Wednesday 14 December 2016

Really...strange... (Life Is Strange - A Personal Postmortem)

Right, okay, I'm probably going to trigger a few people with my thoughts on the game called "Life Is Strange" made by Dontnod and published by Square Enix. Reader beware, you're in for some spoilers (I should have wrote "you're in for a scare" but I couldn't find anything to rhyme with "reader beware").

So in a nutshell: I couldn't get on with Life is Strange. That's all this blog is about. I couldn't get on with it. I think it's got a fun little time-travelling mechanic in there but ultimately doesn't lead to anything to what I wanted. I don't think it's a terrible game in the slightest either so please don't read what I'm writing that I just didn't like it. I think it has problems and whenever I attempt to correlate my thoughts; it sounds scathing when really I'm not trying to be!

For more understanding of my position; my two close friends, Carl and Stefan, really love this game and I don't knock them at all with it. They really wanted to help Max in her situation with her best friend, Chloe, and make things better for her.

When I played the game at the time, I was in a weird emotional dark place in my life and I wanted to see what I could get out of the game by, essentially, fucking everything up. Honestly, that's what I was like. I was attempting to kill people off every time I could do it just to see if there was an actual ramification to what I did.

I couldn't stand hearing how Max was whining about her so called life and all the stuff that was happening to her - I just wanted to destroy everything. I had this power to essentially unravel time and I wanted to see what I could get out of it but the god-damned game just wouldn't let me do it!

Which made me realise that with the nature of narrative such as this, the game really wants you to have that one true ending. The rest of the game is there for fluff and not actually tangible. The mechanics when you boil it down are simply puzzles that lead to one true conclusion rather than use the true nature of chaos theory and time travel.



The ending, if you can expect it, is essentially that Chloe has to die to make things right. However, I didn't want that ending; I let everyone die because I thought what was the point to all of the game? I have been running through five chapters trying to save her and then you throw it all away. It became binary - one or the other. For all the promotion of choice and the rewinding of time, this totally derailed the experience and the way that the game's exposition was built up.

I totally get the pathos of it all but I'll be honest, I hated most of the characters that were in the world when I went through it. All of them whining and complaining about things are strange and shit when really there is a bigger thing to contend with which is the serial killer teacher (whose name I forget, let's just call him SKT).

Yeah, this hammy douche-nozzle.
Yes, I got to admit, the SKT was a cool little twist but as soon as it was revealed, his dialogue was so hammy and forced that all respect I had for him seemed to be lost very quickly. SKT just became the Hannibal Lecter of this world and...I just asked myself...why? Why force him in? It felt contrived and I couldn't get on board with it; why not of all things allow the choice to join forces with him? Use the whole idea of choice and go crazy! Because Max for the most part was!

So I don't know, playing this game when you're in a depressed state is not the way to go I can tell you that much. For every step I took forward with it, it made me feel like it went back a step emotionally. It didn't feel like it had that overwhelming mass amount of choices that the game was promoting to me and I wanted to see the world burn...

...and it didn't, essentially.

Although...
However; if there's one thing you can take away from this game is the fact that it really builds on relationships that were once there but then lost. It does this well and the chemistry between Max and Chloe works...to a point. I think if this had been nurtured just a little more without the weird cliche dialogue, this could have been more of a reason for me not to want to see the entire world of Life is Strange to be destroyed.

But the thing is, I don't mind this game! I think it's okay...but if this had some more focus and built upon these ideas it had in a greater sense, I would have loved it.

Dontnod, if you do another one of these, I'll be watching because you did something fascinating - I just hope that I'm one in the better mood than you next time.

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