There has been no concrete news about theLife is Strange Remastered Collection for several months, but that has changed. Today, we are finally able to see exactly what studio Deck Nine was up to in this freshly-released six-minute gameplay reveal trailer. The Remastered Collection was supposed to have launched in September as part of Life is Strange: True Colors Ultimate Edition, but was instead delayed to February to give the developers time to polish the game. From what we’ve seen today, the wait was worth it.
Achieving Remastery
The featured scene is part of the game’s opening minutes in Episode 1. Here, eighteen-year-old senior student Max Caulfield discovers she has the ability to manipulate time when she saves her estranged best friend Chloe Price from getting shot in the Blackwell Academy bathroom.
Here’s an official list of Deck Nine’s improvements on this clip.
Featuring updated character models, improved motion capture and more, players will be able to experience legendary leads, Max and Chloe, like never before.
Improvements visible in this clip are:
- Now rendering in native 4K resolution in Unreal Engine 4, with a rebuilt lighting pipeline.
- New and updated 4K-ready character models with increased polycounts and additional bones are visible throughout.
- All character models feature more emotive and expressive animation, more natural hair physics, and updated tears, injuries, and more.
- Max’s tears and expressions are more detailed with updated facial SFX.
- Nathan and Chloe’s facial expressions and eyelines have been revamped.
- New lip-sync animation throughout.
- New and updated scenic materials for reflectivity and texture.
- Updated models and materials for key props, ex. the bucket in the bathroom.
The improvements are fairly impressive. Standouts include faces having clearer expressions, characters looking directly into the eyes of the people they’re talking with, better lighting and shadows, light reflections in characters’ eyes, and minute details like phones having actual messages when a call comes in, glass emerging from a shattering camera, and visible tears on a person’s face. Even Mr. Jefferson’s beard doesn’t look like a tattoo anymore.
You can find actual comparisons in this video:
Given this game is a remaster and not rebuilt from the ground up, it’s not a perfect improvement. It’s abundantly clear that the voices were recorded separately from the physical motion capture, as the lips aren’t 100% in sync with the dialogue. The Remastered version doesn’t quite achieve the level of True Colors, where voices and facial motion capture were recorded together.
Still, the Remastered version brings the emotion of the voice acting closer to the physical performance. You can tell it’s a labor of love by Deck Nine.
It’s nearly here
Life is Strange Remastered Collection will release on February 1, though the Switch version will be somewhat delayed. Included in the collection are all the episodes of Life is Strange and Life is Strange: Before the Storm. Pick up your Life is Strange Remastered Collection PC code today.
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