Close to imagery like Life is Strange, Dontnod Entertainment has released a unique three part episodic game called Tell Me Why. This single player game takes you through the history of twins Alyson and Tyler back in their childhood home in Alaska. After ten years of being apart, memories are processed differently and people can change in long spans of time.
Tell Me Why is the first major backed developer to have a transitional character. When Tyler and Alyson left Alaska they were sisters. After their return, Tyler has transitioned to Alyson’s brother. As you progress in the game you will get to see memories of the past, as well as how their mom reacted to Tyler’s transition. Players get to choose the direction the game will go and ultimately lead the way to their own ending.
The whole focus of the game is around the connection between siblings. Magic becomes a part of the fray in a light fanciful way without taking away from the story. Puzzles that are scattered around are pretty easy to solve and use a lot of context clues from the story. If you have siblings then this game may bring back some memories of how you dealt with situations when you were a kid.
Balance between the characters is pretty well done. Tyler’s character is very headstrong and accepting of his decisions, whereas, Alyson is a softer character and somewhat indecisive. Together their mindset helps them piece together the dark night they had to leave home. What you do with the story from there is up to you.
The first episode released tends to be a bit slow. As with any story, you need to have a baseline of your characters and their history. As the episode progresses you start to learn more but this first episode won’t leave you with a huge cliffhanger like games from TellTale. So don’t get frustrated if you can’t seem to get into the story at first. You might just need to wait until the second episode to get to the meat.
Overall, the first episode is really well done. This part of the story really sets the tone of the game and really connects you with the characters, it’s really all about the characters right now. Tyler also really steals the show even if that was not meant to be the case. Dontnod Entertainment did a really good job researching what they wanted in a character like Tyler and it will change how game are done in the future.
9/10
Available on Xbox and PC
https://www.tellmewhygame.com/