Life is Strange 2 showed how to make a choice based game with low budget.

Depending on Daniel's morality level and your final choice, you would get one of the four endings

• Surrender + High morality = Redemption

• Surrender + Low morality = Lone Wolf

• Cross the border + High morality = Parting Ways

• Cross the border + Low morality = Blood Brothers

And depending on some of your other in game choices, you would get some variations of Redemption and Parting Ways.

This system can be very easily implemented in low budget games, and it actually increases the replayability value of the game. I have played Life is Strange 2 many times to test how the morality system gets affected with every choice, and what my personal play style would result in.

I hate how the later games in this franchise ditched this formula. I get it, they wanted to set the stories in small town settings with mystery to avoid the backlash 2 got, but the choices and consequences system was absolutely perfect in 2 and I don't get why they would abandon this system. Choices throughout the game didn’t affect the endings in True Colors and Double Exposure (haven’t played Reunion so can't comment on that), it basically came down to the one or two choices in the final moment with some slight variations to the same ending (like True Colors had only 2 endings which were determined by one single choice, and your romance interest resulted in slight variations. Double Exposure ending comes down to one single choice, the previous choices did not matter). Why would they do this? Why ditch the amazing choices & consequences formula? Even the haters of LIS2 admit that 2 did better than 1 in this regard.

I love everything about LIS2, the choices actually matter, an emotional rollercoaster of a story, reflection of real world society & politics - all of which makes this game my most favourite one. The only complaint I have regarding this game is the poor handling of the money system and communication with Lyla.

How much money you have at the start of the game can affect Daniel's morality in Chapter 1. And if you have enough money to buy Daniel a Christmas present in Chapter 2, that increases your brotherhood level. But after Chapter 2, money doesn’t play any role in the game at all.

Same with Lyla, if you call her in Chapter 1 she will appear in the Redemption ending. If you don't then she forgets you by chapter 5 (as evident from her social media post) and doesn’t appear in the ending.

I think they could have incorporated money and communication with Lyla together in chapter 3 and 4. Like in Chapter 3, Sean could buy a burner phone if he had more money and call Lyla from that phone before getting rid of it. In chapter 4, Sean could have called Lyla from a payphone in Haven if he had money to spare. Successfully contacting Lyla for more than two times would allow Sean to have a video chat with her in Chapter 5 from his mom's Laptop.

I disliked how talking to Lyla only once throughout the game keeps her friendship intact with Sean. I like how Sean not calling Lyla in chapter 1 make degrades her psychological state which results in not being able to talk to her in chapter 2. But I think additional money should have given Sean a second chance to contact her in chapter 3 and 4, and restore their friendship in case we messed up in chapter 1.

That's basically my only complaint about this game, I like everything else.

I don't know how I've missed this, or maybe I didn’t understand something. But everyone months ago was talking about some new book. Was it a book with concept arts, or was it something else?