Life Is Strange

The time-bending teen drama that’s a self-aware meditation on fate

- Jen Simpkins

The opening credits of Life Is Strange see Max Caulfield put in her earbuds as she walks Blackwell Academy’s corridors. She is sound-tracking her life (we’ve all done it at some point), the star of her own show. And the thing about being a teenager is that you’re absolutely, devastatingly certain that the entire universe really does revolve around you. It’s not a selfish thought – not even a conscious one. You’re convinced that everything you say or do carries enormous cosmic weight. Make a mistake, and it’s the end of the world. In Max’s case, that melodramatic statement has a particular ring of truth to it.

Dontnod’s affecting tale tapped into that self-consciousness and wove it into a videogame mechanic. While the studio had played with the idea of time travel and manipulation before, in its debut game Remember Me, it found the perfect setting in Life Is Strange. After a scuffle with a bully in a bathroom leaves her former best friend Chloe Price bleeding out on the tiles, the traumatic event triggers a change in Max: she finds herself suddenly able to rewind time. Preventing Chloe’s death is, obviously, her first act, and a heroic one. Over the course of five episodes, this new ability and its applications mean Max’s story builds from teen drama to apocalyptic horror. But Max’s power also, wonderfully, becomes a much more quotidian part of her life. Regret and perfectionism are both distinctly teenage and videogamey concepts. Imagine, as an 18-year-old, you were suddenly given the power to redo almost anything at will – every embarrassing situation, every awkward conversation. Of course you would take the opportunity to min-max adolescence.