Life Is Strange Guide

You play Max Caulfield, a photography student who returns to her hometown of Arcadia Bay to attend the prestigious Blackwell Academy. Max is shy, loves selfies and retro cameras, and also has the power to rewind time. She learns this latter fact while saving the life of Chloe, a punkish, blue-haired Blackwell dropout. Max and Chloe used to be best friends, but fell out of touch. After the incident, the two reconnect, and Chloe enlists Max's help in searching for her other friend, Rachel, who recently went missing.There are a few puzzles in Life Is Strange, and the best of them use Max's rewind in interesting ways. These interactions act as welcome pace breakers from the drama, but do occasionally tip towards padding and busywork. At one point, in episode two, Max is forced to hunt down a series of empty bottles in a junkyard. It's a sequence so tedious that it earns a self-deprecating reference in a later chapter. The story is part character drama, part detective mystery, part sci-fi adventure. It's in trying to balance these three strands that Life Is Strange most frequently stumbles. In one episode, Max must search a character's room for clues. The character in question is sat in the room, inwardly crying over the despair of recent events. In the situation, it feels weird to be in detective mode—the game undercutting its drama for mystery, even as the mystery attempts to set up a greater drama. It's difficult to pick apart these faults here without spoiling things. Needless to say, the tone is sometimes incongruous. Life Is Strange is at its best when focusing on the characters. Initially archetypes, each gains depth and motivation as the story moves forward. Max's enemies have vulnerabilities, and her allies flaws. At times, the game is pointed in its observation. Warren, ostensibly a close friend, is a clingy Nice Guy™-lite, whose constant, desperate bids for affection made me want to cringe my skin off. While the dialogue doesn't always do the characters service (do teens still say "hella"?), the voice acting is consistently strong. Max and Chloe are particularly stand out. Their shifting, strengthening relationship underpins the game's best moments.

Being a teenager can be rough, and I'm not saying that in the facetious way adults sometimes do. You're experiencing a lot of things for the first time - some of them complete crap - and it can feel like your greatest talent is screwing stuff up. Developer Dontnod tries to bottle that turmoil and self-discovery with Life is Strange, a school-days drama where a shy teenage girl suddenly develops time-reversal powers (oh man, I could've used some of those) and struggles to use them responsibly. Along the way, Life is Strange suffers from adolescent stumblings of its own - taking on too much and not knowing how to deal with it, coming to a predictable conclusion that lets the rest of the season down. But between a sweet central friendship, a vibrant world, time-manipulating gameplay that works well throughout, and emotional moments that latch onto your heart and squeeze, it's clear that there's something special going on here.Life is Strange is the story of Max Caulfield (a photography student attending art school in her old hometown) and her childhood friend Chloe (a tough-talking punk who's shot to death in the school bathroom during the game's opening). Shocked and grief-stricken by her friend's death, Max spontaneously develops time-rewind powers and helps Chloe escape unharmed. Those powers are the central focus of Life is Strange's gameplay, letting you reverse time to test out different responses to tough decisions, or sneak into a locked room and then rewind to erase any evidence of your intrusion. It's a simple idea that's easy to grasp and fun to experiment with, with results ranging from hilarious (when Max successfully guesses how much change Chloe has in her pockets) to horrifying (when a drug dealer gets angry and flashes a knife in Max's face). In terms of how much those decisions mean in the end, Life is Strange falls somewhere between The Walking Dead and Dragon Age - your choices do have a major impact on events that happen throughout the game and are mentioned later on, but the final decision happens the way it does no matter what. It's the framing and the conversations around it that change. When you're not time-turning, Life is Strange plays out like many adventure games that came before it: you interact with different objects in the environment that range from plot-critical to merely decorative, and have conversations with your peers and teachers to get the full story of Arcadia Bay. It's not ground-breaking stuff, but entertaining enough, and works to consistently give the world depth and a sense that it doesn't all revolve around you.

All of this character-building is bolstered by gorgeous art and music that give life to the game's world. Given how little you see of the actual town (the story is relegated to Blackwell Academy, Chloe's house, a diner, and some uninhabited areas out in the wilderness), making you feel a real connection to it is no small feat, and Life is Strange pulls it off gracefully. Rather than using a real-world setting for the sole purpose of contrasting with its supernatural elements, Life is Strange wants to highlight beauty in the ordinary. Every chapter has at least one place where Max can take a break and watch the world go by, and the game pays careful attention to making even the smallest pieces of the environment feel real, from the ambient noise of the Two Whales Diner to the things Chloe's written on her bedroom posters. You get the sense that this world isn't just a backdrop for something else, but a fully-realized character of its own, and that makes the time you spend there much more fulfilling.It takes a lot to make a game feel worthwhile when it doesn't stick the landing, but Life is Strange has a saving grace: the honesty with which it portrays the painful struggles of adolescence. Max encounters everything from cyber-bullying to suicide, from overdose to domestic abuse, and getting to see the human toll through her eyes can be hard to handle. While the plot occasionally dips into after-school-special territory, 99% of the time its handling is spot-on and deeply affecting: even if you've never seen a friend's private photos leaked onto the internet or talked to someone so beaten down by depression that they can barely speak, Life is Strange's raw sincerity still hits you where it hurts. That's part of why Max and Chloe's relationship feels so powerful, and works so well as a central pillar of the story: when they use Max's powers to sneak into the school's swimming pool after hours, or have a blow-out fight that leaves them both vulnerable, their interactions feel effortless and genuine, making them into stronger, more engaging people. It has to be said at this stage that Life is Strange won’t appeal to everyone.

A lot of the time you will get the very real sense that they aren’t so much playing a game as you are directing and re-directing scenes in an interactive television show. A lot of the story in Life is Strange is revealed in cutscenes and conversations, all of which are unskippable unless you’ve already witnessed them. Oh, and there’s the small matter that at least in its first episode Life is Strange isn’t exactly choc-full of high octane action; you don’t wade through rooms filled with enemies shooting them in the face. Story is key here and your enjoyment of this game hinges on your willingness to surrender to it completely.

Arcadia Bay has troubles of its own. A once prosperous fishing town, it's fallen on hard times. It's also beset by a series of weird 'eco-disasters' everything from snow in the middle of summer, to an unscheduled eclipse. It's heavily implied that these disasters are supernatural and potentially apocalyptic. The students of Blackwell are even planning an "End of the World" party a metaphor with all the subtlety of a bull smashing into the coming-of-age shelf of a DVD store, a copy of The Rules of Attraction impaled on one horn.As Max navigates through life at Blackwell, she's presented with a number of choices. Upon witnessing the misfortune of a rival, for instance, she can choose to comfort or taunt her. So far, so Telltale, but, thanks to Max's time powers, every decision can be rewritten. It gives you the chance to revel in schadenfreude, then skip back and do the right thing. I found it useful as I was first feeling my way through Max's life and relationships. Over time, I was firmer in my convictions—rarely feeling the need to double back and see the alternative choice play out. It's only possible to rewind within the current scene, meaning, by the time you reach the long-term consequences, the original choice is set in stone.

Initially, Max's power feels small-scale. She can control time, but remains as trapped by it as everybody else. Life is Strange is a choice-based adventure game with a time-traveling teenager at the center, but Max is, ironically, the most grounded and believable character in the entire cast. Most of the people around her are predictable and boring archetypes, with the actors delivering on-the-nose dialogue with more adolescent awkwardness than any of its characters exhibit themselves. Toward the end of Chrysalis, Max’s rebellious, stoner acquaintance recommends, “You need to get high, it’s been a hella insane f***ing day.” Another character, lacking any semblance of subtlety, threatens, “I will remember this conversation.” In some ways, Life is Strange lacks maturity. Just because it’s about people figuring themselves out doesn’t mean things should be handled without grace. I don’t believe many of these people are teenagers, and I don’t believe many of these teenagers are people -- and that’s a huge problem for a young-adult drama that relies on personality and humanity. Max’s friend Chloe lives a life full of baggage that really made me feel for her. Every time she spoke, I rolled my eyes, and the empathy evaporated. The principal's lack of concern when Max mentions a student has a gun really shocked me -- how can this person not take a claim like that with at least a little dread? And it’s a shame, because for all of the writing and acting problems in Life is Strange, the scenarios it creates are genuinely interesting, and I want to see how Max handles things going forward. Even if the lines aren’t believable, a lot of the scenarios are. In snooping around other girls’ rooms for intel, I felt like I should not be here. Helping an upset friend with her bad boyfriend felt as good as giving the mouthpiece popular girl what she deserved -- but rewinding, taking the high road, and trying to turn an enemy into a friend felt better. Here’s hoping that pays off.