Test - Lost Records: Bloom & Rage: Little happened in the first episode. In the second no more

At the end of mineWas I still at a loss of what the story the Life-IS-Strange makers don't Nod want to tell us at all: soulful coming-of-age melodrama? Mystery thriller? 90s nostalgia flash? Or just a huge bike? Episode 1: Bloom tended to the latter. On Episode 2: Rage therefore all hopes that the developments, which were initiated very timidly in the first half, are roling in the second, all the more unyond.

Or also: that something finally happens at all. Because episode 1: Bloom still looked like an overwhelming prologue that took the time to introduce his protagonists to the emotional worlds. Lost Records tells the story of four outsiders who find each other in a summer of 1995 and in their friendship for the first time in their lives that they are not only with their fears and worries gain the strength to defend themselves against bullying and exclusion.

Developer Don't Nod (Life is Strange) sends the player to a nostalgia trip that has a downtight effect on someone who, like the protagonists, grew up in the 90s, and draws characters on how they are considered to be an unprecedented history of the entire video game: authentic teenagers who are lit with bacon roll on the stomach Hades, not to correspond to common ideals of beauty and long for simply appearing as confident as the supposedly cool boys and girls of their age. The fact that there has never been anything like this in a video game has almost been shameful.

The supernatural action element, typical of a mysterious hole in the forest, which, like a cursed desired fountain, promises the longings of the girls, only indicated in Episode 1 in order to now promise a dramatic final for episode 2.

Because at the end of this fateful summer '95 something terrible must have happened, the second level of action of the game suggested: 30 years after the tragic events, the friends are caught up in the form of a mysterious package, which is why they meet for the first time since that fateful experience to face their dark secret.

Is something else happening?

In a way, Lost Records looks like the authors arbitrarily pages from the two Stephen-King novelsStand by meAnd torn, deleted the passages with the horror clown and put together the rest into a common story: a coming-of-age drama about a summer that will change the life of its protagonists forever, but also pays them a trauma that it catches up with in adulthood.

Episode 1 ended with the unveiling of a tragic secret of one of the friends and thus set the melancholic basic tone for the now published final episode. But my hope that this has finally reached the tipping point that breaks down the dramatic events and gets rolling, which the game was extensively (and unfortunately also very lengthy) all the time, continued to be largely emptied.

Because again nothing happens for a long time. Only at the very end the difficult to collapse, but do not tie up to a captivating node, but immediately disintegrate loosely again before an artistic pattern can weave from it. When I thought it was finally going on, the credits ran across the screen. With just three to four hours of play, the second episode is significantly shorter than the first.

Now I am basically a big friend of it when stories put authentic people and just as such experiences about the opened adventure according to the leaked scheme of the hero's journey. After all, nothing happens in some of the best films in film history. The German silent film classicPeople on SundayFor example, my absolute favorite films, especially because he is no more to tell than what he already describes in his title unspectacular and sober: the uneventful idle of a group of normal people on a bored Sunday afternoon at Wannsee.

But exactly such lightness and casualness misses Lost Records. On the contrary, the game always presses his player on his nose, which has just felt like he feels like it. Not only is the dramaturgical wooden hammer, but the steam roller is swung: grief is negotiated in constant statements of the mutual sympathy and friendly connection is expressed in the dance between the fireflies.

Lost Records constantly claims authenticity and great feelings in small joys, but only finds pictures of pure kitsch. In his approach, it is similar to plumps, in which the viewer always sees through that he has to scary, which is no longer possible. One thinks that the developers can watch the drags to the tear gland so much that you almost get sore muscles of it yourself.

Between search of meaning and nonsense

You can actually not crime them high enough of what important topics you want to address and not shy away from your game so that exciting new territory in the field of video games: Nothing less than the personal search of meaning in the face of serious illnesses is for discussion, as well as the seemingly unusual despair of the bereaved, such a difficult strike. With correspondingly subtle authors, Lost Records could have become a masterpiece of the interactive story.

But instead of just addressing the questions associated with it and leaving their answer to the player, they discuss their topics sultry and sentimental down to every detail until they only turn in a circle. Mourning requires more than just being sad. And regretting made mistakes means more than just apologizing for it. In fact, there is hardly a dialogue in the game in which at least anyone does not apologize for anything.

Significantly, the spokeswoman of heroine Swann with her voice seems to find only the same complaining tone, who wants to indicate fragility and compassion, but only expresses stirring. If the friends then discuss great stupidity that they committed at the end of the last episode just to walk shortly afterwards, at some point you no longer have a pity with them. Especially since the "bad" characters, as always, are annoyingly one -dimensional and flat, so that dramatically thought scenes sometimes seem embarrassing.

The developers seldom sink scenes of the casual gestures, the narrative art of which they once mastered in the first Life is Strange: for example, when the deep connection between two friends gives themselves expression by cutting each other's hair. Or the self-loving priority bitch with a desperate look can only be seen for a short moment that your Everybody's Darling image is just a facade, because her life is also far away from the perfection that you all play. Most of the time, however, everyone just looks out of the laundry and bathe each other in self -pity.