Life is Strange polarized me (Gaming)

by Cody Miller , Music of the Spheres - Never Forgot, Wednesday, October 21, 2015, 15:12 (3112 days ago)
edited by Cody Miller, Wednesday, October 21, 2015, 15:20

I'm going to try to hide spoilers for episode 5 in this post, but be aware I'm going to be talking about that episode in general.

So I finished life is strange, and I have to say that the ending (or at least one of them) was pretty much perfect… if the game were a movie. It hit all the emotional points, and worked perfectly with the theme of the game and the characters. Some people basically predicted it as far back as episode 1, so it wasn't exactly a shocker.

But this game isn't a movie. In that regard I felt like Dontnod squandered something potentially amazing. We could have had the first game where choice not only mattered in the long run, but was instrumental in the game's theme and impact.

The very first time I played the game, I did not like it. My first impression was that the rewind mechanic undermined choice by removing the permanence of it. What's the point of a choice of you can see what happens and change to what you want? As the series went on though, I realized that the mechanic was central in the theme of regret, and was a actually a cool way of portraying that in game. I wrote something on reddit about that. Read that then come back here.

Choice has always been a problem with games. I don't think there's ever been a narrative driven game in the history of the medium, where your choices end up ultimately mattering in the long run. Many games had big choices at the end, which determine the ending, but this nullifies all choices before. Some games had your choices change things along the way, but you still end up in the same place. The closest I've seen such a game come to having all of your choices effect both the journey and the destination is Heavy Rain. Given that game had a lot of problems, that should clue you in as to the state of things. In short, nobody's done it right yet.

So, I was extremely excited coming up on the finale for Life is Strange. The tagline was "You can't save everyone", and given the nature of the theme of regret and the rewind mechanic, I was expecting for our choices to ripple to the end of the game, and force us to finally face them for Max to complete her character arc.

That didn't happen. The only choice that ultimately matters is the last one. The problem is that to get there, to that place to make that final choice, you needed to rewind time and undo all your choices prior.

I was positively giddy when Jefferson burned Max's journal and pictures. That was the moment right there where I thought the choices we made all the way back to the first episode were locked in so to speak, and from here on out we'd see those choices ripple down and effect the events leading to the ending. The fact that it didn't end up that way was criminal!

How will you get out of the darkroom? Were you nice to David? Maybe he'd help. Frank alive and uninjured? He could find a way. Your choices led nobody being able to help you? You're on your own. And when you do get out, all the lives you affected are there staring you in the face. But you just rewind time, and pretty much fix everything…

I think if when faced with the choice in the end, that choice manifested itself without Max having to go back in time, it would have been more powerful. So, if you choose to sacrifice Chloe, that should happen right then and there, and the storm dissipates before it kills a bunch of people. Don't sacrifice her? You both leave together and the town is wrecked. Because you didn't go back in time, all your choices are preserved which can have a big effect on the ending, despite there only being two choices at that moment.

This game was the most interesting failure I've played in a long time. Up until yesterday, it was a huge success. They just dropped the ball, when they very easily could have not. So much about this game was great: the story, the voice acting, etc, that it's a shame it takes its place along side all the other games in history that do consequential choice wrong.

I heard Life is Strange was commercially successful, so I will be keeping an eye out for whatever the studio does next.