The Game That Touched My Heart
It has been just over two years since one of the most important game releases of the decade.
It is not often that a game manages to reach our deepest and innermost emotions, making us feel things that we perhaps did not even know we could feel and leaving an everlasting impression of unparalleled beauty. It was in the January of 2015 when a french studio released the first part of what would become one of the most iconic gaming experiences of the last few years. I am, of course, talking about Life Is Strange.
I am sure there are tons of pieces written on this game. It is the perfect subject; unique, popular, famous, artistic and so different from the mainstream. People laughed, they cried and laid their hearts bare in response to the touching experience that came upon us in form of the heartfelt story of Chloe and Max. What else is there to be said about a game that has already been discussed to this extent?
Well, I can tell you what it means to me personally. First of all, to me Life Is Strange is a sign of friendship and love. Those are obviously central themes of a game and its story which puts heavy focus on the power and importance of unconditional love/friendship. I honestly do not know which one I would rather go with as both are heavily represented and the actual meaning behind Chloe’s and Max’ relationship is different from player to player. For me it is definitely both.
I was able to both experience and express friendship through Life Is Strange. I have fond memories of purchasing the first episode and immediately buying the full bundle after playing it. I then got a friend to play it on my account and from that moment on we both were eagerly anticipating each new episode. We experienced the whole story together but still in different ways. We definitely cried a lot and we talked about all the decisions we made to no end. Later I ended up gifting her a copy of the limited edition which I actually preordered.
There were more friends I ended up giving Life Is Strange as a present. I gave a regular copy to a friend I share my passion of creating games with. A second limited edition found its way to another friend of mine who, just like the game itself, accompanied and supported me throughout a time in my life when finding myself was all of a sudden more important than I could have imagined. It is safe to assume that without either of them helping me things might have turned out different.
And then there was the one version I gave to my girlfriend. This one with clear feelings of love attached — although I want to say that I also feel a form of love for all of my important friends — and with the intention to say that love overcomes it all and I might just decide to sacrifice a whole town to save her (cheesy, I know). All of these presents had a unique meaning to them that could all be expressed by this exact title- the game that had become synonymous with everlasting friendship, love and pursuing your passion.
I mentioned the time of finding myself. Life Is Strange played a surprisingly strong role in that. Max is a very special character; a young woman on the verge of becoming an adult, mixing innocence with growing worries and the struggle to find the right thing to do. Not everyone felt represented by her, I heard people dismiss the game because they could not imagine playing a teenage girl that was not shooting guns or killing zombies. They were unable to (or maybe they were just afraid of it) identify themselves with this decidedly atypical game protagonist.
It was the absolute opposite for me. I felt like I never wanted to be a fictional character more than I wanted to be Max Caulfield. Growing up as a boy my role models naturally often turned out to be male; it was the “normal” thing to happen. But there I was, experiencing the fictional experience of a young woman who was studying her passion, reuniting with her best friend and ending up in a true adventure that forced her to decide what kind of person she wanted to be, presented in a more immersive perspective than ever before, and suddenly it seemed like the most desirable thing in the world.
When I started playing the game all of these feelings were just lingering somewhere in the back of my head; it would take me over a year to properly understand what I was dealing with and act on it. But in all this time Life Is Strange stood out to me as the story that showed me a side of life that left me unexpectedly longing for this exact feeling. Even as a fictional piece the story and the characters with all their struggles gave me a feeling of the life I wanted to live but was unable to.
In a way Life Is Strange did something no other game could have done in that situation. I have played and enjoyed a lot of games and some definitely had a lasting effect on me but Life Is Strange simply touched my heart, gently, took it by the hand and carefully led it to a point where it could suddenly see the light again. From there on a lot of other things followed- I learned to discover and express myself anew and different than before, freed from the bonds that kept me in a place I did not feel comfortable in. And from here on I will always look back to the game that made me start questioning myself, and I will eternally be thankful for this and the amazing experience it bestowed upon me. Life truly turns out to be strange sometimes.
