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Score: 9.0/10
Platform: Xbox One (reviewed), Windows PC
Developer:Dontnod Entertainment
Publisher:Microsoft Game Studios
Release Date:August 28, 2020
ESRB:M
Were it not built around a legitimately tantalizing mystery filled with compelling and dynamic characters, I might be tempted to think Tell Me Why was designed as gleeful troll bait for that small but vocal minority of intolerant players who see any game that doesn’t star a straight white cisgender dude shooting guns and visiting strip clubs as a personal attack.
French studio Dontnod Entertainment’s (Life is Strange, Vampyr) latest work of interactive fiction is a lovingly and at times heartbreakingly told tale of a pair of twins in Alaska. Its opening scene shows one of them — Tyler, a tween — in a police station, clearly in shock as he confesses to killing his mom. It then zooms ahead 10 years, where we see Tyler getting ready to leave the juvenile residential home in which he’s spent the last decade while his sister Alyson excitedly prepares to come pick him up.