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Life Is Strange is a video game about teens.  After five years of hanging out with bohos and practicing photography in Seattle, Max Caulfield returns to her hometown of Arcadia Bay, Oregon, to attend the prestigious seniors-only Blackwell Academy. While navigating the murky cliques and social circles of the Academy, she soon discovers, after experiencing a vivid hallucination, that she has somehow acquired the power to rewind time around her, retaining information and sometimes objects acquired from the future. As she begins to acclimate herself to her new powers (and struggles with how and when to best effectively use them,) she reunites with her estranged best friend, Chloe. Together, they tackle some of the social ills of the academy, and work to unravel the mystery of the missing girl Rachel Amber, who played a key role in the lives of all the students at the school. Life Is Strange (trademark) is an episodic adventure game made by French developer Dontnot Studios, best known for their 2013 game Remember Me. The game blends the decision making of many of Telltale's adventure games with a dialogue mechanic similar to the Mass Effect series. The ability to rewind time and redo any previous decision made in an area is an interesting mechanic for an adventure game; it allows the player to see the short-term effects of all possible decisions. It also enables some light puzzle-solving: not only does Max retain information from each possible decision, but she also doesn't physically move during the rewinding. For example, (very very mild spoiler): there is a puzzle late in Episode 1 that involves navigating a path where a tree has been felled. Max can rewind time to the point before the tree fell down, and cross the path before is collapses. That kinda stuff. The mechanic isn't infinite; as soon as Max leaves an area, all decisions made are final, and the player has to think about how the decision might play out in the long term. So far it seems like there is a very neutral quality to the decision making; there doesn't seem to be any good or bad decisions, only decisions that will cause the story to play out in different ways. It's a unique way of sorta simulating save-scumming while still forcing the player to accept their choices in the long-term. Episode 1, Chrysalis, is out now, and is $5 on Steam. Episode 2, Out of Time, will be out in March. The season pass, containing 5 episodes, is $20 (best deal!) http://store.steampowered.com/app/319630/ eta: The game is also out on on PS4/3 and Xbox One/360. I don't have any of those consoles, so, uh, consult your video games digital distribution service of choice Release schedule, thanks to forums user Accordian Man: Accordion Man posted:The Complete Season will not be available for Playstation users until February 3. I'll update this as more news is released. Also, be warned, this game has a lot of teen-talk and rich white kids and quirky references to famous photographers. A lot of the dialogue is really realistically awkward, the way douchey teens actually do talk, but some of it smells of "written by a 30-year-old French dude with a tenuous grasp on how American young people actually talk". It's sort of charming, sometimes grating. The larger mystery and setting though is really quality stuff, and personally the first episode hooked me pretty hard. quadrophrenic fucked around with this message at 07:00 on Mar 24, 2015 |
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Feb 1, 2015 04:54
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nftyw posted:I still think that "Final Fantasy: Spirits Within" felt more like a futuristic "Resident Evil". Just with less zombies and more, uh, whatever the ghostly poo poo was in those movies. I don't remember much since right after leaving we turned around and watched Fast and the Furious and drained our brains out. Spoiler alert: this game was published by Square-Enix
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Feb 1, 2015 04:59
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Full Metal Jackass posted:Make life poo poo for Victoria crew checking in. On the bone it said only 26% of the people do it and I ask myself why not? Man, I really liked the make fun of decision, but I'm a twerp and I've decided I want my Max to be a good person. Also, I feel like the game is strongly hinting that the Vortex Club is actually full of decent human beings, and I wanna see how that plays out. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLbo6LQwXlw&t=325s
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Feb 1, 2015 05:07
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What I am wondering is if your decisions will carry over into future episodes. So far it seems like they will, because there's a whole lot of decisions whose ramifications don't fully play out in episode 1. I'm pretty sure they will, but in the small possibility that they don't, that would really suck.
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Feb 1, 2015 05:10
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Sorry guys! I feel bad  If you have any pertinent info or insight I'd be glad to add it to the OP
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Feb 1, 2015 05:17
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precision posted:So what happens in the parking lot if you don't blab to the principal? What happens if you DO blab to the principal? I didn't blab, and the only thing that happened in the parking lot was preppy neurotic kid threatened me and then beat up Warren I will say that not blabbing enables you to tell Chloe later on that you didn't snitch without that being a lie, but I don't know if there are any actual story ramifications for that.
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Feb 1, 2015 06:34
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The whole game is kind of an interesting test study in ludonarrative dissonance, I think. There are ludic elements that are taken for granted in a lot of adventure games (rifling through an NPC's personal belongings) that, because of the modern and realistic setting, just feel more wrong to do from a narrative standpoint. BUT, because of the time rewind mechanic, you can enjoy being gamey and amoral and still maintain your personal integrity from a narrative standpoint. That's, I think, kind of the hidden boon of the time travel mechanic: because at any point you can choose to make the experience more like a movie or a game or both, you can kind of have your cake and eat it too. Also, all of the conflict in this game seems to be mostly crouched firmly in after-school special territory, for what that's worth.
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Feb 1, 2015 06:46
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Macaluso posted:Good voice acting too. Chloe is actually voiced by Ashly Burch of HAWP and Tiny Tina fame. If you're familiar with Tiny Tina, you'll understand what a great job Ashly Burch actually did at sounding nothing like Ashly Burch.
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Feb 1, 2015 06:48
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precision posted:The game has at least five minority characters off the top of my head and none feel like tokenism so I dunno what yer on about mate. Wait what -The principal -The teacher lady literally everyone else is white, unless I'm missing something The fat kid who sketches Max? Is he some kind of eastern european or something?
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Feb 4, 2015 17:36
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I'm not saying a game needs to meet some sort of POC quota or something, but this game is emphatically about upper-middle-class white children, whatever you want to read from that is your own prerogative I spose
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Feb 4, 2015 17:40
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I've said it before: Chloe and the jock chilling under the tree are the only tolerable personalities I've met in this game so far Funny, I really do like this game a lot, despite the fact that most of these characters are insufferable. I don't think I'm the only one with this opinion
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Feb 4, 2015 18:56
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InequalityGodzilla posted:Do you mind if I ask how old you are? I'm only about 5 years removed from most of the characters and I found most of them to be fairly realistic. Teenagers are generally kind of self-obsessed knowitalls, that's just how they are. the only ones I found insufferable were Nathan (incredibly spoiled nutjob), Victoria (pretty much clipped straight out of Mean Girls) and the kid who quizzed you before he'd let you see his portfolio (just generally kind of stuck up). Everyone else was a bit annoying yeah but that's just how teens are. I'm 28, and I grew up in kind of a hick town. Most of the people I went to high school with were sorta dumb, and we had a lot of the standard Breakfast Club-type cliques, but not a ton of hipsters or twees or artsy folks or whatever
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Feb 5, 2015 04:40
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They're all gonna be lesbians efb
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Feb 5, 2015 18:43
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160mb update on Steam right now. I'm not terribly familiar with how episodic games work on Steam, I was thinking it would just be a separate executable.
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Mar 11, 2015 16:25
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Welp. I just crashed the game because I alt-tabbed because I wanted to look up Bible verses. This game.
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Mar 24, 2015 18:20
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I really want to see how this game plays out if Kate dies. That seems like a bigger sort of decision than these kinds of games usually deal in. e: oh jesus. bold is not spoiler. quadrophrenic fucked around with this message at 18:53 on Mar 24, 2015 |
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Mar 24, 2015 18:44
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Max posted:As much as I hate wild, speculative guessing in mysteries like this, Man gently caress that guy Just gently caress that guy Never before has just looking at a fictional character made me so physically repulsed
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Mar 28, 2015 16:35
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max slash chloe otp
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Mar 29, 2015 05:00
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Changed my mind, game sucks
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Mar 30, 2015 16:28
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Who the hell is Lisa?
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May 19, 2015 16:43
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Paul Zuvella posted:I will say again, maybe something will actually happen this episode. btw, ha
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May 19, 2015 16:44
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oh god LISA IS THE PLANT 
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May 19, 2015 16:48
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 THIS loving GAME
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Jul 28, 2015 19:52
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ThisIsACoolGuy posted:Also I keep reading this thread title as Life is Kek If I could change the title of this thread I would change it to Life Is Strange: These whales are like beached angels Every other line in this game would make a great thread title
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Jul 29, 2015 07:55
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I saved Chloe and I don't even feel bad about it. The only reason we think the tornado was cause by time travel is because of warren, and I'm not gonna trust some basic beta-rear end little boy with my hard scientific facts. It was La Nina or something, I didn't cause any loving storm. Time travel gives me nosebleeds and I've spent the past 5 days trying to save this chick so I'm not about to throw all that effort away for nothing, dammit Although I then went and watched the other ending on Youtube and regretted my choice instantly
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Oct 21, 2015 07:22
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