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Life is Something
7 years ago
Hi,
So once again I want to review a property a few years after it was relevant. Except this one is only slightly irrelevant as it has a sequel coming out soon. This is about the game Life is Strange. Spoilers ahead, obviously.
Now I did not play this game, I only watched my roommate play some chunks. I came into the living room after work shortly after he'd started it. His partner, my other roommate, was also watching. I knew nothing of the game at that point. I watched the start of the game, I watched a fair bit of the rest of his play through, and he filled me in on the bits I missed. I watched the end as well. My final thoughts on the game were that I really didn't like it.
So the game follows Maxine who is a prodigy photography student. She has just moved back to town after being accepted into a high-to-do art boarding school full of complete assholes. She watches her childhood best friend get gunned down in the school bathroom, (though she doesn't know its her at the time), and then a magic butterfly lands next to her and gives her the power to rewind time. Butterfly because 'butterfly effect' of course, which we'll get back to.
So that's the game. She has the power to rewind time, and later also to go back in time through photographs and alter stuff. So she does this to save her best friend's life (repeatedly, as she keeps getting herself killed throughout the game) and also expose the town serial killer slash rapist. No matter what path she takes though, whenever things start going well the town gets hit with a freak massive storm (because butterfly effect). In the end she and her friend decide said friend was suppose to die, as is why she keeps dying in so many paths. In order to avoid the storm destroying the city, she has to go back to the beginning and let the friend get shot to death in the bathroom.
So the player then has the choice. Go back and watch her friend die, and everyone else lives happily ever after or keep the friend alive and let the storm ravage the town (and presumably kill everyone else in it).
Ultimately this is the thing I hate most about this game. The moral feels like, 'Trying to improve things is futile, because physics, I guess.'
The butterfly effect is a metaphor slash thought experiment to demonstrate the absurdity of certain physical systems. Edward Lorenz came up with it, the idea that a butterfly beating its wings in one place could cause a tornado somewhere else. It's similar to Schrodinger's cat in that its trying to put strange scientific ideas in terms our minds understand. It's a bit easier to grasp, at least. Let's start with it isn't primarily about an actual butterfly or storm.
It's about chaos theory. And chaos theory is the study of chaotic systems. A chaotic system, in science and math, is a system which has wildly different outcomes for small, even infinitesimal changes in input. Take as an example, an archer shooting at a target. They aim directly at the bulls eye, the arrow hits the bulls eye. This is a non-chaotic system as if their aim waivers slightly off from perfect, their arrow will land on the target slightly off from the bulls eye. A chaotic version would be an archer in a story attempting to show their comically bad aim or bad luck. Their aim waivers off dead center and somehow shatters the vase on the shelf behind them, or goes through the window and there is a cat scream, or skewers an apple a kid was balancing on his head down the road.
The events depicted in Life is Strange are almost ludicrously actually not chaotic. After all, for wildly different inputs they all give the same output: storm. Only one course of action avoids the storm. For all of the Simpson's references they put in (I do applaud the Inanimate Carbon Rod cameo), they should have paid more attention to Homer and his time traveling toaster. That is probably one of the best fictional demonstrations of the butterfly effect.
In fairness, it is the curse of the medium. Video games like this want to explore the interactive aspect of the medium to give the player more choice in how the story progresses. But the more choice one gives, the more outcomes one has to program. They grow exponentially. So you have to make those choices be either purely cosmetic, or funnel around to the same outcome which has the inevitable feel of 'choices don't matter.' You can have a handful of possible endings, but if nothing else that makes having a direct sequel difficult or impossible.
So that's that. I have yet to decide whether I'm burned enough to avoid the sequel, or to seek out a let's play because, as the great philosopher Terry Pratchett noted, hate is an attractive force.
Now I did not play this game, I only watched my roommate play some chunks. I came into the living room after work shortly after he'd started it. His partner, my other roommate, was also watching. I knew nothing of the game at that point. I watched the start of the game, I watched a fair bit of the rest of his play through, and he filled me in on the bits I missed. I watched the end as well. My final thoughts on the game were that I really didn't like it.
So the game follows Maxine who is a prodigy photography student. She has just moved back to town after being accepted into a high-to-do art boarding school full of complete assholes. She watches her childhood best friend get gunned down in the school bathroom, (though she doesn't know its her at the time), and then a magic butterfly lands next to her and gives her the power to rewind time. Butterfly because 'butterfly effect' of course, which we'll get back to.
So that's the game. She has the power to rewind time, and later also to go back in time through photographs and alter stuff. So she does this to save her best friend's life (repeatedly, as she keeps getting herself killed throughout the game) and also expose the town serial killer slash rapist. No matter what path she takes though, whenever things start going well the town gets hit with a freak massive storm (because butterfly effect). In the end she and her friend decide said friend was suppose to die, as is why she keeps dying in so many paths. In order to avoid the storm destroying the city, she has to go back to the beginning and let the friend get shot to death in the bathroom.
So the player then has the choice. Go back and watch her friend die, and everyone else lives happily ever after or keep the friend alive and let the storm ravage the town (and presumably kill everyone else in it).
Ultimately this is the thing I hate most about this game. The moral feels like, 'Trying to improve things is futile, because physics, I guess.'
The butterfly effect is a metaphor slash thought experiment to demonstrate the absurdity of certain physical systems. Edward Lorenz came up with it, the idea that a butterfly beating its wings in one place could cause a tornado somewhere else. It's similar to Schrodinger's cat in that its trying to put strange scientific ideas in terms our minds understand. It's a bit easier to grasp, at least. Let's start with it isn't primarily about an actual butterfly or storm.
It's about chaos theory. And chaos theory is the study of chaotic systems. A chaotic system, in science and math, is a system which has wildly different outcomes for small, even infinitesimal changes in input. Take as an example, an archer shooting at a target. They aim directly at the bulls eye, the arrow hits the bulls eye. This is a non-chaotic system as if their aim waivers slightly off from perfect, their arrow will land on the target slightly off from the bulls eye. A chaotic version would be an archer in a story attempting to show their comically bad aim or bad luck. Their aim waivers off dead center and somehow shatters the vase on the shelf behind them, or goes through the window and there is a cat scream, or skewers an apple a kid was balancing on his head down the road.
The events depicted in Life is Strange are almost ludicrously actually not chaotic. After all, for wildly different inputs they all give the same output: storm. Only one course of action avoids the storm. For all of the Simpson's references they put in (I do applaud the Inanimate Carbon Rod cameo), they should have paid more attention to Homer and his time traveling toaster. That is probably one of the best fictional demonstrations of the butterfly effect.
In fairness, it is the curse of the medium. Video games like this want to explore the interactive aspect of the medium to give the player more choice in how the story progresses. But the more choice one gives, the more outcomes one has to program. They grow exponentially. So you have to make those choices be either purely cosmetic, or funnel around to the same outcome which has the inevitable feel of 'choices don't matter.' You can have a handful of possible endings, but if nothing else that makes having a direct sequel difficult or impossible.
So that's that. I have yet to decide whether I'm burned enough to avoid the sequel, or to seek out a let's play because, as the great philosopher Terry Pratchett noted, hate is an attractive force.
