#the terrible state of the life is strange remasters is all Square Enix's fault

[yaboisorzoi]

Square Enix Should Apologize To Deck Nine - And By Extension, Us - For How Terribly They Squeezed On the Life is Strange Remaster

Okay so I know it's old hat to say that the Life is Strange Remasters are… not good.

Everyone and their dog knows that at this point.

But I want to talk a bit about WHY they're so bad. And how it isn't Deck Nine's fault they are as bad as they are.

I've just finished my playthrough of Before the Storm on the Remaster, and while it is definitely a downgrade from the original release, it wasn't terrible. The new character textures are fantastic, the new meshes are impressive, the lighting changes are… fine. I only ever had one or two audio lines drop per episode, and the subtitles would commonly lag behind a full sentence but it was never too bad and was always worth a laugh.

But then I got to the Farewell DLC, and oh my god. It is just unplayable. Like, I straight-up gave up and just bought the Farewell DLC for the base game.

At the top of this post is a video excerpt of the straw that broke the camel's back.

I regret throwing Deck Nine under the bus in the video's editing. I was so frustrated at the time, though!

So let's talk about how we got here.

The development of these remasters was done while True Colors was still in development. They released 4 months after True Colors' release, and I have heard that the original goal was to have them all release at the same time.

Which is an absolutely absurd mandate for Square Enix to push. Like, just think about it for a minute.

Life is Strange 1 is about double the length of True Colors. Before the Storm is about the same length as True Colors. And while Deck Nine didn't have to write and build the games from scratch, the remasters still involved engine upgrades (Life is Strange is a heavily-modified UE3 game; Life is Strange Remastered is on UE4.23; Before the Storm was similarly upgraded to what was at the time the latest version of Unity for the remaster).

Beyond that, Deck Nine also upgraded character face textures and character outfit meshes (and for some reason remodeled the characters' noses; I don't know why…). None of which is to mention how, in order to apply the mocap facial animation upgrade to the base Life is Strange, they had to effectively rerecord all of the dialogue for the game - and then throw out the audio, to keep only the facial animation data.

Top is Life is Strange Remastered, bottom is original. Note how much higher-poly the outfit is, and how things like Chloe's tear or her bra are actually fully modeled now.

All of which is to say, they had to do a lot of work for these remasters. And Square Enix expected them to do all this work while working on True Colors? For games that equate to 1.5x the length of True Colors? Effectively working on 2.5 games within 1 dev cycle?

When playing through the remasters, you can clearly see what Square Enix's priorities were. Life is Strange is the star child, the one that launched this whole franchise (read: money machine for Square Enix) and is the fan-beloved. It very clearly got top priority from Square Enix, and Deck Nine very clearly spent the most time and money on it.

Next up was Before the Storm, and by the time you get to Farewell, it is clear that we're scraping the bottom of the barrel. Farewell was Square Enix's last concern, and Deck Nine had to work with the dregs of what was left of their time and budget to remaster it. And it very clearly shows.

The absolute worst part of this all to me, though, is that of these three games (I am counting Farewell as its own game, given how it is a DLC expansion that was made in a separate development cycle from the rest of Before the Storm), two of them are Deck Nine's own babies. And of these three games, only one of them was given priority by Square Enix.

I can't even imagine how terrible it must've felt for Deck Nine, being forced by Square Enix to release their own games in Before the Storm and especially Farewell in such a broken state. To have to effectively cripple their own children, while fawning over their step-daughter brought into the marriage that is Life is Strange (developed by dontnod).

Obviously we're not going to actually get Square Enix to ever apologize to Deck Nine, and I doubt Deck Nine will ever be given the resources to properly fix Before the Storm and Farewell.

But dammit, the injustice on display is so apparent and so egregious, I just have to scream about it.

I hope I'm not alone in feeling this way. That the terrible state of the remasters is Square Enix's fault, not Deck Nine's. That Deck Nine deserved better than how Square Enix treated them on these remasters. And that, through extension of the sorry, broken state these remasters were released in, we the players and fans of these games deserve better than what Square Enix forced out the door on us.

Fresh out of giving up on the Farewell Remaster, I was upset. But now, thinking about it, about all the things that had to go wrong to get us to this point?

I'm just disgusted.

Shame on you, Square Enix. And I'm sorry, Deck Nine.