Platforms: Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC
Publishers: Square Enix
Developers: Dontnod Entertainment
MSRP: Free
When Dontnod Entertainment revealed that they were doing a free Life is Strange 2 prequel at E3, I didn’t expect much. I figured The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit would be a brief 30-minute experience that just fills in some gaps for the Life is Strange sequel but what I got was one of the most moving games I’ve ever played.
I’ve played thousands of games a majority of which are just fun experiences and that’s fine but the ones that have stuck with me the most are the ones that tug at my heartstrings. Life is Strange as a series has done that on a number of occasions but what The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit does is something much more powerful.
This one to two-hour free experience (which stands on its own completely and it’s free so you have no reason not to play it) is about a little boy named Chris who lives in a small house with his single father. The two suffered the loss of Chris’ mother just a few years prior to the events of the game and they’re both coping in their own unique ways.
Chris uses his imagination to embody a superhero known as Captain Spirit and he forms a fictitious version of The Avengers or Justice League to battle imaginative evildoers. Most of the heroes/villains are just personified versions of toys he plays with but some characters like his arch-nemesis Mantroid and an evil version of his water heater, appropriately named Water Eater, are spawned from fears and elements of his life.
Chris’ father Charles is ultimately a kind-hearted guy, doing his best to satisfy his son in any way he can until he gets his hand on a bottle of booze. This brings out a still grieving husband that takes out his anger and frustration on Chris in verbal and physical abuse. It would’ve been easy for Dontnod to just paint Charles as a sleazeball with dirty, gross clothes, poor hygiene, and an unkept house but they don’t.
They leave stereotypes mostly out of the picture to create something more realistic and not dramatized. The relationship between the two and the character of Charles feel authentic and allow for more painful and tender moments, even giving you room to empathize with Charles despite some of his nasty behavior at times. It’s the remains of a family trying to rekindle the fire which kept their hearts warm before they were split apart.
As you play on Chris on a single Saturday, you battle the imaginative baddies in worlds far from reality and go on an adventure to overcome evil by using compassion. There’s a strong feeling of innocence and purity with this story, Chris contrasts the corrupt youth of the original Life is Strange who are addicts, rapists, and even mentally unstable with his glowing personality and good nature.
While the game can probably be completed in a matter of a couple dozen minutes if you really just plow through the required story beats, the game is about just exploring. Read all the documents you can find, interact with every item, do all of the seemingly optional superhero tasks (I managed to finish the game without completing one of the tasks and you can probably skip most of them if you overlook them), and just absorb the world of what will soon be Life is Strange 2.
If you do so, you’ll be rewarded with moments that personally brought tears to my eyes and made me have to set the controller down for a minute. Perhaps what is so impressive about that is that these moments aren’t anything extreme like the death of a character or anything, it’s subtle stuff. It’s things like seeing Chris relive memories of a time that he cherishes dearly, moments where you can tell he truly misses his mother.
Maybe it won’t resonate with others as much as it did for me but that’s because I had an intense bond with my mom. When I was 14, just a few weeks before my birthday, my mom came into my room early in the morning and kissed me on the forehead and told me she was going out of state for a bit to visit a friend. She never came back.
Things were tough at home and she decided to go and move to another state, leaving me with my dad and brother. It was abrupt, confusing, and incredibly painful. It left me feeling like a piece of me was ripped out of me, like the intense bond was severed. It hurt a lot and it took a long time for me to forgive her and we’re on great terms now but it was crushing, it’s something that most people probably won’t ever have to and shouldn’t have to experience. But those who have, they know what it’s like.
The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit captures those feelings and translates them on screen in a way I’ve never seen before. I’ve never felt like anyone would be able to express that pain and the severity of those emotions that come with a boy separated from his mother accurately portrayed on screen but Dontnod has done it and in a way, it was both emotional and perhaps therapeutic.
The Verdict
The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit is both a powerful standalone experience and a bridge into a new chapter in the Life is Strange universe. Through its incredible writing that favors subtleties and authenticity over more dramatized scenes and stereotypes, Dontnod delivers something truly spectacular.
Some may be a bit annoyed to hear that The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit’s gameplay is just pressing a button to interact with something and then watching a scene play out but that can really be forgiven thanks to the fact it’s a free game that tells a truly (excuse the pun) awesome tale of grief, purity, and how special a connection between a mother and son is.
