E3 2018 Impressions — The Awesome Adventures Of Captain Spirit

While at E3, I was able to see The Awesome Adventures Of Captain Spirit in a more intimate setting than just a trailer. Here is my take on The Awesome Adventures Of Captain Spirit.

Another of the outside the realm of the usual at E3 came The Awesome Adventures Of Captain Spirit during the Microsoft media event and it is the bridge between the original Life Is Strange and the upcoming second full title in the franchise. DontNod is back at the helm for the franchise here and it looks like they also have Square Enix bringing it to us on June 26^th on the PS4, Xbox One, and PC. All for the low price of free, so we can eliminate the cost being a reason to skip out on this new narrative adventure. The main cost now is if you will want to spend the time getting to see how Captain Spirit links into the full titles. This is why I am guessing we all had a chance to check out a demo of it on the floor of E3 even with it coming so soon.

In Captain Spirit, we are playing as a young boy who does not seem to have the best home life due to what looks like the loss of his mother. It was not made apparent in the demo I saw if she was just gone or if she was dead. Nonetheless, Chris uses his imagination to cope with his living situation as his home life is not horrible, but it is not ideal. The demo I saw picked up with the basics being shown here and diving right into the first few changes coming to the gameplay that we may be able to see in Life Is Strange 2. Some of the choices in the game are based on our timing in the game and not just the prompted items from the normal dialog tree.

What I am talking about here is that during the demo I saw, “Captain Spirit” was asked to come downstairs for breakfast. We had a few dialog options to respond with, and the usual “now response” option, but we did respond. We then had the choice to keep looking around his room and playing instead of heading downstairs. This would have fired off a whole new set of events as we did not comply as we said we would. It also meant that we did not have the full option to move around and explore if we wanted to keep Chris’ dad happy. It was interesting to hear about, but we did not get to see in its practice as the demo driver took Chris downstairs to continue on the story and events.

From there, The Awesome Adventures Of Captain Spirit played out a lot like we have seen in the parent franchise it is bridging. Chris finished up his routine for the morning and then moved along to playing by himself and showing off his imagination. More or less ignored by his father thus pushing the feeling of the relationship they had and why he had to hide in his Captain Spirit world. Something that I suspect will be the major driving force for the story here and how it will link into the larger universe that DontNod has been working on for some time and will be continuing here shortly. Especially since there are other elements in this “demo” that will show us how the next major addition will play out.

That all said, The Awesome Adventures Of Captain Spirit does look like a good, new chapter to the LiS franchise and it is what the team is aiming for. It also looks to have one of the deeper stories that has drawn me in further as it links into how life was for myself personally. At least I can relate to a ten-year-old boy from a broken family more than a teenage girl dealing with prep school drama. Not to say I have not enjoyed that, but this seems to be a story to draw in more and bring tears to the eyes of many other gamers out there. Also, hey, The Awesome Adventures Of Captain Spirit is going to be free to get us all excited for the new season of the parent title and maybe branch out more characters for us to enjoy.