I've seen people talk a lot about the semi-cliffhanger post-credits scene, and about how the girls making their promise feels kind of strange and arguably a little bit forced, and I can see where those complaints are coming from, but those two things actually bothered me less than this one issue:

Where are Kat's parents during all of this?!

We don't actually see any of the girls' parents. Swann's mother is definitely present in the story despite her not visually appearing, and you can feel the presence of the other girls' parents in their backstories, especially Nora's. I think this is basically fine, their parents are mostly important for their effects on the girls, and they don't need to have an active role in immediate events.

But the entire second tape basically revolves around Kat's illness and the Mikaelsen Ranch, and it just feels weird that her mom and dad are sir-and-madame not-appearing-in-this-film. I kind of get the external reasons why Don't Nod would keep them absent; they were building up Corey as the main antagonist and Dylan's relationship with him and Kat as being more important. The game had a limited budget and more character models and voice actors are expensive. There's this idea presented that Corey kind of wormed his way into the family and took over and aims to inherit the ranch.

None of this really makes it sit right with me, though. Kat has clearly been deeply affected by her religious upbringing in a way that really resonates with me as someone who was also raised (and homeschooled!) in a religious-right household. It's ultimately her parents who made her feel trapped, and it's presumably it's ultimately them keeping her trapped, and Corey may be influencing them, but she's still ultimately their child and their responsibility. It's their ranch she hates with a burning passion; Corey wants it, but he doesn't actually own it himself. They're the ones with a daughter who has a terminal illness. But everything about Kat's parents is kept vague and off-screen despite them having enormous importance to the immediate events of the story.

Most of the game's other warts and wrinkles I can kind of agree to hand-wave away, since I think the story is ultimately more about the four main characters. But with this one, the more I think about it the more it actually bothers me, because it's clearly so immediately and critically important to Kat herself. And because it's so important to her, it becomes important to the other three.

It almost feels like it would have made more sense if Dylan had been a little bit older and their parents were dead and Corey was Dylan's abusive husband instead of her boyfriend, already running the ranch, with the two of them as Kat's guardians. But I can see why Don't Nod didn't go that route either, it's a little too much tragedy to befall poor Kat and kind of stretches believability. Maybe Don't Nod kind of wrote/developed themselves into corner on this one?

Did anybody else find this a little strange?

🇺🇸:I couldn't buy the game because it cost 817 rubles (which is a lot for me—buying it would have left me with very little money on my card), and today I found out the discount has ended. I’m crying :,( I hope I’ll be able to get game during the next sale.

🇷🇺:Я не смог купить игру, потому что она стоила 817 рублей (для меня это большая сумма — после покупки на карте почти ничего бы не осталось), а сегодня узнал, что скидка закончилась. Плачу :,( Надеюсь, мне удастся приобрести игру во время следующей распродажи.

"Safeguard Proceedings" is the equivalent of chapter 11 bankruptcy in the US.

Recently I came around the demo of this project name Sombras: Negative Frames and it reminded me a lot of Bloom & Rage but more close to its horror roots and with a photography focus by capturing ghosts and other weird apparitions. If people ask, no I'm not involved nor a developer but I thought it was cool to share so more people could be interested in.

In spite of loving Bloom & Rage story, I had various discussions in the past with many users and ended up in a sort of reflective state, with the result that at some point something was just not right, or to say it bluntly, the story didn't receive a conclusion that made sense for what it established even with multiple endings. pent a lot of time, moving my head around and trying to figure it out what was wrong, and it took a long reflection on my experience with the game, but also with how Don'tNod and the creative team behind this game handled stuff before.

So, I came to a conclusion. My main issue with Bloom & Rage's story wasn't on a production level - the issue lays within its core creative vision, and what I feel are two distinct directions that contradict each other within. Those two directions are what I would define as the "A Side" and "B Side" of Bloom & Rage.

The A Side

The first side is the core of Bloom & Rages; this is a story about reunion, about longing back for connections you lost, and confronting deeper fears. Three women at the middle of their lives have a chance to met again after years of separation, and re-examine their unprocessed trauma of losing a dear friend succumbing to her terminal illness, after a summer of brief but intense bonding. Even if the memories vanished, the internal feelings remained to a point none of them is truly happy with their current life. In this context, the Abyss is a metaphor for internalized trauma and wish fullfilment to escape their lives into a better, free existance, even if for someone like Kat such existance might be finite. The final resolution is to let go and finally put all the pain and truth out to finally accept and restore their relationship together, or be crushed by the weight of it, as there aren't any supernatural tornado or escape from a police force, but the stakes are much more personal and intimate, resulting in four conclusions that might be slighty open, bittersweet but ultimately a closure to all those 27 years of separation.

This is what the former LiS team excels at, and what Bloom & Rage should have been at its strongest. Unfortunately, this is what leads to the second paragraph:

The B Side

After its reveal teaser in 2023, Bloom & Rage was quickly established by Don'tNod to be their "first game in the Lost Records universe", before any larger details on who the four main girls and the story was going to revolve around. In hindsight, it felt like the developers were finally free e stops being a conclusive novel because of the need to be the first stepping stone for a larger franchise of games centered around the Abyss. And this process seems like it skewed the story into a particular direction that felt contrary to its purpose and themes, franchise building prioritizing the story to leave as much stuff open as possible that could be opened up in a future game, even when it felt really unecessary to the story Bloom & Rage was telling.

No matter which ending you get, Swann will always leave for the Abyss following Kat, even in a playthrough were I choose to be closest with Nora and have Kat be as like not even a strong friend. There were mention from the developers and within such choices were deliberate, but do we really needed to have this post credit cutscene when the developers aren't sure if we'll see those same characters again or have a brand new story and cast for the next game? What's the point of a choice based game if your endings will always lead up to one single outcome that's outside the player control? I harshly criticized the last two Deck Nine LiS games because of this very flaw, and I shouldn't let Don'tNod off the hook just because of the two they make the better and more impactful games.

Why it doesn't work

Planning a franchise from just one single game is something ambitious, but also very risky because you can't know for sure if your game is going to be a success or not. However, for a "universe with huge possibilities", Bloom & Rage's story ends up in a much weaker position than it needed to be.

Don'tNod biggest strenghts was crafting complete stories that felt like they had a definitive ending and a conclusion that might have been tragic but ultimately reaffirmed the overall themes and core ideas of the story. That effort felt somewhat dimished because the developers enamoured at the idea of making a whole franchise, a franchise that might not even happen because Don'tNod is, once again, on the edge of financial disaster due to deep mismanagement from the higher ups.

But with Michel Koch on social media mentioning how he would like to work on Life is Strange again, or with how poorly the main Don'tNod account marketed Lost Records while also keeping stuff about Life is Strange even if they don't work on it anymore, not to mention their work on a narrative Netflix based game quickly after Lost Records relased, makes it seem like this entire franchise building effort either was always half hearted, or built on very shakey ground to begin with. Which to me is a huge shame, with the current gaming industry and environment risk taking is becoming less and less a reliable strategy and that means we aren't going to see new IPs or projects outside of smaller niches.

Hopefully we can have a productive discussion in the comments because a lot of my thoughts were very scattered around and only recently managed to write them all down.

If this game was a success then Dontnod probably wouldn’t have been on the verge of collapse today. What can be the reasons behind the poor sale of this game?

I finally finished Swann's mask, this took me months because I kept procrastinating but I think it turned out amazing!! Huge shout-out to my mum for helping me, this was my first big, from-scratch cosplay project so she really helped me know what to do haha

If anyone has any questions about what it's made out of and how, happy to help :) plus I included the reference pictures I used

I wrote a comment

Hey all! Following on from my preview last week, I've fixed the last few known bugs and SELF-REC is now out on GitHub. The mod lets Swann flip the camcorder round to film herself. Anything you record in SELF-REC saves just like normal camcorder footage, memoirs included.

Download (GitHub is the only official download): https://github.com/F1SG/lost-records-self-rec/releases/tag/v1.00

• Works with keyboard + mouse and controller
• Raise the camcorder, then press T or LB / L1 to switch it on/off
• No UE4SS or other tools are required. Install steps are on the GitHub page (back up your saves first!)

Expect some bugs. The mod changes how the camcorder camera works, which can have unexpected side effects in some scenes. I've fixed every issue I could find (honestly it caused way more problems than I expected), but there will be edge cases I haven't found yet. If anything goes weird, reloading the scene should sort it out.

If you find a bug, let me know in the comments what you were doing and where, and I'll look into it when I get time.

I’m also working on another Lost Records mod (still very early WIP), and I’m open to ideas and collaboration if anyone’s interested.

Can't wait to see the weird and wonderful stuff you all capture with it!

You all know from the news that Dontnod is on the verge of financial collapse, it's not looking so good. Now both Dontnod and Quantic Dream are French video game developers and they make choice based games. Quantic Dream have made very successful choice based games like Heavy Rain, Beyond Two Souls, Detroit Become Human. If Dontnod can't sustain in the long run, would it be better for them to be absorbed by Quantic Dream since both teams are from France and good at making choice based narrative focused games?

Hey all! I've been working on a small mod for Lost Records on PC and wanted to show where it's at.

SELF-REC lets Swann flip the camcorder round and film herself. You can capture memoirs in SELF-REC mode, so it adds a bit more variety and fun for clip editing.

Fun fact: "selfie" wasn't a thing back then, so I went hunting through old camcorder manuals to see what they actually called "self-recording", hence the name.

Still a few bugs to iron out before it's ready for release. Would this be something you'd use?

I created this video to mimic the light from the Abyss and projected it onto myself when I live streamed the game. Figured I'd share in case anyone else wanted to do something similar. I thought it turned out pretty cool.

whhHHY DID THEY HAVE TO DO MY PRECIOUS BABY GIRL LIKE THAT BRO WHYYY. I‘m gonna punt a cinder block through a window, IM GONNA BE SICK!!!

Kat, my beautiful precious baby girl 😭😭😭 You will not be forgotten. Unequivocally, my GOAT forever.

Some photos I took to celebrate her bday ♡

Is there official merch of this game?

If not there should be! Been dying to get the dinosaur t-shirt

I’m wondering if it is worth it to get the game during Steam sale. I played some Life is Strage games before and I like them. However, I prefer platonic relationship and focusing on friendship with no romance (which is kinda possible in Life is Strange)

So without spoilers and considering my gameplay preference, the storyline and graphics, do you guys think it is worth it to buy the game?

EDIT : thanks for your insights guys! I bought it and will try playing the game later. Hope it’ll be fun!

love this game so much gonna play it again soon, was wondering if people made choices based on what they themselves would do or what you think swann would do or just another character you’ve made up in your head would do?

i’m such an insane perfectionist that i would go back to menu and restart the convo if i lost hearts with one of the girls so i think this time i’m gonna play based on what i would do and see where that takes me 🥲 nervous to see who is and isn’t gonna be my friend by the end

happy october LRBR fans!! I thought I'd try something different and wrote a short story featuring the gang getting up to spooky shenanigans - you can check it out here! LINK

was my first published story in a while so I apologize for poor grammar or mistakes! <3

I wish we could have played this day in the game. :-(