Life is Strange: Increasing Power and Developing Characters

 
Note on spoilers: The previous article on LIS tried to avoid spoilers. This article will still try to avoid them. A note will be provided in advance of crucial information. On another note, this series will probably extend to either four of five articles, and next week's will examine the plot of the first three episodes instead of the game-play.

Looking back at the first article (even though it was less than a week ago) there is a strange mixture of regret, astonishment, and confusion.

Let's begin with the regret.

The preceding article was written after completing the first episode of Life Is Strange, Chrysalis, and on reexamination, it appears the article downplayed the game's strength. Though I criticized the quality of the episode's dialogue, and the character models for their unresponsiveness, I enjoyed it. Though there has never been any numerical rating yet on this blog, it may aid readers to know I consider the game an eight out of ten after the first three episodes. As subjective as this be, hopefully it will illustrate my current stance on Life is Strange. It's strengths of a strong protagonist, an interesting (if undeveloped out) cast, and a myriad of difficult decisions to make, outweigh the negative aspects so far.

And the astonishment, after having completed episodes two and three, of seeing the expanding development of what Life is Strange dared to do. It approached delicate topics without introducing them only for shock, it elaborated on Max's power allowing her to expand her options, and raised the stakes in the conclusion of Episode Three: Chaos Theory.

Yet the threat of disappointment hangs over the series because it has increased expectations and taken risks, but still fails in some basic fundamentals. Not just the dialogue, but some of the character construction. The weakness in some areas of the game, cause me to question whether the risks the writers have made can be concluded satisfactorily.



The conversation remains at the same level as the first episode, including phrases worth banging one's head against their desk, but becoming reasonably intelligent at times. Not brilliant, but serviceable. As a side note, Life is Strange received an M rating from the ESRB for blood, sexual themes, strong language, use of drugs, and violence. I don't mention this to judge or discourage anyone from playing it. I mention it because it doesn't seem to warrant the rating, except for the strong language. Maybe some people don't believe language ever deserves an M rating, but the among of it awkwardly forced into the characters mouths, just to make the setting seem darker and more serious is hilarious. The writer seems to have decided more swearing makes a story more mature, and in this it disappoints, just as the attempts at including high school slang do.

While some games of the new point-and-click genre, such as Gone Home (which I strongly disliked), are criticized for weak game-play (and sometimes all walking simulators), Life is Strange keeps altering the puzzles enough to keep the player engaged. Ultimately all the puzzles are fetch quests, which involve locating the right items and then activating them on the right spots. They aren't difficult, but the developer tries to introduce ingenuity to each puzzle.


The worst puzzles in episodes Out of Time (II) and Chaos Theory (III) are either too simple and therefore boring, or they don't make sense. In one scene, Chloe is shooting at objects and she always misses. To save bullets Max rewinds a few seconds and tells her to aim up, down, left, or right. In another puzzle, Chloe becomes trapped in a dangerous situation. Max works to free her, but her effort has a negligible effect, and Chloe frees herself (or at least that is how it appears).

But these are negated by interesting puzzles. Max watches a crowded dinner for three minutes and then goes back in time and tells Chloe what happened, picking the correct option from four choices. Max engages in conversation with a cop, a drug dealer, and a bully in one location, learning information from one, rewinding, then using the discovered information to convince another to divulge a secret. In a third scene Max breaks open a door, and sets off an alarm, but then walks through, rewinds time while inside the locked room until the door is fixed, and opens it from the inside with no alarm.

A few rules about time travel. Conversations are forgotten by others, but crucial information necessary to unlock hidden dialogue options is remembered by Max. Any object that Max picks up remains with her even if she rewinds past the point where she picked it up. And Max stays where she is, not where she was, while all other persons and objects move back to where they were. This last ability allows Max to hold off danger indefinitely as she tries to solve a puzzle.


But these puzzles and conversations highlight the flaw of time travel in a game. In Life is Strange, Max is only able to rewind at certain predetermined points, and occasionally (without any explanation) is prevented from rewinding at all. For instance, at one point Chloe and Max find five thousand dollars. Max has to convince, and upset Chloe by telling her to give it back to the owner. But using the ability to turn back time, Max should be able to maneuver Chloe so she never even finds the money. This is bothersome, until one realizes that only having two choices for major decisions is simplistic as well, and then one learns to live with it.

Here is a break from the big issues to consider two minor annoyances. One, Max lives in a dorm on a prestigious private high school campus. But none of the students ever lock their door. Even when they break curfew and sneak out in the middle of the night. A lazy contrivance so Max can snoop in rooms. And no one ever protects their computer with a password. Again, so Max can read everyone's email. This flaw is highlighted by the one time someone does have a password and Max has to discover it.


Disappointment time. In spite of the general interest the game creates, it seems to insist upon a number of cliché characters, and obvious villains. One classmate is a spoiled rich bully, who deals drugs, and is a maniac psychotic killer, none of which is an exaggeration, because Max literally stops him from killing someone and a she reads a report a psychologist wrote labeling him deranged. It's impossible to not see him as a villain. There is also Chloe's stepfather, a security guard at the school. The writer may have wanted him to seem like a war veteran who cares about safety too seriously, while still being sympathetic, but he appears so blind to basic human behavior and views every suspicious action as a sign of guilt. He is not sympathetic, but a dumb as a rock and unstable as well.

And then there is the mean girl squad, who are devious and malicious ninety percent of the time, but then the writer has them show a sympathetic yet troubled side which comes out of nowhere.

These characters; the bully, the guard, and the mean girls, are the antagonists. The writer has no subtlety for character creation. And yet, as one that enjoys a good story, I wonder if it is all a trick. I've irrationally begun to suspect the nicest characters of being the true villains, because one expects there to be subtlety and misdirection in a plot.  But it is not a acceptable deception.  The antagonists are so villainous, any attempt to redeem them is not in character and unacceptable.

Back to awesome. Max earned some new powers in episodes 2 and 3. The first is pretty basic, the ability to briefly freeze time. But the other is definitely a spoiler: Max accidentally used a picture of her to travel back in time to the moment the picture was taken. Then she changed the past, was thrust back into the present, only the present was changed. Not the most original idea with time travel. Pretty common in fact, but it will become a transitional element for the game.

So how is it after three episodes? Better than it was, increasing tension. But of course, like most novels it relies on everything holding together for two more episodes, and providing a satisfactorily ending.

A few questions to consider going forward:

Why does Max have her powers? (and so many other questions about them as well)

What does her vision of a tornado bearing down on Arcadia Bay portend?

Are the antagonists really the antagonists?

And what is going to happen with Max's new ability to travel back in time using pictures?

Life Is Strange Series:

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