Three children stare at the dilapidated remains of a battlefield, with trees and man-made structures mostly razed to the ground, save for the sturdy frame of a lone trebuchet. It’s a pensive snapshot of the bloodshed in A Plague Tale: Innocence by virtual photographer Ludovic “Shinobi” Helme — but it’s no mere screenshot. It’s a meticulously framed photograph, enhanced with real-world photographic techniques: composition, lighting, depth of field, and more. “[Virtual photography] is a way to discover the game differently, because you can check every single detail,” says Helme. “It’s really enhancing the artistry in a game for your eyes, and then creating something from it for someone else.”

It’s also a photograph that can be taken with greater ease, given the growing popularity — and complexity — of photo modes in games. Helme is one of very few, if not the first, consultants for these tools, a journey that began when he first approached developer Cold Symmetry about their soulslike Mortal Shell. The studio was impressed by the photographs he took in-game, and when Helme asked about collaborating on a potential photo mode feature, the team swiftly agreed. “Basically I created this work, at least the name ‘photo mode consultant,’” he says. “Of course, other people probably had a role of advising on other photo modes […] but as an external adviser, specifically for photo modes, I’m definitely the first one.” His successful collaboration with Cold Symmetry led to work on everything from the Lovecraftian horror game The Shore to blockbuster titles like Deathloop and Cyberpunk 2077. 

His latest stint was on Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. Helme believes that its photo mode is “close to perfection,” with a dizzying number of settings, including camera roll, aperture, frames for accommodating photograph sizes and several types of grids, as well as minute tweaks to lighting, color grading, filters, and other visual effects. Then there’s the sheer freedom of movement that comes from the option to sever the camera from the player’s perspective. Having spoken to some virtual photographers, all of them pointed out that many photo modes have extremely limited range; Helme says this is akin to not being able to move and extend your arms in real life. Yet in Expedition 33, shutterbugs can now wander to more than just an arm’s length, and even move several paces from the initial scene.

Expedition 33’s photo mode is just one example of these tools becoming increasingly sophisticated. Ghost of Yōtei has a tracking shot option that lets virtual photographers pan the camera slowly from one point to the next, with up to 16 tracking points. Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II’s photo mode has a three-point lighting system, with several focusing settings such as focus assistance and split focal plane. Photo modes have become even more widespread in part due to the growing number of blueprints in Unreal Engine, such as the Advanced Photo Mode, which Helme described as a basic and simple to use feature. “I think publishers want [photo modes] more than developers,” he says. “It’s basically free marketing on the internet.”

As a consultant, Helme says that his role involves sharing his expertise. “I’m here to give [studios] pointers, pedagogic explanations on why [certain] features are essential or, on the contrary, which ones are not really that important,” he says. To him, virtual photography is very much a different experience from simply playing through the game, and this distinction is crucial for studios to understand. Thus, the consultation process usually entails discussing and prioritizing specific photo mode features with the developer and, once these are implemented, testing builds and offering feedback. 

Yet, technical issues have often impeded developers from adding some of his suggestions. “Some studios are a bit concerned, like the textures won’t load properly, or people can check the surroundings and see enemies hiding,” Helme explains. Crafting photo modes across platforms, too, is another major challenge, with Helme adding that several features he has been trying to get in photo modes cannot be included, because they are particularly complicated to implement on consoles. One example is the lack of orientation choices, be it shooting in landscape or portrait. Without this, virtual photographers usually have to tilt their heads to do a portrait shot — something that Helme says is “really hurting everyone in this hobby.” Many photo modes offer the alternative of cropping the pictures with black bars, which reduces the photo resolution. “If I want to shoot a vertical portrait without sacrificing resolution through cropping, I am forced to rotate the camera 90 degrees, compose the shot with my head tilted, and then manually rotate the file later on my PC,” Cristiano Bonora of Vertical Gaming Photography explains.

Another nice-to-have feature? A slow motion option that will allow virtual photographers to fast-forward or rewind several seconds to seize the perfect moment. “In Mortal Shell, we had a slow-motion feature with three different speeds, and it’s also very convenient, very helpful in many circumstances,” Helme says. “Now, what I would like to have is something that also does the reverse, like being able to have a few seconds back if you missed the [moment].” Virtual photographer Cabbac, who has put together a database of games with photo modes, also believes that such an option is sorely lacking. “Timing can be everything when creating a shot,” he says.

One of the major challenges with creating a feature-rich photo mode is also ensuring that it’s accessible to non-experts. One game that Helme believes strikes this balance well is Sony’s zombie thriller Days Gone. “It’s really one of my favorite of all time,” he says. “You can have the very basic features, or you have an advanced mode and […] have way more control. So it’s perfect for people who just want to take a quick shot, or people who want to work on their shot for one hour.”

Helme is optimistic about the future of photo modes, and he’s eager to work with more studios, regardless of size — even if some developers have plenty of room for improvement when it comes to these tools. “I hope big companies like Capcom or Konami will reach out to me to improve Resident Evil’s photo modes or the terrible, terrible Dragon’s Dogma 2 photo mode,” he laughs.

But as photo modes become more prevalent, there’s a chance that even highly technical photo modes may start to resemble one another across games, a development Helme is cautiously wary of. After all, even real-life cameras have different functions across brands and models. “I really hope big games will continue to take risks and produce photo modes with new features.”

There are only two things that Nate really wants to do: use the toilet (one that, he emphasizes, comes with three walls and a door) and go home. He also walks with a strange gait, with one tiny foot raised awkwardly in front of the other, before landing with a gentle plop. At times, he teeters to one side, nearly off balance, as he strives to hike up a very tall, steep, and seemingly belligerent mountain. Nate’s a ragdoll barely held together by a severely compromised musculoskeletal system, powered by a deep-seated urge to trudge toward an outhouse.

Nate is also you. The incongruity of the tedium of hiking, an activity he perennially curses, and the earnestness of hiking culture makes the comedy of Baby Steps — an open-world exploration game from a trio of indie developers, including QWOP designer Bennett Foddy — surprisingly cathartic. Its hilarity is drawn from the harrowing experiences of a reluctant, athletically challenged hiker. Every step has to be micromanaged. Walk too quickly and you can lose your balance; miscalculate the size of your stride and you will probably tumble off a cliff. Then there are the fellow hikers you meet along the way, and the contrast between Nate’s awkward, morose outlook versus their unbridled enthusiasm for clambering over dirt and rocks is sublime.

Thus, there’s a nearly perverse dimension to hiking that Baby Steps instinctively understands: it’s really exhausting for the innately clumsy.

Even walking in Baby Steps is laborious. This involves pressing a button to gradually lift up one leg, another button to hoist the other leg up, and directional keys that will see Nate putting his weight — or leaning toward — a specific point. It will take you a while to get used to this cadence, and making this even more hilariously frustrating is that Nate possesses none of the upper body strength that most people have. Forget using your hands to break your fall or scramble over small boulders; Nate’s floppy arms will do no work and carry no weight. It’s all part of what Baby Steps proudly presents as “fully-simulated physics based walking,” geared toward encouraging sheer buffoonery. 

Beyond just walking, Baby Steps doesn’t give you any sort of goals, aside from heading to the next campsite. This means you can saunter to wherever takes your fancy, be it strutting toward a crumbling tower or climbing a small hill just to see what’s at its peak. Unlike the goal-driven structure of traditional games, Baby Steps offers neither quests nor rewards for your trek. The game also eschews the staples of open-world games with massive maps, such as fast travel, mini maps, and upgradeable gear — features that will ease your traversal from one point to the next.

You can, of course, make your way toward the end with minimal detours, but this approach will make Baby Steps feel very banal, very quickly. To enjoy what Baby Steps has to offer, then, is to find a point in its hike even when there’s no discernible point at all. In a way, it’s a game that offers one of the purest expressions of hiking. Any hiking enthusiast will talk your ears off about how the process is the point: you’re here to take in the sights of the trail, to marinate in the beauty of the wilderness, and to dirty your feet trudging across some of the muddiest terrains in existence. 

Even as an avowed hiking skeptic, I can’t help but grudgingly agree with this perspective; Baby Steps does have many sights worth slogging for. Littered across its landscapes are several trees bearing glowing fruits, which you can pick — and noisily devour — if you can reach them. There are several non-collectible hats to discover, which you can plonk on your head gingerly. Unfortunately, these can easily go missing if you fall from a great height; I’ve lost many precious hats in my own perilous journey. Then there are the items you can find and return to their owners. Chancing upon these make up some of the most memorable events of my hike.

In my first playthrough, I found a set of keys while breaking into a seemingly abandoned hut (just another regular hiking activity), but Nate’s less-than-stellar grip strength means that he has a tendency to drop the item whenever he trips over his own feet. This led me on an extensive wild goose chase as I sought to retrieve the keys: painstakingly search through a grassy field, scramble around the rocky chasm of a pit, and waddle after the offending item as it floats down a river. I did lose the keys in the end, but all the scouting led me to discover several landmarks and other delectable secrets. I won’t spoil what they are for you.

Beneath the absurd slapstick of Baby Steps, however, lies an axiom that many hiking detractors have known for ages: hiking is hell. The more Nate walks, the more soiled his onesie gets. The soles of his bare feet are stained with an indelible brown, and he sometimes lays on his back with a defeated sigh after suffering a spectacular fall. It’s how the game stands out from the burgeoning genre of hiking simulators like Death Stranding, A Short Hike, and Firewatch — titles that depict the activity as a meditative, serene experience.

But in Baby Steps, you aren’t just traversing treacherous environments, but also getting around with your own ramshackle body. Your legs betray your exhaustion; your head screams as you make another agonizing misstep. It’s a hiking experience that reflects the reality of folks who lose their motor skills when faced with the prospect of climbing up yet another craggy hill. 

_{Baby Steps launches on September 23rd on the PS5 and Steam.}

There’s a persistent belief that in order for sharks to breathe underwater, they must keep on swimming. While this is partly true for a few species, the myth likely stems from how certain types of fishes (bony fish, if you want to know) need to breathe through constant motion, inhaling and pushing a huge amount of water through their gills as they swim. As the misconception goes, for sharks, much like their aquatic peers, to cease movement is to spell certain death — which is exactly how it feels playing Sword of the Sea.

The new game from Giant Squid scales this idea up by orchestrating movement into a grandiose, stirring symphony. Similar to the studio’s previous work — the underwater adventure Abzû — Sword of the Sea is an eco-fantasy about restoring the sea and its ecosystem in an arid landscape. Perched atop a sword, you surf across shifting dunes, leap toward dilapidated structures swallowed by sand, and unearth remnants of an ancient civilization that met its end in an unknown catastrophe.

The melody lifts as you backflip and perform ollies through this mural, with the music eventually soaring as you revitalize the landscape. You flit through the undulating contours of the seascape, the shoals now humming with new life. You spin in elegant arcs with the sea creatures that emerge, vaulting among the schools of fishes that make their unceasing journey toward the sky.

The seamless fluidity of movement in Sword of the Sea is deeply mesmerising. As a figure known only as the Wraith, you skate and flow through dunes and waves in search of ways to repopulate the barren desert with aquatic life. This can be done by completing simple puzzles, such as plunging your sword into craters or lighting up clusters of lanterns, which are typically found on higher grounds that you’ll need to perform acrobatic stunts to reach. That’s when emerald water and lush green grass will burst forth from these craters, with scores of fishes crashing through the dunes and floating jellyfish materializing with a pop, offering you access to previously unreachable heights.

Gliding through the freshly revitalized lands is even more exhilarating. Subsequent chapters include more ways to boost your movement to a thrilling degree, such as beacons for gliding across and glowing orbs you can collect to ramp up your speed. 

Despite this focus on speed, the game doesn’t rush you to move on, even after restoring an area. Spending a few minutes nailing heel flips off the crests and troughs of the waves, and reveling in motion amid dense schools of fishes, is tantalizing. At the same time, you can seek and collect trinkets used to unlock new skateboarding tricks, like a double jump or kick flip. These are moves that you can string together — and put to the test — through optional timed puzzles.

This affinity the game has for kinetics, however, never supplants the sense of reverence it holds for the sea. The sea life isn’t just a resource or a means to a utilitarian end; you don’t simply hop on and steer the local fauna, such as orcas and turtles, toward the highest peaks or your next destination, although you can ride on them to enjoy a leisurely swim underwater. Other sea creatures, such as a dolphin and a shark, appear mythical and godlike, and you can later enlist their help in your expedition to traverse even greater distances. Sailing through the choppy waters with the aid of these majestic beings is particularly enchanting, as they jump over crumbling buildings and careen into towering crystals — feats you’ll never manage on your own.

These moments are accentuated by bright, cel-shaded aesthetics, which makes the ocean appear almost celestial and otherworldly. There’s also a symbiotic relationship between the Wraith and the sea life they’ve helped rehabilitate. Glowing algae, nesting at the edges of once-buried rooftops, helps you to jump higher, while tapestries of giant seaweeds allow you to float upstream, making your travel much more seamless. It’s a necessary reminder of how humanity plays a pivotal role in conservation efforts, and that we, in turn, can only benefit from the ocean’s well-being. 

Sword of the Sea ratchets up the tension in its final chapters, leading to a climatic sequence that involves vanquishing the source of its calamity with breathtaking grace. It’s a fitting finale, but it also doesn’t mark the end. Instead, the game extends an invitation to redo your run again from the beginning, this time armed with a speedometer and a proposal to shave off more minutes, or even seconds, off your own record. It wants you to skate faster, jump higher, and plunge harder into the sea.

Not only is Sword of the Sea a celebration of the ocean, its love for unrestrained motion is also a metaphor for — and an homage to — the sheer vibrancy of underwater life. It’s an adventure I dove right into again, my skateboard surging with the pulse of the sea.

_{Sword of the Sea is available now on the PS5, Steam, and Epic Games Store.}

For once, the unflappable Hideo Kojima was overwhelmed. Even close to four decades of game-making experience didn’t prepare him for his biggest tribulation so far: developing Death Stranding 2: On the Beach during the covid-19 pandemic. 

“I thought I can’t pull this off. [I can’t] meet people or scan people, or shoot with people. I almost gave up. And also the staff were all remote, and I became sick as well. I thought it was just the end of the world,” he says through an interpreter as part of a group interview in Sydney. “I’ve been creating games throughout my career, but Death Stranding 2 was the most difficult challenge.”

Even his initial scouting of Australia, where Death Stranding 2 is predominantly set, had to be carried out remotely via Zoom, with Kojima painstakingly directing a local contact to document the landscape on his behalf. “Looking at it from a camera and to be there is totally different, so that’s disappointing.”

For Kojima, those experiences led to a different approach for the sequel. His own sense of isolation that arose from having to develop Death Stranding 2 with a remote team saw him reconsidering its tale — yet it’s also this isolation that led to Kojima realizing the perils of digital connectivity.

Kojima’s curiosity around Australia was eventually sated. As part of a promotional world tour for Death Stranding 2, he has made his way to Australia to chat about the game with film director and his personal hero, George Miller, at the Sydney Film Festival. So drawn is Kojima to the local sights that the noted cinephile says he hasn’t caught any movies at the festival. Instead, he spent the day at the zoo.

Kojima’s legacy as a game designer is anything but typical, from his earliest days as the creative force behind the much-acclaimed Metal Gear series to his less-than-amicable departure from Konami. And like Metal Gear’s anti-war narrative, tumultuous world events have shaped the Death Stranding series, the first game being conceptualized in the midst of a politically charged climate back in 2016. He points to key events such as Brexit and the first Donald Trump administration, with thoughts of creating a game that focused on bringing people together.

“[Back then] there was no theme in games about connections,” he explains. And a few months after Death Stranding was launched, the outbreak of covid soon upended everyday life, including Kojima’s. The isolation he felt almost mirrored the sense of solitude that’s so prevalent in the first Death Stranding. But at the same time, he seemed wary about the digital overload that came with having to stay online — to connect with one another — during the pandemic. 

“We had internet when we had this pandemic. It wasn’t like during the Spanish flu,” he says. “We could order things online, we could work online, we could connect via Zoom, or you could go to concerts; they do live concerts on the internet. So the society kind of changed to being very digital.” This digital dependence struck him as “not always very healthy,” which is compounded by the prevalence of surveillance technology, such as facial recognition, during the pandemic. The sum of these experiences inspired him to rewrite Death Stranding 2 as a cautionary tale.

The contrast between the two titles’ messages lies in their logos. Kojima remarks that there’s a marked difference between the original Death Stranding’s logo and the sequel’s. Unlike in the original, the tendrils — or the “strands,” as he refers to these lines — are no longer emerging from the title, but are instead holding the name up in the sequel’s logo. “You see the strands coming to the logo. It’s almost like [The] Godfather,” he says, referring to the seminal 1972 crime film.

The different logos for Death Stranding and its sequel.

Seated at the front of a small conference room in the PlayStation office in Sydney, the 61-year-old Kojima appears more reticent since the previous Death Stranding world tour — perhaps a sign of weariness and prudence in the pandemic’s aftermath. When I attended the Singapore leg of the tour in 2020, Kojima shook hands with journalists and conducted individual interviews, while fans who attended the event were invited to take pictures with him. “It was an indirect connection to the game,” he said in an interview. The promotional event was, in a way, an extension of Death Stranding’s themes of connectivity. 

But for the second world tour, at least in Sydney, journalists were invited to a group interview, and there was no fan interaction beyond his appearance at the Sydney Film Festival when he waved to eager fans who were hoping to catch a glimpse of the game designer before the event. I was informed by the PlayStation PR team that Kojima didn’t want to risk getting ill again for the rest of the Death Stranding 2 world tour. This feels understandable; Sydney is, after all, only the second stop, and perhaps his bout of illness during the pandemic was alarming enough that he prefers putting some physical distance between himself and the public.

Nonetheless, he is still in good spirits during the group interview, at one point even exclaiming that he is probably talking too much. “This is another reason why I’m doing this world tour. I couldn’t go out, travel, and meet people the past five years, so I thought it’s about time.” 

Yet, at the heart of Kojima’s introspection is still a desire to connect with people, particularly his fans. Part of the reason he’s working on Physint is due to their desire to see another action-espionage game in the vein of Metal Gear. Death Stranding 2, meanwhile, has a greater focus on combat than the first, a feature that Kojima also partly attributed to Metal Gear’s popularity. With more players familiar with Death Stranding’s idiosyncrasies as a “delivery game,” he’s ready to make the sequel a tad more approachable. In a way, it’s his way of bringing more people together through the Death Stranding series, which he refers to as “a game of connections.”

“I think we’re a little stronger,” Kojima says of the world after pandemic lockdowns. “If you could use that experience [of connecting with one another] from the game, I want you to maybe use that experience in real life. Not just in your Death Stranding world, but after you go outside, you feel something in your real world every day, and I want you to link what you felt playing the game as well.”

From the worm-like character stretching to the length of the planetary system in Noby Noby Boy, to the tiny Prince hoarding a spherical mass of objects and even buildings in Katamari Damacy, the heroes of Keita Takahashi’s games reflect the creator’s whimsical vision. To a T is yet another Takahashi title that fits that playful tradition, well, to a tee. The protagonist is a young teen, aptly named Teen, whose body is permanently stuck in a T-pose. But while they may be able to wiggle their fingers a little or move their wrists to reach out for an item, their elbows are woefully nonexistent.

That’s okay, though! Like most of Takahashi’s games, To a T is also a heartwarming tale about self-acceptance. Prep, an indie pop band from England, even composed an infectious, chirpy theme song for the game about already being the perfect shape, no matter what you look like.

In a world where elbows are very much an accessory to daily life, Teen has to go through some pretty unconventional routines due to their irreversibly stiff arms. For one thing, Teen can’t put on clothes, use the toilet, or even dry their face on their own. Even walking down the street can be a little cumbersome, since their outstretched arms mean they may inadvertently slap their hands into another passerby. Fortunately for Teen, they have a trusty sidekick — a dog named Dog — who’s more than eager to help them navigate these tasks.

Take washing your face, which can initially be an unfamiliar affair. As Teen, you’ll need to twist your upper body, reaching your hand toward the tap — one that’s uniquely designed for Teen’s predicament — and lower your head, so the stream of water spurts upward to your face. Then, you’ll hold your position until your face is clean and free of persistent eye boogers. Brushing your teeth is another fiddly routine. This is done by reaching for a toothbrush with a particularly long handle, getting Dog’s help in squirting a bit of toothpaste on it, and then scrubbing your teeth until they’re squeaky clean.

But these activities aren’t designed to be tedious; you aren’t carefully calibrating every small movement like you would in physics games like Bennett Foddy’s QWOP and Getting Over It. Instead, these are simply different sorts of routines you’ll need to get used to. When your arms are resolutely perpendicular to your body, these activities are just all in a day’s work.

They’re also genuinely joyful, even if the movements can appear superfluous. Rinsing your mouth is a matter of wriggling the analog stick or direction keys and then pressing another button to spit the water out into the sink. But you can also shake your head while doing that, so that your spit will trickle out like a meandering, miniature waterfall. Using the toilet allows you to mash several buttons, just so you can listen to Teen huffing and grunting as they go about their business behind closed doors. There’s really no point to doing so other than giggling at these sights and sounds, but it’s such a delightful way of prodding at the game’s inherent silliness. That’s the beauty behind To a T — it has zero pretensions about the kind of game it’s trying to be. 

In fact, To a T later informs you that you can skip any of these routines if you like. Want to eat breakfast without brushing your teeth right after? If you can tolerate seeing green gunk stuck on your teeth for the rest of the day, go right ahead. The game isn’t going to penalize you for skipping teeth brushing for a day — or two.

To a T is chockful of such diminutive joys. Breakfast consists of cereal and flavored milk every day, such as chocolate, matcha, and mango, and there’s a small thrill in discovering what these mixtures would taste like to Teen. In one meal, Teen commented that the cereal tasted like rubbery tires, and in another it was an explosion of strange, candy flavors. Regardless of the taste, they welcomed every mouthful of these sugary treats with gusto.

Exploring the neighborhood, particularly on weekends, feels especially liberating, as your day is seemingly filled with endless possibilities for fun. Eateries offer minigames in the form of speed-eating contests, as you devour a giant corn on the cob and even hailstorms of ice cream. There are coins to collect and discover among the shrubberies and rooftops, new shops to look at, and fascinating locales — from a lighthouse to a magical mushroom forest — to get lost in. Even attending school was an adventure, even though Teen was largely reluctant to head to class in his first few days due to relentless bullying, a problem that does get resolved. 

Eventually, Teen discovers an innate talent for flying. By spinning on their toes like a ballerina, they gain the ability to traverse higher grounds. This skill does have a bit of a learning curve, however. As it turns out, flying isn’t particularly intuitive, and it took me several tries to get my feet off the ground. But as with most gimmicks in To a T, failing isn’t really that big of a deal-breaker. You’re free to wander around town however you prefer, be it flying, running, or riding a unicycle.

As you delve deeper into the game, To a T spins an increasingly ludicrous-yet-charming tale, one that Takahashi himself has referred to as being rather “stupid” in an interview. Having finished the game, I can attest that one of its final moments is, indeed, almost irredeemably nonsensical. Yet it also made me crack a really wide smile, something I haven’t done while playing games in a while.

Playing and making games amid a politically fraught climate may seem frivolous, and this is an issue that Takahashi mentioned he was struggling with when he was working on his previous game, Wattam. But To a T’s central message of acceptance, and of finding joy in life’s smallest moments, feels like a salve for these trying times. At the very least, its positivity gave me the impetus to keep trudging on — hopefully it’ll do the same for you, too.

_{To a T launches on May 28th on the PS5, Xbox, and PC.}

On paper, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 doesn’t seem to stand out amidst a recent wave of prestige RPGs, from the newly polished high fantasy of the Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion remake to the medieval warfare of 15th century Bohemia in Kingdom Come: Deliverance II. For one, its fantastical conquests are set in a world reminiscent of France’s Belle Époque period, an era known for its economic prosperity and radical artistic movements, from Art Nouveau to Expressionism. Add a tinge of melodrama and an emotional backstory, and its setting resembles a medley of games that take place in vaguely European worlds like Greedfall, Bloodborne, and Dishonored. At the same time, Expedition 33 boasts a turn-based combat system inspired by Japanese RPGs like Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest.

All this is to say that Expedition 33 risks appearing banal and cliche. Fending off impossible odds in a world, where everyone wants to swing their very imposing weapons at your head amidst medieval ruins, isn’t all that unique these days. But Expedition 33 isn’t cowered by the lineage of RPGs that came before. Instead, it displays a sense of quiet confidence, understanding that the keys of the genre — narrative and combat — need to be distinct enough to weave a poignant tale.

This is embodied in the prologue, which takes its time to unfold the game’s emotional stakes. At the start you’re introduced to the scraggly-but-charismatic Gustav, who’s nervous about his meeting with ex-partner Sophie. Apart from going through the basics of combat, Gustav spends the first half of the chapter on a leisurely stroll with her along the town’s boulevard, as they make their way toward the harbor. It’s then that the game’s conceit is revealed: the Paintress, a malignant, immortal being of sorts, wakes up once a year to paint a number on a massive monolith, culling the town’s dwindling population. When this happens, everyone of that particular age simply dissipates into petals. It’s a moment that could easily tip into mawkishness, but a palpable feeling of melancholia sets in. A lump in your throat lingers.

This scene sets the tone for the rest of Expedition 33. You guide a group of doomed Expeditioners like Gustav, who are embarking on a last-ditch attempt to stop the Paintress. It would’ve been easy for Expedition 33 to plunge into an never-ending cycle of abject hopelessness, but there’s a genuine sense of wonder in traveling beyond the small town of Lumiere, and toward the vast expanse of its larger, phantasmagoric world.

One landscape has towering pink corals and shimmering sea flora, swaying like underwater tendrils, with bubbling streams rising from the ground. Another showcases the remnants of Art Nouveau architecture, with dilapidated buildings rife with elegant curves and floral patterns, as well as marble faces carved onto their surfaces. It’s as if these lands, once rich with history and biodiversity, have long been wrecked by a cataclysmic war. Despite the looming threat of certain death, even the Expeditioners were awed by the painterly allure of their surroundings, almost thrilled to be on such a lustrous journey. 

Equally — and unexpectedly — resplendent is the game’s combat. Encounters typically begin with the crew striking some monstrous titans with an initial, vibrant blow (or, in unlucky instances, with enemies walking into them), and being transported to a grandiose arena. These scenes are beautiful tableaus, with every attack depicted with the finesse and flourish of stylish sword fights.

Expedition 33’s turn-based combat appears deceptively straightforward. You can issue commands to each Expeditioner every turn, who have their own impressive set of moves. The backbone of Gustav’s attacks, for instance, is his prosthetic arm, which allows him to charge up his assaults and subsequently land a powerful finisher. Whereas another Expeditioner, Lune, embodies the mage archetype with several elemental spells at her disposal.

Adding a wrinkle to this turn-based formula is that enemy attacks can be dodged and parried. When timed right, this allows you to collect more action points for pulling off a string of attacks, or launching a countermove. Performing twitchy maneuvers like these are incredibly satisfying. A perfectly timed parry can easily turn the tide of combat, letting you deal a massive amount of damage. That’s not to say that battles are easy; executing these moves, at the right time, is contingent on your understanding of enemy movements, some of whom are prone to feigning their attacks. Most enemies even present their own twists to combat, which makes every tussle substantial.

Adding some tactical diversity to combat are Pictos, which are items the Expeditioners can equip to buff their attacks. This is, by far, one of the smartest tricks Expedition 33 has up its sleeve. There are plenty of these to collect across the map, so you can further customize each Expeditioner to a specific, preferred build. Gustav’s Overcharge, for instance, requires him to land a flurry of melee assaults to charge up the skill, so I prefer to equip him with Pictos that increase the potency of his attacks.

This is how Expedition 33 lets you subtly refine the cadence of battles. And then there’s the joy of the grind; if an enemy proves to be too overwhelming, you can always plow through ramshackle bands of mechanical titans for experience points. That’s because the ritual of grinding in Expedition 33 is deeply cerebral, rather than mindlessly tedious, with every encounter a sizable, yet surmountable challenge. Plus, swinging enormous swords and scythes at the heads of Expedition 33’s monstrous giants — accompanied by a rousing, atmospheric soundtrack — lets your attacks land with a really meaty thump. Fighting is a grand, stupendous affair.

There’s much more to say about the sheer extravagance of Expedition 33. Its characters carry shades of complexity and compassion that surface in their conversations. Its music swells and swirls with orchestral lavishness, punctuating every interaction with a note of majesty or calamity. Its tale is heart-wrenching, stirring, and humorous in equal measure. Some parts of Expedition 33 can be a tad superfluous — like the need to put a numerical value in the Expeditioners’ relationships, and certain dialog choices that make little sense — but these do little to mar its experience.

Expedition 33 is built upon the conventional anchors of its genre. But its grandiose tale, bolstered by a downright robust combat system, turns it into something much more than just a scrappy underdog.

_{Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is available now on Xbox, PS5, and PC.}

The fuzz of the cathode-ray tube (CRT) monitor, alongside static grains and flickering scanlines, is a touchstone for ’90s-era nostalgia. It’s shorthand for those halcyon days when technology was predominantly analog and millennial kids spent their summers shoving bulky tapes into VHS players, recording favorite bits of their after-school television shows, and making their own home videos with camcorders. It’s this vignette that developer Don’t Nod Montréal leans heavily into in Lost Records: Bloom & Rage. The game follows a blossoming friendship — and apparent falling-out — of four teenagers over an unforgettable summer. And it all starts with a good dose of that nostalgia: the ubiquitously blue anti-drug message that precedes the title screen, complete with the telltale flicker of a CRT monitor.

Such adolescent longing is all par for the course for Don’t Nod. Alongside Telltale, the studio popularized the choose-your-own-adventure style of narrative games with Life is Strange, while foregrounding the outsized pain and tribulations of teenhood. But more than just coating teenage drama in a layer of dreamy nostalgia, Bloom & Rage is also an opportunity for Don’t Nod to write a story based in familiar settings. The era already has its own vocabulary and culture; it’s the era of riot grrrl, Bikini Kill, The Blair Witch Project, and video rental stores. Doing so helps Bloom & Rage avoid the criticism of penning teenage slang and using outdated references that sound like they’re written by much older adults. This means a lot less “hella cool” and more “let’s bounce,” which is definitely a phrase I remember using as a teenager.

At first glance, Bloom & Rage looks like another Life is Strange. Every moment is infused with the same emotional weight the series is known for, be it standing up to a bully or excitedly gushing about your new best friend to your cat. Then there’s the tinge of the supernatural. But while promising, it’s a tad early to see if Bloom & Rage can surpass the juggernaut that was the original Life is Strange. That’s because Bloom & Rage is a two-part adventure game — a nod to the episodic roots of its forebears — with the second half of the game expected to release in mid-April this year.

Set in the small town of Velvet Cove, you’ll play as Swann, one of the four central teenagers. The story is depicted across two time periods: the present-day Swann as an adult meeting her long-lost friends decades later, and her earlier days as an awkward teenager during the summer of ’95.

The first few minutes of Bloom & Rage neatly set the stage. At first, the adult Swann is struggling with a tedious, mostly one-sided conversation with her mother over the phone, and she can choose to respond meekly, with indifference, or mere silence. Meanwhile, lots of objects in the vicinity are available for her to fiddle with: a receipt, some brochures, and even a bottle of maple syrup. While examining these will cause Swann’s mother to chide her for being distracted, this also demonstrates how Don’t Nod is expanding the ways in which dialogue can play out. You can look at specific objects and this will, at times, open up new dialogue choices that can influence your current and future conversations with other characters. It’s a small addition, but it helps make conversations feel more authentic, rather than simply choosing between binary choices of playing nice or being rude.

Flashbacks to Swann’s younger days make up the bulk of Bloom & Rage’s first half, with the teenager navigating the thorny passage of adolescent friendships. In the beginning, Swann is a loner, largely reluctant to socialize and too awkward to belong anywhere — the familiar plight of every millennial teenager. Spending her days memorializing almost every waking moment with a camcorder, Swann will meticulously record clips of anything that catches her eye, before putting them together to make short films. Aside from the conversations, documenting Swann’s everyday life is the game’s central conceit, a bold gamble given how this can feel like busywork at first.

From fulfilling objectives that move the storyline along, such as filming the local video store (it’s one of Swann’s favorite haunts), to discovering collectibles in the form of crude graffiti and exotic birds, this almost reduces the game to an object-hunting adventure. Eventually, you may develop the tendency to just whip out the camcorder the moment cutscenes conclude. But there’s a lingering charm to this approach, highlighting how Swann tends to instinctively interact with the people around her through her camcorder. Making films is the one thing that empowers her. This is all the more poignant as she eventually comes out of her shell and hides less behind her lens.

And then there are Swann’s newfound friends — Nora, Autumn, and Kat — who similarly are more than just one-dimensional caricatures. There’s Nora who, for all her bravado and punk rock sensibilities, is one of the most conflict-averse individuals in the group and the quickest to suggest giving up when they get into trouble. Then there are seemingly villainous folks who are more multifaceted than what their initial hostility suggests, which isn’t revealed until you examine their behavior and personal artifacts.

These point toward complexities that a young Swann may not fully comprehend, evident in some of her childlike responses, but that the older Swann — and by extension, the player — can probably recognize. This is what Don’t Nod has always been adept at: crafting believable and deeply human characters and the abundant world that they inhabit.

Experiencing the idyllic memories of Swann’s days with her friends can be deeply emotional, as if chancing upon a time capsule you’ve forgotten about. These are long-buried moments about engaging in hours-long phone calls with close friends, partaking in rambunctious activities on the fly, and waxing lyrical about larger-than-life ambitions, like playing in famous bands or living in a secret getaway, hidden from the prying eyes of untrustworthy adults.

Seeing Swann, Nora, Autumn, and Kat trade lifelong promises and form intense bonds — ones so characteristic of deep female friendships — will hit close to home for many. It’s this juxtaposition between these idyllic scenes and the constant, foreboding reminder of the group’s inevitable fallout that feels so ominous, unnerving, and perhaps a little painful. And the vague, supernatural happenings only serve to heighten the anxieties of teenhood. Whether it serves a deeper, more metaphorical purpose still remains to be seen. 

The first half of Bloom & Rage ends in a dramatic cliffhanger, of course, but it’s one that’s not quite as audacious as it seems. Some hints have been hiding in plain sight. But a small concern lingers. Stories like these often introduce so many twists that could derail the game, before the story goes off the rails so quickly that it inevitably plummets. This was partly why the recently released Life is Strange: Double Exposure faltered in its concluding chapters. For now, there’s plenty of time to wonder; we still have to wait two more months or so for Bloom & Rage’s melodramatic conclusion.

_{Lost Records: Bloom & Rage is available now on PC, PS5, and Xbox.}

At one point in Life is Strange: Double Exposure’s third episode, Max Caulfield tried to discuss the well-being of a student named Reggie with Loretta, another student on campus. Loretta became somewhat bewildered, asking Max who exactly she was referring to. That was when Max realized, much to her chagrin, that she had gotten the two parallel realities of Loretta mixed up. Turns out, one Loretta has met Reggie, but the other hasn’t. (Don’t ask me which; I can’t remember offhand, either.)

This moment is emblematic of how rapidly Double Exposure flits between its two universes. There’s the “Living World,” in which her best friend Safi was alive, and the “Dead World” where she wasn’t. Several puzzles in the game follow this trajectory: to circumvent certain obstacles when investigating Safi’s death, Max would tear a massive rift into the other reality to gather information she would otherwise not be privy to or grab some useful object as if pulling off a magician’s hat trick before returning to the first.

While this gimmick is a nifty mechanic that adds a fascinating dimension to Max’s sleuthing, it can also get confusing and tedious, especially as events are spun off in wildly different directions. Even Max’s fastidious note-taking does little to assuage this frustration. Ultimately, while the power does offer a look into the otherwise unseen facets of Max’s life, it’s also troublesome as a mechanic, at times reducing interactions to fetch quests.

This piece contains spoilers about Life is Strange: Double Exposure, its finale, and the first Life is Strange.

This tedium is why, as Max shuttles back and forth between the two realities with the flourish of a seasoned illusionist, there’s a sense that her inner turmoil is only growing. Her interactions vary between realities, and so do the myriad events that take place, leaving ripples in the way her relationships develop between universes. For instance, Max is close friends with the school’s administrative assistant in one universe but merely acquaintances in another. It’s no wonder she often engages in moments of quietude and self-reflection, such as pondering her decision to bombard a friend with relentless questions or ruminating over the dirty laundry of a disgraced colleague.

Thus it’s no surprise that as Max starts using her powers more, Double Exposure picks up from the largely languid pace of the first two episodes. The melodrama has significantly ramped up from episode two’s astonishing cliffhanger, with major twists hinted at and then audaciously delivered with a sleight of hand. While it’s easy for these to become contrived, and for Double Exposure to lose the emotional core of its tale — that is, the game’s smaller, more tender moments of affection — Double Exposure hardly falters, persisting without drowning in these bombastic reveals. 

The good news is that Max is learning to live with her grief from the first game. Small yet crucial choices, such as retaliating against a self-absorbed colleague by interrupting his class, using her supernatural powers to unravel clues, and even choosing which love interest to kiss (or none at all), paint a portrait of Max’s identity. Then there’s the pivotal scenario in which Max is seemingly confronted with the prospect of making yet another impossible decision but realizing that she can simply choose not to choose at all. Double Exposure is also at its most confident narratively when it’s chronicling her growth, with the game deftly bringing together the grandiose plot twists and the quieter, more intimate scenes with incredible sentiment.

But the final episode is where Double Exposure seems to run out of space for such ruminations. Episode five is eventually reduced to a series of rooms, with Max simply jogging from one door to the next to rescue the cast from their ghastly predicament. Familiar artifacts from her past life in Arcadia Bay, like the steel chair used by her ex-professor Jefferson, resurface, creating the macabre quality of a strange lucid dream sequence. A massive bowling alley mascot leers menacingly at Max as she struggles to break out of her restraints again. Binders full of photographs — the centerpiece of Jefferson’s twisted portfolio — taunt Max into perusing them once more. It’s a throwback to Max’s meltdown in the final episode of the original Life is Strange, but it felt like such an obligatory nod that it was more repetitive than inventive.

More disappointing still is that, in its conclusion, Double Exposure has opted to clumsily reconstruct the series — one beloved for exploring the emotional depths of everyday life — into a sci-fi story featuring a cast of troubled superheroic teens. It fails to understand that these powers, like Daniel’s telekinetic abilities in Life is Strange 2, are merely a lens with which to examine the anxieties of life at a heightened level. Without a stronger emotional hook, this development feels like a ham-fisted attempt to expand Life is Strange into an endlessly repeatable formula, set in another cinematic universe. A bigger failure is how Max is being established as the face of this new direction, with the credits announcing that “Max Caulfield Will Return.”

Perhaps an ending where Max gets a reprieve from the slew of misfortunes that the world seems to enjoy hurling at her is too idealistic. After all, reality can be just as perverse for the rest of us. But the idea that Life is Strange will present Max’s powers as somehow extraordinary feels a bit discordant. This isn’t the conclusion that Double Exposure deserves.

All episodes of Life is Strange: Double Exposure are available now on PC, PlayStation, and Xbox.