Transcript
Hey hey folks. I’m gonna be trying something a bit new for this critique video. For starters, you probably noticed that I got rid of my disclaimer about spoilers before the video. I feel that it might have been off-putting. Instead, I have added the spoiler tag to the video title, and will reiterate here: I am going to be talking about Life is Strange in detail on an episode by episode basis. If you do not want any of the game spoiled for you, please stop the video here, and come back after you’ve played it. Ok, let’s get to it!
After I had finished episode one, I felt like Life is Strange was akin to playing a television series. I think it’s the setting and the way everything played out (multiple issues among multiple characters). It sounds like the premise for a high school drama doesn’t it? The main character gets the ability to rewind time. How does she use it to uncover the seedy underbelly of Arcadia Bay? Of course, we’re talking five episodes that are movie length, so in terms of time spent, videogames are definitely still their own beast, even when stylizing themselves after other media.
Episode one is an excellent introduction to the game. It starts off with an introduction to the time mechanic and its various quirks (such as if you take an item and rewind time, you will still have that item, or will be in the spot you were standing). You then are introduced to the Telltale choices that a lot of players should be familiar with. Only this seems like an evolution of the systems Telltale's games are known for. Not only do you get to make choices that have an effect on the story (or at least give the illusion that they do), Max comments about the fallout of the decision after it plays out, giving you a chance to see how things would be if you had taken the other route. You now have the ability to walk yourself through all the pathways available to you before you pick one. This culminates at the end of the episode score chart where you get to see the choices you made and the percentage of players that chose each option. More than other games of this type, Life is Strange had me saying “Oh man, I didn’t even realise I could make that choice” on more than one occasion.
Episode one even has some great uses of the rewind mechanic to solve puzzles, such as getting in the dormitory. Sadly in this area, episode 2 makes a grave misstep. To begin with, there’s a lengthy sequence in the diner where you have to tell Chloe specific details about what she has in her pockets before correctly observing and predicting the future. This is one of those trial and error puzzles where you either take a lot of notes, or rely on your memory, and thus have to replay these sequences over and over again until you get them right. As you may have already guessed, I chose the second option. After that, you get sent on a hunt for beer bottles that actually had me looking up a walkthrough to find where the fifth and final bottle was hidden. This was the only time I did so for the entire game, and it was an odd experience to seek help, not for the solution to a puzzle, but to find where an object was placed.
Now Episode two ends with Kate Marsh on top of the dormitory roof about to jump off to kill herself. The tension with Kate has been building (although the seeds were planted in episode one when you witnessed David harassing her). Max almost kills herself using her powers to get onto the roof, and the consequence is that this conversation you are about to have with Kate has no rewinds. Based on your actions, and the correct answers, you either talk Kate down off the ledge, or she jumps. This was an incredibly intense sequence. At a couple of points, I thought I had said the wrong thing too many times, and she was going to jump. When it ended with her stepping down, I breathed a sigh of relief alongside a release of tension. This is only the second episode, but the game has done such a great job allowing you to play out the consequences of your actions using the rewind mechanic, that even at this early point in the game, taking it away was nerve wracking. Based on where the game heads from this point, looking back it seemed unimportant overall but deprived of its place in the entire narrative, this sequence is one of the most memorable for its effect on the player.
I recently watched an anime series called Erased. That show has been compared to Life is Strange, and episode three is where that comparison makes itself known. In Erased the main character finds himself thrown back in time into his childhood to try and stop a string of disappearances and murders committed on his classmates, so hopefully it will change his present timeline. Near the end of episode three, Chloe makes it known that more than anybody else, she blames the death of her father for everything that has gone wrong in her life. Wanting to help her friend, Max finds herself staring at a picture of the both of them at a younger age when William was still alive. Max’s powers activate a new ability, and she finds herself entering the time period of that photograph. Back in the past, you now have the opportunity to stop William from driving his car to pick up his wife, as it was this action which led to his death. You are successful in this, and head back to the present having significantly changed the course of time. The episode is called Chaos Theory for a reason.
When returning you now find yourself a member of the cool kids at Blackwell Academy. One great touch here, and in later sections of the game when you change time, you can look at the SMS history of your phone, and there will be changes in who is sending you texts and what they are saying. So knowing that William is alive, Max rushes off to see Chloe. William opens the door and the episode ends on Chloe appearing to see her friend Max after all this time. Chloe turns out to be in a wheelchair, paralysed from the neck down. Out of all the possibilities that might have been thrown our way to shock the player, this is definitely one I did not even consider.
The next episode begins with Max and Chloe talking about Chloe’s accident, and reminiscing about better times. You find out that Chloe’s medical bills are bankrupting their family and causing friction between her parents. You also discover that Chloe’s pain keeps getting worse and that she probably doesn’t have long left. This leads to the toughest choice I think I have ever made in a videogame. Chloe has had such a great time spending the last day and night with her best friend, that she wants this day to be her last. She asks you to tinker with her medical equipment so that it kills her. Now it’s one thing to say you support euthanasia in theory, it’s another to be confronted by it in real life. Having to make a choice in a videogame is admittingly closer to the theory end of the spectrum, but the decision felt momentous nonetheless. What made the whole experience less impactful is that right after your decision, Max decides to return to the past and change things back to the way things were, resulting in that memorable moment being completely redundant. This is foreshadowing to how episode five is going to play out.
Episode four ends with Max being drugged, Chloe being shot in the head, and the reveal that instead of Nathan, Mr Jefferson the art teacher is the psycho behind the recent abductions, disappearances, and murder. I imagine there are clues that I might have missed, but it didn’t feel that surprising a revelation, or entirely unreasonable either. I kind of just nodded and said, “Ok then. You better have a good explanation for this episode five”. Sadly, there really wasn't one, or maybe the whole mystery angle wasn't made to be as important as time travel powers and environmental catastrophe, even if the disappearance of Chloe's friend Rachel was the inciting incident.
Trapped in Jefferson’s art dungeon, Max uses her photograph power to travel through time. It takes one or two tries to get back to the start of the game. In this classroom setting, you can fix everything without having to leave the room. You send a text message to David, informing him of Jefferson’s lair, comfort Kate so she knows people care and doesn’t despair to the point of wanting to kill herself. You confront Victoria about her insecurities, and then submit a photo to Mr Jefferson for the ‘everyday heroes’ contest. Time rights itself, and Max is on her way to San Francisco, ready to live the life she deserves. Everybody’s happy! Well not quite. If you remember, the game starts off with the vision of a town wrecking tornado. As the game has gone on, whales have washed up on the beach, and there’s even been another moon in the sky. Obviously, Max’s time powers have consequences, at least from a causality standpoint. Chloe phones you at the gallery yelling about the town being destroyed. Everything Max has tried to do for five episodes has been to help her best friend. She can’t just let Chloe die with the rest of the town, even if it means destroying her happiness. It looks like it’s time to go back to the past.
From this point on, the game becomes very surreal. There’s an extended dream sequence in which Max is trapped in her own subconscious. You get to relive horrors, and you get to relive all the fun you had with Chloe throughout the five episodes. You finally talk to yourself at the two whales diner, with the whole town of Arcadia Bay along with your subconscious blaming you for their deaths and unhappiness. It was only after the game ended that I realised this was a setup for the final (and only) major choice of the last episode. Chloe in an act of selflessness believes that all the problems are because of her. By trying to save her, you’ve been ripping at the fabric of the universe, and the tornado that will wipe out the town and kill everybody is an act of balancing the scales. Chloe believes that in sacrificing herself, she can save everyone in the town. Her reasoning is that all those people do not deserve to die because of her. This is the final decision; save Chloe, or save Arcadia Bay.
I chose to save Chloe. Let me explain why, as this was almost as difficult a decision as to whether or not I would kill her when she asked at the start of episode four. I think that sacrificing Chloe is the “right” thing to do, and I put the word ‘right’ in quotation marks. An entire town’s worth of people is not worth the life of one teenage girl. I don’t think it even has to do with the actions of Chloe herself (is any one life worth the lives of many?). Despite all the pain she suffered, I can’t say I actually liked her as a character. You would think this would make her easier to sacrifice. That it would be simpler to do the “right thing”. The reason I chose to sacrifice the town is that despite these very valid points, the whole game revolved around Max and Chloe. Max’s power was first used to save Chloe’s life, and the rest of your time spent in the game is rescuing her over and over again. If in the end, I had chosen to sacrifice her, my entire time spent in this game would have felt worthless. Even more so than when the decision of whether or not to euthanise Chloe was made redundant.
Sacrificing the town isn’t exactly a clean break either, even with this reasoning. There’s a lengthy sequence in the final episode, where you help save lives in the tornado. Not only that but what about Kate? There are plenty of actions that are made just as useless by choosing the lives of the townsfolk over the life of Chloe. What does this mean then? Is the game trying to say that the outcome doesn’t matter? That it’s only what we do in the moment? That it’s our intentions that are important? Or is simply a damned if you do, damned if you don’t scenario, where you’re asked to weigh up what’s most important to you? Would you sacrifice the world for one person you genuinely care about, or would you do the “right thing” no matter what? Life is Strange may not have left me with a satisfying ending or an answer to this question, but it sure did gave me a lot to think about.
