Life Is Strange: Episode One – Chrysalis

Take 2013’s indie darling Gone Home, David Cage’s much-derided Heavy Rain and Beyond: Two Souls and mix them with a little of Telltale’s The Walking Dead series and you’d have something that looks and plays a lot like Life Is Strange. Developer Dontnod’s coming-of-age episodic adventure title borrows from each of these games, from the environmental exploration of the former to the infamous uncanny valley character interaction of Cage’s titles and the story-changing decision points of the latter.

The game follows 18-year old photography student Max Caulfield as she attempts to adjust to life at Blackwell Academy, an arts-focused high school in Arcadia, Oregan. Max has history in Arcadia, having moved away from the area to Seattle when she was younger, and she must reconcile with characters from her past as well as interacting with a cast of well-worn high school stereotypes.

This first installment introduces us to two plot threads, neither of which is fully resolved over the course of the episode’s two-and-a-half hour playtime. One is the disappearance of Rachel Amber, a popular student with hints of a darker side while the other is a portentous vision of a cyclone destroying Arcadia in the game’s opening minutes.

Life Is Strange’s signature mechanic – and what may turn out to be the lynchpin that holds the entire series’ overarching plot together – is Max’s ability to rewind time. It first manifests itself early in the game and quickly becomes central to both story progression and solving the episode’s handful of environmental puzzles.

This power allows Max to rewind conversations  and open new dialogue options, such as being able to correctly answer a teacher’s pop quiz, after getting it wrong the first time. It also gives the player the opportunity to reverse game-altering choices within a limited window of opportunity, although these are clearly signposted so the impact is somewhat lessened. It’s an interesting mechanic but one that doesn’t seem to have many implications at this stage beyond simply moving the narrative forward.   

There’s sometimes a sense that Life Is Strange is trying a little too hard to impress and nowhere is this more evident than in its writing. While the interpersonal relationships between characters are mostly nuanced and well constructed, the dialogue itself is simply wretched at times. The first half hour of the game seems determined to drop the word “selfie” so often that it loses what little semblance of meaning it had in the first place. Elsewhere, exchanges between characters are liberally and unironically peppered with words and phrases like “hella”, “rawk” and “are you cereal?” Real teenagers just don’t talk like this (at least outside of early 00s teen movies) and Dontnod’s attempts to sound streetwise serve only to undermine the game’s credibility and the developer’s efforts to build drama and tension.

It’s all the more strange considering that the game actually handles some fairly serious themes and handles them well - domestic violence, substance abuse, abandonment and bullying (of both the cyber and conventional varieties). In fact, cringe-inducing dialogue and a handful of hackneyed characters aside, there’s plenty to like here. The game’s environments are gorgeously realised and reward thorough exploration with information that can be used in conversations and secret photo opportunities. Its indie soundtrack is thoughtfully put together and helps create a sense of place for Arcadia that add character and a sense of place to individual scenes. Then there’s the plot, which even in the first episode is setting itself up for some big pay-offs later on.

At the end of its first episode, Life Is Strange is in an interesting place. The game shows plenty of promise but there’s also a danger that it might come off the rails altogether and sink back into comfortable stereotypes and MacGuffin time rewind mechanics. This initial installment does more than enough to justify the outlay of a mere few pounds and most players will likely pick up the next episode just to see what happens next but the series long term quality remains to be seen.