The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit is a graphic adventure from developer Dontnod Entertainment in which you play the nine year old Chris who escapes from his troubled home life through his superhero alter-ego Captain Spirit.
Unveiled at this year’s E3, this lead in for the much-anticipated sequel to Life Is Strange is not only a curious hint at things to come but also one hell of an emotional rollercoaster which plays out over the course of its two hour playtime. We open to a disappointing breakfast with a boy named Chris whose father – despite the early hour – is already hitting the booze, his decent into alcoholism the result of losing his wife and Chris’ mother along with the dissolution of his dreams of being a pro basketball player. These details, along with others are slowly revealed to the player as Chris spends this snowy Saturday morning playing around the two bedroom bungalow, assembling his superhero costume and engages in flights of superhero fantasy as his alter-ego.
Moving away from Arcadia Bay, which played host to the first game and its prequel, Dontnod Entertainment aims to provide a lead into their much-anticipated sequel, which from the few details which have been released will also feature a new cast of characters no doubt to the disappointment of those wanting to see a continuation of Chloe and Max’s story. At the same time while your playing the question continually plays on your mind as to how Chris’ story will link into things.
Following on from the breakfast conversation you are free to explore the house and its surrounding yard while his father shouts abuse at the basketball game and later passes out in his chair. From this point the game sets up various interactions that you can choose to ignore or complete depending on your preference, much like the missions which Chris has laid out for himself to achieve as Captain Spirit which include gathering his team, assembling a costume, beating his snowman nemesis and traveling to a distant planet via the use of his dad’s car. All which will require you to find specific objects like tin foil or a firecracker around the house.
It’s an incredibly immersive experience and one that draws you in with its sense of childhood wonder, be it through Chris playing out battles with his action figures or pretending to use his superhero abilities while performing tasks, like turning on the water heater or putting a log on the fire. At the same time the real and often adult world is never far away as you piece together what happened to his mother by going through his fathers room and listening to her old records or just the interactions he has with his father. Dontnod once more really reveals its ability to show realistic relationships between characters, much less the ability to have players inhabit these characters, find one struggling to repair the relationship between Chris and his father by playing the good son as he clears away the beer cans and puts on the washing.
While it might not be clear by the end of the game how this ties into the main game, The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit is still truly an emotionally heavy experience that perhaps lacks repeat gameplay potential is nonetheless as experience that certainly has us excited to see what comes next, much less how Chris will tie into the story they plan to tell as teased by the end title card.
Unquestionably, this continues the trend of character-driven stories that we have seen grow over the last few years through titles like What Remains of Edith Finch and Firewatch and is a game well worth experiencing for yourself.