This phrase will probably trigger me for the next seven years. There's a point in Life Is Strange where one of your four dialogue options is "Rachael's Bracelet", whilst speaking to a man wearing the bracelet of missing local teen, Rachael something or other, it just occurred to me that I hadn't bothered learning her last name. Honestly, I had tuned a lot of the game out at this point. It had made me sit through obnoxiously lengthy set pieces and everyone's terribly acted out and terribly written dialogue combined with the stiff expressionless faces the models had plastered onto the the front of their heads now pushed me to the point of simply tolerating playing the game, not being actively invested in it;
And then I chose to bring up the rather factual point that the man in front of me was wearing the bracelet of a missing girl.
And that prompted main character Max Caufield to fly off then handle and accuse a known drug dealer carrying both a switchblade and a loaded gun of murder and keeping secrets, when in reality, I just wanted to point out the man's fucking choice in jewelry.
This was the moment where all disbelief could be suspended no more, when the immersion broke, where the glass ceiling shattered and I saw the game as it truly was; kind of a garbage fire.
You could see developer Dontnod had only the most basic grasp on some of the things Telltale managed to perfect years before.
Mention Bioware and a lot of players will groan and think of dialogue trees where the on screen text prompts say one thing, and then the words that fly out of your avatar's mouth are completely different. It's honestly a little unforgivable. Imagine other games did this? Imagine Dark Souls said, press Circle to dodge, but then you do and instead your character starts doing the Cha Cha real smooth whilst a three headed dog demon barrels towards you and you've now committed to standing there and allowing your last moments to be of you shaking dat ass before it's swiftly introduced to the pavement.
But this is just the beginning. There are invisible walls everywhere. This wouldn't be a problem if the game didn't hide beer bottles in fucking obscure locations while Max walks with the urgency of a pensioner taking a sunday stroll and barks out vocal ques that are too vague to actually help you.
I'd say those are the games worst offenses, but I'd be leaving out one really large one; Life Is Strange just has no fucking respect for your time; yes, you can fast foward through dialogue you've already heard; But you can't skip a lengthy conversation you know is dull and meaningless, especially if you just want to get on with whatever bullshit meaningless fetch quest the game has sent you on and this is the fourth NPC you're talking to. It's just unwelcome at that point. And let me not forget to spread a circle of fucking salt around that clusterfuck of a bottle hunt that I swear even the fucking developers hated.
There's padding, poor lip synch, awkward animations... The list goes on. I could fill this post with nothing but criticisms and nitpicks and we'd be here until next Wednesday.
But I think let me address one more thing that honestly bugs me about the game probably to the greatest extent. Now the most of the problems I've mentioned were either technical issues or nitpicks, but one of the things grating on the back of my skull was just Chloe.
The cringe fest that is Chloe's dialogue aside (I'm not sure if it's supposed to be some form of ironic patronising millennial speak or if she's supposed to be the hip alternative indie girl of your dreams but I spent the majority of her time on screen looking into my own eye sockets and wondering if somewhere an ex-Disney screenwriter was silently contracted to speed up production by copy pasting from the worst of their sitcom line up) the immediate first thing that came to my mind was Cosima Niehaus from Orphan Black who had that bad ass moment where she firmly declares
And trust me, Cosima is a bad ass queer icon who makes me happy I didn't bleed out at that one twenty first I went to where I got exorcised and banged my head on a corner table.
However, the most interesting thing about Chloe however is that her hair is blue.
I mean, yeah , she has a tragic backstory and all, and she probably likes vaguely the same music your dad liked in his punk phase while high on cocaine under a nearby bridge living with his parents in the suburbs and yeah she wears a beanie and probably skates and reads manga and curses like a sailor and graffitis the walls of her room... I'm not sure I'm perfectly articulating what I'm trying to say.
Chloe is punk waifu bait.
Like there's always this neon sign above her head that says "I'm so fucking counter-culture" and along with the other groan worthy things in the game, it just never goes away. It makes me think of Poochie from The Simpsons and I'm almost certain Chloe was created with a similar thought pattern. There isn't really any sense nuance or originality to the character, hell, we already have a Ramona Flowers, and at least Ramona swings around a cool smiley hammer and Bryan Lee O'Malley at least wrote the word bi-curious in the panels. Hell, if someone at least said the words gay, lesbian or bi then it wouldn't feel so damn queer baity but it does. It's like you're supposed to love this character on the superficial things about her like her taste in music and the colour of her hair and her generic ass sobstory instead of the one thing that Life Is Strange actually does half decent, and that's an organic same sex love story between two girls caught up in a time travelling adventure. You learn to really care for Chloe through her interactions with Max, like that moment she photobombs one of Max's selfies in bed, and when she intervenes when Nathan starts picking a fight... Your interactions with Chloe count for so much more than her too cool for school attitude and vague liking of things you may also like, but like, in a cool, hip way. Chloe isn't entirely unbearable but why the hell is the game trying so damn hard to make me dislike her?
Okay, now that I have drawn my circle of salt and positioned myself firmly in the middle of it, I guess this is the part where I say, despite all that, you should play Life Is Strange.
So, despite all that, you should probably play Life Is Strange.
The reason is because it doesn't do anything related to the adventure genre very well, but the things it adds it does do very well. The over the shoulder camera comes to mind.
Telltale has a habit of using very static, planned shots in their scenes. You view from one angle, usually with a little wiggle room, but it's all very cinematic.
Life Is Strange, for the most part, let's you move the camera around when not in dialogue or QTEs. You can move Max and move the camera, and this let's it the game feel a lot more like a game than an interactive film. Which feels really great. The camera itself just swings in a really nice way and I spent the first five minutes just wiggling it around and looking at all the interactable items in the room.
The HUD is really quirky. It's got that Chalkboard drawn feel to it, so along with the folk/indie soundtrack the game feels super grounded. It never feels like some huge Triple A production but more like something aiming to be it's own. And this is the closest it actually gets to relating to the market its aiming for, by using game feel to communicate with the player. It's easier to get into the frame of mind the game wants you to be in because the HUD combined with the soundtrack draws you into it.
And the soundtrack is really amazing. The Indie/Folk stuff is the best, it's moody and a lot of the time just fills up all the space in the air, and you always feel like you're a moment away from some life changing introspective thought and that's really nice. It really conveys that coming of age, finding your way in the world story every teenager goes through. And it's not just some generic blend of 90s punk and grunge, which would have been the easy pick.
There are lots of moments where you can just sit around and let Max think. I love when games let you organically modulate your own pace. This is a fantastic one. Just letting Max think, and recap her day, or the week, and ask questions, mull over events, just sitting down and doing nothing is an idea that games could use way more of. Pacing especially is everything in a good, emotionally connecting story and Life Is Strange absolutely nails that much.
The game itself is really pretty. There's some chromatic aberration, the scenes always feel soft, I have to congratulate the colourist on making everything just pop. The game does fulfill as a sense pleasure, and that is one of it's biggest strengths.
And Max and Chloe do have a great, organic relationship dynamic which I never felt regrets about going through. Chloe could be a little one note at times and honestly I found myself questioning over and over again if she's even a good person, hell, a person worth going through half the trouble you do go through for her. But you can't help but get attached, especially during this one scene in Chloe's bedroom and sure, there's another option, but it just feels so satisfying to make Max take that leap of faith. It's a great emotional pay off marred only by some awkward performances from the characters, but that you can chalk down to the low fidelity of the game's models in general.
This is where I'd usually find more to complain about but I'll definitely just leave it at, go play Life Is Strange, if only just the first episode, which is free. But really, if you get to the bottle hunt in episode two, look up a guide, it was designed against you and it's not worth the fucking time it takes to complete it.
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