Played on Xbox One (base)

Developed by DontNod

Released 27th August 2020

Tell Me Why is the 4th original creative IP that DontNod has created alongside titles like Vampyr and the Life is Strange series. As a whole, it's a traditional DontNod game with a more grounded approach to storytelling as Director Florent Guillaume wanted to tell a story that circulates the topics of things like contradictory memories, gun rights, poverty and more. It's not the strongest experience DontNod has provided but it does score itself a couple of points, here and there.

Story/Gameplay

The story and gameplay are essentially one. The narrative of this game gives me mixed feelings. On one side it's a plain and mundane story with an intense family drama story integrated into it. However, it also has a unique mystery behind it. As much as I enjoyed exploring the secrets of the residents in Delos Crossing, it felt like every secret discovered or choice made wasn't impactful and was quite lacklustre as you get a very similar (if not practically the same) ending, despite what you chose. This made it more difficult to engage me in growing my knowledge of the town while bettering my relationship with the characters. I can't however discard this game's uniqueity of mystery. Uncovering the hidden details, which unfortunately made no impact, was enjoyable, shocking and intriguing.

Characters

The characters get better as you proceed with the game. At first, they are pretty bland and not written as well as you thought they would considering DontNod are the developers behind this game. However, each character has their enjoyable and well-done moments in the game from Alyson's breakdown to Michael opening up about his feelings - these were my favourite moments. Unfortunately, the only time voice acting or dialogue was consistently good was during emotional and intense moments, while during the other times, they were either sighable at best or just simply uninteresting.

Atmosphere

The atmosphere of this game is wonky. When I did make an effort to listen to it, the music was nice and soothing, and the snowy peaks of mountains in the background enhanced the imagery, however, the game's lighting felt like there was a constant filter on it. As such, this made the game feel unnatural, especially in cases where I wasn't jaw-dropped by the environment and was nearly the most immersion-breaking element, only second to the lip-synching.

Story / Gameplay - 6.5/10

Characters - 7/10

Atmosphere - 6/10