Ashley Greene and Jesse Nguyen | April 24, 2024

SPOILER ALERT: The following analysis contains major spoilers for the narrative of Life Is Strange. It is highly recommended it is played or watched before reading this analysis, as it will provide you with greater context and understanding.

Life is Strange, created by Don’t Nod and Deck Nine, and published by Square Enix, was released in 2015 on platforms including Xbox One, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 & 4 and Microsoft Windows. It is a single-player narrative adventure game driven primarily by embedded storytelling. The player takes the form of Max Caulfield, an awkward eighteen-year-old high school photography student who returns to her hometown to study at the renowned Blackwell Academy in Arcadia Bay, Oregon in 2013.

In the game’s opening scene, players take control of Max through a third-person perspective. She awakens in a forest during a violent storm and sees a lighthouse in the distance. Once she reaches the lighthouse, she sees a massive tornado heading towards her town, only to be suddenly awoken back in her photography class, confused at what she just saw. After a sequence of small events, Max goes off to rinse her face, and she witnesses a woman getting shot in the bathroom. After a flash of light, Max is transported back to her class. After witnessing the same events happen before her, Max quickly realizes that she can rewind time and sets out to save the woman in the bathroom, who happens to be her estranged childhood best friend, Chloe Price. The two set out to investigate the disappearance of a local girl, Rachel Amber, whom Chloe had a close relationship with. Max uses her powers to change the decisions that she makes, and ultimately the reality she lives in. It is up to players to decide the choices Max makes along the way.

Throughout Arcadia Bay, players interact with different objects that have on-screen prompts of which button to press to either look at or interact with them directly. With the look option, Max will have a quick line of dialogue about the given object or character that can provide the player with context clues. A lot of music within the game is diegetic with players being able to turn on radios when prompted.

The gameplay loop of Life is Strange consists of photo-taking, walking, exploring, rewinding time, puzzle solving, interacting with objects, and characters. Players progress the plot by navigating various environments and solving time-based puzzles within them. The game includes an autosave feature with a specific symbol at the bottom of the screen informing the player that a save is occurring. Although a single-player game, its choice driven narrative allows for a pseudo multiplayer experience. Players can also compare their choices with other individuals who have played this game through the global statistics shown at the end of each episode.

Max and Chloe’s journey primarily takes place in the fictional coastal town of Arcadia Bay. It’s an unassuming normal town in the Pacific Northwest, with realistic features such as gas stations, neighborhoods, and schools. Arcadia Bay has a beautiful, picturesque landscape quality to it, making it feel atmospheric and nostalgic.

Littered throughout the town are tons of details such as graffiti and readable posters, making it feel fully realized and lived in. The map is restricted to Max’s immediate goals and plot consisting of navigable spaces, with different areas being unlocked as Max needs to interact with them. Max’s school, Blackwell Academy, is a private senior high school fitted with dorms, sports facilities, and a beautiful courtyard. As players progress, they may uncover the many mysteries and secrets of Arcadia Bay.

Illusion of Choice

A selling point for Life is Strange is the player’s autonomy to choose what Max should do in each scene and how she should interact with other characters. It is this idea of choice that makes this game intriguing. A sense of being in control of the ending is particularly enticing. While objectively there are options to choose from in progressing the game forward, what does it truly mean to have a choice?

To start, players have the choice to play Life is Strange. They bought it, or rented it, and made the choice to play it of their own free will. But game developers designed the game with certain endings and had their own goals in mind, restricting players to a specific fate. Jim Brown, a senior video game designer, states, “When someone sits down to play a video game, they are very much at our mercy. They’re constrained by OUR rules, their path is locked by boundaries of the world WE’VE built, and their options are limited by the controls WE set up” (Brown 2). However, players never feel like they are controlled by the game developer. That’s where the illusion comes in.

“…if we’re doing our job well, then the player will always feel like they’re the ones who are in control” (Brown 2).

It is this illusion of choice that seems apparent within Life is Strange. While there are different options to pick from, these options most often elicit the same response, eradicating the basis of choice. Clara Fernández-Vara in Introduction to Game Analysis when discussing the illusion of choice states, “Whatever the player decides is irrelevant because the consequences will always be the same” (Fernández-Vara 162). I would like to examine this idea in the context of the game itself.

Saving Chloe

After the opening scene in the storm, Max is sitting at a table in her photography class. Players can interact with her journal, camera, and other items within her view while Mr. Jefferson, her photography professor, lectures in the background. These options are designated by the corresponding letters on the controller. While the player can decide the order to interact with each object, the choices are limited in what Max can do in each scene and players are guided along a set storyline.

In this opening scene, Mr. Jefferson calls on Max in class, and players are presented with a few options to respond. However, none of the options are correct as Max does not know the answer to his question. Therefore, this choice doesn’t affect the game. After the bell rings, Max attempts to leave the class, prompting Mr. Jefferson to call her over and speak to her about entering the “Everyday Heroes Contest,” a photography contest where the winner will receive $10,000. After her conversation with Mr. Jefferson, Max states she wants to splash water on her face in the bathroom, hinting at players to head there.

The next events that unfold in the bathroom can be seen in this video:

Warning: This video depicts gun violence

When Max wakes up again in the classroom, she realizes she needs to head back to the bathroom to save that girl. The player can now answer the question with the correct answer using the rewind tool and change decisions that are made until the desired result is met. This “desired result” is an illusion of choice. The player then leads Max back to the bathroom. Players are presented with new interactions, such as the ability to move a mop cart, revealing an object. This object can be used to gain access to the fire alarm so she can pull it and distract Nathan. If players take too long to complete this task, the screen freezes and turns grey, allowing the player the chance to rewind and fix the mistakes. The game does not progress until the girl in the bathroom is saved.

Lo and behold, as the game continues, players realize that this girl in the bathroom is Max’s old best friend, Chloe Price. During the five episodes, they rekindle their friendship and band together to use Max’s powers to attempt to save Arcadia Bay. However, once the end of Episode 5: Polarized is reached, players are left with the option to save Chloe or Arcadia Bay. If Chloe is saved, just about everyone in Arcadia Bay is killed. If Arcadia Bay is saved, the game rewinds to the opening scene in the bathroom, and players no longer have the option to rewind and stop Nathan from killing her.

This very instance begs the question of whether any of the choices mattered. While decisions could alter player interactions and how they view Max in different scenes, in the end, everything is reversed. Players are brought back to the start and all the choices that were made throughout the five-episode span are now reset, as if nothing occurred.

Paradox of Choice

Another feature of the choices players can make is the representation of varying levels of importance for each decision. While some choices are simply just for dialogue and seem to make no difference in the game, others will freeze the scene, with ominous music in the back, emphasizing the importance of the decision the player is about to make.

This differing level of stress and quantity of choice seems to weigh even heavier on the fact that the players must be in control of the ending. However, this falls into another idea surrounding decision making called the paradox of choice, coined by American psychologist Barry Schwartz. While common sense suggests that having more options indicates more choice and autonomy, Schwartz argued that this had the opposite effect. Schwartz believed that “less is more,” arguing that having too many options is more restrictive and too stressful for an individual. In the context of Life is Strange, while it may feel empowering to the player that they have the freedom to decide what Max should do, when presented with multiple options or one that elicits an emotional response, this decision becomes more restricting.

Furthermore, players can test an option and then rewind. After seeing both endings, players then must decide which they believe is the better option, a decision that is subjective for each player.

Saving Kate

This illusion of choice can further be evaluated in the opportunity to save Kate, another friend of Max’s at school. After Kate attends a Vortex Club Party (an exclusive organization led by Nathan Prescott) at school, a video clip of her drunk at the party surfaces the internet. This leads Kate to be tormented at school with the video being posted all over social media with other students writing the link in the bathroom or displaying it around campus. This incident puts Kate in a state of depression and drives her to consider taking her own life. This situation presents Max with decisions on how to interact with Kate. There are many instances where Max can befriend Kate or help her out. An example of one of these choices is when players are given the choice of suggesting that Kate tells the police about being drugged by Nathan or telling her to wait while Max looks for proof.

With so many seemingly important decisions, it seems imperative to make the right ones to save Kate in the end. However, despite any choices players make, Kate will inevitably end up on the roof, threatening to jump and take her life. Only the last sequence of events on the roof are the ones that mattered all along. But if those decisions didn’t matter, why add so much stress to them?

This question may never have a solid answer, other than choice is a difficult concept. A choice is different depending on who is asked, and some choices are more difficult than others. Overall, based on the embedded storyline and desires of the developers, the illusion of choice seems to be prominent within Life is Strange.

Life is somewhat queer…

But choice isn’t the only “illusion” of Life is Strange, there’s also its queer representation. Given its release date, 2015, sexualities other than heterosexual were still a rarity to be shown in the gaming sphere. Only a handful of games during this time represented non-heteronormative relationships such as Dragon Age Inquisition, Mass Effect, and The Sims. And gay marriage wasn’t legalized until June 26, 2015, for all states.

So, it was understandable why Life is Strange got the amount of traction that it did. Audiences were excited to see a blue-haired and brunette lesbian power couple, and the aesthetic of Life is Strange also serves well for queer audiences. The stellar soundtrack of alternative indie and the constant sunset in the game gives it a nostalgic and Tumblr like atmosphere, something many queer teens yearned for at the time.

However, given the political circumstances of the world at the time, it was risky to release a game that outright displayed a lesbian teen couple. Because of this, Life is Strange implemented something called “the gay button.”

The “gay button”, or the opt in gay button, is a term coined by Anna Anthropy, an American video game designer. The gay button is when a games representation is optional and must be pursued by the player. In the case of Life is Strange, Chloe, Rachel and Max are never outright lesbian or even bisexual, unless the player chooses to pursue it. Any hints at them being queer must either be driven by the player or is seen in easily missable details hidden throughout the game.

Throughout Max and Chloe’s investigation into Rachel Amber, their relationship rekindles into the strong friendship they once had as children. But some romantic complications arise between the two, and it’s up to the players if they want Max and Chloe to be romantically involved. But first, it’s important to look at how both are represented in Life is Strange.

Chloe has a sexuality that is portrayed in an interesting way. Many may interpret her as lesbian, given her blue hair, obsession with Rachel Amber and her punk alterative aesthetic. In addition to physical appearance, Chloe has made numerous offhand comments in the game about how she had a “hella stupid boy toy phase” that she’s glad she’s over, and that boys are “way too fucking gross”. She has also expressed that she feels Rachel Amber has “saved her”. Max on the other hand is rather reserved about making such comments and dresses quite inconspicuously.

The only time Chloe is really seen engaging with someone heterosexually was when she thought Mr. Jefferson was “hot for a teacher,” but that was more-so to get a reaction out of Max. It’s also a rather uncomfortable bit of dialogue, which perpetuates the trope of young girls lusting over male teachers, something more aligned with the male gaze. The male gaze, according to feminist film theorist Laura Mulvey in her article Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, is “…pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female. The determining male gaze projects its fantasy onto the female figure, which is styled accordingly” (Mulvey, 808). Another instance of the male gaze in Life is Strange is in Episode 5: Polarized during Max’s nightmare (see Video 2).

This is the only queer scene in the game that every player will see in their playthrough regardless of choice. Even then, Chloe flirting with Victoria was probably the least queer thing here. Its shock value and dialogue are uncomfortable, and quite frankly doesn’t feel like it was intended for queer audiences. The only possible hints of “good queer representation” in this scene is Max’s possible attraction to Chloe. Since this is her nightmare, everything we see happening is based off Max’s own fears and jealousies.

There is one scene in Episode 3: Chaos Theory, where Max has the choice to kiss Chloe, but it’s done under the guise of a dare, and holds little romantic weight, at least if players take it at face value. In Episode 4: Dark Room, after reuniting with Chloe, Max writes in her diary “I’ve never been so glad to see Chloe in my life… I wanted to kiss her again.” If Max doesn’t kiss her during the dare, Max regrets that she didn’t.

What makes Chloe and Max’s representation so questionable is that Chloe can very easily be seen as bisexual or even heterosexual if players choose not to pursue her at all. Outside of her and Max, players can only assume she’s queer through her ambiguous relationship with Rachel Amber, and her clothing or hair color don’t signify anything with sexuality. Additionally, Chloe doesn’t have a queer narrative that players are able to engage with. Her parents don’t ever acknowledge her liking girls and nobody else in the world seems to care either. If players choose not to pursue her, Chloe’s representation becomes an extremely ambiguous sexuality that can fit whatever the player is comfortable with.

Regarding Max, a lot of her identity is tucked away in her diary, which is optional and easily missable. Interestingly though, no matter what choices the player makes, Max seems to be queer, she just isn’t outwardly queer, so, to any players who didn’t read her diary, Max is whatever they want her to be. If players decide they want an entirely heterosexual experience, Max’s diary entries denote how she may have been subconsciously developing feelings for Chloe. It’s almost like Max as a character was designed to be queer but wasn’t shown to be queer. Queerness in Life is Strange being a “choice,” and its existence in hidden corners of the game allowed it to prosper for every audience amidst its release in the world’s controversial political climate.

Life is heterosexual…?

Throughout all the hidden ambiguous representation in Life is Strange, there is one thing that’s clear as day, and that is the heterosexual relationships. Rachel having a relationship with Frank (Chloes drug dealer) is very clear and is shown to players against their will as it’s embedded in the main plot line. This is shown by the countless love letters scattered throughout Frank’s van that players have no choice but to look at as it’s a key in progressing forward. Additionally with these love letters, there are personal, affectionate pictures of Rachel and Frank together, something that was never seen with Chloe and Rachel. This stark contrast in heterosexuality being shown regardless of choice, and LGBTQ+ representation being locked behind choices, reinforces the idea that sexuality is a choice that players can decide in their playthrough, when sexuality in real life is fluid and present regardless of any “choices”.

Furthermore, one of Max’s friends, Warren Graham, is shown to have a crush on her, regardless of what the player wishes. Unlike Chloe, in every play through, regardless of any choices you make, Warren will like Max. Interestingly however, Max herself is rather nonchalant about Warren in her diary entries and seems to care more about Chloe. (See image 9)

In addition to very vague and questionable representation, Life is Strange utilizes the trope “bury the gays”. The trope “bury the gays”, according to this article, is the representation of LGBTQ+ characters being more expendable than their heterosexual counterparts, and often have sad or tragic endings to their stories. This trope, in a sick way, fits perfectly with the state Rachel Amber is eventually found in, dead and buried in a junkyard. There is ultimately no favorable outcome for any of the main characters in Life is Strange.

As mentioned earlier, in one of the endings, Chloe makes a revelation that she has died or almost died a lot around Max, and that she was perhaps “destined to.” By alternating reality and time, Max saving Chloe in the bathroom presumably caused the storm, so Chloe suggests Max let her die, to save everyone else in Arcadia Bay. In the ending where Max decides to sacrifice Chloe, it’s very long and developed. There are high quality cutscenes of Chloe’s funeral that give players proper closure.

But in this ending, Chloe would have died believing Rachel and Max abandoned her, and her stepfather would’ve never gotten the chance to love her. Chloe’s mother would’ve also believed Chloe died as an angry, brash and lost teenager. Chloe herself believes it better that she dies, as she feels “There’s so many more people in Arcadia Bay that should live… way more than me.”

To contrast, in the ending where Arcadia Bay is sacrificed, the cutscene is extremely short. It’s incredibly unsatisfying, you don’t get to see if Max and Chloe live any longer than a week, it simply just shows her and Max driving out of Arcadia. After all, the storm may as well keep chasing them until the end of time, but that’s something that’s never revealed to players..

The fate of the main characters in Life is Strange is very bleak. Even in the very beginning, Rachel Amber is always dead no matter what. Both endings are tragic, Max must suffer the loss of Chloe or the guilt of killing an entire town. Why is it that the favorable outcome for a queer couple is them letting hundreds of innocent people die? And why is Chloe “destined to die?” These are questions players may never know the answer to, but unfortunately for Chloe and Max, Life is tragic.

Works Cited

FERNNDEZ-VARA, CLARA. Introduction to Game Analysis. ROUTLEDGE, 2024.

Brown, Jim. The Illusion of Choice. Epic Games. https://um-twvideo01.s3.amazonaws.com/o1/vault/gdc2016/Presentations/Jim_Brown_IllusionOfChoice.pdf.

Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”, Screen, vol. 16, no. 3, 1975, pp. 6–18. https://doi.org/10.1093/screen/16.3.6

Fredenburg, Tara “QUEER LIFE IS TRAGIC”; Berlant, Laura “Cruel Optimism”; and Edelman, Lee “Negative Queerness in Life is Strange,” Sprinkle, vol. 12, no. 12, 2019. https://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/sprinkle/vol12/iss1/12

Schütz, Yiva. Representations of Non-heterosexuality and the Gay Button in Video Games, https://netlibrary.aau.at/download/pdf/8578042.pdf