Life is Strange 2 Episode 2 - Your choices finally matter

-Spoiler Warning-

After playing the first episode of Life is Strange 2, I was still a bit skeptical. The new characters seemed a bit one dimensional and some parts of the story felt a bit illogical.
Most of all though, it didn't seem like any of the choices really mattered, since the story was so straightforward and I worried that there might be just two options to choose from at the end of the game again.

Luckily it turns out that I was wrong.
I had a great time with the second episode and it was much better than I hoped for.

The characters got a lot more interesting

In the first episode I felt like there wasn't a lot of depth to the characters, even though I really liked all the voice actors, and some things didn't seem very convincing.
For example, how Daniel just followed his brother for days without knowing what's going on. (Or maybe he knew something bad happened and just wanted to act like everything is fine, so that it doesn't come true?)

Anyway, now that there are no hidden secrets between the brothers anymore, I feel like their relationship got much more interesting and believable.
Also we finally got some more quiet and intimate moments to learn more about the wolf brothers and how they deal with their tragic situation and Daniels new super powers in episode 2.

One of my favorite moments was when Sean was smoking alone outside before going to bed and suddenly tried to move stones with his mind like Daniel.

Intriguing location

The majority of this episode is set at their distant grandparent's house, who turn out to be the neighbors of Captain Spirit. I really liked The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit, so I was glad to see that Chris plays an important role in this episode.

The grandparents are also very interesting characters, because there is constantly some sort of tension and you are not sure if you can fully trust them. There is this very awkward feeling of staying at the place of someone you are not very close with and this episode did a good job to make you feel how Sean is thankful, awkward and worried at the same time.
I really enjoyed this particular atmosphere and it was nice to see the brothers finally getting some rest, after running away for so long.

Shocking surprises

Dontnod wouldn't be Dontnod without consistently shoving onions into our faces.
This episode got dramatic really quickly as we had to witness the death of mushroom, without any chance to prevent it.

But even more shocking is what happens to Chris, in the worst case scenario.
Luckily this is something that you actually can prevent, but only in a very unique kind of way and this is were Life is Strange 2 truly sets itself apart from all the previous games.

Your choices finally matter

In Life is Strange 1 most of the choices during the game didn't have much of an impact on the story and eventually everybody got the same two options to end the game, no matter what you did before.
Before the Storm was pretty similar in that regard and even though you could have some influence on Chloe and Rachels relationship, you were given another simple multiple choice question at the end.

But the second episode of Life is Strange 2 introduces a completely new system that offers a lot of possibilities for the rest of the game. Instead of having direct control all the time, there are critical moments where you can passively influence the events through your relationship with Daniel.
He will just react by himself sometimes, based on the things Sean has taught him.

We could see a little bit of that mechanic in the first episode, when Daniel would steal from Brody, if you had shown him before that it is ok to steal. But it wasn't until the end of episode 2 that we could see how much impact this can have on the story.

There are three possible outcomes, one where Chris is fine and helps you to escape, one where Chris gets hit by a car and one where Daniel saves Chris.

The only way to save him, is by telling the right things to Daniel beforehand because everything gets added up in his mind, like a real teenager. That's the reason why Life is Strange 2 gives you more control over the story. Even though it doesn't look like it at first, most of your choices seem to have a lasting impact on the game.

I hope that the developers go even deeper with this in the next episodes and it makes me really curious to see where all of this is going. Of course I understand that there can't be too many varieties, since the story will remain pretty linear, but at least it makes you feel like your decisions actually matter in that way.

Hopefully it won't take too long until the next episode comes out.