YouTuber and Let’s Player Seán William “Jacksepticeye” McLoughlin has apologized for criticizing Life Is Strange 2’s political commentary when he played the game on his channel back in 2019.
When Don’t Nod released Life Is Strange 2 episodically over the course of 2019, it attempted to tackle a wide array of political issues such as police brutality, racism, and immigration through the eyes of two Mexican-American brothers named Sean and Daniel. The pair spend the episodic adventure game on the run from law enforcement after a Seattle cop kills their father and Daniel’s latent telekinetic powers activate and kill the officer. As they walk through the United States, they’re confronted with all sorts of racism, abuse, and systemic failures.
Life Is Strange 2 throws any pretense of not being a political story out the window before the first episode is over, and while this was a subject of praise for a lot of critics seven years ago, it was also a point of contention for players who thought its commentary was forced or heavyhanded. Well, a lot has happened in the years since, and it’s harder to deny just how true to life Life Is Strange 2 was. McLoughlin, who played through the whole game in 2019, signed off on the final episode of his Let’s Play critiquing Don’t Nod’s writing as “pushing one very specific agenda,” though he admitted he was “not the type of person to tackle these sort of political issues” and wasn’t trying to “downplay” the realities of being brown in America.
“I feel like there’s a lot more depth to this than you’re really tackling,” McLoughlin said. “I hope I’m not coming across as ignorant or anything because that’s not what I’m trying to say. If anything, I want to learn more about it. I want to get into it and I want to understand what’s going on a lot more but these things just don’t really shine a light on it that much. If anything it is just shining a light on it and then taking the light off immediately. It does suck that this stuff happens in the real world and I really wish it didn’t. Humans are complicated and a lot of humans are fucked up and have no empathy at all but hopefully we we get to a better place soon and hopefully things don’t get worse before they get better.”
Well, it seems the Life Is Strange community didn’t forget McLoughlin’s criticism, as a thread recently started circulating on X asking fans to offer up “the worst Life Is Strange takes” they’d seen, and one fan responded, “White men playing Life Is Strange 2 and calling it unrealistic and too political.” Another fan tagged McLoughlin and said they were still waiting for an apology from the YouTuber for his comments in 2019, and McLoughlin replied by apologizing and admitting he had been “naive.”
Did I really say that? Jesus! I’m sorry. How naive I was. I’ve learned a great deal in the last 8 years
— Jacksepticeye (@Jacksepticeye) February 17, 2026
While McLoughlin said back in 2019 that he hoped things wouldn’t get worse before they got better in America, they unfortunately have, and as more stories have come out about ICE’s violent treatment of immigrants and the abhorrent conditions of the camps where it’s holding detained individuals, it’s become harder for anyone to deny the state of things in this country. Life Is Strange 2 wasn’t overly political, it was actually pretty honest about how cartoonishly evil these people are. It’s a shame things had to reach this level for so many people to realize that.
