Hi all,
We wanted to give you all an update regarding our progress on Life is Strange 2, as the question of when Episode 3 will be releasing is on everyone's lips. As we remain committed to keeping you up to date with the latest, we are currently considering ways to share Episode 3 content and release specifics earlier than we did for previous episodes. As an episode only comes together visually towards the very end of development, we'll be getting creative with how we present that content! We are also looking at the best ways to share more behind the scenes information in both video and picture format through our social channels, so stay tuned for that in the near future. These written developer updates will continue to provide development phase information as before. We hope that all these new pieces of exclusive content will make the wait in-between episodes feel a little shorter. As always, we appreciate your patience and continued support!
In a previous developer update for Episode 2 we shared some details around our internal playtests. We have reached a similar stage for Episode 3, having completed the internal and external playtests last week. Feedback gathered during these tests will help us push episode through the final stages of development. It is always intimidating to see players play an unfinished episode, as many things do still look rough, but these tests continue to be a great source of information!
The final voice-over (VO) recording session for Episode 3 also took place this week. We always plan this final VO recording session after having received the playtests report, because in addition to the lines that might be missing or that need to be changed, the players' feedback can well lead to extra VO lines. As an example, if we see that some players are lost for too long without knowing what to do next, we can add extra internal voice lines for Sean that give hints about how to progress.
Speaking of voice-overs, we wanted to take this opportunity to congratulate Roman George, the voice actor for Daniel for his "Best Young Actor ¦ Voice Over Role" nomination!
While he is already working on Episode 4 concept art (you can see a bit of this process for Episode 1 here), our Lead Artist Edouard Caplain has started to work on the Episode 3 Key Art. This is a very important piece of art that has the huge responsibility of not only setting the tone of an episode when it is revealed, but which also will have to represent this episode on your favorite stores for the rest of its life. No pressure Edouard...!
Here are some internal key art explorations that Square Enix' Jan-Wah Li did before Edouard got to work on the final artwork.
Similar to the first Life is Strange, even if the full LIS2 story has already been written entirely before working on the individual episodes, we give ourselves the opportunity to adapt the content and make changes during the production of an episode when it feels right creatively. It's the same with the key art: the general idea for the whole season has already been discussed before creating the first one, but individual key arts are usually the last piece of art produced for an episode. We do this for production reasons, but it does also feel like the perfect time to do it because the artist can more accurately convey the mood of an episode and its characters. We cannot wait to share it with you when it’s ready!
Episode 3 is coming along nicely and we hope to be back soon with more news and behind the scenes information for you. The full team continue to be hard at work and we appreciate every positive thought you send our way!
The Life is Strange team