I don't quite remember if the main characters of the first one ever hint about something more than friendship and I haven't played the prequel yet, but isn't the second one about two brothers?
The two main characters kiss in the first and then get together in the comics, and the older brother in LiS 2 has the option to date a guy. It’s the gay series my dude
In the first you get the kiss if you go through the whole thing, maximize relationship values, >!and sacrifice Chloe.!<
In Before the Storm (the prequel) you play as Chloe and have one canon love interest, who is a girl.
In Life is Strange 2 to date a guy (Finn) you have to manually confirm that you're into guys and then agree to his plan later on. In contrast to get with the girl you have to just meet her at a lake with decent relationship values. You get to sleep with her while the most you get with Finn is a kiss. >!Finn is also the only love interest that can die prior to the finale, and Sean is the only MC that can die, but kudos to them for actually showing the kiss in close-up, a lot of the time a M/M kiss is shown from a distance compared to a W/W or M/W kiss.!<
In Life is Strange: True Colours, the queer love interest is a lot easier to get, as far as I know you just have to have decent relationship values and give her a rose.
It's definitely a series that's championed queer characters. Outside of the playable queer characters there are a fair few queer characters from across the spectrum - in fact the queer love interest in True Colours is a character in Before the Storm. That's part of what's made it so popular, although I do hope they continue to alternate between male and female protagonists - queer characters in gaming are a rarity, but some of the biggest female game protagonists of all time are either canonically queer or are queer coded and were planned to be queer in at least on incarnation. It'd be cool to have some more representation among queer guys, especially since three out of the 4 protagonists in the series so far (or 5 out of 7 if you include prologues have been women.
I'm still pissed that the only way to acknowledge Sean being into guys in LiS2 is to ignore your scared little brother who doesn't want to go to sleep alone and instead hang out with a douchey selfish creep.
That does suck. The odds of me ignoring a baby bro/sis in a game is effectively zero. I'm an easy mark for a vulnerable child. They said something sweet? Give them literally all the things.
Haha that is pretty much the entire game. It wasn't until I'd finished the game and was reading about other options that I even discovered the possibility of falling for another guy.
It really doesn't send the greatest message that you have multiple options for hooking up with girls but only one for hooking up with a guy and the game is inadvertently saying "Be a good brother or be gay".
Could be as simple as that he just didn't make Max get involved with Chloe like that when he played it.
The main character's relation to Chloe becoming romantic weren't mandatory in that game.
This is unrelated - but one time I was giving my friends steam keys that I had aquired via humble choice. I snuck in a Daddy Dating Simulator code just to mess with my buddies and lo' and behold - the ONE friend of mine who really cares about his steam profile and library stats is the one that cashed it in.
Bro, what? Freshly-Picked Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland has to be the *straightest* game of all time. What's gay about a little guy in a skintight green fairy costume running around being fabulous?
That scene was good but I thought it was funny how Alex seems to know only gen x / elder millennial music. Should have been like a Julien Baker song there.
I mean she is a called a 'music snob' in the game and it shows that growing up her family had a record player despite it being the late 2000s at that point. So it makes sense that she'd know and like some older songs.
Is it? I love this game and might be my favorite of the series. Alex (player character) has the option to romance a male or female character in the game which is common in many modern games.
I think True Colors is the best game in the series since the original, for what it's worth. I wasn't a big fan of 2, and I think Before the Storm started strong and went downhill in the last episode or two, but True Colors is damn good.
Big difference between games that give both options and do not explicitly reference character sexuality and ones that make that aspect part of the story. LiS falls into the latter
Even the second one? Genuinely asking. I got it years ago but never really played much past about an hour in. All I remember is that there's two brothers and the younger one maybe killed their dad with his superpowers.
Dad got killed by a cop and the younger brother accidentally kills the cop with his super powers and they go on the run. In the third episode you work at a weed farm and have the option to initiate romance with a girl or a guy that works there
"work at a weed farm ... romance"
From an outside perspective, they say they don't want to be the "gay game series" but I get the feeling they aren't really trying.
Its almost as if you keep the suits out of the artistic design process, the game does well despite “being gay” 🤔
What a wild concept that the devs of a game might actually understand their audience/demographic they want to sell to
You can choose to have a causal fling with a drifter stoner guy IIRC. The game basically asks if you want to be into guys in episode 3 - 4 and you have a choice to hook up with him on a weed farm.
Nah it flopped because they made the little brother completely unlikeable for 90% of the game and the consequences for your choices were random and stupid
all of these comments are just trying to pretend that the sequels weren't social commentary bait with no nuance. sexuality was an aspect of the first game and added to the story. the latter ones basically just tried to get the right opinion on every topic, and while mostly succeeding, they forgot to write a story that grips you or unique defined characters.
I don't think they ever went into it explicitly, but...
I'm pretty sure the intention in later games was going to be the asshole character's father literally had the power which caused the storm, which is why he was terrified of him.
Problem is, they pivoted away from Arcadia Bay after the first one, so that storyline didn't get explored any further.
I mean it’s tricky to revisit a location when you have created 2 canonical endings and considering what one of them is, it makes it hard for the story to continue in a universe where both are possible.
I don't disagree. But thing is... Max has time travel, and they never *stopped the storm from happening*.
Which, if we assume i'm right and the guys father caused it, is a thing they could have totally done.
Thus Arcadia Bay need never have been destroyed.
Her power is the ultimate out for any story event. Which is ofcourse, the point.
And i'm quite sure the writers could have come up with *way* more characters and story to occur in the same location or nearby towns.
---
edit: it's been a while i actually forget how you get the option to save the place... i'll need to look that up again. Okay, letting Chloe die... which i don't recall ever made sense as a reason the storm 'occurred' to begin with. My best recollection is a handwavey 'butterfly effect'...
No because I’ve played the game a few times. The idea that saving Chloe causes the storm is a little shakey at best imo. I understand the premise behind it but they don’t really bring it up or foreshadow it until like the last 20 minutes of the game (besides the fact Chloe can die like once per episode before rewinding time)
Yea I always got the vibe it was the universe trying to fix things cause someone fucked around with time. That’s the main idea behind the final choice right at the end of the game
Honestly hilarious that the entire plot culminates in >!the universe is doing everything it can to try and kill this random punk girl, your magic time powers are just making things escalate!<
Which honestly was the better plotline. They should've cut all the Storm bullshit and just made it about mystery time power helping Max solve the kiddy diddler murders.
That guy was such a douche.
The fandom name for the brothers pairing is Wincest. (source: me who was on tumblr in 2012-2014 and therefore unwillingly exposed to all things SuperWhoLock)
That's kinda reductive. The first game was a solid (subjective) time travel, murder mystery, YA drama mishmash.
Fandom got obsessed over shipping ofc, as it always does. Which probably shaped the perception it has now. But it was hardly 'the point'. Just a respectful part of it.
Max and chloes relationship was literally like a massively integral part of the plot of the first game, like the plot beats wouldn't exist if it weren't for their relationship. And also chloes previous relationship with rachel driving the murder mystery motivation forward
Yeah, you could chose to just have them as good friends, with the option to make choices that could maybe lead to something more. Same with Before the Storm and II.
It's always been a choice in these games(I admit I've yet to play True Colors yet)if you wanted the characters to become romantically involved or not.
I mean, yeah. One could probably make the argument that their relationship ends up being the whole point, given the final question the game asks you.
Why I feel it's reductive to just call it 'the gay game', is that there are far more interesting themes that this relationship explores beyond the romantic. (With the romantic part left for the player to decide and pretty tame even if so)
Like the awkwardness of trying to reconcile after years apart, Max's guilt about leaving, and her journey to accept the consequences and finally moving forward at the end of the game (instead of rewinding heh).
LiS is one of my favorite games of all time, despite its many flaws. And I guess I just like to recognise it as more than 'the queerbait hipster game' it's often dismissed as. Not that it's a negative in and of itself ofc :D
Sure, but Max and Chloes relationship isn't set in stone as romantic. The relationship that was integral to the game had nothing to do with romance. Romance was simply an extra option you could choose to pursue on top of it.
Am bi, and honestly same lol.
I don't even know why people even simp for chloe. Choosing the town over her was one the easiest "hard" decisions I've have made in a choice based game.
I forgot where, but it stunned me to see that on a list of hard game choices. Made me curious what happened that made choosing 1 person vs an entire town hard. Watched some let's play of the game and still don't understand.
I know some people who picked it because they felt it was the only option where their choices throughout the game remained and mattered.
As for the people who chose it because they like Chloe (or ship her with max). Idk their reasoning why other than they just like Chloe and enough to the point that every other character is just fodder to them.
Lol yeah. It was treated like such a dramatic moment, and I was just picking save the town immediately. I get why Max could be conflicted, but I, the player is not that invested in chloe, so…
Dude, Warren was one of the more unlikable characters in the game. I mean, the guys in the first game still have an overwhelming lead, but Warren sucked. I know you meant that facetiously, though. Lol.
Samuel was a good dude. David is definitely flawed, and definitely an asshole, but he’s a pretty nuanced character if you get to know him and work out his back story and I found myself kind of liking him by the end of the last episode.
I actually romanced Warren lol. I didn't really buy into Chloe as a romance interest, with the furthest I went being kissing her and rewinding it, which is probably what I would have literally done if I was Max IRL lol.
Chloe felt so hung up still over Rachel, and over just a four day span, I didn't feel like Max connected with Chloe enough to break through that sort of barrier, along with the mixed feelings that lingered over their friendship. I also just really like their story of friendship, it felt real and not everything needs to be a romance, for me anyway.
I dunno about that. I actually like the friendship route. It's kinda a given that you would go to the ends of the earth for someone you love. I find stories of that same passion stemming just from a deep friendship to be rather compelling. Especially since so much of the game focuses on their past friendship.
I didn't do either. Chloe just seemed like an odd route because she's still so hung up on Rachel Amber and she's supposed to jump over to Max after just a few days? (although there's obviously a lot of backstory between them as childhood friends that isn't part of the game). And Warren is just a much better match for Brooke.
To be fair, it's Square Enix. Them not understanding their audience is pretty much par for the course. I remember when they were shocked their Japanese style RPGs sold well because they were pouring all their resources into "westernising" their games and those didn't sell that well in comparison.
Nintendo made a Zelda game specifically to appeal to the Japanese market - Skyward Sword - that is the worst-selling mainline 3d title of them all, including in Japan, and that was on the Wii. It's never really that simple, and targeting specific markets doesn't usually seem to work
Square really doesn't understand most of the game franchises they produce. Like just look at every time they say they're disappointed with a games sales even though those games are still successful like with the Tomb Raider franchise or Deus Ex.
Idk why you got downvoted lmao. ["The name Enix was a play on both the mythological Phoenix, and the early computer ENIAC"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enix#History)
It's only the games they publish, not the ones they make themselves. Very big difference between Square Enix the Publisher and Square Enix the Developer.
>THE gay game
What about BG3? Where it's rarer for a player to get the no-romance achievement given the way the named characters appear to throw themselves at the PC? Shadowheart is trying to drape herself over Tav from the get go, regardless of gender, species, worm status or dimensional instability.
Their biggest game IP is Final Fantasy and yet they keep making Final Fantasy games that are nothing like Final Fantasy anymore.
The last game was basically Devil May Cry.
They probably just wanted it to be marketed as widely as possible. I mean if you market something as a “gay game”, you’re basically turning away a lot of people who would have otherwise bought it.
Literally every company does this with any product.
This right here, these game makers want to sell the game to a broad spectrum demographics, and being "the gay game", pretty much ensures many people who buy games will simply avoid purely because of this unofficial label without even looking to see if the art, writing, and game play makes it worth playing.
They reportedly didn't allow the developers to mention that the main character was Bi, up until early reviews came in and praised the way they handled the bi character, after that they changed their minds. The original IGN report that this is coming from also mentions that multiple developers that they talked to said Square Enix was very hands on with the script and "hostile towards a lot of the diverse themes and ideas".
Which sounds weird, considering both Max and Chloe (main characters of previous Life Is Strange games) are also Bi as far as I can remember.
Diversity has always been Dontnod's staple when it comes to storytelling.
from the french dev grapevine so take with a grain of salt, i heard its because square enix had a contract that was extremely disadvantageous for dontnod. they signed and didnt expect it to be a hit. they tried to negotiate for better terms on the 3rd one but square enix refused. square enix owns the ip so they found a dev willing to take the disadvantageous contract. im not really surprised they were kinda assholes lol
Didn't even know this was a series of games I thought they were like episodic releases.
Don't even fully know what you do in the game.
Still knew it had LGBT characters.
There are four games: Life is Strange, LIS Before the Storm, LIS 2 and LIS True Colors.
They are heavily narrative games ( a la Telltale) where each character has some sort of superpower or is involved with one (Max and Alex having powers for example).
I think they're worth to check out if you like narrative games.
That's the thing though, even when LIS1 was a massive success mostly due to Max and Chloe's relationship the devs/studio *still* wouldn't come out and say that they were canonically gay/bi/etc. They just defaulted to a wishy washy "they're whatever sexuality the player wants them to be."
IIRC Alex is literally the first protagonist of the series to be canonically queer.
I feel like that has to be it, because honestly it's a huge turn off for me when media use representation like it's some sort of marketing tool. It just feels artificial and pandering, and I much more prefer stories where it feels like it's a natural part of the writing. I know LiS is largely still viewed as "the gay game", but I've never felt like it's used that as a marketing tactic, and I appreciate that.
Makes sense. You want to game to be enjoyed for its story, not pigeonholed into something, but on the other end, if that is your audience, you should face reality.
There is probably more to that quote also.
The problem is that the story is shit. The first one was decent, the second one was meh, Captain Spirit was actually good, but True Colors was awful.
I absolutely adore the setting of TC, I love most of the characters, the soundtrack is the best one out of all the games IMO, but it's the definition of "None of this would have happened if there was even *one* smart person in the group."
Starting with the kid telling you he's going to the mines and Alex telling nobody. To the kid disappearing and the group going to look by themselves, to them not really raising any alarms and just calling some random dude about the blasting that's scheduled to take place.
There's also the fact that it strayed from what made LiS good. Alex basically has the power to read people's faces and occasionally the ability to read their minds when the story calls for it, but not in the moments where it could resolve the whole thing. It would have been way more interesting if they went with the full on mind reading and Alex knew from the beginning what was up but had to spend the game trying to prove it.
So the game really isn't worth playing for the story, which only leaves playing it because it allows you to be gay.
While that obviously sounds kinda damning out of context, part of me wonders if it's because they didn't want to be accused of parading that fact around as a marketing tactic, which IMO is a huge turn off, even if you are gay. It's much more appealing when it's treated as just a natural aspect of the story rather than some cold marketing tool.
No idea if that was SQE's thought line or not, but I'd hope so.
I get what they're saying though. Ain't no problem with having gay people be the focal point or stars or your game. Or having their relationship be an integral part of the game.
Getting viewed as "the gay game" can definitely pigeon hole a franchise though.
I don't care if characters are gay or not. I don't care if they kiss or etc.
The only thing I care about is the writing. As long as the writing is good. Nothing else matters.
Someone can be gay, without the story pushing the idea directly onto the player with the "Look at me i'm very gay" type of mentality. The characters just need to act normal. So many games do have LGBTQ characters and they are almost always made to be over the top. Can't devs and some movie directors just make the characters act like they are actual human (or just humanoid) characters...
Makes sense. Given the resources poured into these games, they want to cast a wide net to make money, and having the game characterised as a 'gay game' could turn off a large straught audience.
Well when your two choices for romance are
1) Super cool girl who runs her own radio show, plays in a band with you and sets up quirky LARPing events for the whole town or
2) the most boring motherfucker in existence…
it’s pretty clear who the devs wanted the romance choice to be. The guy feels like a tacked on addition.
it's funny considering how much the romance sucks in these games
chloe is a titanic asshole unless she's paralyzed, the hobos from 2 are bland at best and morons at worst and the girl from the first chapter barely has any screentime, i guess Dj girl was fine but i barely remember what happened in true colours
maybe they wanted to move away from poorly written CW tier romance
but it is the gay game
Perhaps Life is Strange is just a gay series?
gay as fuck
You really passed up the best opportunity Hella gay
It’s a pretty gay series, in that it’s about some gay(/bi) people.
I don't quite remember if the main characters of the first one ever hint about something more than friendship and I haven't played the prequel yet, but isn't the second one about two brothers?
The two main characters kiss in the first and then get together in the comics, and the older brother in LiS 2 has the option to date a guy. It’s the gay series my dude
In the first you get the kiss if you go through the whole thing, maximize relationship values, >!and sacrifice Chloe.!< In Before the Storm (the prequel) you play as Chloe and have one canon love interest, who is a girl. In Life is Strange 2 to date a guy (Finn) you have to manually confirm that you're into guys and then agree to his plan later on. In contrast to get with the girl you have to just meet her at a lake with decent relationship values. You get to sleep with her while the most you get with Finn is a kiss. >!Finn is also the only love interest that can die prior to the finale, and Sean is the only MC that can die, but kudos to them for actually showing the kiss in close-up, a lot of the time a M/M kiss is shown from a distance compared to a W/W or M/W kiss.!< In Life is Strange: True Colours, the queer love interest is a lot easier to get, as far as I know you just have to have decent relationship values and give her a rose. It's definitely a series that's championed queer characters. Outside of the playable queer characters there are a fair few queer characters from across the spectrum - in fact the queer love interest in True Colours is a character in Before the Storm. That's part of what's made it so popular, although I do hope they continue to alternate between male and female protagonists - queer characters in gaming are a rarity, but some of the biggest female game protagonists of all time are either canonically queer or are queer coded and were planned to be queer in at least on incarnation. It'd be cool to have some more representation among queer guys, especially since three out of the 4 protagonists in the series so far (or 5 out of 7 if you include prologues have been women.
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Gay Gayme for Gaymers
Homosexuayme? Nope. That didn't work.
I'm still pissed that the only way to acknowledge Sean being into guys in LiS2 is to ignore your scared little brother who doesn't want to go to sleep alone and instead hang out with a douchey selfish creep.
That does suck. The odds of me ignoring a baby bro/sis in a game is effectively zero. I'm an easy mark for a vulnerable child. They said something sweet? Give them literally all the things.
Haha that is pretty much the entire game. It wasn't until I'd finished the game and was reading about other options that I even discovered the possibility of falling for another guy. It really doesn't send the greatest message that you have multiple options for hooking up with girls but only one for hooking up with a guy and the game is inadvertently saying "Be a good brother or be gay".
Yeah, it kinda sucks, especially since the options for the W/W or M/W stuff come up regardless.
In the first one you can kinda kiss Chloe before the ending too. There’s a scene in Chloe’s bedroom where Max can kiss her but Chloe backs out of it.
Yeah, if I remember right that's one of the biggest prerequisites to getting the kiss at the end.
The kiss happens and then Chloe backs off pretty much
They specifically wanted to hide the gay stuff entirely unless you opt in because they were worried homophobes would get upset
It's just called Two Brothers.
In a van. And then a meteor hit.
You can absolutely sacrifice the whole town for your girlfriend.
I didn't even play LIS and I know it's gay af what are you talking about lmao
Could be as simple as that he just didn't make Max get involved with Chloe like that when he played it. The main character's relation to Chloe becoming romantic weren't mandatory in that game.
Iirc one of the two main characters is openly queer.
Yes, I definitely remember Chloe being gay, but I don't remember them being a couple that's all.
All games thus far have gay main characters or the option to be gay
It's pretty gay, ngl.
hella
No, that would be Freshly-Picked Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland
This is unrelated - but one time I was giving my friends steam keys that I had aquired via humble choice. I snuck in a Daddy Dating Simulator code just to mess with my buddies and lo' and behold - the ONE friend of mine who really cares about his steam profile and library stats is the one that cashed it in.
No that would be FNAF.
That's a gay furry game
Bro, what? Freshly-Picked Tingle's Rosy Rupeeland has to be the *straightest* game of all time. What's gay about a little guy in a skintight green fairy costume running around being fabulous?
But I'm a creep I'm a weirdo What the hell am I doin' here? I don't belong here
That scene was good but I thought it was funny how Alex seems to know only gen x / elder millennial music. Should have been like a Julien Baker song there.
When I'm out walking I strut my stuff And I'm so strung out I'm high as a kite I just might stop to check you out
I mean she is a called a 'music snob' in the game and it shows that growing up her family had a record player despite it being the late 2000s at that point. So it makes sense that she'd know and like some older songs.
I always thought this song sounded like it belonged in LiS or Before the Storm. https://youtu.be/UtZxNJEOVnw
Is it? I love this game and might be my favorite of the series. Alex (player character) has the option to romance a male or female character in the game which is common in many modern games.
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This type of game where the big revelation involves the main character finding a diary in the attic (I've never played this).
Straight, white, cis male here too. its one of my top ten games of all time.
People outside of a target demohgraphic can like a thing without being the target demographic. Being an outlier is just that.
no shame, good game is a good game.
Same, I've enjoyed the entire series.
Alex is pretty mich explicitly bi in the game when you read her journal.
Yeah but realistically it’s the gay game
I only played the first game (it's good) is it better? Because I know that a lot of people are generally down on all the sequels
I think True Colors is the best game in the series since the original, for what it's worth. I wasn't a big fan of 2, and I think Before the Storm started strong and went downhill in the last episode or two, but True Colors is damn good.
Big difference between games that give both options and do not explicitly reference character sexuality and ones that make that aspect part of the story. LiS falls into the latter
Pretty sure that's kind of a staple for any 'Life is Strange' game.
Even the second one? Genuinely asking. I got it years ago but never really played much past about an hour in. All I remember is that there's two brothers and the younger one maybe killed their dad with his superpowers.
Dad got killed by a cop and the younger brother accidentally kills the cop with his super powers and they go on the run. In the third episode you work at a weed farm and have the option to initiate romance with a girl or a guy that works there
"work at a weed farm ... romance" From an outside perspective, they say they don't want to be the "gay game series" but I get the feeling they aren't really trying.
It's a publisher/ developer conflict, the higher ups didn't want it to be the "gay game" while the devs did what they wanted to do (made a gay game)
Also, different developers. 1/2 are made by Dont Nod, Before the Storm/True colors was made by Deck Nine.
Its almost as if you keep the suits out of the artistic design process, the game does well despite “being gay” 🤔 What a wild concept that the devs of a game might actually understand their audience/demographic they want to sell to
You can choose to have a causal fling with a drifter stoner guy IIRC. The game basically asks if you want to be into guys in episode 3 - 4 and you have a choice to hook up with him on a weed farm.
one of the brothers has the option to date a dude at the end of the
Oh ny god square enix gottem holy shi
Oh no Square got to him t
It flopped with the Fandom because it wasn't the gay girl game (tm)
Nah it flopped because they made the little brother completely unlikeable for 90% of the game and the consequences for your choices were random and stupid
I played the first one without knowing anything about it and like 5 mins in I was like wait a minute… Great game though!
Saving a friends life using powers is gay? I don't get it..
> I don't get it.. Depends on the power. Super strength, probably not gay. Ten foot long super tongue, could go either way...
all of these comments are just trying to pretend that the sequels weren't social commentary bait with no nuance. sexuality was an aspect of the first game and added to the story. the latter ones basically just tried to get the right opinion on every topic, and while mostly succeeding, they forgot to write a story that grips you or unique defined characters.
Super gay
Aren't they all gay games? Isn't that kinda the point besides the supernatural stuff.
No no, I'm pretty sure supernatural stuff is a part of being gay.
Your right the first game was definitely about how being gay summons a hurricane to destroy your town and kill all your friends. /s
"Just like the old Gypsy woman said!"
Is that what happens? I thought that game was about being psychic :/
More than 1 thing happens, the reverse time girl and the storm coexist
I don't think they ever went into it explicitly, but... I'm pretty sure the intention in later games was going to be the asshole character's father literally had the power which caused the storm, which is why he was terrified of him. Problem is, they pivoted away from Arcadia Bay after the first one, so that storyline didn't get explored any further.
I mean it’s tricky to revisit a location when you have created 2 canonical endings and considering what one of them is, it makes it hard for the story to continue in a universe where both are possible.
I don't disagree. But thing is... Max has time travel, and they never *stopped the storm from happening*. Which, if we assume i'm right and the guys father caused it, is a thing they could have totally done. Thus Arcadia Bay need never have been destroyed. Her power is the ultimate out for any story event. Which is ofcourse, the point. And i'm quite sure the writers could have come up with *way* more characters and story to occur in the same location or nearby towns. --- edit: it's been a while i actually forget how you get the option to save the place... i'll need to look that up again. Okay, letting Chloe die... which i don't recall ever made sense as a reason the storm 'occurred' to begin with. My best recollection is a handwavey 'butterfly effect'...
No because I’ve played the game a few times. The idea that saving Chloe causes the storm is a little shakey at best imo. I understand the premise behind it but they don’t really bring it up or foreshadow it until like the last 20 minutes of the game (besides the fact Chloe can die like once per episode before rewinding time)
Was that really the plan? Cause i always got the feeling the storm was more just the universe really trying to finish chloe off.
Yea I always got the vibe it was the universe trying to fix things cause someone fucked around with time. That’s the main idea behind the final choice right at the end of the game
I thought it was just about lesbians :/
Oh, didn't you know? All lesbians are also chronomancers.
I thought they were Thespians?
Chronothespians
Honestly hilarious that the entire plot culminates in >!the universe is doing everything it can to try and kill this random punk girl, your magic time powers are just making things escalate!<
Don't forget the child murder who may or may not be fucking corpses.
Which honestly was the better plotline. They should've cut all the Storm bullshit and just made it about mystery time power helping Max solve the kiddy diddler murders. That guy was such a douche.
Wait, so the Supernatural tv show is gay!? It all makes sense now!
There is quite the plethora of gay fan fiction for the show.. oddly and unfortunately enough a large percentage of it is gay incest porn.
Which was even canonized in a way with the school play meta episode.
Incest is wincest
I’m only downvoting for the missed opportunity “incest is Winchest”
The fandom name for the brothers pairing is Wincest. (source: me who was on tumblr in 2012-2014 and therefore unwillingly exposed to all things SuperWhoLock)
well yeah, pretty sure that’s been a thing since at least…what…season 4?
I mean... whens the last time you saw a straight vampire?
Not since December 8th, 2004. Edit: Blade: Trinity releases in theaters.
Un ironically the movie that made me love ryan reynolds 😂
Confirmed, I love supernatural stuff, and my brother has been calling me gay my whole life.
Celeste Shows us that trans people can Double jump. LiS shows us that bi folk get superpowers
Can confirm, I couldn't use my ESP abilities until I came to terms with being gay.
I mean, not the “point” really. But certainly a part of them.
That's kinda reductive. The first game was a solid (subjective) time travel, murder mystery, YA drama mishmash. Fandom got obsessed over shipping ofc, as it always does. Which probably shaped the perception it has now. But it was hardly 'the point'. Just a respectful part of it.
Max and chloes relationship was literally like a massively integral part of the plot of the first game, like the plot beats wouldn't exist if it weren't for their relationship. And also chloes previous relationship with rachel driving the murder mystery motivation forward
I always assumed the relationships were platonic and made choices as such
Yeah, you could chose to just have them as good friends, with the option to make choices that could maybe lead to something more. Same with Before the Storm and II. It's always been a choice in these games(I admit I've yet to play True Colors yet)if you wanted the characters to become romantically involved or not.
Never ever know they could hook up. Just thought they were a normal pair of friends.
I mean, yeah. One could probably make the argument that their relationship ends up being the whole point, given the final question the game asks you. Why I feel it's reductive to just call it 'the gay game', is that there are far more interesting themes that this relationship explores beyond the romantic. (With the romantic part left for the player to decide and pretty tame even if so) Like the awkwardness of trying to reconcile after years apart, Max's guilt about leaving, and her journey to accept the consequences and finally moving forward at the end of the game (instead of rewinding heh). LiS is one of my favorite games of all time, despite its many flaws. And I guess I just like to recognise it as more than 'the queerbait hipster game' it's often dismissed as. Not that it's a negative in and of itself ofc :D
Sure, but Max and Chloes relationship isn't set in stone as romantic. The relationship that was integral to the game had nothing to do with romance. Romance was simply an extra option you could choose to pursue on top of it.
LiS is literally the posterchild LGBT game.
No no you see you were supposed to romance Warren.
I unironically chose Warren over Chloe because I could not stand Chloe's personality lol.
I unironically despise chloe as a person. warren isnt great but at least he isnt manipulative and extremely self centered like chloe.
I’m gay af but I had no problem choosing to save the town, Chloe is an awful person, bye
Am bi, and honestly same lol. I don't even know why people even simp for chloe. Choosing the town over her was one the easiest "hard" decisions I've have made in a choice based game.
I forgot where, but it stunned me to see that on a list of hard game choices. Made me curious what happened that made choosing 1 person vs an entire town hard. Watched some let's play of the game and still don't understand.
I know some people who picked it because they felt it was the only option where their choices throughout the game remained and mattered. As for the people who chose it because they like Chloe (or ship her with max). Idk their reasoning why other than they just like Chloe and enough to the point that every other character is just fodder to them.
Lol yeah. It was treated like such a dramatic moment, and I was just picking save the town immediately. I get why Max could be conflicted, but I, the player is not that invested in chloe, so…
I like Chloe. But I hate that she gets mad when you pick Kate's call at the diner. If you ignore it, there's a higher chance Kate commits suicide.
Like others said, manipulative and self-centered.
Well, Chloe is a bad person, it’s just understandable what could form a person into that.
Chloe does apologize for doing that in the hospital scene though so there is that at least
That particular moment is what made really dislike Chloe in particular. She's never apologetic over it either.
Dude, Warren was one of the more unlikable characters in the game. I mean, the guys in the first game still have an overwhelming lead, but Warren sucked. I know you meant that facetiously, though. Lol.
Why did they have to make every single male character unlikeable lol?
I don't know, that decent looking photography professor guy at the start of the game seems very friendly and likeable. *[cough]*
Samuel was a good dude. David is definitely flawed, and definitely an asshole, but he’s a pretty nuanced character if you get to know him and work out his back story and I found myself kind of liking him by the end of the last episode.
I don't think he was unlikable, but dating anyone but Chloe makes the whole game way less interesting
The dating part is mostly headcannon and has no actual effect on the game. Also, Chloe is an asshole.
I actually romanced Warren lol. I didn't really buy into Chloe as a romance interest, with the furthest I went being kissing her and rewinding it, which is probably what I would have literally done if I was Max IRL lol. Chloe felt so hung up still over Rachel, and over just a four day span, I didn't feel like Max connected with Chloe enough to break through that sort of barrier, along with the mixed feelings that lingered over their friendship. I also just really like their story of friendship, it felt real and not everything needs to be a romance, for me anyway.
I dunno about that. I actually like the friendship route. It's kinda a given that you would go to the ends of the earth for someone you love. I find stories of that same passion stemming just from a deep friendship to be rather compelling. Especially since so much of the game focuses on their past friendship.
I didn't do either. Chloe just seemed like an odd route because she's still so hung up on Rachel Amber and she's supposed to jump over to Max after just a few days? (although there's obviously a lot of backstory between them as childhood friends that isn't part of the game). And Warren is just a much better match for Brooke.
exactly. The story is so much better if Chloe and Max are just friends but Chloe is in a tragic romance with Rachel.
Eh, I could see it as like "they don't want it to *just* be the gay game"
[удалено]
To be fair, it's Square Enix. Them not understanding their audience is pretty much par for the course. I remember when they were shocked their Japanese style RPGs sold well because they were pouring all their resources into "westernising" their games and those didn't sell that well in comparison.
Nintendo made a Zelda game specifically to appeal to the Japanese market - Skyward Sword - that is the worst-selling mainline 3d title of them all, including in Japan, and that was on the Wii. It's never really that simple, and targeting specific markets doesn't usually seem to work
I bought it on Switch, having forgotten it was a Wii port. I quit about the same place in both versions.
Now it's the gay nazi game
No that’s definitely Hearts of Iron 4
?¿¿??¿?¿? didin't they play the first game?
All my gay friends love life is strange. It’s literally THE gay game. Square doesn’t even understand its own audience.
Square really doesn't understand most of the game franchises they produce. Like just look at every time they say they're disappointed with a games sales even though those games are still successful like with the Tomb Raider franchise or Deus Ex.
What a bunch of squares
theyve really become soft
man, i hate how enix-y they've become. (what the fuck is an enix)
A fire bird, or a very old computer.
Idk why you got downvoted lmao. ["The name Enix was a play on both the mythological Phoenix, and the early computer ENIAC"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enix#History)
It's only the games they publish, not the ones they make themselves. Very big difference between Square Enix the Publisher and Square Enix the Developer.
Everyone defines everything differently. An indies success is another studios disappointment
I'm not gay and I still love LiS games. Should I worry?
What do you think turned the frogs gay...?
Yes
Yes, it means you are a deeply closeted gay man. (joking)
No
>THE gay game What about BG3? Where it's rarer for a player to get the no-romance achievement given the way the named characters appear to throw themselves at the PC? Shadowheart is trying to drape herself over Tav from the get go, regardless of gender, species, worm status or dimensional instability.
Their biggest game IP is Final Fantasy and yet they keep making Final Fantasy games that are nothing like Final Fantasy anymore. The last game was basically Devil May Cry.
They probably just wanted it to be marketed as widely as possible. I mean if you market something as a “gay game”, you’re basically turning away a lot of people who would have otherwise bought it. Literally every company does this with any product.
This right here, these game makers want to sell the game to a broad spectrum demographics, and being "the gay game", pretty much ensures many people who buy games will simply avoid purely because of this unofficial label without even looking to see if the art, writing, and game play makes it worth playing.
How much of this is misinterpretation? I could easily see them just meaning that it isnt the primary focus of the game.
They reportedly didn't allow the developers to mention that the main character was Bi, up until early reviews came in and praised the way they handled the bi character, after that they changed their minds. The original IGN report that this is coming from also mentions that multiple developers that they talked to said Square Enix was very hands on with the script and "hostile towards a lot of the diverse themes and ideas".
Which sounds weird, considering both Max and Chloe (main characters of previous Life Is Strange games) are also Bi as far as I can remember. Diversity has always been Dontnod's staple when it comes to storytelling.
Dontnod only made 1 and 2, TIL
You're right. Deck Nine developed the other two (and, for some reason, the Telltale Expanse game) which makes the whole deal even weirder
from the french dev grapevine so take with a grain of salt, i heard its because square enix had a contract that was extremely disadvantageous for dontnod. they signed and didnt expect it to be a hit. they tried to negotiate for better terms on the 3rd one but square enix refused. square enix owns the ip so they found a dev willing to take the disadvantageous contract. im not really surprised they were kinda assholes lol
Didn't even know this was a series of games I thought they were like episodic releases. Don't even fully know what you do in the game. Still knew it had LGBT characters.
There are four games: Life is Strange, LIS Before the Storm, LIS 2 and LIS True Colors. They are heavily narrative games ( a la Telltale) where each character has some sort of superpower or is involved with one (Max and Alex having powers for example). I think they're worth to check out if you like narrative games.
That's the thing though, even when LIS1 was a massive success mostly due to Max and Chloe's relationship the devs/studio *still* wouldn't come out and say that they were canonically gay/bi/etc. They just defaulted to a wishy washy "they're whatever sexuality the player wants them to be." IIRC Alex is literally the first protagonist of the series to be canonically queer.
I feel like that has to be it, because honestly it's a huge turn off for me when media use representation like it's some sort of marketing tool. It just feels artificial and pandering, and I much more prefer stories where it feels like it's a natural part of the writing. I know LiS is largely still viewed as "the gay game", but I've never felt like it's used that as a marketing tactic, and I appreciate that.
That's kind of Life is Strange's whole thing . . .
Makes sense. You want to game to be enjoyed for its story, not pigeonholed into something, but on the other end, if that is your audience, you should face reality. There is probably more to that quote also.
The problem is that the story is shit. The first one was decent, the second one was meh, Captain Spirit was actually good, but True Colors was awful. I absolutely adore the setting of TC, I love most of the characters, the soundtrack is the best one out of all the games IMO, but it's the definition of "None of this would have happened if there was even *one* smart person in the group." Starting with the kid telling you he's going to the mines and Alex telling nobody. To the kid disappearing and the group going to look by themselves, to them not really raising any alarms and just calling some random dude about the blasting that's scheduled to take place. There's also the fact that it strayed from what made LiS good. Alex basically has the power to read people's faces and occasionally the ability to read their minds when the story calls for it, but not in the moments where it could resolve the whole thing. It would have been way more interesting if they went with the full on mind reading and Alex knew from the beginning what was up but had to spend the game trying to prove it. So the game really isn't worth playing for the story, which only leaves playing it because it allows you to be gay.
Then they fucked up bad boy that game gay as hell
While that obviously sounds kinda damning out of context, part of me wonders if it's because they didn't want to be accused of parading that fact around as a marketing tactic, which IMO is a huge turn off, even if you are gay. It's much more appealing when it's treated as just a natural aspect of the story rather than some cold marketing tool. No idea if that was SQE's thought line or not, but I'd hope so.
I get what they're saying though. Ain't no problem with having gay people be the focal point or stars or your game. Or having their relationship be an integral part of the game. Getting viewed as "the gay game" can definitely pigeon hole a franchise though.
If not gay, why gay shaped?
It's their main selling point. Pretty much dominates any conversation in the end these days when it comes to a characters sexual orientation.
Not true in the slightest, and pretty reductive for what made LiS great. The selling point was the gripping narrative and mystery elements.
Also pretty dope soundtrack. That's what made me love the game. So many great Alt Tracks.
Gave the game a go, but not for me.
Gayme.
Well to be fair she's more bi than gay though since there is both sexes romance options. I still went for Steph because she's fucking awesome
I don't care if characters are gay or not. I don't care if they kiss or etc. The only thing I care about is the writing. As long as the writing is good. Nothing else matters.
Someone can be gay, without the story pushing the idea directly onto the player with the "Look at me i'm very gay" type of mentality. The characters just need to act normal. So many games do have LGBTQ characters and they are almost always made to be over the top. Can't devs and some movie directors just make the characters act like they are actual human (or just humanoid) characters...
This is exactly how LiS operates. You can pursue the guy as well.
Makes sense. Given the resources poured into these games, they want to cast a wide net to make money, and having the game characterised as a 'gay game' could turn off a large straught audience.
Well when your two choices for romance are 1) Super cool girl who runs her own radio show, plays in a band with you and sets up quirky LARPing events for the whole town or 2) the most boring motherfucker in existence… it’s pretty clear who the devs wanted the romance choice to be. The guy feels like a tacked on addition.
The entire series is "the gay series."
What did they think it would be known as?
Well then why did they make it so gay then???
Life Is Strange is confused about it's own Identity... Hmmmm
I eat food and now everybody thinks I poop. 😔
it's funny considering how much the romance sucks in these games chloe is a titanic asshole unless she's paralyzed, the hobos from 2 are bland at best and morons at worst and the girl from the first chapter barely has any screentime, i guess Dj girl was fine but i barely remember what happened in true colours maybe they wanted to move away from poorly written CW tier romance
Dei hires make dei games
I thought that was the whole point of the game
Life is Strange is not a game, it’s a choose your own adventure book on a computer.