Life is Strange Season 1 – Choice and consequence

Having played through the first two episodes of Before the Storm, this seemed like a great time to revisit Season 1 of Life is Strange and to think about what makes it such a great game… scratch that, a great life experience.

Obviously, spoilers ahead.

With Life is Strange, Dontnod surprised the entire gaming world with an episodic adventure inspired by the likes of Telltale’s The Walking Dead, only better. More meaningful, more impactful, with a great but enigmatic cast of characters thrown into extreme situations. The highlight of the game is the time rewind ability that our shy photography loving character Max Caulfield discovered, and this turned a potentially normal adventure into a deluge of back and forth, of confidence and regret. It was choice, and none of it came without some sort of consequence.

Life is Strange isn’t all black and white; in fact, most of it is grey, and in another sense, dark. The decisions you make are permanent and affect you or other characters in some way later on. There is no good choice, only what you assume would fit best with your persona.

There are a couple of impending mysteries that Max has to explore, but will she find the answers? The big one is her dream of a huge tornado destroying everything in Arcadia Bay, and the second one is why she has these time rewind powers. But there is one other mystery that will eventually play a bigger part in all of this: just where the hell is Rachel Amber, the most popular girl in school? Amidst all this, she has to deal with the always troublesome high school life and the tribulations that come with it. It won’t be a walk in the park, that’s for sure.

Honestly, Life is Strange’s beginning is a bit mild, and during the first hour it’s not easy to see what is so special about it. Face it as you would the start of most movies – it’s setting things in motion, telling you about the characters and welcoming you to this new world and its mechanics. Not that there isn’t some excitement right there, with some blue-haired girl getting shot in the bathroom.

Persevere and soon you will find that Life is Strange balances the trivial with the awkward, the familiar with the shocking, and it will punch you right in the stomach at the end of each episode. The cliffhanger is usually violent – the ending of the second episode is intense, and YOU have a say on it –, and I understand why many players hated the wait between the release of each episode. It’s nerve-racking, but it’s a valuable part of the process and adds a significant dose of anxiety to the story. Playing the entire season one now, without the previously mandatory interruptions, is a good thing as it eases the mind, but I would dare to say that it lessens the impact of the cliffhangers in just a tiny bit.

If Life is Strange started as an apparently harmless piece of young adult sci-fi, it soon turns into a grim tale of deception and suspense, with a bit of detective work thrown in for good measure. The game keeps you guessing, taking sides and despite mostly clichéd personalities, it’s a flamboyant mix of genres, one that works on most levels.

If there’s one criticism to make, it is that Dontnod didn’t have the guts to stand behind some of its most daring decisions. Chapter 4 begins with a true turn of events that could spin the game in an entirely different direction, but this is one of those moments where everything will magically be back to “normal” in a while. Business as usual, and a major kick in the nuts for every player who was already lauding the writers for going with true consequence.

The final chapter goes extremely dark and its title – Polarized – fits like a glove. This chapter “polarized” players’ opinions, and while I mostly liked it, there’s a certain repetitive nature to its proceedings. Gone is the cheerful high school atmosphere, with the impending tornado and the Rachel Amber mystery about to be fully disclosed, for better and for worse. And that leads us to the most disappointing part of what was, overall, a wonderful experience…

The ending.

Get ready to feel crushed. To feel deceived after all those choices, all those roads that you chose to walk on, only to come to a conclusion that doesn’t take any of that into consideration. Instead of an outcome where your actions led to a certain consequence, both to you and the persons that you have affected, you’re given a binary choice: “A” or “B”. Pick whatever you want.

This isn’t to say that the two endings aren’t soul-crushing in some way, particularly one of them. They just don’t feel like they belong in this game. After working so hard for the entire five episodes, the writers chose the easy way out. It was disappointing, but I can also understand that it would be a nightmare to make sense of all the decisions and creating seven, eight different, smaller endings.

Don’t let this distract you from the bigger picture, though; Life is Strange is a wonderful experience, a game that is surely flawed but that is the perfect example of what an episodic adventure should be. Before the Storm may be charming and mysterious, with one episode to go, but it’s far from reaching the heights of Season One. Play this right now if you like good, twisted and mysterious stories with your games, or forever regret missing on one of the best games ever made. Oh, and that soundtrack… Perfect!

Final rating: 9.5/10

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