Review: "The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit"

One of the most pleasant surprises at last month’s E3 convention was the announcement of The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit: a prequel to the upcoming Life is Strange 2 that was released for the major platforms (PlayStation, XBOX, PC) on June 26th. In keeping with the current trend for playable teasers that are also stand-alone gaming experiences, Captain Spirit is a 2-3 hour story about one of the new characters from LiS2. Also, because it’s technically a trailer, it’s completely free to play.

(Please beware story spoilers from here on in, but nothing about the major secrets or the ending.)

We meet our hero, Chris, on a snowy Saturday morning in the winter of 2016. Chris is a ten-year-old boy who loves superhero comics, dinosaur toys, and video games starring popular cartoon characters. He loves to draw, and still sleeps with his favourite teddy bear. All of this is immediately apparent, as the game begins with Chris playing in his bedroom, waiting for his father to make him breakfast.

If you’re familiar with the original Life is Strange or its prequel, Before the Storm, you’re probably already braced by this point for a story that will hit you right in the feels. The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit does not disappoint: the world outside of the idyllic fantasy Chris creates in his bedroom has not been kind of late. His mother, we learn, was killed in a hit-and-run two years earlier; his father, after spending most of his money in a futile attempt to track down the driver of the car, has moved with his son to a small, run-down home on the outskirts of town.

On this particular Saturday morning, Chris’s father drinks three beers with his breakfast, before settling down in front of the TV and opening a bottle of whiskey. The dishes are unwashed; laundry moulders in the basket; the pilot light in the boiler has gone out. Chris has a large bruise on his forearm, which his father hopes he has remembered to hide from his teachers and neighbours. But what’s utterly tragic is not the sudden bursts of anger Chris’s father directs at him, but the equally random moments of friendship: briefly joining in with his games, sincerely thanking him for taking care of a chore, trying to assure him that his grief is normal. Chris’s dad is handling their situation terribly, but he’s not a monster so much as a painfully realistic depiction of an adult who has entirely lost control.

You will likely find yourself wanting Chris to do the sensible thing and confide in someone: the grandparents who write to his father asking to see him, the neighbour who comes to check in on him, the social worker he’s been referred to by his school. But Chris is still a little kid, and has a child’s determination to stay with his one remaining parent no matter what. He knows that his father needs help, but sees himself as capable of providing that help single-handedly; only an adult can see how impossible and unfair a task that is for an isolated ten-year-old. One of the great tragedies of this game is how much you’ll want to help Chris, but the game limits you to the only method of self-help that children instinctively practice: retreating into fantasy.

This is a Life is Strange game, which returning players will know means a healthy serving of kids with superpowers along with your dose of devastating emotional realism. Chris’s self-created alter-ego is the Captain Spirit of the title: a classic superhero on the Superman/Captain America end of the scale, whose powers include electricity, flight, telekinesis, and anything else Chris decides in the moment, because he’s more concerned with having fun than with narrative consistency. Chris draws Captain Spirit comics, and spends much of his Saturday morning cobbling together a Captain Spirit costume from items he finds lying around the house. The games he plays while in character are telling: cars from his toy-box are cast as dangerous, mindlessly cruel characters; the villains in Chris’s personal super-pantheon have sympathetic backstories of personal pain and family loyalty; Captain Spirit shows a particular disdain for bullies, but is torn over whether to forgive them or fight back.

On several occasions, the game makes clever use of camera angles to fool you into believing that Chris may be using his superhero fantasy to explore his own developing super-powers… only to deliver a cheeky rug-pull as the method behind each trick is revealed. (There is, however, a hint that Chris might have some real powers by the time of Life is Strange 2.)

For the main section of the game, your goals are represented in an eight-panel comic titled “Chris’s List of Awesome Things to Do”. These are all the games that Chris wants to play on his Saturday morning, most of which revolve around his Captain Spirit fantasy in some way. You can finish the game without completing them all (I accidentally triggered the end-game with two goals left to go on my first play-through); but whatever you choose to do or not do in your game, you need to see the conclusion to the “Captain Spirit’s Treasure” goal. I teared up more in that moment than I did at any point in the original game, and I was in love with Chloe by the end of LiS1, so I don’t say this lightly.

If you like games that provoke a strong emotional reaction, and that give very realistic depictions of mental health issues in both adults and children, you’ll like The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit. This game takes place in-universe with the first Life is Strange, and there is a small tie-in with hints of a crossover to come; but you don’t need to know the first thing about that game to play and appreciate this one. Also, this game is free, so if you’re looking to jump in to the Life is Strange franchise, it’s an excellent starting point.