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Congratulations to the winners of the Level Story follow giveaway! One of the winners, Zac (pictured on the left), won physical copies of the first three issues of the magazine! Thank you to all who entered. Be sure to follow Zac over on Twitter. @ itmeZacG
FEATURES
p.16
An Adolescent’s Power in Choice pg. 16
What is missing from the final choice of Life is Strange?
Subverting the Coming Of Age Narrative pg. 20
Cover artwork by: Laura Anderson (Sepphyr) https://www.instagram.com/sepphyr/ https://www.artstation.com/sepphyr
How Life is Strange follows and subverts the coming of age story that traditionally belongs to men.
Rewinding, Focus, and the Philosophy of Time Travel
p. 20
pg. 24
Discussing the larger implications when it comes to using time travel as a devise in storytelling.
SUPPORT
10 // Story Overview 12 // Reframing Heroism 18 // Centralising Chloe and the Struggle of Player Choice
www.patreon.com/levelstory
28 //How Music Tells a Story 32 // Needs More Gay 34 // Remember Me
www.ko -fi.com/levelstory
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36 // On Motivation and the Co-worker Scenario
p. 24
LEVEL STORY MAGAZINE MISSION STATEMENT Storytelling in video games is getting better and better with age. What began as simple forms of combat, exploration, and journey missions, has evolved into something much more sophisticated than once allowed. No longer are we content to only be concerned with gameplay mechanics. Although gameplay is really important, the gaming community also cares about other attributes such as style, design, musical score, and of course story. As time has passed, video games have steadily begun to provide well crafted stories to accompany their gameplay. But unlike mediums such as the novel or film, video games are not well respected and therefore are not considered to be an art form. They began as a series of objectives for the player to immerse themselves in. It was only as the technology developed that creators began to challenge the mediums original intent. Video games are still tainted with the taboo of mediocrity that many find to be silly and for the immature. This is an outdated notion. Video games, new and old, are important. Stories are important. All stories regardless of the medium are worthy of study. My goal is to examine the stories that exist in classic and modern day video games. Through careful exploration I will analyze these stories just as one would analyze a novel. Is the story well crafted? What themes are at play? How do our characters grow? And ultimately, what attributes of the video game directly contribute to the game’s core narrative? This is Level Story Magazine. The ideas presented by the writers in this magazine belong to them individually and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of everyone who contributed. © Level Story Magazine, 2019
CREDITS Writer & Designer | Danielle Karthauser Writer | Angelina Bonilla Writer | Samuel Gronseth Writer | David McNeill ARTISTS Laura Anderson (Sepphyr) Nathan Hartanto Rita Popova (PopovaJr) PHOTOGRAPHERS Javier Allegue Barros Branimir Na Inho Cole Keister Stas Knop Joanna Kosinska Oleg Magni Sharon McCutcheon Moose Photos Miguel Á. Padriñán Markus Spiske Laura Vinck Vasiliki Volkova Sebastian Voortman Jian Xhin PATREON PRODUCERS Giza White Mage SPECIAL THANKS John Berry Connor Keane Kevin Weitzel
WORKS CITED 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16.
Trites, Roberta Seelinger. 2010. Disturbing the Universe Power and Repression in Adolescent Literature. Iowa City: Univ. of Iowa Press. Wilson, Aoife. 2015. “Life Is Strange Review.” Eurogamer.net. Eurogamer.net. October 23, 2015. https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2015-10-22-life-isstrange. Savage, Phil. 2015. “Life Is Strange Review.” Pcgamer. October 22, 2015. https://www.pcgamer.com/life-is-strange-review/. Frank, Allegra. 2015. “Polygon’s 2015 Games of the Year #7: Life Is Strange.” Polygon.com. 2015. https://www.polygon.com/a/game-of-the-year-2015/ life-is-strange-game-of-the-year-2015-polygon. Rougeau, Mike. 2015. “Publishers Wanted To Change Life Is Strange’s Protagonists Into Men.” Kotaku. Kotaku. January 11, 2015. https://kotaku.com/ publishers-wanted-to-change-life-is-stranges-protagonis-1678811522. Knutson, Matt. 2018. “Backtrack, Pause, Rewind, Reset: Queering Chrononormativity in Gaming.” Game Studies 18 (3). http://gamestudies.org/1803/ articles/knutson. Rothfuss, Patrick. “Unattended Consequences.” Unattended Consequences (blog). Simplecast. Accessed December 6, 2016. https://unattendedconsequences.simplecast.fm/episodes/45560-corral-your-spawn. Visser, Matt. 1993. “From Wormhole to Time Machine: Remarks on Hawking’s Chronology Protection Conjecture.” PHYSICAL REVIEW D 47 (2): 554–65. https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.47.554. O’Mara, Matthew. 2014. “Problems with Time Travel in Harry Potter... and in Everything.” VR Goggles. November 24, 2014. https://matthewomara. com/2014/11/24/problems-with-time-travel-in-harry-potter-and-in-everything/. Wheeler, Craig J. 2007. In Cosmic Catastrophes: Exploding Stars, Black Holes, and Mapping the Universe, 2nd ed., 294–95. Cambridge University Press. “To All of You.” Track 04 on Someday We Will Foresee Obstacles. Third Side Records, 2008, compact disc. Syd Matters. “Crosses.” Track 05 on Veneer. Imperial Recordings under exclusive license to Mute for North America, 2006, compact disc. José González. “Santa Monica Dream.” Track 05 on Down the Way. Angus and Julia Stone under license to Nettwerk Productions, 2009, compact disc. Angus & Julia Stone. tct255. 2014. “The Dangers of ‘Teen Wolf’ through ‘Queer Baiting’.” QIPC 2014. March 23, 2014. https://qipc2014.wordpress.com/2014/03/23/the-dangers-of-teen-wolf-through-queer-baiting/. Lockhart, Eleanor Amaranth. 2015. “Life Is Strange, Mass Effect, Gal Pals, and Why Video Games Aren’t Quite as Gay as You Think.” Medium. Medium. December 5, 2015. https://medium.com/@BootlegGirl/life-is-strange-mass-effect-gal-pals-and-why-video-games-aren-t-quite-as-gay-as-you-think82abb7cddc52. “Queer Theory in 80’s and 90’s Action Movies | Renegade Cut” YouTube video, 0:26. “Renegade Cut,” 2019. https://youtu.be/7wsHjT8sPi4.
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Creator Letter
Giving Life is Strange a Second Chance When I first played through Life is Strange, I didn’t like it all that much. Despite all of the praise the game had received, I found the storytelling to be lackluster and the visuals less than appealing. Everything felt contrived and there was never a moment where I felt compelled to really finish the game. I continued playing so I could get in on that good old internet discourse, and boy did I have a lot to say by the end of the game. Mostly I was frustrated with Max as a character and the final choice. I had also anticipated Max and Chloe becoming girlfriends and this never happened. You’d be correct in assuming that I wasn’t all too optimistic when popping in my copy of the game to replay for this issue of the magazine. It had been a while since I’d played, two years in fact. Since I could only associate this game with negative emotions, I went in somewhat dreading the replay experience. What I experienced on a second playthrough, however, was far from negative. Playing Life is Strange a second time proved to
be a wonderful, emotional experience. Though my frustrations with the game still were on the cusp of boiling over, I found that there was a lot more to like than dislike. Aspects I found annoying on the first playthrough were charming on the second run. I sat with this for a long time and tried to figure out what had changed. Why was this game affecting me so deeply when previously it had left me feeling cold? I think a partial answer to this question is that during my second playthrough I allowed myself to experience the game more fully. I didn’t go into this with a one track mind as I did the first time, wanting Chloe and Max ending up in a relationship. Rather, I tried to examine everything that glowed and talk to every character I passed by. I really tried to experience the game to the fullest. Though my frustrations still remain (I’m looking at you Episode 5!), playing this game again turned out to be a rewarding experience. I finished the game late at night. When I made the final choice, I chose to save Arcadia Bay and bawled my eyes out. I had not expected to be moved in any fashion by this games ending. And yet there I was, crying on my bed as if these characters were real people. I do not condone the idea that something that makes you cry is good. I cry every time I hear the “Christmas Shoes” song and that is a piece of garbage. But there are times when a story is something you need at that very moment, and I think I needed Life is Strange. It is among the more unique and thoughtful games I’ve played, and I am glad I played it again to talk about it in the magazine.
Danielle Karthauser Creator & Publisher
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The Hot & the Cold
News
PS5 Controller Patent A patent was filed for the Dualshock 5, and it looks like a PS4 controller with significantly more nuanced rumble features. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!
Half-Life: Alyx Half-Life 3! Sort of! More like HalfLife 1.5, starring fan-favorite Alyx, in VR. Strange approach, limited audience, but it actually looks pretty cool!
Pokémon Switch Backlack, Reviews, & Sales The national dex controversy hasn’t slowed the latest entry one bit; it’s been met with generally positive reviews and the best-selling Pokemon launch to date.
Sonic Design Improved The Sonic the Hedgehog movie redesigned Sonic, and he actually looks great! If only executive meddling didn’t necessitate that kind of crunch to begin with.
Google Stadia Google’s attempt to revolutionize game streaming seems to have landed with a thud, with impressive performance undercut by technical issues and a miniscule library.
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Kingdom Hearts 3 ReMIND DLC is the New Generation of Final Mix The highly anticipated Kingdom Hearts 3 has been out for almost a year now and new DLC is on the way. In the past, the Kingdom Hearts numbered titles as well as Birth by Sleep have received the subtitle Final Mix, which symbolizes the final cut of the game with bonus content such as new boss battles, new items, new campaigns, and more. But now Kingdom Hearts has entered a new era of gaming, seemingly dropping the Final Mix for their brand new DLC called ReMIND. Earlier this December, a new trailer revealed a January 23, 2020 release date for the Playstation. The trailer showed off a lot of great content including new playable characters, story continuation, Final Fantasy characters (finally!), and bonus boss battles similar to the Data Battles in Kingdom Hearts 2 Final Mix. Tetsuya Nomura, who has led the development since the beginning, may be a mad man but he sure does know how to get fans excited!
Cuphead Ripoff? I Am Jesus Christ Not Really. is a Real Game Xixo Games Studios’ Enchanted Portals has has been called a Cuphead rip off due to the similar aesthetics of its gameplay and art style. But is it really a rip off? At the worst, it is a tad bit careless but surely we can allow games to take inspiration from other games before it. Enchanted Portals takes a more fairy tale approach to its art style, as opposed to Cuphead with its 1930s cartoon look. The game clearly has its own ideas and shouldn’t be discounted.
Announced earlier this December, I am Jesus Christ is described as a realistic simulator game where players play Jesus Christ himself and perform various miracles. Although fairly nice to look at, it is reasonable to question if this is just a modern take on Christian propaganda games like Bible Adventures and Super 3D Noah’s Ark. It would help if the game had a more historically accurate looking Jesus but I guess that is too much to ask.
ALL I WANT FOR
SWITCHMAS 1
THE KINGDOM HEARTS SERIES
Now that we have the entire series on XBox One, it makes sense to get it on the Switch! Okay, I know the Switch can’t handle Kingdom Hearts 3, but at least give me the 1.5, 2.5, and 2.8 collections. And maybe sprinkle in the original Chain of Memories, 358/2 Days, and Coded if Square is feeling generous! The Kingdom Hearts series is my absolute favorite and having the games to play on my favorite console on the go, and possibly in their original form for the handheld titles, would be amazing!
2
OCARINA OF TIME & MAJORA’S MASK
These games pretty much explain themselves. The Legend of Zelda is a beloved Nintendo franchise and it is only fair that we get to experience the games on the newest console! Now that the Virtual Console is dead and the Wii and Wii U are showing their age, it would be awesome to experience these games on a new system and on the go. My hope with Ocarina is that if they do port the game, they will have the original N64 version and the 3DS version. I do not like 3D Ocarina, the art style isn’t appealing to me. It would be awesome to play the game with the original aesthetic. I will keep my fingers crossed but won’t keep my hopes up.
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The Nintendo Switch has quickly become one of my favorite gaming consoles of all time. I love playing it on the go, the feel of the pro controller in my hand, and how much it makes me feel like a kid again. So naturally I want all of the games on the Switch. These are the games I want to see on the Switch for Christmas...I mean, Switchmas. Look, I’m not picky. These don’t have to come right away. But at some point these games need to be announced and I am really hoping I get my Switchmas wish!
BANJO-KAZOOIE & BANJO-TOOIE
The bear and bird finally made it into Smash, a dream that has long felt impossible. So why can’t more of the impossible become possible too? Don’t get me wrong, I have a great time playing my Banjo-Kazooie games on the XBox, but to have them back on their home platform would be the most rewarding experience. I love Banjo-Kazooie and Tooie and having them on the go on their native console would bring me such joy...which is really what Switchmas is all about.
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SUPER MARIO 64
This one may be the most obvious choice to bring to the Switch, and will most likely come before all of the others. I never owned Super Mario 64 but played the game while in the dentist’s waiting room. It has always been a game I’ve aspired to play, master, and beat. Although buying it for the Virtual Console, nothing ever came of owning it and I hardly ever played. With this fresh opportunity and my love for the Switch, seeing this game on the console would be such a reward.
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STORY OVERVIEW Life is Strange begins with Max Caulfield who finds herself caught in a ferocious storm, unsure of how she ended up in this location. After trying to make her way through the wind and rain, she suddenly finds herself back in class at her school, Blackwell Academy. Certain that what she’d just experienced wasn’t a dream, Max feels somewhat out of it for the remainder of the period while her photography professor, Mr. Jefferson, lectures on about selfies being modern examples of portraiture. After class, Mr. Jefferson encourages Max to submit a photo to the Everyday Heroes contest. Max goes to the bathroom to splash water on her face. Feeling insecure about her photograph that she was going to submit to the contest, she rips it in half and the pieces fall to the floor. Then, she sees a blue butterfly off in the corner of the bathroom. Just after snapping a photo, a guy walks into the bathroom in a panic. Shortly after, a girl with blue hair walks in asking for her money. The guy pulls out a gun and shoots the girl. Max jumps out from the corner and reaches her arm out toward them when suddenly she is back in class, going over portraitures again. She realizes that she went back in time and experiments with her new ability in class a bit before running to the bathroom to stop the girl from being shot by setting off the fire alarm. Max notices some weird things going on at school such as the security guard David Madsen harassing another student, Kate Marsh. It is also believed that Nathan, the boy from the bathroom, has been involved with some drug schemes as mentioned in the bathroom. Later that day, Max learns that the girl from the bathroom is none other than her old best friend, Chloe
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Price. Max had been living in Seattle for the past few years but returned to her home town of Arcadia Bay to attend Blackwell Academy for their photography program. She hasn’t talked to Chloe in quite some time and it is clear that Chloe was hurt by this. They go to Chloe’s house and Max learns that Chloe was close friends with the missing girl whose posters are all over school, Rachel Amber. It is implied that they were in a relationship with one another. Chloe’s stepfather is David Madsen, the campus security guard. He demands to come in Chloe’s room to tell her to stop blasting the music. He is harsh and overpowering toward her, and accuses her of stealing his gun. Chloe says she didn’t steal it. Max decides to confide in Chloe about her new time travel powers after having another vision of the storm. Chloe puts Max to the test, asking her questions she would only know with her powers. Although Chloe is excited, Max is hesitant and sure that her powers won’t last forever. The two go to the junkyard by the train tracks where Chloe and Rachel used to hang out, and test David’s gun which Chloe revealed she stole after all. While there, a man named Frank comes and says Chloe owes him money. The exchange is very hostile. Meanwhile, a video leaks and circulates around campus of Kate Marsh. Students shame her for the video and it is clear she is having a difficult time dealing with it. On a rainy afternoon, students rush to the girls dorm where Kate is on the roof about to jump. Max tries to rewind time but finds her powers are no longer working. She makes her way to the roof to convince Kate not to jump. (It is at this point that the player’s decisions can affect the rest of the story. They can stop Kate from jump-
ing or not stop her. Because of this, this summary will not be touching on Kate in a detailed manner from this point forward). The entire campus is shaken about Kate Marsh. Max and Chloe believe that Rachel’s disappearance and Kate Marsh’s leaked video are connected, and they decide to start investigating. They sneak into the school at night and try to find clues in the Principal’s office. After finding a few new leads, they sneak into the pool and swim for a while before sneaking off when David arrives. Max sleeps over Chloe’s house. In the morning, they go to the diner and see Frank is there. Chloe believes his camper could have information about Rachel and so they sneak inside to find evidence that Rachel and Frank were in a relationship. Upset, Chloe lashes out at Max and reflects on the death of her father, who tragically died in a car accident when they were younger. Max returns to her room and looks at an old photo of her and Chloe that was taken the day Chloe’s father died. Suddenly she realizes that her powers are taking a new form and she can use this photo to go back to the time the photo was taken. In a hurry, Max takes step to make sure Chloe’s father, William, does not die. When she returns to the present day, several things are altered and she finds that although William is still alive, Chloe is in a wheelchair, paralyzed. She spends the day with Chloe and it is clear the Price family is struggling with Chloe’s medical bills. Chloe asks Max to turn up her morphine and let her die. Realizing how her meddling in past events messed with time, Max returns to the day William died and this time allows him to die. She returns to the present day and everything is back to normal. It is implied she made up with Chloe at some point. The two continue with their investigation with all of the evidence they have gathered. It leads them to a barn in the middle of nowhere. They find a secret latch beneath the hay that leads to a locked door. They unlock it and inside find what looks to be a bunker for the apocalypse. After investigating, it is revealed that Kate and Rachel, along with many other girls, were taken into this room against their will and photographed. They find a lead to where Rachel is, at the junkyard. Chloe hurriedly drives over and they dig up Rachel’s dead body. Believing Nathan to be behind Rachel’s death
and the dark room, Chloe and Max go to the Vortex Club party to find Nathan and turn him in. When they realize Nathan isn’t there, they leave and receive a text from Nathan saying he won’t leave any evidence for them. Believing he is going to move Rachel’s body, they hurry to the junkyard. There, Max is drugged and can’t use her powers. Powerless, she tries to warn Chloe when someone shoots Chloe in the head. Max looks up to see it is Mr. Jefferson. Max wakes up in the dark room, strapped to a chair. Using photographs, Max manages to jump through time in order to stop Jefferson and save Chloe. She jumps through several different timelines, messing with time further and further, fixing things only to make more problems. She ends up back at the dark room where David arrives and rescues her. Max goes out in the storm to find another photograph to help her go back in time again and save Chloe. Outside the storm from her visions is happening. The destruction is overwhelming. She manages to go back in time to the Vortex Club party and tell Chloe what happened. Then she finds herself in the storm with Chloe, overlooking Arcadia Bay at the lighthouse. She passes out and goes through a trippy dream sequence, before waking up in the storm again. Unsure what to do, Chloe suggests that this storm is the result of her fated demise. Max must make the decision - sacrifice Chloe by returning back in time to the bathroom and letting Nathan shoot her and therefore stopping the storm, or keeping Chloe alive and sacrifice the town of Arcadia Bay. If Max sacrifices Chloe, the two share a kiss, Max lets Chloe die, and attends Chloe’s funeral in a very gut-wrenching montage. If Max sacrifices Arcadia Bay, the two drive out of town through the destruction. Life is Strange is at both times frustrating and fantastic. The story deals with a lot of heavy topics that many games would sooner shy away from tackling. Additionally, the game is beautifully cinematic and contains a banger of a soundtrack. Despite the good, the game gets a bit lost with trying to do too much with the plot. This leads to an ending that while very emotional, isn’t very strong in terms of what the story set up. Taking all of this into account, Life is Strange seems to be at a Level 3 when it comes to its story. The good and the bad average each other out. Level: 3 out of 5.
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RE-FRAMING HEROISM MAKE CHLOE A HERO TOO Photo credit: Rita Popova (PopovaJr) www.deviantart.com/popovajr www.instagram.com/popovajr_art
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Written by Danielle Karthauser
L
ife is Strange struggles with telling a solid, cohesive narrative. Though there are several elements that work well and are executed nicely, the story fails to come together in the end and apply the themes it has presented in a satisfying way. One of the core themes of the game is heroism, specifically explored within the main character, Max Caulfield. Throughout the game, Max is clearly framed as the hero of the story. She is an ordinary girl given extraordinary time travel powers, and must wield them cautiously and use them for good. As the game progresses and Max continues to use her powers, they start to spiral out of control and lead to the convoluted final chapter where Max jumps through several different timelines. This all leads to the final choice of the game, the choice that is meant to symbolize Max’s growth as a character. Because she is the hero, she must make this difficult, albeit unfair, choice. Although Max’s heroism is explored in very interesting ways, a much more interesting and thematically rich route would have been to elevate Chloe’s role as the hero of the story alongside Max.
Chloe, the More Interesting Character It isn’t a controversial thing to say that Chloe is a far more interesting character than Max. Though Max gets too much hate from critics, these critiques are not unfounded. The game doesn’t do enough work with Max as with Chloe. She often comes across as a bland placement for the player to inhabit. Chloe, however, is leaps and bounds more fleshed out. Right away Chloe is set up as someone who is going through a lot of stuff. She is dealing with the feeling of abandonment from her dead father, the loss of her best friend Max who moved away a few years ago, as well as the loss of her romantic partner Rachel Amber. This leads to a lot of attitude from Chloe and she comes off as a selfish jerk for much of the early chapters in the game. Another hardship Chloe faces is her home life. Her family is far from poor but they are struggling. David, her stepfather, is invasive and abusive. She was also kicked out of Blackwell Academy two years prior and doesn’t have a core, stable group of friends. Chloe displays all of the classic signs of a rebel. She has tattoos, smokes regularly, and has short blue hair. Although judging a character by their appearance can be a shallow exercise, it actually can tell you a lot about their personality. Chloe defies authority and social norms in all ways possible with her punk rocker look. This is juxtaposed with Max who embodies a very heteronormative look, dressing in plain jeans and artsy t-shirts, and has straight brown hair. Chloe, unlike Max, is set up as a character who is working toward something. She has clear flaws and these flaws are what the game could use to help Chloe grow as a character. Max’s biggest issue as a character is her lack of flaws. The game constantly frames her as a nice person, trying to do the right thing. The only instance where Max can be a jerk is if the player chooses to have her act in this way. Nice characters who contain no flaws don’t fully show the complex range of human emotions and tend to be less interesting and compelling. Chloe immediately pops on the screen and draws players in due to her vibrant personality and appearance.
Everyday Heroes In the first episode of the game, Mr. Jefferson introduces the everyday heroes contest for his students to enter. Max has an entry, a photo of herself blurred from behind looking at polaroids on her wall. The contest doesn’t play a huge roll in the story until the
final chapter, but it serves as a way to frame Max, literally, as an everyday hero. Max rips the photo up in a moment of self doubt at the beginning of the game. Max truly is an everyday hero. Not only does she have newfound super powers but she repeatedly stands up to school bullies and authority figures, and even runs to the roof to save Kate Marsh when she threatens to take her own life. Max also works to save the life of Chloe’s father as well as Chloe several different times in the game. At the same time, Chloe is also standing up to opposing forces. She stands up to her stepfather constantly and she stands up to the world she believes is against her. In many ways, Chloe is an anti-hero. Her motivations are selfish and complicated, unlike Max who plays the conventional, upstanding character of the story. Very rarely does the conventional character get anything meaningful to do but watch as other characters do things around them. While Chloe’s actions are coming from a darker and less heroic place than Max, this positions her to redeem herself and ultimately become the hero of her own story and not leave it up to fate (as the game decides to do later).
Selfish to Selfless Chloe spends most of the game unconcerned with the feelings of those around her. She acts in accordance to what she wants and nothing else, often hurting others in the process. Yet this leaves a large opportunity to allow Chloe to grow as a character. In some ways she does grow and in later chapters becomes less intrusive and mean, though this has more to do with audience reception than character work on the part of Dontnod Entertainment. Since the chapters of Life is Strange were released as individual episodes, leaving large gaps for people to comment and discuss, it is likely that Dontnod noticed Chloe’s popularity and curved her personality. Simply shifting a character’s personality slightly doesn’t provide the framework for character development and let the character come to a place of personal growth via their experiences throughout the story. But Chloe is the perfect character who should grow from what has happened to her. After all, she and Max uncover the mysterious events happening at Blackwell and she finds the body of Rachel Amber buried at the junkyard. Life is Strange tries to boil the games events down to fate. Chloe’s constant deaths through the various timelines are evidence that she is fated to die. But this completely negates the work that has been done in the narrative which is the friendship between Max and Chloe. The game decides to have Max make the choice to save Chloe or sacrifice Chloe. This is not just a hard choice but an unfair one. The game seems to think that this final choice is the test for Max and it is clear by the two different endings that sacrificing Chloe is the moral choice. Yet, how powerful would the ending be if Chloe herself made the choice? Rather than focusing on Max’s ambiguity, the game could have framed the moment around Chloe’s heroism. There would be no final choice for the sake of having the player beat the final boss. The entire game would have been building toward this moment and thus make the ending much more satisfying because Chloe would have grown so much as a character. By framing Max as the hero and giving her this moral quandary, the ending of Life is Strange feels inconsistent and unfair. Had the game built up Chloe as the hero as well and carried her arc to the end, taking her from selfish to selfless, the narrative would have felt much more earned and rewarding.
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Centralising Chloe & the Struggle of Player Choice Written by David McNeill
I
don’t think it should be especially controversial to suggest Life Is Strange’s success or failure as a vehicle for story is underpinned by the relationship between Max and Chloe. The opening act of the game centralises Chloe: she’s the reason Max develops the ability to time travel, and she forms the inciting incident for the narrative at large. Writ in unmissable ink across the story is the theme of consequence, the exploration of choice, and a simple question: is Chloe worth more than the people around her. The game constantly puts Chloe’s desires in opposition with the people around her, and Max must decide whose interests she’ll support. By centralising Chloe’s world view, Max is forced to react to Chloe’s perspective, rather than the stimulus in front of her. By the time you, the player, can decide how you feel about a decision, the game has already precipitated events through Chloe’s particular brand of self-serving nihilism. Which isn’t to say there is an inherent problem with associating with, or agreeing with, Chloe. Plenty of folks have worldviews that differ from our own and plenty of bad folk do good things, and plenty of good folks do bad things. The fulcrum of the Chloe problem is not one of ethics, but of choice. Video games are, cliche as it, one of the only mediums where you get to decide how and when to do things - even in a linear narrative like Death Stranding or even Ninja Gaiden, the player’s ability and requirement to interact with the game is what creates unique experiences, and empowers games writers to explore empathy, sympathy, and themes in a rich, deep way that film and prose cannot. Games do not hinge on choice, but a narrative driven mystery that simulates Telltale’s inhouse style, one that
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relies on dialogue decision-making and consequence, sort of needs a little of it. The inclusion of Chloe and her centralisation is a rather unique and hard to explain phenomenon, so to illustrate a little of why this can detract from the story, let’s talk about Fallout 4. Despite being the least RPG that ever RPG’d, Fallout 4 does a lot with a little when it comes to morality. Yes, you can’t really be anything other than a saint or a murderous psychopath in Bethesda’s version of Fallout (a pale imitation of Obsidian’s original works) but, at the very least, Fallout 4 taps a handful of rich themes around immigration, marxist theory, and socialism - in particular, via its use of The Institute, Synths, and the proletariats of Diamond City. The game also shares a similar issue to Life Is Strange. Rather than being menaced by Chloe’s ever present “I’m smart enough to actually enjoy Rick and Morty and you’re not” attitude, Fallout 4 is burdened by the world’s most straight shooting moral companion of all time: Piper. Piper is one of the first companions most players will meet. She’s a reporter who believes in straight forward American values: freedom of the press, a fair go for everyone, being nice all the time. The game borrows from The Walking Dead by including a HUD indicator when a decision you’ve made is liked or disliked by companions in your company. If you have Piper with you and you do something mean or unfair, the game tells you she doesn’t like it. Periodically the game shows her satisfaction with dialogue or her actions, but this tends to be as binary as the display, often resulting in her stomping back to her newspaper shop for a while until you move your morality meter into the “good guy” zone again by shooting some designated evil bandits. But Piper is funny. She’s a little sassy. She’s independent and has a handful of insightful thoughts about Synths. She gives you a cute nickname. She wants to get to know you. And, crucially, you can romance her. Thanks Bethesda. The result is that a lot of players meet Piper, like her a whole lot, and start to make decisions in the game based on what Piper might like or dislike, instead of focusing on what their player character might want to do. There is nothing wrong with this mode of play, it just isn’t the most dynamic option when it comes to RPG’s. Contrasted with Fallout 2 where your companions have opinions that are not binary. They want to talk about fucked up decisions you make, and they want to understand why you did that really bad thing that they disagree with. What I’m aiming at here is that the play style of trying to please a character you want to romance just kind of sucks. If you know someone in this type of relationship in real life, you’ll know it is not fun for anyone involved. Max, by contrast to our player character in Fallout 4, is presented as having her own opinions on all matters. The game renders these opinions in an almost self-perceptive way where the game tonally wants us to be constantly on the edge of tears with an aggravatingly cliched use of the most predictable music of all time, a simulcrant for Max
having actual emotions. Max never quite engages emotionally through no fault of Hannah Tell, who does an exceptional job of voice acting. Rather, Max is not allowed to emote properly in response to almost anything in the story without Chloe’s expressed suggestion or concern. It’s fairly telling that the only scene where Max feels a feel is when she’s flashing-back at the end of act one and Chloe is there to comfort her. Or, indeed, at the end of the game, when Max feels a feel about Chloe. Max’s emotions are MacGyvered into a shake-shift hessian sack where the writers can hastily jam Chloe’s opinions and reactions into a jumbled mess that you are asked to engage with. As a result, the game ultimately provides Chloe as a way to elevate your requirement to choose and engage in the ethics of the story at hand. It’s a clever way to provide an immediate understanding of consequence: every time you make a decision and Chloe is around, you’ll receive immediate feedback as to whether that was a good thing or a bad thing to have done. In the presence of Chloe’s strong, nihilistic worldview, I found my initial playthrough a breeze: my ethics, my morals, and my imagination need not be stretched much further than asking the question: will Chloe like the decision I make? The game is more dynamic than this, of course. The first real decision of any consequence the game presents, and the first real use of your powers, is during Kate’s suicide. Of course, the game strips you of your powers in the moment where you confront Kate on the roof. This lack of power mirrors the player’s vulnerability in the face of Kate’s emotions. And it smartly allows you, the player, to experience talking Kate off the ledge by using empathy and sympathy, and engaging with her on the same emotional level Max does. Even Kate’s death, however, is somehow about Chloe. The game never shows us how it might affect Kate’s family or the community at large, aside from in passing. No, the focus, instead, is on how Chloe feels about it. I’m undecided if the aggressive centralising of Chloe is good or bad, but certainly it should change how the game is discussed and written about. It’s still a game of player choice and the story is still influenced by your decisions as Max, but unless you try very hard, Max is not a free agent in the narrative, and being beholden to Chloe’s attitude can be draining. I like some things about Chloe, but the further I move back from the story, the more I wonder if the game developers watched Scott Pilgrim Meets The World then 500 Days of Summer and sort of missed the point of both: Chloe is not the problem, per se, but Max should be allowed to stand by herself.
DAVID MCNEILL
is the lead writer at Digital & Creative Media Works and the author of the Maynard Trigg series, find his other work at www.youtube.com/dcmworks
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An Adolescent’s Power in Choice Written by Angelina Bonilla
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DECEMBER 2019 | LEVEL STORY
Photo credit: FangedMink5
F
or anyone who has played Life is Strange all the way up until it’s final episode, they know how big the concept of choice is for the game itself. They’re constantly reminded of it with that judgemental butterfly in the corner of the screen telling you that your choices have consequences. While Life is Strange isn’t the first game to have that sort of reminder (Telltale Games’ “X Character will remember that” being the one most people think of in regards to this) it doesn’t pull its punches when it comes to many characters meeting gruesome fates thanks to Max’s actions or lack of action. Which brings us to the final decision of the game. Let Chloe live or let Chloe die. It’s a decision that many players weren’t prepared for and it received quite a bit of backlash. I’ve made two videos discussing the initial Life is Strange and getting into why the story itself does telegraph the ending choice through its use of symbolism with Max’s camera and the sheer fact that it is a coming of age tale in the more tragic sense, which often end with a character having to cast their childhood behind. This can mean either the place they grew up, their friends or, in many interesting cases, themselves. Which leads to this inquiry. Why weren’t we given a third option where Max sacrifices herself? Throughout Life Is Strange we are given a chance to play an active role in the lives of everyone around us. We aren’t given a choice when it comes to Chloe, but with the other characters we are. Kate Marsh’s death can entirely hinge upon us finding out things about her that we wouldn’t have found out otherwise if we had played a passive role in the story. Chloe is our main focus but she’s not the only aspect there is to the game. Max can change the fates of people around her through her meddling or even her counsel. By the end of the game, when that final choice is presented to you, you’ve likely taken the time to get to know all the people of Arcadia Bay. This means that you are essentially bound to everyone in the town and to Chloe, leaving a binary choice to be rather nonsensical in every sense of the word. If the events in the skewed timelines can be any sign, Max has created countless selves when she rewound time with at least one having full knowledge of her actions throughout the game. Their discussions lead to Max questioning if she was doing all the rewinds for herself and her relationship with Chloe, out of guilt for not caring about people, or because she just wants to control everyone. All of these things are a possibility as Max speaks to “herself” until Chloe comes in and tries to snap Max out of it. Yet the damage is done. Max is the reason that many of these things happened. By trying to save Chloe, she creates the storm. This much is clear, but what about all of her other rewinds? Do they make the storm grow? Every time Max rewinds time, she ends up further complicating her own timeline and even destroying others.
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If Max was given the option to save both [the town and Chloe], it would have led to the story having a poignant ending that many people wouldn’t have expected. If Max was given the option to save both, it would have led to the story having a poignant ending that many people wouldn’t have expected. There would be two options for this. One, Max sacrifices herself in the bathroom scene, leading to an investigation of Nate and Jefferson, resulting in what would have happened in the Chloe Dies ending, but with Max. The second option would be that Max dives headfirst into the storm allowing herself to be smashed upon the rocks below or torn apart by the winds, causing the storm to dissipate and the entire town as well as Chloe to be saved. Power is an essential part of coming of age young adult stories. More often than not, the characters in it don’t start off with the power and only achieve it through various means within the story. Max doesn’t start out with power. She’s a nobody who just so happens to be good at photography. When her ability to rewind time appears, Max is given the power to change things, to change the world as she knows it. In Disturbing the Universe Power and Repression in Adolescent Literature, Roberta Selinger-Trites states this: “Eventually I realized that these lists of predictable and unpredictable patterns in adolescent literature share one thing. They can all be linked to issues of power. Although the primary purpose of the adolescent novel may appear to be a depiction of growth, growth in this genre is inevitably represented as being linked to what the adolescent has learned about power. Without experiencing gradations between power and powerlessness, the adolescent cannot grow. Thus, power is even more fundamental to adolescent literature than growth.” 1 It’s this sort of “power” that was missing from the ending choices of Life is Strange. I found myself desperately looking for it when I analyzed the endings. While they do convey many aspects of the adolescent journey in literature and storytelling as a whole, especially with the inclusion of cameras and their connection to death, I did notice that the power at the end is more so threaded together with the two choices of killing your
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best friend or the entire town, despite the story conveying much to the contrary. Those two endings would have always been options but with the developers showing in Episode 5 that Max has become aware of her actions, her place in the world, and how her power has changed it, there was a hollowness to the ending that just displays one or the other, leading many to view the choice as moralistically divisive. Which in many ways it is. The choice becomes an entirely emotional one, not one based in logic or character development. Who do you value more, your love or the world around you? This leads to an unfortunate case of black and white thinking that doesn’t do anyone any good. I find that a third choice could have lead future installments to interesting places. It also could have shown the world of Arcadia Bay without Max pulling the strings, something that I personally would have liked to see. Now whether or not she had to die is up for debate. I find myself leaning towards her at least losing her powers so the world would have to develop organically and she’d have to learn how to talk to people without relying on the reset, something that we’ve only seen portrayed in the story once in the case of of Kate’s suicide attempt. This option is enticing because after everything she has gone through, seeing her live within the confines of one timeline and having to make up for past mistakes would have made an ending that could have impacted us like never before. Despite the bumps on this ride, Life is Strange allows players to go through a narrative of a girl discovering her power and choosing how they want her to use it. It’s just a shame that they didn’t fully explore how she could have realized her power and used it to its fullest extent.
ANGELINA BONILLA
is a Librarian, games journalist, voice actress, and the host of the Red Angel Channel which includes the show Late Night Ponderings. https://www.youtube.com/c/RedAngelPonderings
WHAT ARE FANS CREATING? TIME ALBUM
SUPERPOSITION
BETTER THEN SHORT- FILM
by Koethe
by Innuendo Studios
by Better Then Project
Koethe’s music largely revolves around Life
Mostly known for his The Alt-Right Playbook
Originally Life is Strange fan-fiction written by
is Strange. From the occasional cover to his
series on YouTube, Innuendo Studios is great
Israel Blargh, the story is now being brought
original music, Koethe beautifully captures
at exploring ideas within the media we con-
to life as a 3D animated short-film / audio
the spirit of the game within his lyrics and
sume. His astute observations are meaningful
drama with the help of various artists and
instrumentation.
and thought provoking.
voice actors.
www.youtube.com/KoetheKoethe
www.youtube.com/c/InnuendoStudioss
www.youtube.com/c/BetterThenProject
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DECEMBER 2019 | LEVEL STORY
SUBVERTING
the Coming of Age Narrative Written by Danielle Karthauser
Photo credit: Nathan Hartanto https://www.deviantart.com/inh99 https://www.instagram.com/i.n.hartanto/
The coming of age narrative is very popular among audiences, and for good reason. Most, if not all, people will experience the transition from childhood to adulthood and the loss of innocence that comes with that. Often times the coming of age story is intertwined with the schoolboy narrative, where young boys are shipped off to boarding school as playful adolescents and complete their education as respectable men. Throughout their contained school experience they will be victims of violence and also perpetrators, in service of achieving “true masculinity”. We see this in a plethora of stories from literary classics such as A Separate Peace by John Knowles to films such as Dead Poets Society. Those are only two examples out of the plethora that exists within the literary canon and popular media. Clearly the genre is still resonant since its origins in the Victorian era of strict morals and “Christian” virtue. But something severely lacking are the stories that place girls at the forefront of school, coming of age dramas. Few stories that take place at a boarding school place girls in a position beyond being the side character or motivational prop. Female characters are typically used as objects to fuel the male protagonists sexual awakening and feature little real character development. Stories within the popular public consciousness in which girls come of age, bond, and are allowed room to do so, just as boys are, are also very limited. If they do exist, they are often labeled chick-flicks and/or marketed exclusively to girls. Little Women may be taught in schools but you will not see it given to boys to read outside academic institutions, and certainly won’t see Rainbow Rowell books or the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants given to boys even though girls are consistently exposed to the coming of age stories of their male counterparts. Male stories are considered the default, while women are not allowed to share that same space, and certainly not in the same school setting. This makes it seem like these types of stories belong only to men and cannot take on a different identity outside of this bubble. Then there is Life is Strange, a game that challenges these rules as well as plays by them. The game was released to wide critical acclaim, called “one of the most interesting games in years” by Aoife Wilson of Eurogamer 2 while Phil Savage of PCGamer said the game was one of his favorites of 2015. 3 Allegra Frank of Polygon marked it as her #7 pick for game of the year saying, “Life is Strange affected me so,
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so deeply...Female friendship is so powerful, and it’s something I want to see played out more in all media.” 4 The game clearly had an effect on the game industry at large, telling a familiar story with a twist. Life is Strange tells the coming of age story in a school setting but from the perspective of a young woman, Max Caulfield. The story focuses on female friendship, as Allegra Frank pointed out, and growing up amidst the turmoils of high school. In fact, Dontnod had to fight to keep Max and Chloe female characters as many publishers wanted to make them men. Square Enix was the only publisher to not want to change the protagonist’s gender. 5 Max does not have a romantic subplot with the boy she goes to school beyond undertones which the player can encourage or discourage. Rather, she is more interested in her friendship with her recently reunited best friend, Chloe. Some even read their relationship as romantic and it would be remise not to mention the queer subtext going on throughout the game. Instead of the traditional high school plot points girls in fiction usually go through such as prom, break ups, and talking about cute boys (it should be noted, there isn’t anything inherently wrong with these experiences, but they occur so often in stories about adolescent women that it can feel stifling to girls who don’t want or do these things), Max and Chloe are more concerned with solving mysteries with Max’s new time travel powers. What is Max’s storm dream all about? How can they use Max’s newfound time travel powers to their advantage? And who is behind all of the sick events going on at Blackwell Academy? The game affords Max the autonomy to make choices that are unrestricted by the barriers usually set in place for girls’ stories in media. In particular, it removes the masculine presence from the story which is traditionally defined by it.
The game is consistently questioning authority, whether it be in the classroom or the town of Arcadia Bay, and this authority is usually male. Instead of maleness, Life is Strange is much more interested in exploring the female school experience and the threat of men in women’s daily lives.
Following the Tropes
dle age white men completely distant from teenage girl speak, this does not discredit what is happening on screen. Characters experiment with different words of dialogue that are not prominent in the linguistic consciousness, saying things such as “hella,” “are you cereal?,” or the classic “go fuck your selfie.” Although the cringe factor is real, it is worthwhile to address the reality that high school students say dumb things and experiment with language in their modern context. Like many coming of age stories, these teenagers are trying to figure out their place in the adult world and establishing themselves through language. Victoria, the insecure bully, may have the worst line of the game, but it speaks to her character’s insecurity that she would turn a fairly neutral word into a lame insult. It is also worth noting that Mr. Jefferson, who we later learn is an antagonist of the game, openly dislikes the word “selfie,” subtly queuing us into his villainy. Although he seems like an easy going person, his aversion to the younger generations use of language is very telling, in a genre that pushes adolescents to challenge the rules set in place by generations before them and figure things out on their own, new terms. Many coming of age stories position the protagonist in a state of in between. They are not yet adults and no longer children. This can often lead to a sense of powerlessness. Max is constantly in a balancing act, not only in accordance with her age but also in terms of the people she associates. Reuniting with Chloe returns her to childhood and reflecting on her memories of being a kid. Yet neither she nor Chloe can return to those days,
Life is Strange follows the form fairly well when it comes to tackling coming of age. Max is a teenager disenchanted by the adults around her and trying to make sense of things. She makes her way through high school by attempting to stay out of trouble while at the same time defying authority when she feels necessary. She begins the story as an unsure teenager and by the end is expected to have the emotional maturity to make the difficult final, albeit unfair, decision. Max is an obvious homage to Holden Caulfield from Catcher in the Rye. Though the novel takes place primarily away from school, it deals heavily with the politics of school and Holden is consistently referring back to his experiences there. While Max is in all manner of speaking nothing like Holden, there are homages to the book in several places in the game. At one point when Max is snooping in the principal’s office, she spots a hunter’s hat and notes, “Only a total ‘phony’ would wear a creepy hat like that,” using the classic “phony” line that Holden says over and over in Catcher. Max also has a poster in her dorm room that is an exact replica of Catcher’s cover artwork with a title change. Although the comparison is not one to one, Max and Holden both defy authority in their own ways. Like the coming of age stories before it, Life is Strange likes to play with dialogue and challenge traditional language. While it is entirely clear that the dialogue in the game was written by mid-
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and they are constantly reminded of this. Even Chloe’s mom, Joyce, repeatedly comments on how she has to remember that Chloe and Max are no longer children. Yet most adults treat them as such.
Challenging the Narrative Rules The game is consistently questioning authority, whether it be in the classroom or the town of Arcadia Bay, and this authority is usually male. Instead of maleness, Life is Strange is much more interested in exploring the female school experience and the threat of men in women’s daily lives. Men are constantly framed as immoral or bad people, and sometimes are outright bad people, including Principal Wells, Nathan, David, and Mr. Jefferson. Nathan texts Max and calls her a feminazi when he believes she is trying to “dethrone” him from Arcadia Bay, a comment that is all too relevant in our current climate. David refers to the students as “metrosexuals” and “libtards,” obvious jabs at the left leaning, open minded student body, and complains about PC culture. The game clearly has something to say about toxic masculinity and how it impacts women’s lives. Beyond toxic masculinity, the game positions itself behind the various different experiences of women. Although their experiences vary, Max, Chloe, Rachel, Kate, and Victoria all fall victim to men forcing themselves on them, some paying more dire consequences than others. The story pushes against traditional coming of age narratives made for men and designs one for women and the experiences of women.
Challenging the Combat Rules Life is Strange introduces a sci-fi/fantasy spin to its narrative by giving Max the power to rewind time. This power consumes the entire game, allowing Max to maneuver her space in unique and nontraditional ways. The power to reverse time is the only form of “combat” in the game. As previously discussed in Issue 2 of Level Story talking about Firewatch, there is a term called feminized gameplay which is when a game uses traditional female attributes as a means to progress through the game. It does not equate to the game having a female lead character. For example, the Tomb Raider games would not be an example of feminized gameplay as Lara is actively violent in order to progress through the game. Likewise, feminized gameplay can be used in games where the main character is male such as Phoenix Wright. Feminized gameplay can include dialogue choice mechanics or cooking simulators. Life is Strange solves its problems through communication rather than shooting a gun or using violence. It places itself in a boarding school setting traditionally found in schoolboy, coming of age stories. Yet right away it is distinctly female based on the mechanics of the game. Another unique mechanic of play in the game is the ability to take as long as possible when making a choice. Unlike Telltale’s choice system that gives you a timer and forces you to make a decision within the time limit, Life is Strange removes the fast paced mechanic in place of slower gameplay. Matt Knutson writes in his essay “Backtrack, Pause, Rewind, Reset: Queering Chrononormativity in Gaming”, “While many games feature time
manipulation, Life is Strange focuses on decision-making rather than adept performance, while emphasizes interpersonal relationship management...” 6 Knutson’s essay is directly commenting on the queer aspect of Life is Strange through how it manages time in contrast to how games traditionally handle the concept. Like many coming of age narratives, the game not only challenges culture but challenges the form itself.
Life is Strange Can’t Follow Through Despite the solid setup that happens in the first few episodes of the game, the gears suddenly shift from coming of age to a time jumping adventure trying to take down the apparently psycho Mr. Jefferson. The heightened tension seems to shift the focus at the expense of the coming of age narrative that had been set up fairly nicely in all honesty. The game seems to let its walls down as it goes along, losing confidence in the ideas it had been working toward at the start. What was initially presented as a foil to the traditionally masculine formula is shifted and the game becomes a story about fate, rather than a nuanced take on the tropes of the coming of age genre. Max’s relationship with Chloe is boiled down to a grossly unfair choice that the game believes to be her moment of “with great power comes great responsibility.” Rather than ending their game with a thematically distant choice that hinges on being unfair, they could have allowed their themes and ideas to grow organically.
Conclusions Although thematically inconsistent throughout, Life is Strange is very interested in overcoming the traditionally male centered themes of coming of age narratives. Men exercising their masculinity is not empowering but threatening, not only to women but to men themselves. This is most evident in Nathan who is pressured by his family and ends up trying to prove himself, only to harm himself in the process. Through challenging narrative and gameplay conventions, the game is able to present audiences with a familiar yet brand new type of story. Coming of age stories do not just belong to boys and young men, and Life is Strange shows that women are more than capable of leading these sorts of narratives. The game reframes the narrative to revolve around the experiences of young women, changing the context in which we view these types of stories. By following tropes while also challenging them, Life is Strange ends up presenting us with a new way to experience growing up stories through a medium that is already infiltrated with tales of masculinity, even if the game fails to maintain these ideas all the way through.
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Written by David McNeill
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REWINDING, FOCUS, AND THE PHILOSOPHY OF TIME TRAVEL.
DECEMBER 2019 | LEVEL STORY
In the immortal words of Patrick Rothfuss: “including time travel in your story is just like, a dumb thing to do.” 7 Rothfuss was referring to Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, but the quote prevails regardless of context: time travel is very hard to do well. Life Is Strange is built around the rewind mechanic. In short, Max, the player character, can reverse time - sometimes for a few seconds, in other instances, for much larger periods of time. It results in some really cool gameplay sequences. In particular, early on when Max is proving her power works to Chloe, the two head to a diner. The player must observe what’s going on around them, and reverse time, then recall and explain what is about to happen to Chloe. It’s one of the best uses of the mechanic both in the fiction of the universe and in the gameplay. The diner scene has an understated eloquence in the alignment of narrative, mechanic implementation and themes - and yes, despite being plagiarized wholesale from Groundhog Day, it’s brilliant. If you don’t pay enough attention and predict incorrectly, Chloe straight up doesn’t believe that you can time travel. It’s extremely cool and is one of the best moments of the game, period. By being directly associated with Chloe (her attempted murder triggers Max’s powers), and by extension, the game’s underlying themes, Life Is Strange’s Time Travel is baked into the game’s worldview, philosophy, and writing. Time travel, by necessity, is a device of philosophy and science. On the one hand, time travel has been embedded in semiotic discussion and analysis since H. G. Wells The Time Machine, and on the other, the examination of its very scientific possibility summons questions of determinism, fate and so on. Philosophers and physicists alike have invested a great deal of time explaining how time travel may manifest, and a lot of these theories have become embedded in fiction and form the rules around time travel in a lot of worlds. Life Is Strange initially adheres to one such set of rules, in this case, Novikov’s Self-Consistency principle. Igor Dmitriyevich Novikov attempted to solve the paradoxes of time travel by suggesting that the possibility of changing the past with time travel is zero. Novikov proposed that if time travel exists, whatever you went back to change would always have been changed. 8 The most straightforward example of this occurs in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, where Harry and Hermione use the time turner to travel back in time a few hours to save Buckbeak from execution. Harry then casts a charm to repel creatures that were killing his past self. Novikov’s self-consistency principle suggests that Harry and Hermione always travelled back in time, and Harry’s future self always casts the charm to repel the creatures, because he can’t not have cast the charm, otherwise he would have died before time travelling 9 (see more detail in my video, Harry Potter and The Time Turner Problem).
It gets a little headache-y if you think about it for too long, but in the initial use, Life Is Strange works similarly. When Max travels and alters an event, the new reality she returns to has always had that change. It creates a straight forward gameplay mechanic: you, the player, can change the past, but in doing so, you are sacrificing whatever reality you were in before time travelling. JC Wheeler put it simply when he said:
“you can coexist, take yourself out for a beer, celebrate your birthday together, but somehow circumstances will dictate that you cannot behave in a way that leads to a par-
adox in time. novikov supports this point of
view with another argument: physics already
restricts your free will every day. you may will yourself to fly or to walk through a concrete wall, but gravity and condensed-matter phys-
ics dictate that you cannot. why, novikov asks, is the consistency restriction placed on a time traveler any different.” 10
Simple enough, right? Life Is Strange erects this self-looping logic, only the plot quickly demands to be made interesting (largely, I suspect, because the writers realised part way through chapter two that Chloe was not all the fun to spend great deals of time with). During the third act of the game, the story throws in a new ability: Focus. If Max Focuses on a photograph, she can project her mind back into her past self and change the past. So, if she, seventeen, looked at a photo of herself at two, she would be projected back into her two year old body with her seventeen year old mind. The mechanic starts off as fairly innocuous, used to save William Price from a car crash (and introducing some weird narrative side effects). By chapter four, Max has used Focus to revert back to the original timeline, and then the game loses its mind. Rather than following Novikov’s self-consistency principle, the game uses Focus as the single mechanic by which Max will escape the Dark Room. She Focuses on a photo taken by Jefferson, and uses it to get him to take a different photo, which then allows her to Focus on a different photo where she can see her diary, and within that she Focuses on a selfie of herself to move into Jefferson’s class, where she then submits the selfie to the Everyday Heroes Contest to ensure she has a window back to Arcadia Bay and Chloe for plot reasons. While the above sequence is less confusing while playing, it causes friction with the game’s fictional rules around time travel to have Max engage in so many complex, repeatable jumps -- not to mention that allowing Max to Focus while already in the past, Focus again, opens the door to myriad, endless possibilities in
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Rather than focus on one power, Life Is Strange innoculates itself from needing to follow any set of guidelines, and in turn, takes away the player’s ability to use Max’s power in a way that feels meaningful or interesting. a way that is conceptually cool, but ends up not feeling very fun to experience. In offering Max the ability to create and experiment with infinite theoretical realities, the game introduces no small amount of dissonance as we’re unable to play through infinite theoretical realities. Before Focus, Max could certainly create alternate realities with time travel, but it was limited by her ability to act on the world directly--it never feels like you can do anything when you travel back, but rather, feels like you’ve got a handful of choice in each given circumstance and must choose the best way to alter reality from a neat, short list. The idea of ludonarrative dissonance has been well written about in game design by folk much smarter than I, so I won’t dwell on it too much here (seek out Folding Ideas youtube video on the subject or Eric Swain’s 2010 piece for The Game Critique). But if Life Is Strange was created around the idea of the rewind mechanic, and because this mechanic is superseded by Focus, it leaves the player in a bizarre place. The time travel becomes more about the player’s ability to keep track of photographs and the many realities Max is diving between, rather than the player’s ability to recollect the future and use this information to act on the past. If the time travel is supposed to be symbolic of Max’s inner thoughts and desires, then by necessity, the mechanic itself has an element of interiority. You can only time travel in a way that the designers think Max would want to time travel. Equally, you can only alter
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events in a way that Max would conceive of altering events. This issue of interiority comes with playing any game that contains choices and a named protagonist Firewatch only lets you react to things within the degrees of Henry, you can’t suddenly call Delilah a slur and stomp off into the highlands, because Henry would never do that. However, Life Is Strange puts itself in an awkward position by having Max lack a strong personality. If there was a firmer, more defined set of attributes for Max’s personality, it would be a lot easier for the time travel to lack agency. Of course, we might have said to ourselves, “I’d travelled back to this moment” but Max, the very defined X type of person, would only consider changing these two things. The result is two mechanics, rewind and Focus, that are neither fun to play, nor have anything especially profound to contribute to the game’s themes. Rather than focus on one power, Life Is Strange innoculates itself from needing to follow any set of guidelines, and in turn, takes away the player’s ability to use Max’s power in a way that feels meaningful or interesting, aside from deciding what flavour of sarcasm you’d prefer Chloe respond to you with. Unless it’s a predetermined set piece, the game is ultimately not interested in time travel or what it means in Max’s life, except for a very big, black and white climax, which once again, relies a little too much on Chloe to make itself felt.
DAVID MCNEILL
is the lead writer at Digital & Creative Media Works and the author of the Maynard Trigg series, find his other work at www.youtube.com/dcmworks
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Written by Angelina Bonilla
How Music Tells a Story
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Music often tells a story better than images can. It’s unsurprising when video games have a good soundtrack because oftentimes that’s what they’re known for. Many gamers have their favorite soundtracks, composers that they follow and rave about their music. This is why Life Is Strange is so unique in this regard, because it doesn’t just have a single composer, it has multiple indie/alternative artists contributing their songs to the game’s soundtrack. From the opening song “To All of You” by Syd Matters being played over the game’s opening sequence to “Mountain” by Message to Bears being played over the heartbreaking moment where Chloe rushes to find Rachel Amber’s body. Life is Strange’s soundtrack tells the story almost better than the game does. Which is why dissecting each of the songs’ lyrics in direct parallel to the episodes they’re played
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in provides another insight into how Dontnod crafted the story and what they wanted to convey to the players. I will do this with three songs that manage to perfectly convey the story itself.
To All Of You Let’s start at the beginning. In the song “To All Of You,” we are treated to the opening credits, allowing us to walk through the hallways of Blackwell Academy, watching the small interactions between other characters as well as getting a feel for Max herself. There’s been criticism of Max’s character, stating that she is yet another blank slate for us to project onto due to the choice heavy nature of the narrative. However, I find, “To All of You” Illustrates an interesting point about Max herself because she’s listening to this song on her mp3 player..
To all of you, American girls, it’s sad to Imagine a world without you American girls I’d like to Be part of the world around you Driving a car by the seaside Watching the world from the bright side, yeah Within the first verse, the singer is longing for his song to reach all these American girls and stating how sad the world would be without them. Using this in the intro sequence, shows Max’s desire to be like all of the American Girls, popular or talented, she wants to special. Her work in the first part of the game shows that she uses an old polaroid camera that develops things instantly rather than a digital one. The song itself has a clear bent towards the more nostalgically driven idea of women as a whole. To all of you, American girls in the movies No one can tell where your heart is American girls like dollies With shiny smiles and plastic bodies With these things in mind, the song as a whole can be interpreted as both the singer and Max having warm feelings about the concept of the American Woman and how they’d like to make something to everyone. Putting their real feelings into it. That’s more than likely the real meaning of the song in regards to the story. However, if you put it in context to the Life is Strange as a whole, it almost becomes a rather sinister song if you put in the mindset of another character: Mark Jefferson. Due to Max wanting to stand out, she gets onto Jefferson’s radar and it puts a whole new spin upon the lyrics. Him imagining a world without these American Girls he’s been putting in his red binders and how he views them as just like “dollies”. The last verse ends up tied more to the game as a whole and doesn’t have quite as much relevance to the events that occur if you think about it from Jefferson’s point of view. However, if you look at it from Nathan’s, it’s quite a different story. I cry sometimes walking around my own place Wondering why she cries sometimes Talking about her own place Somewhere around the mountains No one could dry her fountain Till she got tired to complain That’s when I fly to the wildland, to your land Nathan never wanted to hurt Rachel. He also is the most emotional of the more villainous characters in the story. It’s implied he may have had a relationship with Rachel in the sense that they hung with the same groups and he more than likely knew about Rachel Amber’s desire to go explore elsewhere. This would make him wonder if she was maybe
like him or perhaps her being too tired to complain signifies her death. This could also be thought of in Max’s point of view, if she is wondering about Chloe who was a friend she left behind in Arcadia Bay, her guilt plaguing her for all these years despite the fact she never contacted Chloe again. Mind you, this is just from the opening song and, while other songs throughout the game have more thematic weight to them, “To All Of You” manages to deftly sum up the big players in Life is Strange’s story’s motivations and emotions. 11
Crosses “Crosses” by José González is more straightforward in its meaning and has less points of views to consider. It’s played in the first episode acoustically by Max herself and ends up being played in the second episode’s opening while Max is on the bus. This is after her encounter with Kate who is a focal point for the episode. Don’t you know that I’ll be around to guide you Through your weakest moments to leave them behind you? Returning nightmares, only shadows We’ll cast some light and you’ll be alright We’ll cast some light and you’ll be alright, for now Crosses all over, heavy on your shoulders The sirens inside you waiting to step forward Disturbing silence darkens your sight We’ll cast some light and you’ll be alright We’ll cast some light and you’ll be alright, for now Max is Kate’s guide for this episode. Her actions or inactions are what Kate sees and hears the most. If you take on a supportive role towards Kate during her difficult time, this song is meant for her, showing that Max is going to try to be there for her as much as the story allows. It has Christianic symbols throughout the song itself, including the title, combined with religion being a major theme in Kate’s character. This episodes opener is trying to tell the player that this is going to be a Kate episode and they should pay attention to her. Or at least that’s what the song conveys within the confines of the narrative. However, if you interpret this in an alternative way, it could also be said that this could represent Max’s desire to be that light for everyone, not just Kate. Throughout the story you have many opportunities for Max to help all sorts of people around Arcadia Bay. So it could also be meant to convey how the metaphorical cross itself is on Max’s shoulders, representing her desire to save everyone. It depends on how you look at the scene itself but it gives way to many interpretations. 12
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Santa Monica Dream Life is Strange sometimes uses a song throughout an episode or a segment, like “Santa Monica Dream” by Angus & Julia Stone which is used in episode 3. You could call this Chloe and Rachel’s song, considering Max finds the CD itself is next to a picture of the two. Since Chaos Theory focuses on Rachel and Chloe’s relationship and the revelation that Rachel was seeing Frank on the side gives the song a whole new meaning. Goodbye to my Santa Monica dream Fifteen kids in the backyard drinking wine You tell me stories of the sea And the ones you left behind It’s Chloe coming to terms with the fact that she isn’t going to California with Rachel anytime soon. Rachel’s betrayal stings Chloe in a way that directly parallels how she feels when Max doesn’t pay attention to her and how max abandoned her when she left Arcadia Bay. Chloe herself is a very emotional character and this song perfectly reflects her feelings of abandonment at the hands of the women that she has loved. This song is played during a rather pensive scene where Chloe is mulling over her decisions with Max, wanting Max to stay with her and talking about Rachel. Her staring at the ceiling and wanting things to go back to the way they were, even though they won’t. The scene uses a quieter moment in order to express to us a very raw and emotional moment for Chloe without her outwardly showing her normal outburst of feelings. I’m somewhere, you’re somewhere I’m nowhere, you’re nowhere You’re somewhere, you’re somewhere I could go there but I don’t Rob’s in the kitchen making pizza Somewhere down in Battery Park I’m singing songs about the future Wondering where you are The rest of the song is similar to this, but these verses in particular stand out because it shows that Chloe has experiences with being left behind. First by her father, then by Max, and then by Rachel. The song speaks of a narrative of one person being in one place, asking where the other person is. Which is what we see Chloe doing in this very scene. It’s a touching moment where we see this character who is very much wrapped up in her own feelings let them out in a healthier way that doesn’t have her hurting anyone in the process. 13
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There are countless other moments with the other tracks that are just as strong, but these are the ones that stood out the most in regards to how strongly they correlate with the episodes that they’re in. I’d recommend listening to Life is Strange’s soundtrack if only for how much it resonates with the game and how it connects to it in a way that I doubt we’ll ever see again.
ANGELINA BONILLA
is a Librarian, games journalist, voice actress, and the host of the Red Angel Channel which includes the show Late Night Ponderings. https://www.youtube.com/c/RedAngelPonderings
IF YOU LIKE LIFE IS STRANGE, THEN YOU WILL LIKE... TURN OUT THE LIGHTS / JULIEN BAKER Julien’s music would fit perfectly in Life is Strange. Full of haunting instrumentations and compelling lyrics, this album is something that will stay with you long after listening.
ERASED This anime follows Satoru Fujinuma who is sent back in time 18 years to prevent the events leading to his mother’s death. The show’s gorgeous visuals and a dark story create some powerful television.
THE TIME TRAVELER’S WIFE / AUDREY NIFFENEGGER Written in easy, beautiful prose, this novel follows Henry who was born with the genetic disorder that causes him to travel through time.
DONNIE DARKO Containing several similar elements to Life is Strange, this psychological thriller follows Donnie Darko when he learns the world is possibly coming to an end.
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Life is Strange’s Troubling Relationship with Queer Representation
Written by Danielle Karthauser
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T
here are two things that were readily apparent, based on internet conversation, about Life is Strange when it was being released: It was a gay romance and it had time travel. The premise is appealing, particularly since queer representation in video games isn’t all that prevalent. Certainly queer people are given much more positive representation today than in previous years, but it still is scarce when looking at the bigger picture. On my first playthrough, I imagined there was a side of this game where the romance did not exist, so I intended for Max to have a strong relationship with Chloe in order to allow the relationship to blossom. My method of play was to constantly appeal to Chloe’s desires and to see these two become girlfriends. I chose to ignore Kate’s phone call, I kissed Chloe, and I denied going with Warren to the drive-in. When it came time to make the final choice at the end of the game, I hesitantly chose Chloe. What I ended up getting was a game that constantly teased as the premise of a queer romance but never actually followed through. There certainly was subtext littered throughout the game like a candy trail. For those of you who are familiar with the tale of Hansel and Gretel, their candy trail only led to peril. The same can be said of Life is Strange. The game teased something great while providing something quite opposite, and this is a real problem for queer representation in media.
QUEER THEORY
Queer Theory
“Queer theory” is a framework for examining art that removes the default, masculine heterosexual, gaze and instead inserts a different, queer, gaze in which to view the art. 16
Throughout the game, Max and Chloe form a strong bond with one another. They spend a lot of intimate time together - listening to music in Chloe’s bedroom, hanging out at Chloe’s secret spot by the railroad tracks, and swimming in the pool in their undergarments in the dead of night. This inherently suggests something more going on beneath the surface. What also adds to this notion is that Chloe herself presents as a gay woman. It is clear that her relationship with Rachel Amber was romantic, with Chloe saying that she was the love of her life and being obsessed with finding her. Chloe’s blue hair can also que us into her queerness in her defiance of traditional social norms. Not only is Chloe a queer woman but she also presents as queer in the abstract sense. Despite all of this, the story is strangely absent of a romance between Max and Chloe. Though there constantly feels like something is brewing, nothing ever truly comes it.
Queerbaiting Max and Chloe’s relationship is very reminiscent of a trope in media known as queerbaiting. The term is used when a creator/creators market a story that hints at same-sex romance but doesn’t actually depict it. Doing this “baits” queer audiences while avoiding the reprecutions of alienating audiences. The problem with queerbaiting is that it teases a queer audience without providing actual representation. Examples of queerbaiting in other media includes Emma and Regina from ABC’s Once Upon a Time, Sherlock and Watson in BBC’s Sherlock, and even Finn and Poe from the rebooted Star Wars trilogy. Possibly the biggest perpetrator of queerbait-
ing comes from MTV’s Teen Wolf. After realizing fans shipped characters Stiles and Derek together, the creators decided to promote the show with a TV spot having the two men sitting close together on a literal ship. The characters never get together in the show’s canon. The show will acknowledge the ship without actually allowing it to happen. 14 Life is Strange is no exception. Max and Chloe are clearly marketed as a couple. The game has queer subtext amidst intimate moments that only add up to close friendship. Max’s choice to kiss Chloe is played off for friendly laughs. It does not lead to a realization or something more between them. Sure the two share an intimate moment in the pool, but nothing comes of it. Their relationship remains purely platonic amidst the romantic implications.
Bury Your Gays This all culminates at the end of the game when Max must choose between saving Chloe or saving the thousands of people of Arcadia Bay. If Max chooses to save the town and sacrifice Chloe, the scene that follows is Max and Chloe embracing to make-out. Following this is a scene of Max letting Chloe die in the bathroom at the start of the game and Chloe’s funeral. If Max chooses to save Chloe and let the town endure the destruction, the two drive off together without saying any words. Hopefully it is already clear that there are serious issues with how this story plays out. Max’s moral quandary does not bode well for queer romance. It is yet another trend that makes queer people the casualties of straight narratives. Chloe’s life becomes expendable because of fate. “I don’t have to remind readers how many ‘tragic lesbian’ tropes this plays into...” writes Eleanor Amaranth Lockhart, “the idea that girls who love girls have to die is overplayed and has an actively harmful effect on the psyches of non-straight women who have to be exposed to the tropes, over and over and over again. But, unlike in films where lesbians just die, in [Life is Strange], [Chloe] can survive - over the blood of thousands…” 15 If the player wants to see themselves represented in media, as I did on my first playthrough, then they might choose Chloe and bear the weight of that decision, as if choosing queer love must have dire consequences. Or they can sacrifice her and Chloe can end up as another cliche along with the other queer women killed off in media. It is saying a lot that when the game finally allows these characters to truly be together in a romantic context, it can only truly occur if one dies. If Max chooses to save Chloe, there is no make-out session or anything cementing their relationship as anything beyond friends. In essence, the only choice that allows some sort of confirmation of their relationship is if Chloe dies.
The Cycle Continues What this all amounts to is a very dismal portrayal of queer relationships. Life is Strange certainly allows player choice to influence how they view the story, but there is no question as to whether the text supports certain ideas. Although the game itself presents queer themes, it fails to depict a true queer relationship, merely hinting at it before killing it off. Watching queer relationships only hinted at for marketing purposes and watching queer characters die in the name of deep storytelling is a tiresome trope. Life is Strange is yet another story that adds to the pile of these problematic stories when it had every opportunity to be above this nonsense. WWW.LEVELSTORY.NET
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REMEMBER ME Written by Samuel Gronseth
I picked up Remember Me on a whim.
I like to think my tastes are fairly broad, and I’ll enjoy most types of games if there’s something interesting and high-quality there. But I also have my personal interests, the kinds of games I’m more willing to give a shot just because it looks like something I’d enjoy. At a glance, Remember Me appealed to me on that kind of visceral level. Looking at the cover, it sort of made me think of Beyond Good and Evil, one of my all-time favorite games that has an extremely good reputation (and finally an upcoming sequel/ prequel thing) despite, still, no one seeming to have played it. A female protagonist set against a sci-fi background, a title that hints at something beneath the surface, a AAA release despite having heard little about it before or after it hit shelves. Even just seeing it on shelves, it felt like a sci-fi cult classic, and I was more than willing to give it a shot and see how it lived up to that first impression. What I didn’t realize at the time, of course, was that the developer behind Remember Me would eventually be famous for creating Life is Strange. Dontnod Entertainment became something of an industry darling after that, but their first game didn’t manage to catch fire the same way. In fact, Remember Me’s poor sales put Dontnod in a position of near-bankruptcy, forcing them to take public funding to continue on long enough to create Life is Strange. So is the game really as bad as that would suggest? Well, the short answer is no. Not at all, in fact, it’s a perfectly serviceable sci-fi action game, and pretty much exactly what I was hoping it would be when I saw it on that shelf. It’s imperfect, unpolished, a little rough around the edges, but clearly made with love, care, and dedication by a team who set out to do something unique and believed in it from beginning to end. I could speculate about why it failed commercially, but I’m much more interested in how Remember Me may have influenced Life is Strange. And if I inspire you to pick up a used copy of this underappreciated gem, all the better.
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Remember Me is a cyberpunk third-person action game about Nilin, who works as a memory hunter in 2084 Neo-Paris. The game is primarily about memories, identity, and (being a cyberpunk story) corruption and tyranny on the part of megacorporations. The story primarily revolves around Nilin trying to recover her stolen memories and bring down a company called Memorize, which has developed technology to remove, access, and re-experience the memories of oneself and others, and used that technology to effectively create a surveillance state. At a glance, it’s a fairly stereotypical action game. Lots of button mashing, punching and kicking, and increasingly complex button combos that string a number of damaging hits together for more powerful attacks. It does have a unique mechanic that allows the player to create their own combos; over the course of the game the length of combos and number of available types of attacks increases, and the player can map out combos with different buttons in various orders to create different kinds of effects. It never gets quite deep enough to set the game fully apart from others of its genre, but it’s an interesting system I’ve not seen replicated anywhere else. But the more interesting mechanic is more closely connected to the story, and gives us a better view of how Dontnod went from the cyberpunk dystopia of Remember Me to the modern high school fantasy of Life is Strange. One of the game’s main mechanics involves an ability unique to Nilin; she can dive into other peoples’ minds and slightly alter the events of their memories, changing the way they perceive their own past, and thus, the way they act in the present. This is accomplished by replaying, rewinding, and remixing the memory; as the events play out before the player, they can stop it at certain points to alter small details, slowly creating a scenario that leads the memory to a pivotal moment that changes the outcome. It’s not hard to see some degree of a line of cause and effect between this mechanic and the time manipulation inherent to Life is Strange’s mechanical and narrative identity. Both
games revolve around the idea of changing how things progress (or progressed) in such a way that creates an outcome that benefits the player. And fascinatingly, they also both take a fairly critical stance toward that kind of intervention, if in very different ways. I won’t go too deep into spoilers for Remember Me, but suffice it to say that the memory-altering power controlled by the fascist megacorporation maintaining a surveillance state in the dystopian future is not portrayed as a positive thing. And even Nilin’s own efforts to change peoples’ memories rarely make the player feel like a hero. In the first segment where Nilin alters someone’s memories, the player is tasked with overseeing a critical surgery and, through the alteration of minor elements in the memory, change its outcome in the mind of the person who holds the memory so that the patient dies. This doesn’t actually kill a person, of course. This is just a memory. But it’s the memory of Olga Sedova, a Memorize agent who’s working with them in exchange for their continued medical care of her husband. Nilin’s alteration of that memory makes Olga believe that her husband was killed through the negligence of a Memorize doctor, and inspires her to join the rebellion against the corporation. Again, the game’s heroine uses her memory-altering abilities to make a woman believe her sick husband is actually dead. To say Remember Me is critical of its technological centerpieces would be an understatement, which is appropriate since that cynicism toward powerful technology is a lynchpin of both dystopian fiction and cyberpunk. Life is Strange takes a similar stance toward its protagonists’ time-altering powers, though the source of this power changes the meaning somewhat. The source of Max’s powers relates not to technological advancement but to natural phenomena, and its backlash comes not as a result of misuse or overuse (or perhaps even the simple act of using it at all). Max’s mistake is messing with the natural order of the universe, while Nilin and Memorize are guilty of misusing the creations of humankind to perpetrate harm and injustice. In both instances, there’s an implication that neither of these powers, whether altering memories or the past itself, should really be used in the first place, as the stakes are too high and the abuse (and consequences of it) is inevitable. Despite these similarities, it’s hard to really compare Remember Me and Life is Strange in a meaningful way. Common themes and mechanical ideas notwithstanding, they’re very different games, and were produced under very different circumstances. But I will say that there’s one clear area in which Life is Strange did something similar to Remember Me, and did it better: moral ambiguity. For all of Remember Me’s cynicism toward its memory technology, it never really makes a cohesive statement about it. Nilin’s use of it leads to multiple morally questionable (at best) results, but this abuse of technology is part of the path that leads her toward the downfall of a tyrannical megacorporation. She does many things that are uncomfortable or downright wrong, but it’s all in the interest of an ultimately good resolution, and the game never really wrestles with these implications. It doesn’t help that it ultimately falls into a common trap for this kind of game, where the twists at the end muddy the whole narrative experience in such a way that makes the story and its meaning a little unclear. Life is Strange, however, has an entirely different approach (despite arguably sharing that problem with the ending). Life is
Strange heavily features player choice and branching narrative. To some extent, I would argue it’s easier to present a convincing sense of moral ambiguity when the player is allowed to make choices and confront the consequences of their own actions. The player is more easily invested in decisions they actually have to make for themselves than decisions of another character (especially a character without much presence in the story). When something happens in later episodes of Life is Strange, the player can usually make some kind of connection back to a choice they had made earlier in the game, and it’s hard to be confident that you’re making the right decisions when you’re constantly seeing the consequences, positive and negative, of those decisions. In order to create this effect, Dontnod had to make sure there was a clear cause and effect for the player to follow. The vague sense of an action seeming wrong wasn’t enough; the player would inevitably have to see the consequences of their actions and realize exactly what it meant to make the choice they did. This is the same logic behind Telltale games telling you that someone will remember your actions, or the various story points and graphs in games like Until Dawn. And I believe that this made Life is Strange a better story in an area where Remember Me fell short. Some could use this to argue that branching narratives are superior to linear ones, or at least that they inherently make better use of the video game medium, and I don’t stand by that at all. But I do think, in cases like this, that the need to create a clear cause and effect in a branching system pushes the writers to establish important story points and meaning where a linear story may not have. Remember Me presented morally ambiguous situations, but it ultimately glossed over them because they were necessary to bring the player to the story’s inevitable conclusion. Life is Strange may have ultimately brought the player to a couple specific outcomes, but the freedom of choice that the player had building up to that point freed those morally questionable decision points from the expectation that they lead to one specific point in the story. The game inevitably has to address what the player does, and it doesn’t need to try to justify anything; it leaves that up to the player. And it works much better than Dontnod’s previous attempt. Remember Me and Life is Strange are both fantastically complex works in their own rights, with plenty of similarities and differences and connections, and while considering Dontnod’s first game isn’t at all necessary to understand and appreciate their defining work, Remember Me is absolutely worth checking out if you’re a fan of their other games. It’s fun to see what these people poured their hearts and souls into before Life is Strange, and sometimes it’s nice to see that some rough edges can be sanded out. Even if it doesn’t happen until a completely different game.
SAMUEL GRONSETH
is the creator, writer, and host of the popular YouTube channel, “Games as Lit. 101.” https://www.youtube.com/user/gamesasliterature
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On Motivation and the Co-worker Scenario Written by David McNeill
S
how don’t tell is some day one writing stuff. It was one of the first topics they covered during my university’s writing course, but while it sounds simple, in practice “show don’t tell” means a great deal of things. And it’s also not always right. Sometimes telling is quicker and neater and better, if the audience doesn’t really want to be shown it. Sometimes if your story is from a closed point of view, telling rather than showing can reveal a lot about our narrator. More than anything, the rule exists to assist the craftsman in casting the vessel of their narrative against some northern star - a compass point, generally. A way to guide your work when doing the work of writing prose. Life Is Strange does something unusual, where it continually tells you about your relationship with Chloe and that you have an interesting past. This, despite Max having a handful of dynamic interactions throughout the game with side players. In particular, Warren, who becomes an accidental foil for Max’s increasingly crappy behaviour, despite his own deeply flawed expressions of affection (usb thumb drive aside). All to say the game can and does render relationships that are interesting, but crucially, we see these develop and change over the course of the game. For example, when an inexplicable eclipse looms over Arcadia Bay and the temperature drops, Warren delivers both a handful of exposition to the player, and moves closer to Max to warm her up. It’s not especially brilliant writing, but it is multipurpose scene work. From this one moment, the game communicates: Warren is still very good at science; Max is physically cold; Warren is still attracted to Max; Max is still comfortable enough around Warren not to immediately push him away; and the eclipse should not really be occurring which means some spooky time stuff must be going on. Breaking down scenes like this with a lot of the side characters reveal a similar pattern - because the B-listers of the story are rendered from archetypes, the writers leverage them to deliver exposition while subverting the archetypes, leading to a lot of dynamic, interesting little universes of story. Heck, the game doubles down on Warren’s complexity and has him end up with Stella in the alternate reality. Crazy times, indeed.
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With Chloe, however, the game equivocates interesting things happening while Max and Chloe are present to Max and Chloe having an interesting relationship. This is not a unique property of Life Is Strange, but the other denizens of Arcadia Bay amplify this problem by contrast. It speaks volumes that the game puts Chloe on a pedestal, weighting her life equal to that of every other citizen of Arcadia Bay combined. The final choice is not a choice at all: Chloe is bad news and bad for Max, but because you’ve spent the entire game doing things with and for Chloe, it’s hard to see past her constant involvement as anything other than affection and chemistry. Frequency does not equal intimacy, folks. And this in and of itself is a compelling mixture to add to your narrative. Think of all the times you’ve had a crush on someone only to learn they haven’t thought about you twice. It creates tension. Sparks. Drama! Two characters desiring different things coming into each other’s way is what story is made of. Now to the question of how. How do you communicate to an audience that two characters have conflicting motivations. The key to this process is writing characters with strong, core motivations. Real people have a myriad of reasons to do what they do, but in narrative, we understand what a character wants by what they do, and what they say (or, in fact, what they elect to not say). I do not know who said it, but character is found in the difference between what someone says, and what they do. In my mind I attribute this insight to Stephen King, but, dear reader, I cannot find a trace of it online. Perhaps I dreamt it up altogether. Example: You are having a challenging time with a project at work.Your boss and colleagues are making your tasks more frustrating than need be, and it’s affecting your team and their ability to achieve their goals. You discuss with a team member, who agrees that during the next meeting, if you bring up the topic, they will back you up. The day of the meeting arrives, and you summon your courage. This is a week in the making. You’ve discussed it many nights, resting on the bedhead, and your partner, in-between reading, has assured you saying something is the right course of action. At the meeting, in front of all, you explain the issue - your project will be delayed, this situation is not tenable. And your co-worker, with their promised support, remains silent. The divide between your co-worker’s words and their actions now colours their character in your mind - they aren’t a person of their word. They are cowardly, perhaps. Or even conniving. We can assume that the reason you feel betrayed is your motivation did not align with your co-worker’s, and they did not do what they claimed they would. This is an implicit tool in characterisation, but becomes complicated in Life Is Strange because you, the player, bring your own motivation to Max. The lens by which you measure the behaviour of the characters in the story is
filtered through the possible reactions Max might have. Let’s imagine Max in the early example with a co-worker who does not support her. Max would likely not directly confront the co-worker, but might avoid the co-worker for a while, gradually continue to grow in their confidence and ask why it happened a later date. She’s a patient manipulator. In contrast, Chloe would probably walk out of the meeting, right up to the co-workers desk, and demand answers. Neither attitude or approach is right or wrong, but even just from this one example, you’re able to stencil it an idea of who these people are. As I alluded to before, the problem is when the player gets involved. The player can have infinite motivations coming into any given moment of the game, and the decision you make might be flavoured my how you think Max might react, how you react, or for a thousand other meta-fictive reasons. Show don’t tell is muddied by the fact that in Life Is Strange (and video games) you also do. It’s little surprise the game struggles with characterisation then. It takes needle precision to craft narrative where the player can pick and choose what happens in the story. The most successful moments in Life Is Strange occur on the micro-scale: small interactions between Max and her schoolmates. Single, witty exchanges with Chloe. These beats of dialogue and action show us the motivations of these characters at work. The game struggles against its own nature at each turn, wanting the ensure the player knows Chloe and Max are tight and have a weird past. But also wants you to make choices and explore other characters but don’t forget about Chloe! It’s an exhausting game of keep-me-up that lands more often than it doesn’t. But if there’s one thing we can learn from the co-worker scenario it’s that character occurs in the negative space - the gaps in-between. Life Is Strange is about Teens with a capital T, who use cuss words and say heck and crap - there is rarely room for negative space, and rarely room for quiet reflection. At the very least, I think we can all agree we don’t want to be that co-worker.
DAVID MCNEILL
is the lead writer at Digital & Creative Media Works and the author of the Maynard Trigg series, find his other work at www.youtube.com/dcmworks
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WHAT WE ARE ENJOYING
PEACE
DOUBLE TEAM!
BATHING BEACH - EP
IN THE HEIGHTS
Let Audrey Assad’s vocals serenade you this winter.
Reorchestrated Pokémon music. Yes please!
Aetherial, lyrically driven music that transports those who listen.
Prepare for the movie by listening to the original Broadway soundtrack!
MEASURES OF TRUTH
METAPHORS BE WITH YOU ESCAPE FROM VAULT DISNEY [Chipperish Media]
[Tony Goldmark]
HER HEAD IN FILMS
A podcast discussing all things His Dark Materials, including the new HBO show!
This show is short and sweet, and perfect to get you ready for Episode IX.
Critical and comedic podcast discussing content on Disney+.
Caitlin talks about films in relation to her own life and experiences.
[Fortune Fall Records / Tone Tree Music]
[Hallowed Ground Media]
[Loudr]
[Allpoints]
[Sh-K-Boom Records]
CROSSWORD Across 1. Ending Song 2. Episode 1 3. Blue _________ 4. Chloe’s Step-father
Down 1. _________ Academy 2. _______ Bay 3. Cissy Jones 4. Developer 5. ______ Club 6. Ashly Burch
DECEMBER 2019 | LEVEL STORY
Answers: Across: 1. Obstacles, 2. Chrysalis, 3. Butterfly, 4. David; Down: 1. Blackwell, 2. Arcadia, 3. Joyce, 4. Dontnod, 5. Vortex, 6. Chloe
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CELESTE: THE CHAPTER EXPEDITION IS IT GOOD TO BE BAD? [Corvus Analyzes] [What’s So Great About That?]
LOST LEVELS SHOWCASE [Games Done Quick]
Settle in for this almost three hour chapter by chapter analysis of the brilliantly designed indie title, Celeste.
You wouldn’t expect there to be something profound to say about this short game - and yet Grace manages to do so.
This video features several different speedrun categories of the incredibly challenging Super Mario Bros Lost Levels.
THE ENCHANTED CHRISTMAS [Musical Hell]
I’M SAVING CHRISTMAS [Maggie Mae Fish]
GERBERT: THE GIFT OF GIVING [brutalmoose]
Disney sequels are known for being notoriously bad. This holiday themed sequel may be one of the worst offenders.
Maggie is back with another Christian film analysis, talking about Kirk Cameron’s Saving Christmas and the larger problem with Christian media.
Ian watches a Christmas episode from the Christian-themed television show, Gerbert. As you can imagine, this VHS can get pretty wacky.
THE DARK FANTASTIC [NYU Press]
A CHRISTMAS CAROL [Puffin Books]
HISTORY VS. WOMEN [Feiwel & Friends]
Ebony Elizabeth Thomas thoughtfully discusses race in relation to stories that take place in the realm of the fantastic.
This is my favorite book of all time and I would be remise for not mentioning it during the holiday season. It is a must read.
This easily accessible book discusses various women in history, many of whom are not mentioned in the public discourse or school history books.
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FROZEN 2 a review
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DECEMBER 2019 | LEVEL STORY
Yes, I am reviewing this movie. A sequel to Frozen has always seemed inevitable. When it was announced, I will admit to not being very excited. Sure I like Frozen well enough but in terms of it being any good or not usually places me on the middle of the seesaw. But after seeing the second film, I really can’t be all too cynical about it. The truth is, I had a fun time watching Frozen 2 and have listened to the soundtrack at least once since. In many ways it brings me back to the days of seeing the first Frozen. However, the movie has some problems and I believe these problems exemplifying a larger problem within the industry of children’s entertainment. Frozen 2 is a hard movie to summarize due to the many drifting plot points. At one time it seems to be about overcoming false histories, another time about parental discovery, and then the worst episode of Avatar the Last Airbender titled “The Great Divide.” But the central focus is Elsa who is feeling unsettled in her role as Queen of Arendelle and follows a mysterious voice which calls out to her and leads her to a place of personal discovery. The film is particularly interested in the idea of transformation, from singing a song about change, to Olaf constantly talking about growing up, to the film taking place in Autumn. Yet for a film about change, this movie seems to be unable to do that very thing. When the original Frozen released, its popularity skyrocketed and soon Frozen was Disney’s favorite child. It took over the Disney theme parks, merchandise, and radio stations. “Let It Go,” Elsa’s power anthem, may be one of Disney’s most beloved and hated tracks of all time. Watching Frozen 2 makes it uncomfortably clear that they wanted to create their masterpiece a second time. From the music that sometimes sounds identical to songs like “Let it Go” and “For the First Time in Forever”, to the constant, albeit funny, references to the first movie, Frozen 2 is too stuck in the past to truly move past its predecessor. The film gives no legitimate reason for its existence besides Disney wants to make money and this is a shame because Frozen 2 contains so much wasted potential. Disney could have explored Norweigan mythology deeper and incorporated it into the story of the elements. They could have explored Elsa’s relationship to her parents and their mishandling of her ice powers in the first movie. But instead the film goes off in too many directions and becomes a stagnant ode to mediocrity, not on the part of the people who worked hard on this movie but the corporate executives who most likely limited where the creators could take these characters. The film builds up to so much but fails to follow through on anything. As mentioned, Olaf is constantly talking about getting older and what that means. Without spoiling anything, there is a point in the movie when Olaf is not in the picture and they have to recreate him. My first thought was that Olaf would get aged up and be older, showing some sort of transformation and arc for his character. But instead we get the same Olaf, and it occured to me that if Olaf truly had this arc then he would no longer be the same character and this is apparently bad for Disney’s marketing. They need Olaf to remain the same because if he changes, he may not be as easy to sell. This is only one example that comes at the expense of Frozen 2’s story. And this leads me to Frozen 2’s unintentional commentary on the state of films made for children. Often times these films are dumbed down for the sake of better marketing. They incorporate easy gimmicks in place of telling good stories to kids who deserve just that. Frozen 2 had the potential to be something great. Heck, the movie would make money no matter how good or bad it is. This is evidenced by the domestic gross of over $351 million as of December 13th, 2019. With all of the resources at their disposal, Disney still won’t let risks be taken at the feared expense of their capital giant (see Kingdom Hearts 3 for more evidence of this). Which is a darn shame because Disney is a company that has nothing to lose and they took advantage of this notion. Frozen 2 looks beautiful, has catchy music, and lots of great jokes. But all of this fails to mask the incompetence of the storytelling and Disney’s inability to change anything in a movie that says it is all about change.
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FA N S W R I T E Life is Strange means the world to me. In 23 years of playing video games, no other game has touched me so deeply. The game told me the story about the purest and the most unconditional friendship and love between the main characters: Max and Chloe. It made me fall in love with the characters and their friendship and also made me wish I could have that deep and strong connection to someone in my life. - SteelN7 on Reddit Life is Strange means a lot to me. I couldn’t say exactly why but something about the story captivated me and I was genuinely sad when it ended. I grew to love the characters over such a short period of time and felt I could relate to them (minus the whole time powers thing). I had just moved to a new area and playing the game helped encourage me to make some new friends. Long story short, this game holds a special place in my heart. - WorldOfBeans on Reddit Life is Strange has affected me more emotionally and in an ongoing psychological way than any other work of fiction I can recall, in any medium. There’s something about the story, the characters, the wistful nostalgia of remembering being that age, and the way time travel stirs up that universal aching sense of “what if/if only...” It’s been over a year now since I first experienced it, and I don’t think a day has passed where some thought about it hasn’t occurred to me at least once. The way the game ends sets up a kind of “mental loop” where you can’t stop thinking about alternatives and possibilities. I had never read fan fiction before, but I started reading it about this game due to that. - m477m on Reddit Honestly, I still don’t know what Life is Strange means to me. I think it might be my favorite piece of media ever. The final decision made me completely reevaluate my own morals because of how strongly I felt about my choice. This weird teen drama touched me in a way nothing else ever has and I don’t know what that means but I fucking love this game. - WhatIThinkAboutStuff on Reddit The game & the comics both take you on a journey that you can’t wait to go back on even if you’ve already been on it. - login123kid45 on Reddit Life is Strange will always hold a very special place in my heart. The familiar setting, the beautiful music, the relatable and interesting characters, the mystery, and the relationships you help develop make the game a very memorable and impactful experience. The way it makes you feel so connected to it’s characters in so little time is astounding. I learned a few things about myself through Life is Strange, which is more than I can say about most stories, let alone video games. - JDPrime3 on Reddit To me Life is Strange means loss, friendship, discovering yourself and having an sudden responsibility thrust on to yourself whilst juggling everything else in your life.- Adam Price
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DECEMBER 2019 | LEVEL STORY
I had a few close friends when I was younger that I would visit and play with almost everyday. Over the course of my late teens and early twenties, my friends started to pursue their own goals and dreams by moving to other parts of the world while I stayed in the small rural area we grew up in. I was never good at keeping in touch and even when I tried, their interests and personalities have changed so much now they each seemed like a completely different person to me. Playing Life is Strange made me overly nostalgic of the good times I had with my friends and is making me want to go out on an adventure and find someone I can be close friends with again like Max and Chloe are. - Randy Yee To me Life is Strange is the most beautiful, touching, incredible story I have ever experienced. Because of its medium, the game engaged and touched me in a way that no other story, be it a book, movie, TV show, fairytale, etc., had ever done. It made me think about my life and the most important things in it. It included a lot of topics, such as connections with people, friendship, choice, fate and, of course, love. To me Life is Strange is the biggest inspiration, which shook me to my very core and made me realize a lot of things about myself, the world and life itself. That’s why it’s forever special to me. - Evil_Shepard on Reddit I can’t describe it...it means a lot to me. It helped me see the world in a different light than what I was experiencing in real life. It made me realize that everyone has issues and problems and it wasn’t fair to take mine out on them. I know how Chloe feels with her mom and stepdad and I understand the feeling of abandonment all too well. Chloe’s story left me with a changed mindset to try and make the world better and brighter instead of filling it with more hate and darkening it further for people who already can’t see a bright side. They tackled tough topics like Kate and how depression and hate can take someone without you expecting it or how not everyone is who they seem (Jefferson being a complete monster and Nathan being used as a pawn). This game spoke to me in a way nothing else has prior or since then. It warms my heart to see this game has brought together good people for good causes and to just make the world a better place. I love everything about this game and what it’s done for people in the fan community. - nukafan2277 on Reddit
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DECEMBER 2019 | LEVEL STORY
