“This Action Will Have Consequences” Player Identity in Life is Strange
It can be said that in many ways, the video game achieves certain feats that other media like movies, TV, and books cannot. One of these being the integration of the audience in the story. In this story I will be looking at how video games manage to include the player in the narrative via the introduction of choice with a specific focus on the series Life is Strange.
If you are unfamiliar with the series, it encompasses four games which are somewhat related and reference each other. The first game follows Max Caulfield as she returns to the town she grew up in to attend an elite school. The second is prequel Life is Strange: Before the Storm (Before the Storm for short) which follows Max’s childhood friend and love interest in the first game, Chloe Price. The most recent is Life is Strange 2 and its free demo The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit (Captain Spirit for short). Life is Strange 2 follows the brothers Sean and Daniel Diaz after a freak accident causes them to flee home and Captain Spirit, which is shorter, follows nine year old Chris spending a Saturday morning at home with his father.
If you have not played any of the games and would like to, I highly recommend that you do, but if money or other factors are an issue, watching a let’s play on YouTube will also work. If you don’t feel the need to experience the full game, the video below is notable video game site Eurogamer’s 17 minute or so let’s play and review of the demo for the first game that introduces many of the characters featured in the game as well as the main gameplay mechanics. I suggest watching the demo before reading, but doing so is not necessary.
Video games are directly linked to their audience, the player. As a result, the video game as a medium connects the audience to the characters. When one makes a decision in a video game, they do not say that the character decided to do something, instead they acknowledge their choice and say “I chose to do this”. Life is Strange is one of the most famous examples of a video game based on player choice. A lot of times a game would say they have choices that impact future events, but since a lot of developers are reluctant to give up their story completely, they make those choices small and meaningless to the central plot. Therefore, a lot of games are criticized for giving the illusion of player choice while the writer still holds all the strings of how the story is going to play out.
Life is Strange manages to find the balance between complete player choice and the illusory choice. This is because the story is completely decided by player choice. In dialogue, the player is allowed to decide from a number of options what the character they are controlling would say in the next part of the conversation and in cutscenes the player is given the choice of how the character reacts. Then, depending on those choices, aspects of the story change. Similarly, the player can look for clues when not in a cutscene that open up dialogue options previously unavailable, contributing to each player’s unique story since not everyone may have found the same clues. Yet all these choices are placed there by the developers.
One way in which player choice is further optimized, specifically in the first game, is through Max’s ability to rewind time. This means that if the player decides that they would rather have picked the other dialogue option or that Max should have reacted differently, they can go back and change it. However, one could not rewind infinitely. Once they decide and continue the story past the reaches of Max’s rewind power, that decision is final. This also contributes to a deeper level of player identity in the following games, in which no rewind powers are available. With this mechanic comes two main criticisms. These being that it devalues all decisions since the player can just go back and pick the one that’s best and that there is only one choice in the game that matters. Regarding the first one, I previously addressed that once you continue, that decision is final and there are some points where Max’s power is limited or not available. The other criticism is more reasonable. Spoiler warning, at the end of the game the player is given the choice of allowing a storm to destroy the town or to rewind time to the beginning and allow Chloe to be killed. The criticism of this is that the other choices don’t matter since either everyone dies or just Chloe does. However, with this game the story is whats important, not the end goal. There is no way to objectively “win” the game.
Another aspect contributing to increased player identity in Life is Strange is the fact that it is an episodic game. An episodic game is one that, like a TV series, releases as a series of episodes instead of a full game. Sometimes this to try to make more money, because the full game would be too large like with the upcoming Final Fantasy 7 remake, or because of story reasons. The Life is Strange series being an episodic game greatly enhances player choice. Not only does it reflect your decisions in previous episodes in future ones, but at the end of each episode it displays a list of statistics showing the percent of players that made a certain decision or managed to get a certain outcome. The image shows the major decisions and hitting the “Next” button would show some of the less major choices.
Now, one may ask “how exactly is the effect of this different than that of another medium?” The answer is simply the connection to the characters. One of the most important aspects of the video game is the pressing of a button. In any other medium, the audience is a distant observer to what the medium is portraying. When someone watches a movie, they are simply watching the story that movie portrays. However, with video games, the player is much more connected to what is being presented whether it be a story based game or a multiplayer action game. The player has to physically press a button, or act in a similar way using motion controls when using those kinds of systems. In a movie someone can lean back and just observe whereas a video game requires the attention from the player. This leads to an increased emotional effect on the audience. If someone were to watch a movie that saw a high school make difficult decision of sacrificing their best friend to save others, it would have a fraction of the effect that it would have if they were asked to make that decision themselves.
