Square Enix has released the first installment of their episodic game Life is Strange and it’s everything you’d expect an angsty coming-of-age story to be. A shy, awkward teenage girl begins developing in strange, supernatural ways who uncovers a mystery she must help solve. She’s torn between wanting to use her skills for the good of others while also looking out for herself. Her actions may be noble in the moment but the consequences will affect everyone around her.
The Story
I’ll keep the spoilers to a minimum here, but seeing as the story is the main focus of the game, giving away key details is unavoidable. The title follows the story of Max Caulfield, an 18-year-old girl attending Blackwell Academy in Arcadia Bay, Oregon on an arts scholarship for her photography skills. She’s behind the times when it comes to the cameras she uses; her classmates are using digital cameras while she can’t hide her obsession with Polaroid film.
One night she has a strange vision of herself watching a violent storm heading towards Arcadia’s lighthouse. She wakes up incredibly flustered and heads to the bathroom. While there she witnesses a classmate murder a teenage girl.
Max rushes to help the girl and then suddenly she’s back in her photography class having major déjà vu and questioning whether what she saw was real. Max discovers she has the ability to go back in time and change the outcome of certain events. Posters of this missing girl, Rachel Amber, appear everywhere and Max can’t stop thinking about her.
Soon, Max reunites with Chloe - an old friend who was best friends with the missing girl. Chloe somehow triggers Max’s vision of the lighthouse again, but this time she follows a deer instead and finds out something terrible is going to happen to Arcadia in the next couple of days.
The Choices
The main point of Life is Strange is that your actions have consequences. I played through the first episode three times, making different decisions each time. Some of the choices that have consequences are pretty mundane. For example, there’s a plant in Max’s dorm room that you can choose to water or not. You can also choose to erase something mean written on someone’s whiteboard next to their door. It’s not clear why these actions are important, but it could have a major consequence down the line. Uncertainty follows you throughout the game.
These little actions seem difficult to decide and the bigger scenarios are even rougher. There’s a scene where Max witnesses a friend named Kate being harassed by the school’s head of security. The guard is yelling at Kate and the option to intervene in the situation comes up. I choose to not intervene and take a photo of the guard harassing Max’s friend. Kate ends up getting furious with Max for not helping her out, but the photo I took of the situation comes back in another area of the game. If I didn’t take the photo of Kate, Max wouldn’t have ended up inadvertently helping another person in a volatile situation down the line. In this sense, Life is Strange is spot on; there are situations where we think, “Maybe if I’d gone right instead of left that day, my life would be different.”
The Verdict
The first episode of Life is Strange won’t WOW you. It’s not immediately known why Max has the ability to time travel, why she’s only limited to head back to change the outcome of immediate scenarios, or why this Rachel Amber girl is so important. The story will pull you in though based off curiosity alone.
Yes, the dialogue is right out of the mouth of millennials. You’ll hear the terms selfie and chillax get thrown around, see gag-worthy hipster-inspired haircuts and clothing, as well as the archetypical jocks and mean girls, but that’s all part of setting up the game’s 2013 scene. The developers have delicately mixed reality with the supernatural.
Depending on your decisions, you can make Max Caulfield come into her own and stand up for what she believes is right or you can keep her as reserved and unsure of herself as she was when we met her. An interesting part of Life is Strange is Max is never sure she’s making the right decision in the moment. If you’re new to the episodic genre, Life is Strange will give you a pretty solid start. Developers have made it clear even the smallest of actions may have the biggest consequence. Hopefully we get more of both in episode two.
