We will never get a game quite like 2015’s Life is Strange ever again. Ready for the mosh pit, shaka brah? Go fuck yourselfie? I was eating those beans, are you fucking insane? I was eating… those BEANS!? Iconic. Equally as cringe a decade ago as they are now, but it just worked. A small, relatively unknown French studio doing its best to hella capture the essence of American high school life.At the core of it all was the game’s two main characters: Max Caulfield and Chloe Price. Specifically, their relationship (as sapphic or platonic as you well wish) and the ravelling and unravelling of a single week together as Max’s newly-unlocked rewind power danced along the timeline of their lives. All of this culminates in the choice for Max to either save their hometown at the expense of Chloe’s life, or defy fate forever and see Arcadia Bay destroyed.(Image credit: Square Enix)Life is Strange is a game that, despite its shortcomings, was an incredibly earnest and heartwrenching tale of teenagehood, tragedy, and consequence. A perfect storm.One which Deck Nine—who has developed all but one Life is Strange game since Don’t Nod’s initial debut—has spent the last two years trying to recreate. First with Double Exposure, which brought Max back with new friends, romance options, and time-adjacent powers to explore. We will never get a game quite like 2015’s Life is Strange ever again.It was a tough job narratively, one I personally found serviceable enough as a staunch Bay over…
