Maxine

Here’s a little sketch I did today! I’ve been playing Life Is Strange recently, a game which I saw all the time on the Xbox 360 Marketplace but never got to play until now.

This would be the second time-travel multiple-endings game I’ve played since Steins;Gate forever ago. I do love me some story-driven gameplay and branching paths, hence my love of visual novels, so I’ve been enjoying the game so far.

The main character is Max Caulfield, an adorable but meek high school girl who loves photography. She’s cute, but so embroiled in the dramatic high school environment that she lacks the self-esteem to see it.

She kind of reminds me of Riki, the main character in Little Busters (my favorite VN of all time), since she’s got a shy personality that’s often overshadowed by the dominant personalities of those around her. Riki would deny it, but he’s also pretty adorable.

Life Is Strange’s controls feel a bit sluggish (I’m playing on a Nintendo Switch) which discourages me from interacting with the environment, even though I’m the kind of guy who taps on every single little object in the Phoenix Wright investigation segments. Same with the time travel, which is unfortunate; part of the fun of visual novels is exploring all the different choices and routes, but Life is Strange is a 3D adventure game, so you can’t really go back and forth to try new things as fluidly as a VN.

I’m on Episode 3 of the game, and it kind of worries me that no matter what choices I make, I’m still being railroaded through a set storyline with Chloe and the disappearance of Rachel. For instance:

Life Is Strange: Episode 2 spoilers

Kate’s story feels more like a momentary distraction from Chloe and Rachel’s main storyline. Regardless of the outcome of Kate’s subplot, it seems like you will discover what happened to Rachel sooner or later, because that’s what the game is setting you up for. If Kate dies, the story just kind of moves on.

What would sadden me a little is if, for all the emphasis the game places on chaos theory and the consequences of choices, the endings are just slight variations of “you solve the mystery” and “you fail to solve the mystery.” So rather than reaching Kate’s Good/Bad Ending, you end up at Rachel and Chloe’s Good/Bad Ending no matter what you do, with a footnote about what happened to Kate and the other characters. Compare this with Fallout 3:

Fallout 3 spoilers

Despite Fallout 3 having hundreds of ending variations, the only one that really matters is the main story’s. Regardless of whether you choose to blow up Megaton is largely irrelevant to the search for Dad and Project Purity. As far as the ending is concerned, all it does it change a few slides of the final montage. The number of endings are due to combinatorics, not because there are actually hundreds of deep plotlines.

Maybe I’m just spoiled by the many storylines of the visual novels I’ve played.