your local analyst

For the intents and purposes of this essay, I will only be considering the DontNod games canon, as this plays into my conclusions.

This essay will contain spoilers for both Life is Strange and Twin Peaks.

Ever since I first came across the game Life is Strange (the original, commonly known as LiS1), I have found myself questioning why the game enraptures me so much. Ostensibly, it is a glitchy millenial Twin Peaks ripoff characterised dialogue that was very obviouslt written by the French adult male interpretation of what American teenage girls sound like, alongside a nonsensical and contradictory time travel mechanic; however, in spite of its numerous flaws, Life is Strange is a game which I, and many others, keep returning to. 

What could it be about this 2013 time capsule that could keep an audience so intruiged? 

For all its interesting combinations of choices throughout the game which do in some way influence the narrative or gameplay (namely decisions made up to and including the scene with Kate on the roof), the choices in the game don’t impact the outcome of the narrative to such an extent that players worldwide would be desperate to replay over and over and over again. Therefore, this game must possess some quality which allows for the game to remain in the back of the players minds, even over a decade after release. 

Many have speculated over the years about what content was cut from the game, as SquareEnix forced DontNod to abridge the story, cutting it from around 8 to into just 5 episodes. Whilst this may not seem like too drastic of a change if this had been done earlier in production, DontNod had already set up many clues to the cut content and potential original storyline and endings in the final edits. In fact, we see these clues, which become more and more blatant (with thorough gameplay), even up to episode 4, which makes the shift to the abrupt, makeshift ending all the more confusing. Most people can agree on a couple of main aspects to the story that were never explored: the influence of nature and the native American influences, and the Prescotts involvement in the storm. Although a slew of evidence exists from episode 4 to back up these theories, that is a subject for another day; the imporant detail here is that we have these clues in the game but they were never actualised into the main story, so they remain as fragments of the story that could have been told. For all intents and purposes, the ending which exists could and should be perceived as the ‘real’ ending. After all, the alternative exists only in the heads of the original developers and in our imaginations; and beyond that, the game can be enjoyed in its entirety almost completely without encountering information prevalent to the omens and Prescott family.

I can speak from personal experience that in my first playthrough, other than the tidbit about Nathan trying to steal the Tobanga, I did not come across anything to do with that side of the story, and I still loved the game as it is. However, the couple of scraps of information (such as the information that David is working for the Prescotts and Kate’s remarks about the Prescotts being  associated with death) slipped through the cracks, which is what kept my head so deeply engrossed in this game, even after having completed it. After the final scene (which in my case was Chloe’s funeral), I still felt that the game had questions to answer, mysteries to resolve, even before I played through more thoroughly and discovered an onslaught of clues which only amplified this.

 Of course many will attribute this feeling of incompletion to the atmosphere and case of characters populating Arcadia Bay, labelling it as a desperation not to part with a beloved story. This could be true to an extent, but there are uncountable numbers of fictional universes from movies, books, video games, etc. which also instigate this feeling initally; however, few dominate my mind as strongly as the world of Life is Strange and the town of Arcadia Bay.

Here, is where Twin Peaks, one of the biggest inspirations for this game (and many others) comes in. For context, David Lynch, the co-creator of the show, never intended to reveal the killer of Laura Palmer, as he believed that solving the mystery would allow people a sense of closure, after which they would forget all about Laura Palmer and what she represented (again, a subject for another time). However, the studio he was working for forced him to reveal Laura Palmer’s killer, after which he left the show and the ratings temporarily plummeted. David Lynch returned only for the finale, where created a powerful finale, leaving the second season on an ambiguous note where his evil doppelganger from the Black Lodge (just watch the show) escapes instead of him, interpreted by many as a symbol for the show becoming its creator’s biggest fear. This creates a meta narrative within the story, where real events influence the events within the story (like when a character is killed off in a soap opera because the actor wants to leave). Thankfully, David Lynch got the last laugh with his epic third season, taking place 25 years after the second season concludes), containing what is considered by many to be his magnum opus (3x08). The season ends with what feels like 2 finale episodes. The penultimate episode features a sequence where almost all of the mysteries of the season intertwine in a satifying way and there is something akin to a happy ending, but the closure exhbited by this scene is undercut by the unsettling overlayed face of Kyle Maclaughlan (playing Dale Cooper) slowly fading in over the scene, as it becomes clear that something is terribly amiss. The true finale is far more unsatisfying, instead undoing the closure given by its predecessor. 

Here, the story of David Lynch’s clash with the studio and subsequent corrections reveals the link between closure and the audience’s forgetfulness through the meta narrative created. 

‘This applies to Life is Strange, how?’ - You, probably.

Life is Strange, due to SquareEnix forcing DontNod to shorten the story and rush the release of ‘Polarised’, seems to waste the foundations for a huge reveal and epic finale. However, unlike in Twin Peaks’ case, I believe, in some twisted way, that this actually works in the game’s favor.

In the case of Twin Peaks, the studio were pushing to kill the mystery, to give the audience their tidy conclusions and pacifiers and leave them feeling closure; but here, SquareEnix inadvertently prevented DontNod from tying up all loose ends. This leaves a few rogue threads sprinkled throughout the game, mostly optional easter eggs as what could have been. Whilst I would desperately love to know the original plans and story in order to see how the jigsaw should have fallen into place, I know for a fact that learning this information would significantly diminish my brainpower allocated to contemplating these clues. 

Ultimately, this allows us to ponder what could have been whilst spending more time thinking about the game’s themes and message, which would not be the case if we had access to the intended conclusion.