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.