The adventure of Sean and Daniel comes to the third episode and, just when the plot should come to life and give a nice acceleration, the title Dontnod undermines our expectations in a double way: on the one hand it involves us in a whirlwind of feelings that we remembers what he recently felt at the cinema during the screening of the first half of Avengers: Endgame, while on the other hand it definitely makes us suffer with a thoughtful and slow pace, before hitting us in the face with an impactful ending that makes us hope that the fourth episode arrive as soon as possible.
The pace of the storytelling in Life is Strange 2: Wasteland is slow and thoughtful for most of the adventure: we start with a useful feedback to recreate, months after the previous chapter, the right degree of empathy with the characters. The scene then moves to the present: three months after leaving their grandparents' house in the snow-covered Beaver Creek, the two protagonists continued their journey south to settle in a California tent city together with some characters they had already met in Life is Strange 2 in the Rules episode, including the beautiful Cassidy and the rebel Finn. The plan is simple: working illegally on a marijuana plantation not far from the camp, Sean reckons he will set aside the money needed to tackle the last part of the long journey he's taking, he and his little brother to Mexico.
After having circumscribed the theater of the story, let's go back to the Endgame discourse: it is well known how the Russo brothers' film opens with a pace that is anything but pressing and how, before seeing a bit of action, the viewer must wait a long time. Here, Wasteland is built just like this: it's a break in the rhythm of Life is Strange 2, which in this chapter offers us a long exploratory part full of dialogues and, only at the end of the episode, a very strong scene characterized by the usual precipitate of events following the choices made by the player.
As in every product signed by Dontnod, once again the choices are the main ones and save in full an experience that definitely risked being a simple chapter lengthening soup waiting for further more interesting developments. Wasteland, when compared to the first two episodes of Life is Strange 2, is a decidedly short episode: by sacrificing a little exploration and following only the key events necessary to continue the game, you will reach the end credits in about an hour.
However, the statistics at the end of the chapter - combined with the very comfortable collector mode, which allows you to re-face the various chapters by making different choices without influencing the plot of our first run - showed us how for the first time the developers have really inserted crossroads able to put us even in the face of very different situations.
Genre exponents such as Detroit: Become Human have now accustomed us that the beauty of a graphic adventure with moral choices lies precisely in offering a screenplay that can show the player different scenes and different epilogues based on the path he has decided. In this, Life is Strange 2 stands as a cornerstone of the genre: will you let Daniel integrate with the vagabonds who have welcomed you or will you try to prevent him from getting too familiar? Will you indulge in the pleasures of the flesh (and lie to snatch a kiss from Cassidy) or will you have your eyes fixed on your target and nothing will distract you from accumulating the small fortune needed to travel across the border? If the beginning of Wasteland didn't convince us, the final part of the chapter is a flurry of tragic events in which, once again, the decision to protect Daniel and keep his power secret turns into a burden on the player's shoulders.
Because this is the real strength of Life is Strange, we had already said it in the review of chapter 2 and we repeat it again here: despite examining the crossroads we realize the ingenious plot expedients aimed at bringing us towards the same epilogue in order not to distort too much the main plot, during the game you always have the feeling that your choices generate a devastating butterfly effect. The between the protagonists, the trust of the companions, the life of a friend: each choice puts one or more of these elements on the plate, generating that emotional involvement that is the true strength of Life is Strange 2.
The technical sector and the music magically frame the experience, in this third episode even more refined: let us applaud the first one once again, which after the snowy landscapes takes us to a splendid redwood forest; as for the second, the predominance of the acoustic guitar is this time balanced by a decidedly more pop soundtrack, which clashes enough with the seriousness of the adult themes treated.
The dubbing is also of excellent quality, which as in the previous two chapters is in English with Spanish subtitles, recited in order to make the experience as cinematic as possible.
Life is Strange 2 episode 3: Wasteland is a transitional chapter. Shorter and slower than the two that preceded it, it is still full of that pathos that only Dontnod can create and does nothing but throw the two protagonists even more in trouble, while the player becomes even more fond of him. The characterization of the non-protagonists "actors" is also excellent and the network of events that can be generated by a simple choice is much wider. We just have to hope that the brevity and slowness of this episode - which however accelerates significantly in the final stages - will serve to ferry us towards the second half of Daniel and Sean's bizarre adventure.
