Life Is Strange (2015)

NOTE: SPOILERS - Seriously, do yourself a favor and play it first. Then come back and read this analysis.

A choice-driven, episodic game in the same vein as all of Telltale's properties, Life is Strange follows the freakish time-manipulating adventures of Max Caulfield at a prestigious art school in the Pacific Northwest. In essence, it is part Twin Peaks, part "Twilight Zone," and part The Catcher in the Rye. References to all works are scattered throughout (from the location to the last name of the main character). When the story starts getting especially strange and crazy, it might betray the grounded, relatable nature of the first episode, but is not unexpected as a result.

The story itself delves deep into issues that many people - especially younger folks - deal with. They deftly maneuver to include issues of bullying, suicide, and drug use while tackling themes of lost innocence, coming of age, and dealing with regret.

The long and short of the game is that it's one of the better choice-based games with the added twist of an interesting and well executed time rewind power. It's extremely touching, focused on two young women rekindling an old friendship in the aftermath of what could have been a horrible tragedy. It offers some cringe-worthy dialogue at times (sometimes comes off as "what older people think younger people sound like"), but it also features some of the most tense and difficult decisions ever asked of a player. Episode 4 is the pinnacle of the game, featuring arguably the most challenging choice I've ever had to confront personally, plus one of the better, more organic, and satisfying puzzles to solve. It does kind of fall apart at the end a bit, and its timeline of events could have used a little more ironing out, but it's still an incredible entry into the choice-based gaming.

Instead of doing a breakdown of the game overall, it might make more sense to tackle some of the bigger themes, and in particular why I might be one of the few who actively liked the final choice presented at the end. I was struck upon replay with how much it seemed to encourage players to dig into the meaning of things that it would make for a more interesting post to break down some of that, rather than a straight-forward review of it as a game. So indulge me as I do a deeper dive into some of that stuff.

One of the complaints people had at the end was that there aren't any reasons given for why Max developed the powers. By the conclusion, we are left without answers to those questions. Certainly, it's easy to understand why some would not be thrilled by that prospect. However, the game was never so much about the power itself. It was always about the characters and what Max did with it. There never needed to be an explanation as to why she got the powers.

Yet one thing that could have used further explanation is why her powers created the tornado seen in her apocalyptic vision of Arcadia Bay's destruction. Throughout the game, they loosely connect Max's time manipulation powers to things like the Butterfly Effect or Chaos Theory. Essentially, we as players are meant to understand that Max manipulating time is also manipulating reality and causing all of these unusual events: an unscheduled eclipse, snow during the summer, and a bunch of beached whales and dead birds everywhere. Max's power is also clearly behind the impending tornado. While they do a relatively solid job connecting that idea for the players, they don't exactly produce any super compelling evidence for the characters to buy into within the game. Max and Chloe both seem sold on the idea that that is the truth, but there isn't really much evidence for them to believe it whole-heartedly. Confounding it more is that the sequence of events is not that Max uses her power, then has premonitions of the twister. In fact, she has the vision first. Then she learns she can manipulate time. If they had just sorted that out properly, more people likely would have bought into the idea that the characters know it's cause and effect.

Of course, the biggest controversy of the game is its conclusion. When all is said and done, players are left with one binary choice: sacrifice Arcadia Bay or sacrifice Chloe. First off, I'd like to point out the beauty of phrasing here. The final choice isn't who you want to save. It's who you feel you must sacrifice. The game is by no means presenting Max as a hero at this point, and it aims at the harsher side of decision-making. Sometimes, you have a choice to make that just sucks either way. By phrasing it as "sacrifice" instead of "save," it forces you to confront the fact that it is a choice, and even if you find it a rather easy decision to make, there is an alternative. You don't have to let Chloe die again.

Some have argued that such a choice renders the rest of the game irrelevant. This is essentially the Mass Effect 3 argument, but it's not quite accurate. See, Mass Effect 3's concluding choice feels crappy because it feels oversimplified and disregards the point of the game. With Life is Strange, the finale serves the primary theme of the game. It's a video game take on the philosophical "trolley problem." More to the point, it marks the conclusion of Max's development either way.

So much of the game is about loss of innocence and dealing with regret. Max is an aspiring photographer, in which she constantly wants to snap images that "capture a moment in time." She's constantly stuck looking at the past, often at the cost of the present and future. The trauma endured when witnessing her childhood friend Chloe getting shot and killed in the bathroom is compounded by the guilt she feels from having lost touch with her. This was her best friend as a kid, and they had grown apart. Everything after that moment is simply Max trying to get more time with Chloe, to avoid that feeling of guilt and regret. All of the time manipulation is designed to retain that innocence of the past. She doesn't want to grow up and deal with serious problems of the adult world. So, she treats her time rewind power like she does her camera - just a way to re-live a moment in time.

The phantom doe is a bit of a strange creative decision that gets no real explanation and has sparked much debate among fans. Many felt betrayed by it just disappearing without reasons, as some argued it was the connection between Max and the missing Rachel Amber.  However, it could be argued that the spirit doe didn't represent Rachel, nor did it even represent Max herself. It represented the innocence of childhood - something fading rapidly, but still Max pursued. She's seen chasing the doe several times, but it only disappears completely once they find the truth about Rachel. Max's innocence is completely gone when she's forced to confront the horrible reality of a supremely serious situation. At the same time, it was her pursuit of that innocence - spending all that time with Chloe, trying to mend that friendship - that brought them to that point. Chasing the doe drove her to the point where she could no longer go back to those happier days.

Some of this is also displayed in Max's outfits. In the first three episodes, she is always wearing a shirt that depicts a deer or doe in some fashion. Does typically represent innocent creatures, baby deer that are cute and harmless. At that point, Max is still chasing the past. She is trying to fix her old friendship with Chloe while still a bit ignorant of the more sinister plot of Rachel Amber's disappearance.

After the events of Episode 3, Max cannot escape her feelings of guilt anymore. She no longer wears a shirt featuring a doe. Instead, she dawns a black shirt featuring a rugged looking butterfly that appears to include a skull. It's substantially darker, depicting the loss of innocence completely. She knows she can't ever go back to those more pure times, and she's now fully wrapped up in the dark and horrifying events of a serial kidnapper.

Max's chase for innocence lines up well with Mr. Jefferson's scheme as well. A famed photographer, Mark Jefferson has made a name for himself by obsessing over one thing: capturing the moment where innocence is lost. That is why he works at a school and pursues teenagers. They're just on the cusp of adulthood and having no choice but to abandon notions of returning to the happier times of childhood. He's surrounded by people losing innocence and gaining more cynicism and darkness. While Max tries to hunt down those fleeting moments of past pleasantries, Jefferson hunts her down to capture the moment where she loses it.

All of this creates a cohesion of specifics and themes. Max being into photography serves her main arc of learning to come of age and become more of an adult. Pictures are capturing moments in time. This hobby is not just some pretentious art for her to randomly be interested in. It fits her character's development and the primary theme of learning to get out of the past and live in the present, ideally in a way that prevents regret.

Similarly, Jefferson's obsession with photographing the moment when "light turns to dark" or innocence is lost fits the theme as well. He is trying to capture Max in the moment she is trying to avoid, pitting them as natural thematic enemies. In a sense, Jefferson is the darkness to Max's light. The two are opposite sides of the same coin. This is represented through their actual photography. Jefferson tries to capture dark, tortured images while Max has a tendency of snapping photos of more positive, cheerful things.




The idea that the final choice renders the entire game pointless is not entirely fair, nor accurate. It's worth keeping in mind that everything that happens prior to that moment - including all of the alternate timelines and rewound scenarios - all happened for Max. Whether you choose to go back to the beginning and let Chloe die or to move forward and screw over the town, Max will remember virtually everything that happened. She will have to live with further guilt either way, and live with the fact that she did possess the ability to change things. Letting Arcadia Bay get destroyed does not render everything you did meaningless, but it would indicate a level of selfishness that she wouldn't have otherwise developed into.

Indeed, the entire point of the game is really about Max dealing with the guilt of failing to keep in touch with a dear friend, and wishing she had more time. All of the interactions with other characters, whether it was Victoria or Warren or Kate, all serve to show character development. The whole thing is told from Max's perspective, complete with her inner dialogue, explaining her feelings and opinions. She is not a stand-in for you, the player, even though you get a choice in how she develops. It should be clear, then, that no matter what you choose at the end, Max will continue about her life knowing all of those things did happen. And she will have to carry additional burdens as well.

At times, I have been accused of making great stretches to create a pretentious justification for the flaws of the final choice. Certainly, binary decisions are rarely amazing, and indeed the timeline of events is flawed in a way detrimental to the specific plot. However, replaying the game in a week - start to finish with no breaks as we did when it was being released - I'm more convinced than ever that I am not making wide leaps in my explanations here. This is not to suggest that I believe my interpretations are "correct." There have been many theories and commentaries about what certain things mean, all of them every bit as valid as I believe mine to be. Great art is something that will impact people differently. Great stories will allow different consumers to take different things from them. Maybe the doe doesn't represent that sense of innocence to other people, but it absolutely seemed that way to me.

So, despite some noticeable flaws and missteps here and there, it's hard for me to call the game anything other than great. It's one of the better point-and-click style of choice-driven games. It handles choices in vastly better and more interesting ways than Telltale has in any of there games, to be frank. I love that the game had me reading into things, challenging me more. More importantly, I adored that it presented some decisions that actually made me reconsider my positions on real life issues. And, admittedly, it's one of the only games that ever made me tear up (which it did both times, even when I knew what was coming).

Life Is Strange is one of the more powerful entries in narrative gaming, and it's one of the better examples of just how much empathy and emotion interactive media can generate.

Reductive Rating: Incredible!
(Rating Scale: It's Terrible..., Pretty Bad, It's Fine, Pretty Good, Incredible!)