In case you don't know Life is Strange is an adventure game that takes place in the seaside town of Arcadia Bay. You play as Maxine Caulfield who has recently transferred to a private school to further her dream of becoming a photographer. Five years prior to the game's start she moved to Seattle with her parents. Arcadia Bay may have been her home town, but she finds that not everything is as it used to be. To start she didn't talk to her childhood best friend after her move and she feels guilty about it.
To cut down on spoilers I'll be talking a bit surface level here. Max encounters her old friend Chloe in the school bathroom. It's not exactly a happy reunion though, because Chloe gets shot by the school's resident creeper! In a shocking turn of events Max finds out that she has the power to rewind time.
Time rewinding is the crux of the entire game. Most modern adventure games feature a slew of hard choices, and Life is Strange is no different. You can however, change any of the "life changing" choices you make. If you make a decision you can rewind time and take it back. On occasion the game has you solve puzzles with Max's time rewinding power as well, but most of the time you're just talking to people.
More than trying to shake up the traditional adventure game formula Life is Strange tackles some interesting topics in its narrative. Video games often don't take on controversial real life topics, but Life is Strange definitely does. Off the top of my head I can think of bullying and suicide. I'd expect these subjects to be eye roll inducing in the average video game narrative, but this one pulls them off exceptionally well.
*sigh* I really like the characters of Max and Chloe. The game can be a bit try hard at times, but there's something endearing about it. Even though a lot of the "teen" dialogue felt fake I still got invested in the characters.
If any of this sounds interesting, then I think you should probably play the game. It's five episodes and each one is around three to four hours long. You're looking at a twenty hour experience maximum. It's available on PS3, PS4, PC, Xbox 360, and Xbox One.
As I said, I have some thoughts on the ending of this game that I need to spill out into the vastness of the Internet. If you don't want to spoil the entire game, then do not cross the line below!
Seriously!
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As soon as I started Life is Strange I figured out how it was going to end. Max wakes up in class after having a vision of a tornado destroying the town. She then leaves class and goes to the bathroom where she takes a photo of a blue butterfly. Chloe comes in, and gets shot and Max saves her by rewinding time.
Time travel stories tend to all blend together at some point. It was fairly obvious (to me at least) that the storm was a result of Max messing with time and space. I had a feeling that the game was going to end with Max choosing whether she wanted to save Chloe, or everyone in the town of Arcadia Bay. It did end that way, but the ending was a lot more rough on me than I thought it would be.
Chloe is a punk who's rebellious on the surface, but good at heart. Over the course of the five episodes you learn that she's actually pretty cool. Her dad died in a car crash shortly before Max and her family moved to Seattle. Chloe was extremely close with her dad and it crushed her emotionally. Max moved shortly after and didn't really keep in contact. Understandably this left her emotionally devastated as well. She then began her punk phase and got expelled from school. Around that time her mother fell in love with a man who is a gigantic tool and got married. She felt betrayed by this. She then became friends with a local girl, and "replaced" Max. It eventually became more than a friendship and Chloe fell in love with the girl.
That girl was Rachel Amber. At the beginning of the game you find out that she's been "missing" for months. Chloe seems to be the only one still looking for her. I don't have it in me to explain the entire plot of this game, but Rachel got into some awful shit.
Despite the fact that Max wasn't in touch with Chloe for years it's very obvious that they're still close friends. Pair this with all the shit Chloe has been thorough and it makes the final choice that much harder to make. Max learns that she can travel through time, because she wants to save Chloe from dying. In fact, Chloe dies multiple times in the game and you have to save her every time. Max's entire goal is to find Rachel Amber, and make Chloe happy. There are times when Chloe flies off the handle and acts like an insufferable child, but as you learn about her deep depression it's totally forgivable.
The final scene of the game sees Max and Chloe in the midst of the world ending storm. Chloe realizes that the only reason that the storm is happening is because Max saved her in the first place. She then asks you to go back in time and let her die....
The screen then blurs out and you are given two choices. Sacrifice Chloe, or sacrifice Arcadia Bay. It was at that moment that I put my head in my hands and didn't know what to do. Do you want to kill your best friend, or kill literally everyone in town. On the surface it seems like an easy choice. Chloe told you to let her go, and that's the choice I ended up making.
What makes me sad is that if presented with that option in real life I probably wouldn't choose it. In video games I always try to choose the selfless options, but in real life I don't know that I'd be able to let go so easily. In the end I watched Chloe's funeral and got ridiculously sad. I think what makes it harder is that I can relate to a lot of things in Life is Strange. I've been severely depressed, and I've had a parent die much before they should have. It sucks.
I don't even really know what I'm trying to say here. Words are just kind of happening at this point.
I really liked the final choice in Life is Strange, but everything in the final episode leading up to it was complete bullshit. The entire plot had already been resolved, so the game presents you with a bunch of dream-state bullshit to pad itself out until you have to sacrifice Chloe or not. It sucks, because everything else came together pretty well. This is generally what happens with time travel stories though. They collapse in on themselves and turn out lackluster in the end. I won't even get into the fact that Max still has to go back in time in order to have Chloe die, so she still ended up messing with time travel. Negating the entire purpose of sacrificing Chloe in the first place...
Life is Strange was cool, and the ending made me sad. Chloe shouldn't have to die. That is all.
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