After an awesome cliffhanger at the end of episode one, the game remains quite dull until it hits an exciting stride in the final act, which uses one of the game’s few good mechanics to usher in a series of touching reveals.
Tell Me Why doesn’t seem interested in exploring this important facet of the narrative, and it ended up rubbing me the wrong way as the story approached its crux. Yet for a studio that has a history of dealing with difficult topics carefully, it was strange to see Dontnod drop the ball when depicting mental illness in the sibling’s mother, whose unexplained violent outburst plays a large part in the game’s central mystery. One scene where the siblings discuss keeping or ditching old photos of them as children was particularly insightful to his experience, presenting a situation I had never even considered. In a wider sense, I found Tyler’s story to be nuanced and moving. It’s great to see a trans character front and centre as the protagonist of a AAA video game, but it’s not for me to say whether the representation is effective. Dontnod’s famous licensed music scenes are forgettable here too.
The lack of a developing diary is also missed in Tell Me Why – I would have loved to see Tyler or Alyson take notes and go through the motions in their own heads as well as within scenes. It made me realise how much this format can wear, especially without a strong narrative to back it up. The game has a smattering of puzzles intertwined carefully with the narrative where you learn new details as you go, but the rest are naturally very dull. The worst part is that there are more imaginative ideas present. I’m really not keen on doing maths to fix a fusebox in the middle of a supernatural game about childhood trauma. I’m the same age as the leading characters in this game and my cringe radar was blaring on many occasions – I hope for future games Dontnod might consider getting some younger writers in the room. In Tell Me Why there aren’t any silly catchphrases, just a lot of back and forths between young people that overwhelmingly feel like they’ve been written by old folks. L ife Is Strange was mocked for its use of what the writers assumed to be modern teenage vernacular, like “hella” and “shaka-brah”, but at least in that game, it was unique and charming, in a dorky way. Beyond the exposition though, there are some really lovely smaller scenes between characters spread across the story, like when Tyler is flirting in the storeroom of the local shop, or when the siblings are reckoning with old memories as they clear out their childhood home. “The Fireweed administration backed him up Tyler, they thought it was best, for both of us,” Alyson responds. Tyler turns to Alyson and says: “You mean Chief Brown, as in the police officer who arrested me, and your adopted father, the man who didn’t let you visit me for seven years!” In one of the first scenes, the siblings are on a boat together catching up when Alyson offers Tyler a gift from a character named Eddy, whom we’ve yet to meet. There’s also so much unnecessary, grating exposition in this game. Across three episodes, there aren’t that many opportunities to branch off and chart your own course, so the storytelling feels stoic. Even the game’s final flashpoint fell flat because of this – your mileage may vary of course – but it definitely feels that there’s a right way and a wrong way to progress through Tell Me Why. I’d rather they were just honest with each other and hashed this out beyond the binary mechanic. This is a clever idea in theory, but in many cases, the “big choice” was crystal clear to me, because I had already uncovered the evidence that proved one of the sibling’s interpretations. You’ll have to pick which side of the story you believe, and your choices will colour the wider narrative. In many cases, Tyler will perceive the past in a different manner to Alyson, and this is where player choice becomes paramount. The duo use this to their advantage when solving puzzles and trying to manipulate people to seek the truth, but it’s a disadvantage when their recollection differs from one another. The supernatural Dontnod twist, in this case, is that the Ronan siblings can communicate telepathically and stimulate visual memories of the past in the present via the resonance of sounds and the strength of emotions. In Tell Me Why, the latest from Life Is Strange developer Dontnod Entertainment, you play as brother and sister duo Tyler and Alyson Ronan, who reunite after a decade to return to their Alaskan hometown hamlet and commit their troubled past to memory.
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