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Chaos Theater Redux is a Features series that follows up on topics previously discussed during the podcast’s 2011-2017 run.
I find myself getting more and more emotional whenever I play a certain type of game, watch a certain type of movie, listen to a certain type of music. Scenes of friendship and bonding, where people stick by each other through thick and thin. Synth backgrounds and ethereal voices, echoing reverb vibrating in my heart and repeated on my Spotify favorites. People feeling intense joy and loss, unafraid to express their emotions despite whatever the repercussions might be. When creative works manage to combine these elements, I’ll often find myself in a funk afterwards, a hole in my heart, missing the emotions they inspired and made me feel.
Anybody that’s familiar with playing habits know how much I’m a sucker for the Life is Strange series, whether in the hands of the original dev or Deck Nine, who has been working on the series since the LiS prequel Before the Storm. Both studios have been able to capture an indie-film vibe with each game, taking advantage of the relaxed nature of the narrative adventure game to really get you invested in their worlds and characters. Instead of trying to break your brain with esoteric puzzles and advanced inventory systems, they want you to feel like you’re living in the life of their protagonists and, at least for me, they’re largely successful.
Thinking back to the first season of Telltale’s The Walking Dead, which we covered years ago in Chaos Theater, this format has grown immensely. That first season made you feel deeply for Clem while trying to survive a pretty vicious world and putting you up against some pretty vicious odds. It was strongly character based, but since it was In the pre-established Walking Dead world, there wasn’t much additional world building you could do outside of whatever safe areas you end up running toward. Actually, that was kind of the issue with a lot of Telltale’s output. While they were a lot of fun, they were stuck within the confines of their license to varying effect. You can shift Batman, or Bigby, or Marty, or Star-Lord, but you couldn’t have permanent change. At the end, these people still had to be, at their core, the same person. It doesn’t change how fun or interesting the story could be, but variance in character was minimal.
With the popularity of the episodic narrative adventure game, original takes started becoming possible, so when Square Enix published DONTNOD’s Life is Strange, it finally let an original story go in unexpected directions. I remember people being pretty mixed with its initial execution, with the earnest writing in particular sticking in people’s craw. I waited until all five chapters were released and proceeded to eat the whole thing up. Yes the writing was a little cringey, coming across occasionally like Steve Buscemi asking what his fellow kids were up to. But the game had a big old bleeding heart, with big events being unafraid of going over the top. By the time it got to the final decision, where the fate of your best friend is put against the fate of the town you were living in, there was no way that I was going to pick a town that I barely knew over the girl the lead character had fallen in love with. Add to the fact that I finished the game only and hour or two before going to a close friend’s going away party, I found myself stuck in my head afterward.
Jumping ahead, I think back to watching Euphoria a few years back after its second season had finished airing. I’d heard about the slick cinematography, audacious storylines, and great soundtrack and figured it would be a great rollercoaster to watch. What I didn’t expect was to feel so deeply for Rue and Jules. I was impressed with how the whole show looked and sounded, but what struck me about the show’s structure is the almost dreamlike way events happen. It’s all incredibly heightened and everything feels like it’s the end for the kids and, considering the awful things some of them do to each other, unrealistic and a little dumb if you think about it too much. That’s not what struck me though. What got me was just how much of what was happening was based of feeling, not logic, especially with Jules and Rue. I think about the party scenes, drenched with gorgeous lights and motion blur to match their altered states and feeling their hearts swell and break. I could feel everything they felt and remembered what it was like to be like that. I wanted these kids to be happy and knowing that their lives were not headed in that direction was a little heartbreaking, and I appreciate that the show was brutal with that. I still hold Jules and Rue as a favorite doomed romance.
In October, Square-Enix released a new Life is Strange, now developed by Deck Nine. I really enjoyed the last LiS game they released, True Colors, back in 2021, so the combination of a new entry in the series and going back to the old lead got me hyped. As I started hearing more about the game, I started getting a little worried that meddling from S-E might dilute what I love about these games, but I tried to focus on the fact that these people had made an excellent entry several years prior. Unfortunately, my instincts were kind of right. While it was great to jump back into Max Caulfield’s shoes, the writing was noticeably weaker. The characters weren’t quite as charming. The overall story pushed for a larger universe instead of diving into the personal stakes that I cared for. I thought at first it was an age thing, both for me and the characters, but several months later I was proven wrong.
February 2025 came the release of DONTNOD’s latest narrative game Lost Records: Bloom & Rage. Again, I was hyped because I hadn’t played a DONTNOD game in a while and this was their chance to establish their own new world. No connections to a franchise, not beholden to a giant company’s discomfort with LGBTQ narratives, DONTNOD could make the game they wanted. The promotional materials promised a story split across time, with their four leads being teenagers in 1995 and catching up in their 40s in 2022. There were vague Stand By Me/Yellowjackets/The Craft vibes in the trailers, and based off how they handled pastiches in the original Life is Strange I figured I’d enjoy it.
I loaded up the first part, Tape 1, and was very charmed by the whole thing, even if I had some quibbles. I found the characters very charming, even if their performances felt a little stilted. The writing was just like the original LiS, earnest and with its heart on its sleeve. These sounded like 16-year-old girls trying to navigate their lives and their budding romances in a small town with shitty people. I was less impressed with the segments that jump ahead into adulthood, but that’s mostly because that’s supposed to be the payoff to the events in 1995. Just why did they all break up? Why was one of them missing? What is up with the cabin in the woods and what they found behind there? Some of these questions got answered in the first part, but a pretty big cliffhanger was left regarding the missing girl in the present. I put it down and jumped into other games to keep my mind occupied while, well, world events seemingly occurred every 20 minutes or so.
The second part of the game, Tape 2, dropped in April 2025 and I didn’t jump on it right away. I did read some reviews saying how it generally wrapped up well and that it had some beautiful scenes, so I kept my expectations tempered so I wouldn’t have a repeat of Double Exposure. Thankfully the reviews were right: while some of the story beats didn’t pan out, the core relationships between the girls were great and emotionally resonant. Tape 2 is all pay-off with the three girls you’ve become tight with. While dealing with the fallout from the end of Tape 1, you get solo scenes each of the girls and each one hit me in different ways, but all go back to the feeling of heightened emotion in your youth when you feel like you’re running out of time and recognizing that something beautiful will have a definitive end soon. Add in teen love and I was pretty invested in the joy and happiness of these kids, especially in contrast with how each of their lives panned out in adulthood. This all culminates in my favorite scene, located in a cabin in the woods after a huge in game event. Spoilers in the next paragraph.
The girls seal their bond with the magic they found in the woods, then celebrate by dancing to the track Lazuli, by Beach House. Bathed in the pink/purple light of the Abyss they’ve discovered, the girls dance to the sweet synth song and revel in the love they have for each other. At this point, Swann can pick a girl to dance with or dance on her own, but if you’ve been playing this game like any other DONTNOD experience, you’re going to pick the girl that you’ve fallen for. The girls dance together and they share their first kiss, forming a memory that shouldn’t have disappeared, but has in-story. It’s a great payoff for Swann, who began Tape 1 lonely and lost, yet over her last summer in her hometown has bonded with several girls who would do anything for her. You can feel Swann’s joy, like she doesn’t want the night or the summer to end, and considering what happens later that evening, would be something she’d want to hold on to for the rest of her life.
I keep going back to the scene in my head and why it affected me so much. I did get similar feeling in previous LiS games, but something about the combination of soundtrack, shot composition, and narrative pay off hit me harder now than in the other circumstances. It has been a rough couple of months for me and the world in general, and finding moments of joy and love has been hard. Things are generally more cynical, looking darker day and day. It’s harder to believe in these simple pleasures, especially when we’ve seen opportunities to do right and so many people have chosen the opposite. And then I play a game were a lonely girl meets some friends who make her last summer the best. Yeah, some of the halting line deliveries can be jarring. Yes, some of the general story beats don’t pay off in the end. There are some technical issues with the game proper. None of these things alter how this game makes me FEEL.
People forget that stories aren’t always supposed to be broken down and analyzed until the meaning is the only thing left. Sometimes, some things are supposed to make you feel. David Lynch was really good at that, asking you to throw aside the meaning and background and just go for the ride. Drink in the music, the visuals, the performances, and have a reaction. There’s a lot of shame that people throw at stories that ask you to take their emotions seriously and that may be easier to do when times are good. At this point in my life, with the world the way that it is, I don’t give a fuck about that. I want to feel something in my art. I want music to make me tear up. I want TV and movies to put me in people’s lives. I want games to make me walk in the shoes of people I never have before. There’s plenty of time of badasses and dark stories, but that’s not what I need. I need hope. I need love, I need people to not be afraid to show their emotions and leave their hearts open in a world that wants to be cruel. That’s brave, and that’s the world that I want to live in.
Part of me didn’t even know what I wanted to say when I started this, but I think I figured out while writing, like so much of my life before. I’m so happy that Lost Records: Bloom & Rage exists, problems included. I want my games to feel like people made it, not corporate conglomerates trying to focus-group their way a hit. My hobby and passion has become inundated with soulless experiences that are made to drive money. I want to these experiences to make me feel something, because those feelings will save me. It reminds me there’s more to this world than domination and destruction. Love and our bonds will save us, and our art shouldn’t be afraid to show that. Don’t be afraid to feel.
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