DONTNOD has built up a good reputation over the years with me so I had some pretty lofty expectations for Tell Me Why. In some ways it met them but in many ways it did not. I think the biggest thing I found weak with the game were the main characters. I just couldn’t bring myself to care much about Tyler or Allison. I can’t point to anything specific, just a general feeling. I did however enjoy many of the side characters such as Eddy; Sam; Dee; and Michael. I also really was pulled in by the history of their mother Mary Anne and wanting to know more about her past and motivations. Luckily the game got around to that part and I was happy with where it went with it. I was overall alright with the way the main story turned out although I wish I could have pushed it in a different direction on a few points. I will also say the puzzles were very hit and miss. I enjoyed about half of them but many I just felt were obtuse or just made little sense and I solved by luck or trial and error. To the game’s credit you do have ways to bypass certain puzzles by brute force so there is an out on some of them if you want it. I found the gimmick about being able to remember the past and speak through their minds to be both underutilized and lacking depth. The story could have functioned almost as well without it. I do praise the effort that went into creating the lore with the story book the siblings has as children and using it to solve certain puzzles by figuring out which story was needed. It was usually intuitive and only made you read a few pages at a time.
Graphics wise the game was quite good but also not very well optimized. The hair; clothes; water; and object detail were all above average to great. The vistas were mediocre. I do feel it took more hardware than was needed and the frame rate suffered sometimes when it shouldn’t have. The voice acting was great all around. I also found reports and papers on the wall hard to read as you couldn’t zoom in on them and most were hand written. Most games give an option to display the text and this would have been appreciated here.
I played Tell Me Why on Linux using Valve’s Proton. It never crashed on me and I didn’t notice any bugs or glitches. There were three AA settings; six other settings; and a Vsync option. The game uses an auto save feature. The pacing wasn’t the worst I have seen but a manual save system would have still been preferred. Alt-Tab works. You can pause cut scenes.
Game Engine: Unreal
Disk Space Used: 18.01 GB
Game Settings Used: All Very High @ 1080P with Vsync on
GPU Usage: 2-100 %
VRAM Usage: 1795-5452 MB
CPU Usage: 12-39 %
RAM Usage: 3.8-4.7 GB
Frame Rate: 39-144 FPS
Overall I would say this was DONTNOD’s weakest game yet but that being said a weak game from them is still better than a lot of other games. There was enough to keep me interested and more positives than negatives. If you enjoyed games like Life is Strange then, while you may not enjoy this as much, you will still probably enjoy it. I finished the game in nine hours and thirty three minutes. It felt like a good and natural length. I was gifted the game for free. I would say the current price for it of $22.79 CAD is a bit steep and think $15 CAD is a better spot for it.
My Score: 7/10
My System:
AMD Ryzen 5 2600X | 16GB DDR4-3000 CL15 | MSI RX 580 8GB Gaming X | Mesa 20.3.4 | Samsung 970 Evo Plus 500GB | Manjaro 20.2.1 | Mate 1.24.1 | Kernel 5.11.2-1-MANJARO | AOC G2460P 1920*1080 @ 144hz | Proton 5.13.6