I Can't Wait For September: "Captain Spirit" and "Life is Strange 2"
I just finished playing The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit last night, and it certainly didn’t disappoint.
Most of the games announced at E3 that really captured me were the small indie games like Unravel 2 and Sea of Solitude. The moment I saw the trailer for Captain Spirit, I knew I was headed for a new emotional breakdown.
Developed by DontNod, the makers of Life is Strange and Life is Strange: Before the Storm, Captain Spirit is also set within the same universe. It follows the same gameplay mechanics of its predecessors, but unlike Max’s rewind power in LiS and Chloe’s smack talk challenges in BtS, nine-year-old Chris possesses the imaginary superpowers of his alter ego, Captain Spirit, which allow him to manipulate inanimate objects and enemies.
I think what drew me to this game was this world of imagination in which Chris is immersed. Maybe it’s partly due to the fact that I grew up in the rising era of video game consoles, before every American household had a gaming console and children still had to go outside and play and use their imaginations. Chris’s world took me back to my “good old days” as a kid when we balanced video games on the Playstation One with outdoor adventures on our bikes and hours of battles among our Star Wars action figures.
I also adore magic realism and realistic stories infused with elements of fantasy, so the scenes in which Chris confronts the Water Eater and Mantroid were wonderfully magical for me. Not only do they serve to seamlessly develop Chris’s character, they are also beautiful to watch from a game development point of view. They are just plain creative and I love it. The three-hour demo turns a simple Saturday of childhood fun into real, life-like adventures.
I related to Chris as an only child who often had to entertain herself and who admittedly enjoyed it. Chris’s situation is, of course, somewhat different. He lives alone with his father in snowy Oregon, isolated from any real friends or family based on the letters found lying around the house. While Chris does seem content and self-sufficient as an only child taking care of himself most of the time, he sadly lives in quite the lonely world. Captain Spirit, his archenemy, Mantroid, and the other superheroes and villains of Chris’s imagination are really the only immediate friends he has, at least that we are aware of thus far.
There’s a lot to love about this game, and although there was no resolution (which is understandable given the fact that this is a demo), the two- to three-hour gameplay packed a lot of fun and emotional gut punches. DontNod has proven itself once again to be a master of combining the silly (and campy) with the serious. After finishing the game, I really only had two questions/concerns.
I’ll address my less-important concern first, which is WHAT THE HECK WAS UP WITH THAT HEAVY BREATHING PHONE CALL?
This isn’t so much a concern but a question. A nagging, persistent question to which I can find no answer on the interwebs. I had Chris call the Reynolds’ line when Charles was sleeping and when someone answered, all I got was heavy breathing. Justifiably disturbed, Chris hangs up the phone and says, “That was weird.”
Apparently, though, if you call the Reynolds when Charles is awake, Mrs. Reynolds answers the phone and carries on a conversation with Chris.
I’m hoping that this plays into the actual game. The dark creator in me hopes for an “evil town” kind of secret at most. At least, I hope they give us something, anything, to explain what that was. Maybe one of Mrs. Reynolds’s grandkids playing a prank? Maybe crossed phone wires? Who knows? Just give me something. My mind is a-spinning now with possibilities.
DontNod is especially good at presenting environmental subtleties that either play into the story or give the player something to think about—such as that moment in Life is Strange when you catch Warren watching you through your window from where he stands on the ground level. Now you can consider this creepy, stalker behavior, or you can chalk it up to a teenage boy in serious like with the cute girl in his class. People across the internet have leaned both ways. Regardless of what you think, it’s subtle.
During my first playthrough of LiS, I adored Warren. Any guy who takes a fist to the face for me can certainly take me out to a drive-in theater to see Planet of the Apes.
But wait a minute—this is the same guy who thinks Cannibal Holocaust is hilarious. I myself had never even heard of this film until LiS, but I have since researched and discovered it is a torture porn film involving actual torture and sexual assault.
Okay. Not so adorable anymore. A little strange. Demented maybe?
My point is that Warren isn’t one-dimensional, and subtle findings—like catching him spying on Max through her window—give the player room to weigh the differences in the game’s narrative. Is Warren a quirky little science geek or a perverted psychopath? I’ll leave that for you to decide.
Okay, now it’s time to get a bit more serious.
My second concern is with popular culture’s preoccupation with addiction. I felt this way when I recently played Detroit: Become Human, too. Chris’s father, Charles, is an abusive drunk still grieving the loss of his wife two years before. He blames Chris for his wife’s death, though what Chris supposedly had to do with his mother’s passing is not explained (yet). The first time we see Charles, he is preparing scrambled eggs for Chris. In place of his own meal, Charles has, judging by the cans on the counter, his third or fourth beer that morning.
Okay. I can buy that.
Then he asks Chris if his arm still hurts. The bruises on his arm indicate some violent behavior on the dad’s part. I think this is where I got a little annoyed. Another one of those stereotypical alcoholics, I thought to myself.
I know this seems like such a ridiculous thing to think. The fact that Charles gets violent with his son when he’s drunk isn’t necessarily what bothers me because we know that violent alcoholics exist. What bothers me is that Hollywood and popular culture generally seem to think that the raging, violent alcoholic is the only type of alcoholic that exists.
In Detroit, we have Todd, the abusive father who beats both his daughter, Alice, and Kara, the housekeeping android. Todd drinks and regularly ingests Red Ice, the game’s version of cocaine. Then he stumbles around the house, screaming vulgarities and threatening Alice for no reason. At one point, he flips his lid at Alice when she's sitting at the table drawing. While mood swings are a typical symptom of addiction, especially with specific drugs, I'm afraid that popular media uses it for shock value.
Charles’s personality swings did indeed bother me. One second he is making scrambled eggs and the next he’s raging about church people coming to the door to convert him, all in the same breath. I felt like the game was trying to say, “See, he’s a drunk. Look how angry he gets. Look how he beats his son. Look how emotionally unstable he is,” when instead, the signs of his addiction could be much more subtle and still just as effective. Three empty beer cans on the counter by ten o’clock in the morning is more than enough to communicate that Charles has a drinking problem, and it is no less concerning than violent behavior.
I want popular culture to understand it doesn’t have to glamorize addiction to make people understand how terrible it is and the effects it has on the addict and his family. Highly-functioning alcoholics are just as troubled as violent alcoholics. Closet alcoholism is just as devastating as violent alcoholism. I understand why the game went in the direction that it did—to make us more sympathetic to Chris, and to show the toll the wife’s death has taken on the family—but it felt like a storytelling cop-out. It very easily paints the violent drunk as the antagonist because, well, who isn't going to sympathize with a child being beaten by his alcoholic father?
As someone whose life has been affected by loved ones and their addictions, I find myself wishing that popular culture would stop looking for shock and start presenting the truth. We should be concerned when alcoholics are highly functioning, too, not only when they are beating their families or driving drunk.
I wouldn't say that every movie or show I've seen involving addiction is inaccurate or going for shock value. That's simply not true. It just seems that more often than not, that is the chosen path. Please, Hollywood, use a little more imagination than that. Pay a little more attention and care than that.
Now I’ll get off my high horse.
I really did love the game. It has massive potential, and in spite of these two concerns and questions, I can’t wait until September for the real deal to come out. I love Chris—dare I say, more than I loved Max and Chloe, and probably because he’s at that wonderful age where the world is still at your feet and you haven’t yet discovered things that steal your childhood—and I can’t wait to see his relationship with his father unfold.
Now excuse me while I go stock up on Kleenex.
Developed by DontNod, the makers of Life is Strange and Life is Strange: Before the Storm, Captain Spirit is also set within the same universe. It follows the same gameplay mechanics of its predecessors, but unlike Max’s rewind power in LiS and Chloe’s smack talk challenges in BtS, nine-year-old Chris possesses the imaginary superpowers of his alter ego, Captain Spirit, which allow him to manipulate inanimate objects and enemies.
I think what drew me to this game was this world of imagination in which Chris is immersed. Maybe it’s partly due to the fact that I grew up in the rising era of video game consoles, before every American household had a gaming console and children still had to go outside and play and use their imaginations. Chris’s world took me back to my “good old days” as a kid when we balanced video games on the Playstation One with outdoor adventures on our bikes and hours of battles among our Star Wars action figures.
I also adore magic realism and realistic stories infused with elements of fantasy, so the scenes in which Chris confronts the Water Eater and Mantroid were wonderfully magical for me. Not only do they serve to seamlessly develop Chris’s character, they are also beautiful to watch from a game development point of view. They are just plain creative and I love it. The three-hour demo turns a simple Saturday of childhood fun into real, life-like adventures.
I related to Chris as an only child who often had to entertain herself and who admittedly enjoyed it. Chris’s situation is, of course, somewhat different. He lives alone with his father in snowy Oregon, isolated from any real friends or family based on the letters found lying around the house. While Chris does seem content and self-sufficient as an only child taking care of himself most of the time, he sadly lives in quite the lonely world. Captain Spirit, his archenemy, Mantroid, and the other superheroes and villains of Chris’s imagination are really the only immediate friends he has, at least that we are aware of thus far.
There’s a lot to love about this game, and although there was no resolution (which is understandable given the fact that this is a demo), the two- to three-hour gameplay packed a lot of fun and emotional gut punches. DontNod has proven itself once again to be a master of combining the silly (and campy) with the serious. After finishing the game, I really only had two questions/concerns.
I’ll address my less-important concern first, which is WHAT THE HECK WAS UP WITH THAT HEAVY BREATHING PHONE CALL?
This isn’t so much a concern but a question. A nagging, persistent question to which I can find no answer on the interwebs. I had Chris call the Reynolds’ line when Charles was sleeping and when someone answered, all I got was heavy breathing. Justifiably disturbed, Chris hangs up the phone and says, “That was weird.”
Apparently, though, if you call the Reynolds when Charles is awake, Mrs. Reynolds answers the phone and carries on a conversation with Chris.
I’m hoping that this plays into the actual game. The dark creator in me hopes for an “evil town” kind of secret at most. At least, I hope they give us something, anything, to explain what that was. Maybe one of Mrs. Reynolds’s grandkids playing a prank? Maybe crossed phone wires? Who knows? Just give me something. My mind is a-spinning now with possibilities.
DontNod is especially good at presenting environmental subtleties that either play into the story or give the player something to think about—such as that moment in Life is Strange when you catch Warren watching you through your window from where he stands on the ground level. Now you can consider this creepy, stalker behavior, or you can chalk it up to a teenage boy in serious like with the cute girl in his class. People across the internet have leaned both ways. Regardless of what you think, it’s subtle.
During my first playthrough of LiS, I adored Warren. Any guy who takes a fist to the face for me can certainly take me out to a drive-in theater to see Planet of the Apes.
But wait a minute—this is the same guy who thinks Cannibal Holocaust is hilarious. I myself had never even heard of this film until LiS, but I have since researched and discovered it is a torture porn film involving actual torture and sexual assault.
Okay. Not so adorable anymore. A little strange. Demented maybe?
My point is that Warren isn’t one-dimensional, and subtle findings—like catching him spying on Max through her window—give the player room to weigh the differences in the game’s narrative. Is Warren a quirky little science geek or a perverted psychopath? I’ll leave that for you to decide.
Okay, now it’s time to get a bit more serious.
My second concern is with popular culture’s preoccupation with addiction. I felt this way when I recently played Detroit: Become Human, too. Chris’s father, Charles, is an abusive drunk still grieving the loss of his wife two years before. He blames Chris for his wife’s death, though what Chris supposedly had to do with his mother’s passing is not explained (yet). The first time we see Charles, he is preparing scrambled eggs for Chris. In place of his own meal, Charles has, judging by the cans on the counter, his third or fourth beer that morning.
Okay. I can buy that.
Then he asks Chris if his arm still hurts. The bruises on his arm indicate some violent behavior on the dad’s part. I think this is where I got a little annoyed. Another one of those stereotypical alcoholics, I thought to myself.
I know this seems like such a ridiculous thing to think. The fact that Charles gets violent with his son when he’s drunk isn’t necessarily what bothers me because we know that violent alcoholics exist. What bothers me is that Hollywood and popular culture generally seem to think that the raging, violent alcoholic is the only type of alcoholic that exists.
In Detroit, we have Todd, the abusive father who beats both his daughter, Alice, and Kara, the housekeeping android. Todd drinks and regularly ingests Red Ice, the game’s version of cocaine. Then he stumbles around the house, screaming vulgarities and threatening Alice for no reason. At one point, he flips his lid at Alice when she's sitting at the table drawing. While mood swings are a typical symptom of addiction, especially with specific drugs, I'm afraid that popular media uses it for shock value.
Charles’s personality swings did indeed bother me. One second he is making scrambled eggs and the next he’s raging about church people coming to the door to convert him, all in the same breath. I felt like the game was trying to say, “See, he’s a drunk. Look how angry he gets. Look how he beats his son. Look how emotionally unstable he is,” when instead, the signs of his addiction could be much more subtle and still just as effective. Three empty beer cans on the counter by ten o’clock in the morning is more than enough to communicate that Charles has a drinking problem, and it is no less concerning than violent behavior.
I want popular culture to understand it doesn’t have to glamorize addiction to make people understand how terrible it is and the effects it has on the addict and his family. Highly-functioning alcoholics are just as troubled as violent alcoholics. Closet alcoholism is just as devastating as violent alcoholism. I understand why the game went in the direction that it did—to make us more sympathetic to Chris, and to show the toll the wife’s death has taken on the family—but it felt like a storytelling cop-out. It very easily paints the violent drunk as the antagonist because, well, who isn't going to sympathize with a child being beaten by his alcoholic father?
As someone whose life has been affected by loved ones and their addictions, I find myself wishing that popular culture would stop looking for shock and start presenting the truth. We should be concerned when alcoholics are highly functioning, too, not only when they are beating their families or driving drunk.
I wouldn't say that every movie or show I've seen involving addiction is inaccurate or going for shock value. That's simply not true. It just seems that more often than not, that is the chosen path. Please, Hollywood, use a little more imagination than that. Pay a little more attention and care than that.
Now I’ll get off my high horse.
I really did love the game. It has massive potential, and in spite of these two concerns and questions, I can’t wait until September for the real deal to come out. I love Chris—dare I say, more than I loved Max and Chloe, and probably because he’s at that wonderful age where the world is still at your feet and you haven’t yet discovered things that steal your childhood—and I can’t wait to see his relationship with his father unfold.
Now excuse me while I go stock up on Kleenex.
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