By Nick Jaccaci ’18, Contributor
How does one make choices with great consequences that will forever influence their lives? Do they do so recklessly or with cautious decisions? Do they regret their choices or do they forget them? One question that is usually considered is what if one could change their choice. Unfortunately, this is not usually explored in depth. Not until Life is Strange. Life is Strange: Chrysalis was produced by Dontnod (the same developers as Remember Me) and released by Square Enix as the first episode in a five episode game. An episodic game is a game that is split into usually five parts. Every two months or so, a two and a half hour episode is released. The decisions made in each episode carry on the future episodes. Life is Strange: Chrysalis is about Maxine Caulfield, a girl in her senior year of high school, who has just moved back to her hometown of Arcadia Bay, Oregon. She is attending Blackwell Academy to take a photography class. After reading Max’s in-game notebook, it explains that she is attending Mark Jefferson’s photography class and there is a photography competition called “Everyday Heroes “where the winner gets to go to San Francisco with him for national exposure as a photographer, but besides that, there is not much to know. After considering the exposition, it would be safe to say that the game would start with something Blackwell Academy.
Without any context, she is forced to escape from the tornado and find out what’s going on. After Max manages to escape from the tornado, she wakes up in Jefferson’s photography class, before she can find out why there was a tornado in the first place. It was all a dream! After some dialogue (and optional exploring), the class finishes and Max decides to go to the bathroom and give herself a wake-up splash of water to the face. She notices a butterfly and, being the photographer she is, decides to take a picture. This is when things get intense. Suddenly the town’s richest teenager Nate Prescott enters the girl’s bathroom and is frantically, almost insanely, talking to himself. Max hides in terror from him. He’s obviously scared, and then a girl enters the bathroom. The two are yelling at each other about drugs and money. This girl seems to be the only thing that seems to frighten Nate. The girl is getting extremely aggressive until Nate pulls out a gun. After some more frantic threats, he shoots the girl. Max jumps out from her spot and time then reverses until she wakes back up in Mr. Jefferson’s class. With these new powers, Max saves the girl by hitting a fire alarm.
This is where this game sticks out compared to others in the genre. Other games developed by studios such as Telltale Games force you to make a decision and the player has to live with it, whether it was a good or bad decision. In Life is Strange, the player can rewind and change their decisions. It does not become a matter of which option seems better at the current time, but rather which of the two options will have fewer consequences than the other in the long run. This mechanic, that presumably would break a story-based game due to the player knowing more options, in fact makes the decisions harder. Overall, the story is a bit too basic, but shows excellent potential with the looming threat of the tornado Max saw in her dreams.
Mechanics: The only things you will be doing as a player are moving, pressing one of four buttons, and occasionally rewinding time using the left trigger on the controller. The controls are simple and they’re sufficient. There are a few collectables throughout the world in the form of photographs. In order to find them, Max sometimes has to do a series of actions or just take a picture of something. These are worth finding for extra game play and achievements. The idea of rewinding time is an interesting one and isn’t only used for major plot choices. Once while walking around campus, Max came across a group of skaters who asked her what kind of skate trick she wanted to see. Max confessed she doesn’t know any tricks and the skaters said something along the lines of “Too bad you’re not cool and know what a tre flip is or an ollie.” After rewinding time and talking again with the knowledge of what a skate trick is, Max is asked which of the two tricks she’d like to see. I personally recommend a tre flip. If Max asks that, the skater will TRY it, but fail. His skateboard will hit the ground, and then right into his balls. Ouch. What makes it worse (and I mean better) is that Max can go up to the skater and take a picture of his pain and weakness. Talk about adding insult to injury.
Graphics: It’s clear and even marketed that this game is based around story, so that’s where the focus of this game is instead of graphics. Dontnod claims in an interview with Eurogamer that, “We decided when we started the game that most of the budget should go towards the writing and voice actors—they were really what was important.” With Dontnod stating most of their budget went to script writing and character voices, the character models and world are not the highlight of the game. The world itself looks like something out of a panorama camera, which is quite fitting seeing how the entire game revolves around Max, a photographer. This choice of stylistic graphics is better for the game and developers, since there is no need for hyper-realistic looking characters and that they complement the story. Because of this, the characters themselves are alright-looking. There are moments where the lip movement and the audio are as atrocious as a Godzilla movie, but besides that, the graphics were decent.
Verdict: Overall, if you have some spare change and time, this game is worth it. The story is decent, but the future looks promising. Life is Strange: Chrysalis is for the PS4, PS3, Xbox One, Xbox 360, and Microsoft Window. This game is worth $5 for the episode and $20 for the entire season of 5 episodes. This game was reviewed on Xbox One. IGN gave it a 6.5/10, on metacritic it has a 75/100, and I personally would give it an 8/10 for a good game with interesting mechanics, but it has a mundane story.
Citations: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2015-03-18-publishers-wanted-life-is-stranges-main-character-to-be-a-guy-qtes-added
Image Source: http://vignette3.wikia.nocookie.net/life-is-strange/images/9/98/1908440_888207817867800_545726511779941891_n.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20150415030216
