloom & Rage would create the same magic that Life is Strange did, it was extremely disappointing. While the plot did pick up in Tape 2, it wasn’t enough to make up for the six hours of nothing in the first tape and could have easily been a story beat that was introduced much sooner to keep some interest going. The game just keeps building and building onto the promise of a “thing” happening in 1995, consistently teasing the player with this knowledge. After six hours, I half expected Cthulhu to rise from the lake and destroy the town with the way this event was alluded to. And it turned out to be absolutely nothing. And with the minor influence the paranormal elements had on the plot, these could have been easily left out too, focusing on the more personal, heartfelt story that takes up much of Tape 2 – but it was almost like the writers felt obliged to include some fantasy after the success of Life is Strange.
Jess played Lost Records: Bloom & Rage with a provided review copy.
