Life is Strange and Before the Storm both feature a reasonable amount of queer activity. Before the Storm features an explicitly queer character in Stephanie — one of Chloe Price’s friends and an adorable nerd. However, Price’s own relationships are constantly up for debate. Is she in love with Rachel or is it just a friendship, does Max see her as a childhood friend turned into something more or do they remain best friends? The game can include as much subtext and even text as it wants but ultimately these choices are left up to the player to make. Lead Writer Zac Garriss does address this problem in an interview with Game Informer where the maintaining of relationships becomes a point of good game writing.
“Game writing is weird and unlike other kinds of writing, because you have to think discursively. If you’re really going to embrace player agency in the narrative, you have to think about multiple branches simultaneously. I think in writing Rachel, it was important to us to try to do both of those things — to say we’re going to tell a love story and we’re going to tell a story about best friends. But what we’re really telling a story about is neither love or friendship; it’s about people that completely change your life. And that can be love and that can be platonic.”
Whether or not the relationships Chloe has are explicitly romantic or not, they are certainly life changing. It is also important to point out that Deck Nine has learnt from what fans wanted in the first game and adjusted the plot structure for the second — there are infinitely more options to explore a romantic relationship in Before the Storm, whereas the original game heavily focuses on the friendship aspect and the romance is more incidental. This is also likely to be because of the type of relationships involved — Rachel and Chloe are exploring something new together and whether that becomes a friendship or a romance is up to them, whereas Chloe and Max have a shared history irrevocably tying them together. When you are given the choice to explore the romance options, they feel natural, and are often more rewarding (with longer cutscenes and more character development) than alternate options. “We were going to treat queerness as incidental, as matter-of-fact.” Garriss states. “Not casually and not disregarding the intricacies, but we let that not be the most important thing going on. When they kiss, it’s just going to be a romantic kiss. And we set it up to be as lovely and as crazy and awesome as it could be and just not care about the fact that it’s two girls.”
While Life is Strange, has explicitly included queer content in the first two games, there remains the disconcerting feeling that an unwilling player could easily sweep it all under the rug. The creators of Life is Strange use twitter and meta-text to emphasise the queerness of its characters, leading players to believe that while there are choices, the “true” end are the ones where Chloe in particular is a queer character and, ultimately, dies.
It would be lovely to see this flipped on its head in the next game. What we have seen so far leans towards an examination of brotherly love and coming-of-age rather than growing into ones powers and life direction. The characters of Life is Strange 2 are younger and still learning about the harshness of the world. We know they are also on the run — but we don’t know yet what exactly from — it is a supernatural force or the more regular terror of a slowly failing justice system?
In addition to this, fans are also going to receive the added bonus of a comic book focusing on the ending where Arcadia Bay is destroyed but Chloe lives. The authors are adamant that their comic represents only one of many possible futures (more chaos theory anyone?) but it is heartening that this is the storyline they wanted to represent — the one where the queer characters live. While Max and Chloe will have new problems to face, hopefully the creators will ensure that the characters are presented as explicitely queer as Dont Nod wish to represent them out of the games, and that they will both live.
The Life is Strange games are doing something truly amazing, of that there is no doubt. In such a fast-paced genre, it is no hyperbole to say that the landscape of gaming has changed drastically since the first game was released in -. The Life is Strange games have helped highlight the importance of emotion, characterization and plot in games, emphasising that gaming is a genre to be reckoned with, just as much as film. They are doing so well, it would be fantastic to see them continue to push as many boundaries as they can.
