And so begins another series of podcasts, episode by episode, of another episodic adventure game. This time it is Dontnod’s Life is Strange.
I’ve been hoping at some point we’d get to talk about Life is Strange. Ever since I first played it back in January. Though I was a little down on it at first, the game offered a lot of material worthy of discussion. It’s a dense game with multiple lens that can be applied to it. The photography angle and how it frames the ensuing events, the feminist angle given its very existence in the current market climate, the genre angle and how high school plays in the medium, the time manipulation angle, the social commentary being made, the undermining of tropes and archetypes, the craftsmanship angle and the evolution it performs on the adventure game genre, etc.
We don’t get to far into any of those lenses here, instead touching on a few of them and taking the broader view as a way to begin the discussion. We try to place Life is Strange into the best context that we can as to what it is doing, what is similar to what is out there (most notably TellTale’s games) and what it does differently. It’s not a problem. There are going to be four more of these after all.
The podcast is up over at PopMatters, you can find it in our SoundCloud or download the episode from the RSS feed.
“That’s a tasty plasma. Maybe I could sneak in and watch Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. I don’t care what anyone else says, that’s one of the best sci-fi films ever made.”
“Oh now, why don’t you just go fuck your selfie.”