Like many others, I was cautiously optimistic when the life of strange remasters were announced alongside true colors. Those games have a very unique and deliberate art style, which could prove difficult to quote unquote improve upon. Sure, some more expressive faces and less stiff animations would be wholly welcomed by fans, but what could be done to remaster a very purposefully stylized game like Life is Strange? In this video, I'll only cover the original game's remaster, since it had more work done on it than before the storm. I was by no means desperate for a remaster, but I'll be the first to admit that the first game could do with a bit of touching up, mostly with the facial animations. I'll divide the video into three parts. Part one, gameplay changes. In what ways did Deck 9 alter how Life is Strange feels to play? Part two, bugs. I'll discuss them knowing full well if they'll likely be patched out in a future update. Part three, the visuals and major changes. Basically looking at how it compares visually to the original and commenting on what I feel was done well and what wasn't. So for the gameplay side of things, it's pretty much identical. The camera and the remaster is different than it was in the original, but I don't really consider this a good or bad thing. Something definitely not favorable, however, is Max's walking speed. For some reason, she walks considerably slower in the remaster. It's something that was immediately noticeable to me, and although it's not a massive or game-breaking alteration, I do see it as a downgrade. They compensated for this by allowing Max to jog in many places where she couldn't in the original. Again, not a huge change, but an apparent downgrade immediately. Another unfortunate change is with the rewind power. In the original, the screen would violently shake whenever you use the rewind ability, and that along with the distortions on screen give a really great impression of bending time to your will. It felt powerful. In the remaster, the screen still distorts, but the camera doesn't move. It sounds like a small change, but it makes rewinding feel much less intense. This also, sort of, carries over to the focus mechanic. The controller doesn't vibrate, and it indicates success with these anymore, so it's slightly more annoying than it should be. Again, not a huge difference on paper, but disappointing in practice. The only other point I have to make for the gameplay is that it feels like you have to get too close to interact with the object sometimes, but this is mostly negligible. On to the bugs and glitches now, with the acknowledgement that the point's I'm about to make probably won't apply in a few months. Unfortunately, the remaster is just less stable than the original. I got stuck while rewinding a couple times, which never happened in the original. Max even froze in place at one point. Max's shirts are supposed to change in between every episode, but sometimes they wouldn't. The first episode's Jane Doe shirt was with me for almost half of episode two, and for the first half of episode three. The subtitles from episode two onwards bugged out, and instead of displaying the spoken dialogue, it displayed their file names. This can be fixed by switching the subtitle language to something besides English and then switching it back, but it broke again when I loaded the next map anyway. A few times, the rewind spiral icon didn't appear. Victoria's phone shows her getting a call before it even rings. This is real. Hello! Max's dorm room sign drawing is neon blue when it should be plain black. On the investigation board, in episode four, what pieces of evidence you've already selected aren't highlighted, making this section more confusing than it should be. While focusing on Max's gallery selfie, the game froze and whited out, leaving me an avoid. In the episode five nightmare, the dorm hallway scene is missing music. Hey, which one is the proposed theme? Max's footsteps only came through my left-head phone, and there was a delay on the sound effect. This next one is for the OGs. Remember back in 2015, during episode three, the eggs you had to get for a choice for next to the front door for some reason? Don't not patch this later so they'd be in the kitchen, which made infinitely more sense. In the remaster, it was a pleasant surprise to find them back by the door. Only to pick them up and have Max be teleported to the kitchen anyway. The physical model and triggers by the front door, but the game still thinks they're in the kitchen. I'm not even mad, honestly, it's just kind of funny. For the entirety of episode one, the picking up a new object sound would play when it shouldn't have. Hey, what the hell is that? Hey, Juliet. Fix your camera. Why do I feel like I was just a hear? Oh, this is the exact same path I was on during my nightmare today. Standard dialogue choice text would hop around when it shouldn't. It should only do that when you're making an important choice. The darkroom door doesn't make any noise when you walk over it. But that can't be the only thing here. The resolution of some textures and icons are either really blown up or way too small. Warren becomes a shadow person here. Text messages are formatted incorrectly. Max's phone light hovers, etc., etc. There are more, but you get the idea that's buggy. Almost none of these issues are present in the original, either. I don't want to rag on it too much since it's likely that even with a delay, Square Enix put an unreasonable deadline on the game, but it is unfortunate. Last part. How well did Deck 9 capture the aesthetic and feel of the original? Like I said before, the original game had an extremely deliberate and distinct aesthetic. Every texture in the game was hand-painted and don't not combine that with very intense and warm lighting to create what game director Michelle Coe called impressionistic rendering. Basically, game looks like a painting. I still think the original game looks wonderful. It's not striving for realism and it shouldn't have. Sure, the animations and expressions are limited, but the game overall has an extremely well-realized style that I don't think will ever age from a purely artistic point of view anyway. The game was also exceptionally vibrant. Colors popped and I had this incredibly warm and nostalgic look to it, which was intentional. I wouldn't call the lighting in Life is Strange realistic, but it was carefully and lovingly crafted. And it shows. Life is Strange Remastered by comparison is kind of all over the place. Some scenes look great with the appropriate amount of light and dark exposure and contrast. Other scenes are way darker than they should be. Some are too bright. Blackwell by Day looks drained of all its life and color. By night, well, just compare. I can barely tell what's going on in this scene. The price garage is way too lit up. The stealth section in Episode 5 nearly gave me a headache. Why is the storm green? I almost have to go buy it on a scene by scene basis due to how inconsistent it is. For every environment that I think looks great, another one looks terrible. It's a mixed bag. Fortunately, the Remaster sports a new facial mocap for all the major characters. Characters are definitely more expressive than in the original and on the whole I'd say it's a win. Though sometimes they can pull what feels like the wrong expression and there's a bit of a disconnect. Lip Sync can exist now too, though it's still not perfect. Sometimes characters would say something too faster they're mad to keep up with, but anything's better than the gum-flapping of the original. Now Max, since you've captured our interest and clearly want to join the conversation, unfortunately, idle conversation animations remain unchanged, and despite more nuance to their expressions, characters will still snap into emotion, if you will. They still cycle through these really robotic animations too, which is unfortunate. They'll still break eye contact at random, but with the higher fidelity graphics, it feels more egregious. I feel like they remastered the game too much and not enough. Each main character model has been updated and to be fair, most of them look great. It's weird though that the game still uses a lot of old assets where the characters look as they did in the original. Looking at pictures of the characters littered throughout the world, it's drawing to see the original versions of some characters contrasted against their updated models. Max doesn't look like that anymore. Chloe doesn't look like this anymore. Warren sends you a picture of his past life's self, it's just bizarre. Victoria looks great. Kate mostly looks good. David made it through. Warren looks good. Nathan also looks pretty good. Frank looks terrible, honestly. Joyce looks pretty alright. Jefferson looks like himself and I don't think they touched Williams' model at all, but basically all the secondary characters look good. Deck 9 seemingly tried to make the characters look more realistic in a way. For example, it's not totally gone, but the painterly aesthetic that was on every character in the original is somewhat diminished. Certain materials actually have bitmap textures, if that means what I think it means. Essentially, materials actually look like materials now. I don't love it. It kinda looks like an in-between of the style of the original game and true colors. True colors lack the impressionistic touch of the first. So, they're in between a faux, plastic-like realism and the impressionistic look of the first game. To be fair, the new models don't clash with the rest of the environment as much as I thought they would, but it's difficult to see it as an improvement. It's like everything in the first game clicked together perfectly, and in this, these models clearly aren't meant for this world, and vice versa. They don't really look like paintings anymore. They look like cheap action figures at times, especially Max and Chloe. If I had never played the original before, I probably wouldn't have a problem with these models, but I have, and I do. Max just doesn't look like herself. All the characters are a little rounder in the face, but Max and Chloe have it the worst. With a side view, she looks fine. Straight on though, and she just doesn't look right. I think it's the eyes mostly. Her and Chloe's eyes are bigger than they reasonably should be, and it leads to them just looking weird. From a pure graphical standpoint, they look fine, but as Max and Chloe, I don't buy it. But now the big question. Should you buy the Life is Strange Remastered Collection? No, absolutely not. It's too buggy at time of recording, and its improvements over the first game are too small to warrant its $40 price tag. At best, it improves on the first game in small, superficial ways. At worst, it looks worse in a lot of ways. That's without you in mentioning that none of the puzzles are different. There's nothing added to the Sacrifice Arcadia Bay ending. There's no post-episode credits or teasers anymore, and Chloe's death scene in episode 4 is actively inferior to the original. What the fuck? Look out! If you're really curious, I recommend at least waiting till it goes on sale. If you're like me though, you already have the original and you prefer it anyway. If you've never played the original or before the storm, well, I'm sorry for spoiling it just now, but you should just buy the original versions anyway. I'm not going to say this was just a cash grab, but I also can't see it as an improvement. Hopefully it gets better with time and patches, but as of now, this is not the definitive edition of Life is Strange.