Crossing the Border: ‘Life is Strange 2: Wolves’ Review
After a year of traipsing through the uninspiring world of the sequel to Life is Strange, I felt conditioned to expect that “Wolves” would be a flat note to a dull story. At first, I kept nitpicking the game because I was frustrated with the narrative and I wanted it to be better. But as if my prayers had finally been answered, I quickly found myself enraptured in easily the best two hours that the sequel has delivered throughout its five episodes. I can barely believe how powerful the episode’s ending is, and how it shifted my perspective on Life is Strange 2.
When I began the final episode of Life is Strange 2, I felt a lot like Sean Diaz: I wanted this awful journey to finally be over. The problem I have maintained about Life is Strange 2 largely centers around the lack of long-term narrative consequence for the Diaz brothers’ interactions, the absence of narratively compelling supernatural powers which the series still uses to forward its story, and weakly developed thematic elements that often fail to complicate the game’s characters. Nearly every particularity that made the original Life is Strange special is missing in its sequel.
“Wolves” captures a tone, however, that rekindled a similar emotional resonance that I haven’t quite felt since the original Life is Strange. It made me feel, for once, that I had taken a meaningful journey through the lives of Sean and Daniel Diaz, rather than the badly paced wanderings of incohesive plotlines. It retroactively justifies many boring and redundant hours that – at the time – didn’t feel as if they would pay off at any future point.
The Calm Before the Storm
One of this episode’s strengths is its slow beginning, serving as an opportunity for some long-awaited familial bonding between Daniel and his mother. Sean reluctantly refers to their mother as Karen, and you may begrudgingly choose to open up to her or shove her away. Either option feels appropriate considering the Diaz brothers’ perspective of being abandoned by their mother as a child, as well as the recently rekindled maternal protection that Karen has shown towards her children – specifically Daniel – in the wake of the previous episode, “Faith.”
The episode opens up with the Diaz brothers staying in their mother’s living space, which is situated deep in the American desert amongst other off-the-grid, free spirited type folks. Karen is off running errands, so Sean entertains Daniel as they explore the town, communicating via walkie talkie. Every interaction that Sean has with the local people is interestingly written. More than any episode before, the writing comes through crisply as Sean meets a gay couple, one of which describes the life he led as a married man for many years. Another character eccentrically builds magnificent sculptures out of seeming junk, inviting Sean and Daniel to participate in her creative process. She’s the kind of person who talks to her art and hoards all sorts of things. These characters are compelling, they are human, and they command a development of both Sean and Daniel’s character that many episodes of this series have failed to accomplish.
The strength in this slow-paced introduction is that the brothers are offered an opportunity to play around in what is essentially a lawless, free place. Daniel’s powers are questioned by none, and there is no immediate concern for police chasing the boys down. When in the presence of this desert village, these boys feel safe and reconnected with themselves as both family and individuals. It’s tempting, even after all of the resentment Sean has expressed throughout the episodes, to even crack a smile or two at Karen.
An Unexpected Reunion
An unexpected treat in this village is the introduction of a character that anyone who has played the original Life is Strange games would know: David. Serving as Chloe’s step-dad in the original series, a punitive veteran who later revealed himself as a savior, I would not have imagined to find him in this desert camp. But something about the formerly buzzcut, hard-ass, drill sergeant persona turning into a ponytailed hippie living in a makeshift desert camp felt right.
David brings a kind of connection and closure into Life is Strange 2 that has been entirely absent since the first episode of the sequel. In the first episode, Sean and Daniel briefly observe Arcadia Bay, the location of the first game. Depending on your choices in the first game, either this town is destroyed or in tact. From that point on, seldom connections tie these two series together, and they don’t actually feel connected. David, however, allows you to explore his living quarters, in which you can find tons of personal artifacts of his past life in Arcadia Bay. You can even listen in on a phone call with David and Chloe, in which he wishes Max luck, if you had previously saved Chloe. Everything about these moments with David felt important. They connected me to the nostalgia I have for the originals, and I didn’t want these moments to end.
To Puerto Lobos
Karen takes the Diaz brothers off into the canyons for a beautiful night out, where she informs the brothers that their history of crime is catching up to them. When Karen and David went into town to restock on supplies, they caught wind of the police looking for the brothers. Thus, as much as it finally feels like Sean and Daniel have found a home where they can stay, they have one last mission: to reach Puerto Lobos, Mexico.
Their mother offers to stall the police and turn herself in for her involvement in burning down the church – where the previous episode ended. The boys pack their stuff into her rusty old truck, say their goodbyes to the people they had met out in this desert village, and begin their final drive south towards the border. Along this drive we are treated to a silent montage of the brothers bonding, reminiscing, and speculating about their life once they’re free from the United States. Daniel worries that he won’t be able to make friends in Mexico because he doesn’t speak Spanish, and I chose to reassure him that I’d teach him Spanish, which he found to be very cool.
Breaking Through the Wall
When Sean and Daniel reach the Mexican border wall, the writing leans into heavy political themes. Daniel asks if there is a similarly imposing wall up north at the Canadian border, which is more a question for us as players than it is for Sean, who gives a halfhearted response. The boys approach the border wall in dead silence. It’s almost a holy monument after the difficult journey these brothers have struggled through to get here.
Sean tells Daniel to rip open a truck-sized hole in the wall so they can drive through, and it looks for a moment like this task might be too great for Daniel’s powers after all. However, after struggling to the point of exhaustion, the wall begins to contort and open up. On the other side stretches a seemingly endless desert, one identical to the soil on which the brothers find themselves at this moment. The light shines through this hole in the wall like a beacon of hope and happily ever after.
But then a gunshot goes off. A rogue truck speeds up wildly, and it becomes clear that Sean and Daniel are being hunted at the border – except these aren’t the border patrol. These are vigilantes who are clearly representative of the racist, redneck, regressive groups of Americans who believe so strongly in the Mexican border wall. Daniel is shot, rendered unconscious, and Sean is captured and blindfolded just in time to see an actual border patrol vehicle pull up.
Blurring the Lines Between Justice and Corruption
The tension between the police and these vigilantes is interestingly written, as the palpable nature of corruption within law enforcement agencies becomes clear. These vigilantes have a handshake agreement with one of these police that rewards them for hunting, killing, and capturing illegal immigrants. Due to Sean and Daniel’s Mexican heritage, they are assumed to be Mexicans illegally entering the United States. Even as Sean’s perfect English persists as evidence to the contrary, neither the border patrol nor these vigilantes want to hear it. Hell, Daniel doesn’t even speak Spanish, but he is unconscious and cannot advocate for himself.
Sean thus finds himself in jail cell with a Mexican family who tried crossing the border into the United States to build a better life for their unborn baby. Sean converses in Spanish while the vigilantes thrash about with insults in an adjacent cell. This family warns Sean that life in Mexico is hard, that their family didn’t feel safe, that members of their family had been captured and killed. It’s a hard life in Mexico, one Sean didn’t consider fully. A little dread begins to creep in, as though being arrested with a long-standing criminal record weren’t bad enough.
In a remarkable act that almost defies belief – but hey, life is strange – Daniel breaks into the jail house, having escaped the medical facility he was being separately kept in due to the gunshot wound. Daniel frees Sean, and you have the option to free the Mexican family and/or the vigilantes who tried to kill you. You also have the option to use Daniel’s powers to take revenge on the vigilantes, but every time the game asked me to use Daniel’s powers to kill or injure, I went out of my way to protect his innocence. I left the vigilantes rotting in their cell, hoping justice would one day find them.
Survive or Surrender?
Sean and Daniel break free from the police station, hop back in their vehicle, and make a second go for Mexico, this time straight for the road that goes through the border. Predictably, they encounter a barricade of a dozen or so police vehicles blocking the border, guns drawn by all officers. The FBI agent who had previously been working with Sean on his criminal case speaks through a megaphone and warns the brothers that this is their last warning. They will be shot if they try to go any further. Thus, the game’s final choice presents itself: Surrender peacefully and turn yourself in, or muster Daniel’s powers to break through, presumably killing all officers involved.
It felt wrong to ask Daniel to break free, but it also felt wrong that my other option was to surrender, thereby negating all the hard won progress these brothers have made in their escape towards freedom. The feeling of moral guilt was too strong, however, and so I surrendered. I turned myself in, watching the dream of freedom slip away, knowing that Sean was going to be imprisoned for a long time. It felt unfair because I knew these were good kids. I knew they were caught in an awful situation and have been running from constant danger since the story’s beginning. I have been rooting for Sean and Daniel. And yet, thematically speaking, it was inevitable that they would get caught eventually.
Sean’s speech to Daniel in this moment made me nearly tear up. Every word he says feels like I’m speaking to Daniel myself, where he admits to trying his best, making mistakes, and lamenting that he and Daniel might be separated. It created an emotional border that I didn’t want to cross, but had to.
A Heartfelt Ending
After I made my final choice, I watched several minutes of cutscenes unfold. We see Daniel grow up, graduate high school, party with friends, and become a proper adult. We see Sean emerge after 15 years of prison into the sunlight, greeted by Daniel, Layla, and Karen. We see Sean start to readjust with the world. This whole ending arc is surprisingly emotional, one of the rare times that Life is Strange 2 has made me feel the way the original game did.
The final scene involves a wordless montage of Sean and Daniel meeting up, walking through the woods where they once were. Seeing them return to this place reminded me of how long this journey with Life is Strange 2 has been. I have been playing this game off and on for over a year as the episodes have released. Sean and Daniel have gone through hell and back, travelled thousands of miles, and yet we are treated to a peaceful moment where the game wordlessly communicates a nostalgia of which only Life is Strange is capable.
I looked at a final view of the path through the woods and thought about how these brothers must be feeling after 15 years of separation. As an only child, I can’t truly relate to this moment. And yet the game has put me in so many situations where I have protected Daniel that I sort of felt like Sean at the end. I felt like someone who had sacrificed himself so that his brother would have a better chance at life. When I watched the brothers get into separate cars and drive in different directions, I knew that this bond between brothers could never be the same, but that this moment of closure was needed in order for the story to feel complete. In this respect, Life is Strange 2 succeeds tremendously.
This game has four main endings, but seven alternate versions of those endings. The version I have written about represents my first playthrough, which felt perfect for me, and that’s what a choice-based game should aim for.
Sheep Amongst Wolves
I don’t know where the writing team has been for most of Life is Strange 2, but they came out in full force for “Wolves” and its ending. As hard as I have been on the series, I can’t say anything bad about this final episode. When considering the entire package, I’m happy to ignore any minor flaws and focus on this episode’s strengths. This kind of episode is where the series needed to be the whole time.
A good ending is not enough to redeem an entire body of flawed work, but instead of walking away from Life is Strange 2 with a bitter feeling of disappointment and resentment, I am elated to say that this final episode felt like a true payoff. I don’t know what Dontnod has in store for this franchise’s future, but I hope they can learn some lessons from this series and continue on to something truly remarkable once more.
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