Dotnod Entertainment In Life Is Strange you play Max Caulfield – a shy, unassuming 18-year-old girl

Trying to feel comfortable in your own skin while dealing with insecurities, wanting to fit in and being fixed in the crosshairs of bullies – adolescence can be a tough time for a lot of people. Life Is Strange is set in this very moment, that inbetween period where you’re trying to discover who you are find your place in the world. It explores issues most games wouldn’t even dream of touching – finding life so bleak you want to take your own life, discovering your sexuality, depression and abortion, to name but a few. It looks at these adult themes while you play a character who can control time – and the fact this juxtaposition isn’t jarring is credit to what great storytellers developer Dontnod Entertainment are. In Life Is Strange you play Max Caulfield – a shy, unassuming 18-year-old girl who has returned to her hometown of Arcadia Bay to study photography and hopefully reunite with an old childhood friend.

Dotnod Entertainment Few games have such a profound ability to move the soul so much

She discovers she has the ability to rewind time by chance after experiencing a strange vision of a devastating storm and then witnessing a girl getting shot right in front of her. Max uses this ‘rewind’ power to save the girl’s life – and then tries to use her new-found ability to help the people around her and solve the mystery of a missing person. Like Mass Effect and the Telltale Games titles, Life Is Strange has branching dialogue options where you choose how you want to interact with other characters - but your actions have consequences. Do you help the girl in your class being bullied when you see someone picking on her, or do you just watch and take a picture? Do you offer a sympathetic word to the bully making the lives of people you care about a misery when she’s left red-faced, or do you take it as an opportunity to poke fun at her?

Dotnod Entertainment Life is Strange is out now on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and PC

All these actions have consequences, many of which you won’t realise until much further on in the game. The characters that fill Arcadia Bay, and Blackwell College where Max studies, are so well-developed and fleshed out that it makes it feel like you’re in a living, breathing world. The conversations you have with them, which can branch off onto the personal dramas they are facing, all depends on what you choose to say – and whether you invest time to help. You could grab something you need from a student and ignore how they’re upset they look – or you could search their room to find clues then use your rewind power to make sure a heart-to-heart chat goes just right. So many moments like this occur - which helps give Life Is Strange one of the most vibrant game worlds ever created.

Other touches like receiving text messages from loved ones, a diary that gets updated as you progress and being able to interact with so much in your surroundings add to this illusion. The main bulk of the story sees Max teaming up with her old childhood friend Chloe, to help solve the mystery of Rachel Amber – a missing former student of Blackwell College. The pair have a complex friendship – as they haven’t spoken in five years since Max moved away from Arcadia Bay after Chloe’s father died. In another example of how strong the characters are, Chloe reacts in a very human way to Max’s return – anger at abandonment eventually being replaced by the bond they have long shared. As they delve further into their investigation, their close relationship is explored alongside the unexpected effects of time travel.

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