Life is Strange – PS4

Picture yourself gazing out to sea, wind whipping through your hair and rain lashing down your face, battling the gale to stop yourself tumbling down the cliff to the rocks below. A tornado whirls, bigger than you’ve ever seen, vicious and beautiful all at once. The end of the world is here.

But wait. You’re actually in class, listening to a photography lecture as the autumn sun streams through the window. Was it a dream? It felt so real. Hella weird.

Like Max’s visions, Life is Strange is a polarising experience. It certainly has been subject to a lot of love and hate over the years. While some love the game and all its quirks, others cite dodgy graphics and dialogue as failings of one of the most influential interactive story games of recent years. So, what’s the verdict?

Spoilers abound for gameplay. Minor plot spoilers.

“This Action will have Consequences…”

You are Max, a shy 18-year-old who returns to her sleepy hometown of Arcadia Bay, Oregon, to attend an elite academy for up-and-coming artists. She’s a true hipster, obsessed with photography and journaling. After she takes a photograph of a shining blue butterfly (subtle!) and witnesses a girl getting shot in the bathroom, she discovers she can rewind time.

Max saves the girl’s life, and over the course of the next week, she learns this is her childhood friend, Chloe, and they become closer than ever. They investigate the disappearance of Chloe’s friend, Rachel Amber, help Max hone her powers, and try to stop Max’s vision of a destroyed Arcadia Bay before it’s too late.

It sounds larger-than-life and, ultimately, it is. Time travel and hard-hitting choices about the fate of the world are high-concept themes that are more suited to a superhero movie. Max begins using her powers as a typical person surely would. If she spills a drink on her friend’s book, says the wrong thing, or wants to warn a classmate that a roll of toilet paper is flying straight for her head, she’ll have the option to rewind. It’s often a game to her and Chloe as they figure out her powers, and it brings them closer together.

However, there’s an undercurrent of manipulation involved. Is it ethical to learn something about your classmate to then rewind and mention it first in a bid for them to like you? From then, it evolves even further. These rewinds soon become a matter of life and death as you make changes to the world around you or try to talk people out of decisions that can lead to tragedy.

Whenever you make a decision that will affect the story down the line, the butterfly will flutter in the corner of the screen, with the words, ‘This action will have consequences…’. This phrase is now iconic in interactive story games. It’s a simple way to hint ominously at the story ahead and make you second-guess your decisions.

Unlike in subsequent Life is Strange entries, which focus on characters with different powers, this shows how interwoven the themes are in this game. Your choices matter, but if you can rewind time, do they at all? The fact that your decisions are not always in stone brings a powerful thematic point to the game. This thoughtful approach is why the first will always be the best.

Sometimes, though, your powers are useless in the course of the story. That’s when it really hits home: you can’t escape fate. This is potentially the primary issue with Life is Strange. When the credits roll, all the decisions you made can be undone by one final choice.

I’m not sure this matters. I’d argue that the journey is the goal, not the destination…and how Max gets there is, crucially, how she makes her final decision.

“Everything is a Picture Waiting to be Taken”

…as Max says. Life is Strange has a unique art style that is impressive even nearly a decade later. Everything looks brushed with watercolour paint. It’s a style that shows the drive the developers had to delicately and artistically craft a story that I think the characters themselves would appreciate.

Oddly, I prefer the graphics in the original to the recent remaster. While some facial animations are more lifelike and shading is more sophisticated in the latter, overall, features seem smoothed out and less interesting. Chloe actually looks like a whole different character. For the price, I’d have wanted the characters to look more like those in Life is Strange: True Colors than an over-filtered, hardly changed version of a game that still holds up today. If you’re considering buying the remaster, I’d only suggest doing so if you don’t have the old version stashed away in your Steam library.

This unique style choice may have meant making sacrifices elsewhere. The lip-synching is more than a bit off. In the wrong light, the whites of eyes have an odd blue sheen to them. Sometimes the game loop feels like you’re locked in a point-and-click slog to gobble up all the context you can. But the voice acting is mostly stellar, and the environments are rich and exploding with things to find.

Speaking of pictures – not only do you need to take photos for crucial story beats, but there are also 10 optional photos to find in each chapter. Sometimes you may need to coax a squirrel out from the brush to manufacture an interesting scene, while other times you can take advantage of the picturesque scenery of Arcadia Bay for your moneymaking shot.

Top tip: go to your journal and navigate to the Optional Photos tab. There you’ll see hand-drawn clues for each optional photo. Perfect for completionists like me who don’t want to cheat with a walkthrough.

At the end of every chapter, we can look at the choices our friends or the wider Life is Strange community made, from the mundane to the most influential. It’s almost like a soft multiplayer feature and it brings an exciting element of justification or regret to your decisions. If 79% of players accepted Warren’s invitation to go to the drive-in, why didn’t you? How will that impact the rest of the game?

“I’m Hella Ready”

“Are you cereal?”

“Ready for the mosh pit, shaka brah.”

“With great power comes great bull$*@#.”

“Go $%*! your selfie.”

Love or hate it, Life is Strange has stood the test of time. How many video games do you remember any lines from, let alone this many? I’m pretty sure this game popularised the trend of saying “hella” as a modifier outside of California. It’s cringe, but I don’t think it’s the kind of cringe that arises from adults trying (and failing) to sound like young people. I think it’s just teens being teens. It gives the game more character and makes it more memorable, and I’m all for it.

Despite this, the game isn’t scared to dive into more serious issues. It uses its fantastical concepts of time travel and the apocalypse – fantastic hooks – to shape a more vulnerable, grounded story.

Life is Strange shines brightest in these moments. It’s a story about a girl simply doing her best and trying to fit in. It’s about teenagers dealing with slut-shaming, suicide, questioning sexuality, and everything else that comes under the umbrella that encompasses growing up and navigating life – real-world issues that many players have faced or are facing. They can see themselves in these characters, who are often unlikeable, flawed, and well-rounded. It’s an emotional ride that is mature in how it deals with sensitive issues.

I think this is ultimately why people are still talking about Life is Strange. It’s quirky, it’s a little cringy, but it’s real.

“You Better not Rewind and take that Kiss back”

The relationship between Max and Chloe is at the core of Life is Strange. For some, it may have even been formative.

Players will interpret the relationships within the narrative differently, which will affect their choices in turn. Some will only see Warren as a viable love interest, despite Max’s potential indifference towards him as anything but a friend. Some might miss the option to romance Chloe completely, depending on how they feel towards her throughout the story. Will you take the blame for something that could get you expelled? Will you go along with her antics, even though they could lead to disaster? Some see Chloe as exciting and spontaneous, while others will see her how most of the adults in her life do: destructive and selfish.

I could never go that far. She’s a flawed character who has had to go through a lot of pain and trauma over the last 5 years. Her father died, her best friend moved away, her stepfather is a step-douche, and her best friend (or, maybe, lover?) Rachel has disappeared. Of course she rebelled. She sometimes goes too far, but her real weakness is that she cares too much, despite claiming to not care at all.

No spoilers here, but Max and Chloe’s relationship is what fuels the final, most vital decision of the game. This is a shared theme of Life is Strange and its subsequent entries. Often, it doesn’t matter what you think the right action is out of context. What does matter is how you treat people. In particular, the one or ones you connect with the most throughout the story.

Final Thoughts

We can see what makes Life is Strange special in the varying success of its sequels. The sequel was, in my opinion, too large and meandering, with too many characters and settings to feel as connected. Life is Strange: True Colors, on the other hand, kept its story intimate, allowing you to get to know the small cast of characters and get truly invested.

Life is Strange still holds a candle in many players’ hearts due to this intimacy in the face of spectacle. You care about Max, Chloe, and the colourful characters you meet. Arcadia Bay is a home, despite the apocalyptic events that threaten to destroy it. But ultimately, like with all Life is Strange games, the relationship between the two main characters is the thread that stitches it all together. And whether Max’s powers last forever or not… our memories will.