LIFE IS STRANGE, and the case for resurrecting Chloe Price

The following contains spoilers for every Life is Strange game to date.

The original Life is Strange was released episodically ten years ago, concluding with its fifth chapter on October 20, 2015. It is one of my all-time favorite video games: a poignant, nostalgic, and heartrending supernatural adventure. It tells the story of Max Caulfield, voiced by Hannah Telle, an 18-year-old photography student who discovers she can reverse time, after witnessing (and preventing) the murder of her childhood friend (and potential love interest), Chloe Price, voiced by Ashly Burch. After Max reconnects with her, the pair set about investigating the disappearance of Chloe’s close friend Rachel Amber.

Max and Chloe in the remaster of the original Life is Strange game

By the end of the game, Max’s interference has generated a temporal storm that threatens to sweep the town of Arcadia Bay. Players are given a terrible choice: allow Chloe’s murder to transpire, and prevent the storm from existing, or let her continue to escape death, at the cost of many other characters’ lives. I picked the former, many picked the latter, but either way, it meant bringing back Max in a future installment would always be in doubt, as accounting for Chloe’s absence in half of people’s playthroughs may’ve been deemed too expensive by publisher Square Enix.

After starring in the Titan Comics series, Max returned to the games in last year’s Life is Strange: Double Exposure, which picked up ten years later, with her now working as a college lecturer. It was an enjoyable entry that brought closure to the loneliness Max had to live with after the terrible events she needed to keep a secret after the first game, but of course, I felt that way: as far as I was concerned, Chloe had been dead and buried for a decade. Fans who saved Chloe were livid at developer Deck Nine‘s decision to have them break up in the intervening years, believing it rendered their choice completely invalid, or worse, that it was queerphobic, or motivated by animosity towards them and Chloe.

A comparison of the photos of Chloe you see in Double Exposure, based on whether she’s alive or not

I’m not going to argue they’re wrong, though being a former Wikipedian, I always advise assuming good faith: instead, what I’m going to suggest is how to remove what’s probably holding Chloe coming back the most, allowing her to join the game Deck Nine clearly wants to make, that’ll feature Max and other Life is Strange protagonists, in a natural way for the supernatural series — namely, having her literally come back from the dead. In a franchise featuring time travel, telepathy and telekinesis, shapeshifting, alternate realities, and other weird, unexplained phenomena, would it really be such a stretch?

I’d joke that it’d only be fair if the decision I made was rendered moot, since those who chose Chloe over Arcadia Bay had their outcome shot in the foot, but there’s a lot of dramatic potential here, so much so that it could incentivize the other players to start afresh with the setting where she died. A huge part of Chloe’s character has always been her survivor’s guilt, which turns her grief for those like her late father (Joe Ochman), Rachel Amber, and potentially her mother (Cissy Jones), into fuel for anger and resentment at others (even Max) — how might that manifest if her rest is disturbed?

It’d also be appropriate, given that Chloe’s spirit is symbolically represented by a blue butterfly, which appears during Max’s fateful reunion with her and at Chloe’s funeral if she’s killed off. Butterflies have historically been a metaphor for life, death, and rebirth, so it could similarly turn out that death was simply a metamorphosis for Chloe (though resurrection would not necessarily be a power she discovers as a result, but I digress).

Chloe’s butterfly motif, as featured on the slipcase for the collected Life is Strange comics

Life is Strange is also an indie film-inspired take on the superhero genre. Double Exposure and 2018’s Life is Strange 2 both brought the idea of a supervillain into play, with Max’s new best friend Safiya Llewellyn-Fayyad (Olivia AbiAssi) losing any compulsions about her shapeshifting abilities in the former, and (depending on how you play it) the latter letting protagonist Sean Diaz (Gonzalo Martin)’s brother Daniel (Roman Dean George) be corrupted by his telekinetic powers. Resurrection is often only a matter of time in superhero stories, and it’d be another classic trope the series could provide a unique spin on.

Lastly, what is the original Life is Strange about thematically? Since Chloe ultimately dies in my playthroughs, it makes it for me a story about getting to have closure with someone who died before you got to speak with them. Over the years, I’ve lost several important family members, whom I never got to have that fabled final bedside conversation with, and frequently experienced bewilderment over the deaths of famous people I didn’t know and never had the chance to meet.

But as the years pass on, and their lives recede into memory, the desire to see any of them return from the dead turns to unease, as it wouldn’t be fair on any of them, in much the same way it was unfair for Captain America to miss so many decades while frozen in the Arctic. I didn’t plan to bring up another precedent set by a superhero story, but there we go: it’s a deeply dramatic theme that’d be perfect for the similarly shocking world of Life is Strange to provide a characteristically relatable and anxiety-inducing version of.

Max, Chloe, and Life is Strange: True Colors protagonist Alex Chen (center) in the trailer for the Nintendo Switch release of their games in 2022

Whatever happens next, I’ll always be invested in what transpires for Max and Chloe, as well as anyone else in Life is Strange‘s magical yet realistic world. There’s something really endearing about the series, with its superpowered stories that unfold in a universe nearly identical to ours, where the ongoing geopolitical concerns aren’t the Blip or Superman, and its heroes are living among us, dealing with the same everyday bullshit we do. Hopefully, one day, we’ll get a greater insight into what Chloe might be doing right now, the way we got to catch up with Max last year – Max would probably be grateful for the opportunity, too.

This article is dedicated to the streamers and Life is Strange fans Dani (CacophonyandDiscord) and Mira (Mirafalls), whose kind words helped immeasurably during some tough times earlier this year, and also because I promised Mira I would complete this draft. If you like it, thank her! If not, then please argue with me instead.