So.... I'm about halfway through the first tape. Goodamn the game looks a-fuckin'-mazin'! An absolute giant leap in visual quality in comparison to LIS games and even the last one which is not made by Don't Nod. The lighting, rendering of characters, cloth, various surfaces, different materials, modeling of everything etc. is out-fuckin'-standing most of the time (there's some blurry textures here and there, but nothing major). It's just mind-blowing how the game looks. The biggest issue visually though is not so great facial animations at times and they could've been a lot better tbh.
Now, narratively... Idk if just two parts will be enough to tell the whole story and develop characters well at the same time. From what I've seen so far, I like the characters and the way they're written, but it's definitely not going to be 26hr (at least that's how long it took for me to finish the first Life is Strange with no rush whatsoever) type of experience in terms of playtime, so Idk if it's possible to develop character just as good in Lost Records, which is according to Don't Nod has 2 times less playtime incl second part which'll be released in April. Maybe I'm wrong and everything will turn out to be great but.... I guess we just have to wait and see.
Gameplay-wise I can see that someone may not like to shoot everything with the camera and then edit and finish various tapes, but the plus side is that Swann has commentary for each tape you make so there's that as well. You can literally shoot whatever in the game and then try and make something great out of all the footage to make it look great, It's kinda like way more interactive diary from LIS which you literally create yourself over the course of the game, catch various evenst on camera and it's not drawings and text, it's video tapes you can watch. I mean, it's really cool and I like what they did here, but it's not for everyone and especially not for those who don't even know what VHS tapes are and haven't seen a video tape player in their lives.
There's bond levels for each character in the game and based on what you said and did, it might go up or down and it'll affect which dialogue options you can choose during conversations. I'm yet to see the big impact of all the decisions I made so far other than dialogue options, but I highly doubt that they're even in the first part of the game so, we'll see about that when the second part will be released. Anyway, I really like and even love what they did so far but idk if it's going to have a great second part to develop characters more and finish the story on a really high note cuz it's just 10-12 hours of total playtime, fingers crossed though cuz Idk how the story will end, but I'd love to see a second game or even more episodes similar to Before the Storm and what this game did for the first Life is Strange, even though it's not Don't Node made it.
