Back in 2015 I was dealing with a lot of shit. Particularly my dealing with the realization of being queer, the realization of what the gamer community that I was a part of was becoming with Gamergate (thanks Steve Bannon and Jeff Epstein), and the fact that I was continuing to deal with significant health issues as I had been diagnosed with MS not much earlier. It was in this environment that the game that would become one of my favorite games that I have ever played would be released.
On January 30th of 2015 Life is Strange Episode 1 was released, back when episodic games were all the rage because of the massive success of the past few years of Telltale games, particularly The Walking Dead and The Wolf Among Us. The game was developed by Don’t Nod, a developer that I had never heard of and I went into the game with little idea of what it really was.
Or at least, sort of. See I didn’t start playing the game until episode 3, I had heard of it but I was already tired of episodic games, as everyone was starting to be. I didn’t expect to love it so much and I didn’t expect Life is Strange episode 3 to hit so damn close to home since I had, multiple times by this point, been in a hospital and having to have people I care about surround me with worry and sadness just like Chloe did in an alternate universe that Max created.
This solidified the game in my mind as one that meant the world to me and when it continued to develop the romance between Max and Chloe and the tragically ended before it really got going romance between Chloe and Rachel, I fell in love. So with Life is Strange: Reunion coming out tomorrow (at time of writing) I thought I’d go into some more detail about why Life is Strange means so much to me, how Double Exposure only grew that love, and how I am glad to finally be getting closure to Max and Chloe’s stories.
The original Life is Strange covers a murder mystery in a small town on the coast of Oregon called Arcadia Bay. You play Max, a teenager in a fancy school concentrating on photography because she’s really good at it. It starts rather simply and develops into a love filled and depression causing ride that ends with one big choice: Bae or Bay. I picked both over the course of 2 playthroughs but I can only ever look back on how much I loved the Bae ending. Don’t get me wrong, sacrificing all of Arcadia Bay for Chloe is a shitty thing to do, but I get the feeling of you being willing to do anything for the person you love.
The love for that game survived through the years. I look back on the original game and I think about the characters, about the story, and about my life. As I covered, I had a lot going on at the time of release and the game helped me make progress towards accepting myself, something I will always be thankful for. Strangely, what mattered so much wasn’t even the story itself or finding out who the murderer was, it was the characters of Max and Chloe and how they very obviously loved each other, even if in an unhealthy way. It taught me that sometimes what matters most isn’t about focusing on what others want out of you but on focusing on what you want out of life.
Life is Strange is so special because of my life at the time, but, even more, that love has never changed because of my life since. The game was formative to me despite coming out in my early 20s. I saw myself in the angst of Max, in the anger at the hand one was dealt in Chloe. As time went on that just became more solidified. Not that I didn’t grow past it, mind, just that who I was at the time was reflected in many ways that the game captured. That’s the magical nature of Life is Strange. It’s not that it was something completely new or incredibly original, it’s that it was done so well that it meant a lot to a ton of people and allowed a lot of people to finally see themselves in the game.
Particularly because this was one of the first games that really allowed you to see queer teens in real life. Not the actual first, as I covered in my History of Queerness in Videogames article series (here’s part 1 if you haven’t already read it), but was during a time when the industry was becoming much more accepting. Even as Gamergate fumed at the edges of the community before it engulfed large swathes of it, the acceptance still existed and Life is Strange was a pillar of that acceptance and representation. It means so much to me because of the acceptance it had and because of my life at the time and how I just kinda needed acceptance. It showed me that while life can be strange, it is still mine and I have to live it how I want to.
Many in the Life is Strange community think Double Exposure is a bad sequel to Max’s story. They think that if you picked to save Chloe at the end of the prior game then you experience a Max who was hurt immensely by Chloe who up and left Max. They view this as character assassination or at least very out of character. They think the game as a whole is just bad. Even I had issues with it (as you can read in my review from a year ago), but I still enjoyed the game a decent amount despite those issues.
All that said, the game still pushed me into appreciating Max as a character even more. See, she grew a lot during the years between the original ending and Double Exposure. During that time she became an even better person. Someone who would still do everything to save her friends but also someone who had been so hurt by her original journey that she was still dealing with the trauma from it all those years later.
Max had depth in Double Exposure. More so, the characterization in her journal provided tremendous context to her as a person at that time. Particularly, her time detailing her and Chloe’s journeys and the eventual breakup. Chloe in the game started to realize she wasn’t quite what Max needed and that she was never quite sure whether Max had rewound time to “fix” their relationship, despite Max promising she hadn’t. Essentially, their relationship was doomed to fail because of the context of the events that lead to it. I mean if your partner sacrificed your entire hometown in order to keep you around how could you not feel guilty about being together? How could you not think she made a mistake? How could you not think that maybe your whole relationship wasn’t based in quite the same amount of affection for each other when she literally sacrificed a town for you? How could that relationship ever be actually healthy? Chloe and Max grew as people and that lead to Chloe second guessing their relationship, regretting being together, realizing how unhealthy it actually was which lead to thinking they weren’t right for each other, and then leaving. It wasn’t character assassination or even out of character. It was character development. Chloe changed as she became an adult just like we all do.
This is something fundamental to Double Exposure that I loved so much, seeing Max as a fully formed adult and having been through a ton between games. When the first game came out I was a completely different person than I was when I played Double Exposure. I mean it came out a decade later. By that point I had made friends, lost those friends, gone to college, started film school at that college, transitioned, got into a terrible relationship been told I wasn’t allowed to continue the production track of film school because my work wasn’t the right fit, dropped out of college, got out of the terrible relationship, went back to a community college, got into a much better relationship, got a certificate from said community college, bought a house, and started writing this very blog. Max and Chloe had both grown, just like I had. Sure, Chloe had grown differently than expected but how is that surprising? People don’t always grow up to be who you think they would be.
Double Exposure did something with their main character that most games haven’t been able to do, largely because of how most games don’t have sequels come out a decade later that have the same main character, it had the character grow with you, alongside you. Except you only found out about it if you played the thing.
Having Max and Chloe grow as people, including growing apart, having Max become a fully formed person with a career and new friends, having her use new powers again, and now having her have to face her ex again after a rough breakup all are things that people can relate to. Well, except the powers thing. But besides that, Max and Chloe were great characters back in the day because of the depth they had, because they were beautifully written and acted characters who loved each other and were willing to do anything for each other.
So now over a decade later we finally get a conclusion to their story. We get to see what they will have to deal with in their final moments together in the game (I dunno if anyone dies this is me just talking about how the game is the end of their story). This will hopefully provide some kind of closure. It’ll give you, the player, an idea of what Max and Chloe mean to each other even all these years later.
The finale to these characters could be disappointing, it could be just kinda...fine. Or it could be a finale that finally feels like it allows the characters to rest. Honestly, I don’t know what it will be, but I know it will be controversial in the community. Yet, it still means so much because of knowing what the characters endings will be. Who knows what those endings are but honestly I don’t know if I care right now as much as I am just glad we are getting an ending.
Rewind over to maybe Buy me coffee?
Life is Strange: Reunion comes out in under 24 hours. I am tentatively excited. I know I had issues with Double Exposure, as I mentioned, but to be able to see the finale to Max and Chloe’s story is kinda nuts considering how it seemed like there wasn’t going to be another Life is Strange game after Double Exposure didn’t sell super well. I don’t know if I’ll feel satisfied with the story. I don’t know if having Max’s original powers back will feel good, although I think it’ll feel better than the reality shifting from Double Exposure. I don’t know if it’ll feel good or bad to play as Chloe one last time. I don’t really know anything, I haven’t played it yet after all.
What I can say is that no matter what happens, I will review it, I will cherish the fact it happened, and it will not change the fact that I love Life is Strange. It will not change how much Life is Strange meant to me. No development could happen in the game that changes that.
Meow,
Cat
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