What Kind of World Does This?: Life is Strange and the 2016 Election

Spoilers for Life is Strange. I mean it, I’m going to spoil all the big twists. But I won’t go into any other games in the series. If you haven’t played this game and intend to do so, please go do it. I’d avoid the “Remastered” versions and play the original if you can. If you’ve already played, or you know you never will, then read on.

Some of the ideas for the following were inspired by Innuendo Studios’ excellent video essay about Life is Strange, so credit to Ian Danskin for the language around these ideas.

Episode 1: Intro

It’s November 2016. I’m 23, living alone in my grandparents’ old house by the Chesapeake Bay. Three weeks before, Donald Trump was elected President of the United States. Like many others, I’m still walking around in a haze of disbelief and horror. I cannot stop myself from spiraling out into wild horror fantasies of the tragedies yet to come – some that will not come true, many more that will. I go to work at my office desk job and return home, unable to do or think about anything else. I take walks on the cold beach, listening to music and staring off vacantly into the choppy waters. I retreat from people. I make myself my comfort food. I’m afraid and depressed, obviously, but there’s another feeling gnawing away at me that I can’t quite name.

That is, until I start playing Life is Strange.

I’ve written before about my love of this 2015 story-based video game. If you’ve talked to me at a party at all in the last five years, I’ve probably found some way to talk about it. It emotionally affected me in a way that very few fictional stories ever have; I woke up in the middle of the night crying after I finished it. I spent two years writing a novel-length fanfiction about it. And I’m not alone. The Life is Strange fandom is still going strong six years later, and the singular game has now expanded into a franchise including a prequel (Life is Strange: Before the Storm), and two anthology sequels about different characters (Life is Strange 2 and Life is Strange: True Colors). I love them all.

But why? What’s so special about Life is Strange? Why can’t I get this story out my head, five years later? And why did it help me process my feelings about an election that happened a year after its release?

Well, here’s an essay about it.

Episode 2: Life is Strange

Life is Strange is a story-based video game released in five episodes throughout 2015 by the French game studio DONTNOD. It tells the story of 18-year-old Max Caulfield, a shy young woman returning to her old childhood home of Arcadia Bay, Oregon to attend a sort of 13th grade art school program. One regular fall Monday, she experiences a strange vision of a vortex wiping out the town, and then goes to the bathroom to clear her head. Inside, she witnesses the school’s resident rich kid, Nathan Prescott, murder another young woman. Distraught, Max soon realizes she has gained the ability to rewind time, and uses her new powers to save the girl. Later that day, after another confrontation with Nathan, Max learns that the girl is in fact her old best friend, Chloe Price, and the two reconnect. Over the course of the week, Max and Chloe work together, trying to solve the recent disappearance of Chloe’s close friend, the school’s most popular student Rachel Amber. Max rewinds time to help out her fellow students in matters both trivial and important, Chloe struggles with the grief of her dead father and missing friend, and the two become close again (possibly more than friends, depending on how you play it).

Thus far, Life is Strange presents itself as a nostalgic, emotional story of two young people on the cusp of adulthood dealing with life, all with a supernaturally-powered protagonist and a cozy mystery to solve. And if this is all Life is Strange ever was, it would still be a nice story. But around the later points of Episode 3, things take a darker turn.

Max’s power mutates and changes, and she finds that she can briefly send her consciousness back in time if she concentrates on pictures of herself. In an effort to help Chloe get over the loss of her father William five years ago (a loss that coincided with Max’s family moving away and the two drifting apart), Max rewinds time to the day that William died in a car crash, and prevents him from driving. Soon her consciousness shifts back to the present, only now she’s in a parallel timeline, one where she herself is part of the popular kids, William is alive, but Chloe has instead been profoundly injured in a car crash, rendered completely paralyzed, and terminally ill.

Max’s “super-power” that’s come in handy so much in the first half of the story, now appears entirely ill-equipped to save both William and Chloe. No timeline is perfect. And so, she journeys back again to that day, and lets William get in his car, and returns back to her original present, Chloe none the wiser. Max and Chloe then put together the pieces of their mystery plot-line, and soon discover a mysterious bunker underneath a remote Prescott family property. Inside is plenty of camera equipment, and binders filled with pictures of teen girls in various drugged and sexually suggestive poses: including a picture of Nathan posing with Rachel, looking dead in the local junkyard.

After a lengthy detour to a school party to warn people of Nathan, Max and Chloe hightail it to the junkyard, and begin to dig, only to smell rot and death. It’s Rachel. She was dead before they even tried to save her. Chloe breaks down, here at the grave of the only person she really loved, and screams “What kind of world does this?”

This is no longer a fun, earnest, nostalgic trip about reconnecting with your childhood friend and solving a cozy mystery. This is something darker. And the seeds of that story were there the whole time.

Chloe had a hard life before this moment, losing her father, being a depressed high school dropout, and struggling with how to go forward. But even she didn’t expect this moment to come. "What kind of world does this?" Not the kind of world she thought she was living in. Not the kind of world I thought I was playing in.

And then, there’s movement near them. Max and Chloe turn to look – and Chloe is immediately shot in the head and dies instantly. Max barely gets time to shout before a needle slides into her neck, and as she falls out of consciousness, we see the leering face of her photography teacher – and the game’s true villain – Mark Jefferson.

When the final episode begins, Max is tied to a chair in the bunker she visited the day before. Rachel is dead. Chloe is dead. And soon, she will be too.

Jefferson has been drugging and abducting “innocent” young girls, taking compromised photos of them, relishing in the fact that somewhere, they’ve realized that the world is darker than they thought. He thinks of it as capturing the moment when they leave their idealized view of childhood behind. He’s capturing the loss of innocence and causing it in the same action. He then lets them go back into the world, never quite sure what happened to them, but feeling the weight of the trauma. Nathan viewed him as a surrogate father and helped him out. He tried to do the same thing on his own with Rachel, only he screwed up the dosage and killed her. At least, that’s what Jefferson says.

Through some truly harrowing endeavors and use of her time-rewind power, Max finally escapes to the beginning of the story and reveals Jefferson’s villainy. He’s arrested, she reconnects with Chloe, finally submits her photo to the contest she was too shy to do so before, and by the end of the week she’s been flown to San Francisco for her art to be displayed with other young people’s. She’s saved the day, saved her friend, and taken the first steps towards her future career. She’s become a stronger person, ready to face adulthood. The story’s done.

Except…

Chloe calls. The storm Max saw in her visions? It’s still coming. It’s there, destroying the town, killing Chloe.

Something’s gone wrong, somehow. Max can’t get there in time. So she journeys back in time and ends up stuck in Jefferson’s bunker yet again. She suffers through more, only to be saved by Chloe’s ex-soldier step-father. As the storm rages around her, she drives to find her other friend Warren, who has a picture of Max, Chloe, and himself taken at the party, at a time before Chloe was killed. She finds him, but watches as people die all around her. He presents his theory – that the storm is due to her messing with time. Chaos theory. The butterfly effect. She thinks he might be right, but what else can she do? She takes the photo and travels back again.

Now Chloe’s alive, but the storm’s still coming. Max and Chloe make it to the top of Arcadia Bay's lighthouse, where they can see the vortex about to hit Arcadia Bay. Max tells Chloe her theory, and Chloe decides to make a brave sacrifice. If all this happens because Max messed with time, then the only way out it to negate that pivotal moment when she changed things: go back to the bathroom and let Nathan kill Chloe.

And here’s your choice, player. Sacrifice Chloe and save the town? Or rip up the photo and drive out of there with the only person that really matters to Max, and Sacrifice Arcadia Bay.

Yeah, it’s a tough one. I agonized over the decision for like an hour, before I finally decided to Sacrifice Chloe.

I woke up in the middle of the night afterwards, crying, imagining Max at Chloe’s funeral, a Chloe who never got to reconnect with her, to fall in love with her. Max feeling devastated, but unable to tell everyone that they were more than childhood friends, that she went through so much more. A grief so engulfing, so impossible to share the full enormity of it with anyone else.

In October 2017, I played the game’s prequel, Life is Strange: Before the Storm, in which you play as Chloe 3 years prior, as she meets and grows close to Rachel Amber. It’s a more grounded story – none of them have powers – but it’s profoundly sad. Either both of these young girls will be dead in three years’ time, or one of them will, along with everyone else in the town.

After playing this, I couldn’t let Chloe suffer again. In every subsequent playthrough of Life is Strange (and there have been many), I’ve sacrificed Arcadia Bay. Is it the “wrong” choice, to save one person at the cost of an entire town? Probably. But as a storyteller myself, it’s the more interesting choice.

Because Life is Strange is fundamentally composed of two separate stories, both with the same characters, setting, and plot, but with different and at times contradictory themes and lessons. The first story is a coming-of-age drama, where Max must learn to overcome her fears and doubts (metaphorically represented as her time-rewinding powers) and ultimately make a sacrifice for the benefit of the world (let Chloe die, fixing the time paradox and saving the town). The second story is a dark, almost Lynchian thriller, where real-world evils ruin the lives of young women all while a cosmic doom descends, prompted by someone just trying to save a stranger’s life.

The final decision of Life is Strange asks you to choose which of these two stories you want to have an ending, and then wipes away the other storyline. Sacrifice Chloe, and Max has her coming-of-age story. The world is saved, but all of the mystery and darkness she’s experienced in the last week no longer happens. She’s left with sadness, but all is right with the world. Sacrifice Arcadia Bay, and Max and Chloe give a big middle-finger to the story’s lessons, and escape out of their narrative. Everyone else is killed, the coming of age storied wiped away. There are no lessons, except sometimes you’re punished for trying to do good, and nothing you can do can stop what’s coming, so you should cling to the people you love in the face of an indifferent universe.

Both endings are deeply sad, and yet I think that the reason this game has sunk its claws into me for 5 years now is that I can feel the incomplete, untold story of whichever option I don’t choose. The two stories of this one game contradict each other, and nothing we can do can make the two fit together coherently.

But regardless of which story contained in Life is Strange we focus on, both are bound up in the concept of coming of age. And that’s what I want to look at more closely.

Episode 3: Coming of Age

Life is Strange is about – among many other things – coming of age. That’s nothing unusual, lots of stories are about young people growing up. But what does that actually mean? Many stories in the traditional Bildungsroman model show their protagonists learning to become part of society, subsume their own rebellious childhood selves and become “mature.” In the more modern American model, protagonists come of age by defining themselves in opposition to their society’s expectations. Growing up as an American, I’ve been bombarded with stories about “following your heart” and “becoming your true self.” Becoming an adult means making a concrete decision about who you are, fashioning yourself into this ideal form, and then charging headlong into achieving your goals.

In real life, there’s no clear-cut break between childhood and adulthood, and anytime you try to draw one, it resists such easy classifications. Age, marital status, employment, education status, homeowner status – all of these approaches fall apart in the face of mature and immature people of every kind and achievement, not to mention socio-economic and political barriers to achieving these things.

Life is Strange’s 18-year-old protagonist Max Caulfield certainly grapples with her own coming-of-age in more-or-less traditional ways. She’s shy, nosy, self-deprecating and unmoored. The greatest sins of her past are rooted in inaction, in fear. She drifted apart from Chloe in her youth because she didn’t know what to say. She wants to be a photographer, but can’t pluck up the courage to submit her art to the world. She’s paralyzed by indecision and doubt.

And then she gets the ability to rewind time. Her choices don’t get any easier. In fact, they get harder.

It’s clear that one interpretation of Life is Strange, and the theme of one possible outcome, is for Max to “come of age” in both the traditional way (by sacrificing her youthful love of the rebellious Chloe for the sake of society) and the modern way (by asserting herself as an individualized artist.) This happens in the Sacrifice Chloe ending.

The ending montage to this choice is more complete and polished, and only with this choice can you get Max and Chloe finally kissing and confessing their love for each other, moments before this timeline will be erased. It’s hard to shake the feeling that this is the game’s more “correct” choice. In the classic thought experiment of the Trolley Problem (of which this game’s final decision is a direct example of), sacrificing the one to save the many is the “correct” option, at least intuitively to most people. This is a harder sacrifice for Max in many ways, but it’s ultimately the decision that’s right for society, and ultimately the path for her to truly come of age.

But Life is Strange is also fascinated with a different vision of coming-of-age, one that presents the line between youth and maturity as being one about knowledge and worldview, about beliefs and values. This version of the line between youth and maturity is crossed not through a particular event or age, but at that moment when your worldview is truly shaken and altered. When you realize that the world is not what you thought it was supposed to be. That it’s so much darker than you dreamed.

This coming of age is the loss of innocence that Jefferson thrives on (within the fiction) and represents (outside of it). It’s all those photos of those girls. It’s the storm that comes no matter what you do to stop it. It’s Chloe digging up Rachel’s corpse and crying out “What kind of world does this?"

It’s deciding to Sacrifice Arcadia Bay, because why would more time travel solve this, because damnit you’ve been trying to save Chloe all this time and that’s what you’re going to do!

It’s the moment when you realize the type of story you thought you were living in had been wrong the whole time.

In other words, you were in the wrong genre.

Episode 4: The Wrong Genre

Alright, so Life is Strange is a compelling game partially about coming of age, and fascinated with the moment when our worldviews are shattered in the face of the world being darker than we expect. It affected me deeply, especially in the wake of the 2016 election.

Perhaps you’re seeing where this is going?

The election of Donald Trump was a scary moment for anyone who considers themselves even vaguely left of center, but what made it so much more bewildering is that, for many of us, it meant more than simply a terrible turn of events. The fact that Trump won was especially horrifying because we believed it was impossible. We told ourselves a story about America, that whatever its faults, it was not the kind of place where such a man could say what he said, do what he did, and still become President. We told ourselves a story that, whatever her faults, Hilary Clinton would obviously become the next President of the United States, the first woman to do so. The arc of history would bend towards justice, slowly but surely, and the changing demographics of America would put the reactionary, racist right-wing in the dustbin of history.

But that story was a lie. And it always had been. America was the kind of place to elect Trump in 2016. And it most definitely is the kind of place that could easily re-elect him in 2024. Anyone telling themselves a story that it can’t happen again is lying to themselves, yet again. America’s democracy has never truly been completely representative. Even now, many Americans can’t vote, and even when they can, our choices are profoundly limited. Small changes that would make things more democratic – such as Election Day being a federal holiday, expanded early and mail-in voting, ranked choice voting, etc. – are denied by the Republicans, because they understand that their agenda is broadly unpopular and the less people that can vote, the better for them. The Democrats are largely ineffectual, stuck in an imagined past of gentlemanly-like “bipartisanship” even as the Republicans yank the football from under them time and time again.

Donald Trump could be outwardly racist, sexist, homophobic, mock the disabled, brag about sexually assaulting women…and still win. Why? Oh, there are hundreds of reasons. But it happened, and it can happen again.

Our story was wrong. Or perhaps I should speak more for myself. There were definitely many people who believed that Trump’s victory was certainly possible, even likely, not to mention all the people who actively voted for him. But I can only speak to the ideals and thoughts of a particular subset of Americans, likely college-educated, white, liberals, and even then, only for myself.

I was a progressive before Trump was elected. In 2012, the first election I could vote in, I voted Green Party. In 2016, I voted for Bernie Sanders, and then after his loss, held my nose and voted for Clinton. I thought I had no illusions about America’s greatness. I knew we had dark days coming due to climate change. But I had fundamentally bought into the idea that our days of war were done. That fascism and dictatorships were a thing of the past, at least in America. That we would only get better.

I thought I knew what genre my story was in.

“What kind of world does this?” Not the one we thought we were in. The fictional discovery of Rachel Amber’s murder and the all too real election of Donald Trump are obviously incredibly different, but at their heart, for me, they’re both moments of realizing that I’ve been wrong about the genre of story I was in. The rules I thought applied don’t. The truths I thought were real, weren’t. The future is now a darker place, but the past is too, hidden cracks in the surface I can only see now, in hindsight.

I’ve written elsewhere about my recent struggles with the concept of progress, about if it might be a flawed way of thinking about society. But I also consider myself part of the progressive/socialist left that wants great change to improve the world.

Like the twin strands of themes bubbling under the surface of Life is Strange, I can’t reconcile these two thoughts. I think our ideas of progress might be an illusion, that we go through long seasons of freedom and repression, that we are not on an assured path towards something better, that it could all end in an instant or just get worse and worse and linger on. But I also believe that humanity can achieve more, that we’re being held back by the systems and decisions propped up by a wealthy and powerful few, that a better world is possible.

Donald Trump’s election has been a pivotal point for many in America. It’s reawakened a never-really-sleeping far-right and reactionary instinct among millions, completely conquering the Republican Party, leading all the way to the failed coup attempt after Trump’s loss to Biden…and beyond. But it’s also energized an oppositional force, the newly emerging American Left. The Democratic Party has long been a Centrist to Center-Right party by the standards of much of the rest of the world, especially after Bill Clinton’s “Third Way” transformation. It’s getting more left wing, but only at the margins, only where it doesn’t affect much. Social justice politics have won over much of the party’s leadership, but often only in milquetoast ways without any real policies behind them. But there’s undoubtedly a movement of people far to the left of what the Democrats have become, a few of them finding their way into elected office, many more taking to the streets and organizing. Certain sectors are beginning to unionize again, with more strikes than America has seen in decades. And most of these people are no longer afraid of the word “socialist.”

This actual Left movement is still quite weak. But it’s been basically dead in America ever since Reagan, and while it was slowly starting to re-emerge before Trump’s election, that has certainly put fuel on the fire.

To be honest, my own political awakening has not been very substantial. I protest occasionally, I donate, I vote for the left candidates when I can, but I have not really done much actual organizing. But at least in terms of what I believe to be true and what I believe to be morally right and wrong, I’ve changed.

I know what genre I’m in now.

Episode Five: Genre-Savvy

So where do we go from a moment like this? Life is Strange offers us a choice. It’s not perfectly constructed, and the more distinct metaphors you use for it, the more it falls apart. But I’m particular drawn to the second of the game’s endings, the one where you Sacrifice Arcadia Bay. This is the only ending where Max decides that she doesn’t understand the rules of the story she’s in, and that she’d be a fool to bet everything on them. She doesn’t need to learn a lesson, because those lessons belong to a genre that she’s no longer living in, and that maybe she was never living in to begin with. She drives off with Chloe into an uncertain future, with her old life left in shambles behind her.

It’s painful to let the constructed notions of our worldviews die. Some people might not take that journey with us, and we have to leave them behind in the wreckage. But seeing clearly is the only way to really mature, in a way that matters. I highly doubt that I’m done with learning more about the story I’m in, or having my worldviews changed or shattered. That’s what coming-of-age really is; not a single moment of transition from childhood to adult, but a commitment to remain open to the fact that you don’t have all the answers. But neither is the answer to refrain from committing to any story at all in the fear that it will be later proved wrong. That way leads to the same kind of indecision and paralysis that hold Max back at the beginning of both her stories.

So what do we do?

We accept that we were wrong about the genre we were living in, about the story we told ourselves. And then we get adjusted to the world in which we really live. We should remain open to learning more, but not so ambivalent that we stop playing the game. I don’t know much more than that. I’m still figuring it out.

So here I come, at the end of this rambling essay about a video game and politics. I don’t know if anyone else that’s played this game has had it inspire the same detours I’ve just taken you all down. Life is Strange is just a game. A relatively small project, a painfully earnest game, goofy and melodramatic and stumbling at times. But I love it profoundly. Possibly obsessively.

I love it for more reasons than I’ve gone into in this essay. It’s the perfect storm (pun intended) of my favorite motifs and tropes; teen dramas, time travel, multiple timelines, cosmic storms, small towns with weird mysteries, bunkers, melodramatic doomed romance, stories about regrets and indecision, etc.

But I don’t think I’d have fallen so hard for this game if it hadn’t hit at just the right time in my life, when I needed a story so badly that could both distract me from my spiraling anxiety and help me learn to live in the new genre in which I found myself.