10 Years Later, Life is Strange Feels More Impactful Than Ever
Choices, consequences.
If you could change the past, would you? We’ve agonized over that tantalizing question for centuries, exploring it through every kind of entertainment imaginable. That includes video games, and in 2015, one of the most harrowing, emotional looks at the consequences of time travel was created with Life is Strange. One part supernatural thriller, one part teen drama, Life is Strange revitalized adventure games, and a decade later it’s now a riveting, albeit flawed, classic.
When I say Life is Strange is a teen drama, I mean a CW channel, One Tree Hill-like kind of drama. French developer Dontnod’s interpretation of American high school isn’t entirely accurate, but boy is it fun. Characters spout off ridiculous lines like “Are you cereal?” Or “Ready for the mosh pit, Shaka Brah.” It’s somewhat of a parody, but everything works in spite of that — with a story that’s genuinely full of heart and personality.
Life is Strange has a striking art style meant to evoke the feeling of an indie film, using a lot of unique camera angles and lighting effects.
You play as 18-year-old Maxine Caulfield, who’s returned to her childhood home of Arcadia Bay, Oregon to attend the prestigious Blackwell Academy. After experiencing a vision of the town getting destroyed during class, Max excuses herself to the restroom only to find a classmate shooting a young woman. In this catastrophic moment, Max discovers she has the power to rewind time, and the young woman is her childhood friend, and crush, Chloe.
As a narrative adventure game, the story quite literally drives everything in Life is Strange. It follows the formula established by Telltale, where you’re largely going through dialogue and making choices that branch the story, interspersed with some light exploration.
But the richness of the characters and world is where Life is Strange truly shines, letting you get to know characters and their daily struggles intimately — all while Max grapples with her newfound powers and the dubious morality of rewinding time. Life is Strange isn’t afraid to delve into tough subjects, touching on abusive step-parents, suicide, parental pressure, and the teenage desire to fit in.
Life is Strange is packed with a lot of details to uncover, about the city of Arcadia Bay and its people.
All of this is filtered through Max herself, an earnest young woman who only wants happiness for herself and those she loves. But in pursuit of that goal, the Butterfly Effect starts to set in — with her time traveling to save people and make certain choices bringing about new problems. While your time travel might feel like an innocent game mechanic at first, you quickly see it can have dire ramifications. That’s a fascinating approach to an actual game mechanic and one that makes the player constantly question what they’re doing. Each choice becomes an agonizing problem, even if it’s as simple as rewinding time to ace a test.
Life is Strange is an incredibly simple game to play, you’re only moving a character around and making choices. But the beauty of the game lies in how it bridges the gap for interactive entertainment, feeling less like a game and more like a movie you control, in a good way.
In the heyday of Telltale adventure games were all the rage, like The Walking Dead and The Wolf Among Us. But the genre slowly went away as technology advanced, and more games were able to achieve cinematic standards. But in 2015, Life is Strange made a real case for these kinds of experiences, riveting stories that could only be delivered through complex choice-driven dialogue. At the same time, even from the first game, Life is Strange has been an unabashed queer story. Max's exploration of her bisexuality is a key driver in the story, along with overarching themes of accepting your true self and building community. This is especially present in her friendship, and potential romance with Chloe, who’s almost the perfect foil to Max. Where Max is quiet and reserved, Chloe is loud and abrasive.
The way Life is Strange explores relationships, community, and queerness, still feels important to this day.
Because of all those elements, Life is Strange has a unique identity unlike anything else out there — and the series has continued to build on these pillars ever since. It’s a testament to how strong that first game is that the series is still going strong and the latest game, Double Exposure, even brought Max back as the protagonist.
Life is Strange is one of those timeless stories, the kind that anyone can find something from their adolescence to identify with.
It’s certainly not perfect — the pacing is often sluggish, it does nothing to innovate gameplay-wise, and the writing has that cartoon-like feel most of the time. But despite its flaws, Life is Strange has proven to be surprisingly enduring. Ten years later, its message of kindness and acceptance feels more vital than ever.
