Development began under the working title What If, before being retitled to avoid confusion with the film of the same name.[6] It was Dontnod's second title with a female protagonist, and most prospective publishers were unwilling to publish a game unless it had a male protagonist. Guilbert also challenged the idea at the start. Dontnod Creative Director Jean-Maxime Moris explained that Square Enix was the only publisher with no intention to change this. "Square [Enix] is basically the only publisher who didn't want to change anything about the game... we had other publishers telling us to make it a male lead character, and Square didn't even question that once."[7][8]
For the first game, the Pacific Northwest was chosen for the setting to convey a nostalgic and autumnal feel, with the team eventually settling on Oregon as the location of the fictional town of Arcadia Bay.[9] It was decided early on that most of the budget be spent on the writing and voice actors.[10] The story was originally written in French by Jean-Luc Cano, and converted into a game script by the game's co-directors and design team. This was then handed over to Christian Divine and Cano to be fine tuned in English.[11][12] Recording sessions were done in Los Angeles, California, with the French developer brought in via Skype.[13][14] The textures seen in the game were entirely hand painted, adapted to achieve what art director Michel Koch called "impressionistic rendering".[15] Sources of inspiration include the visual novel Danganronpa, in terms of balancing gameplay and story, and the novel The Catcher in the Rye, whose protagonist Holden Caulfield shares a surname with Max, the first game's lead character.[16] For the sake of realism, the supernatural elements were designed as a metaphor for the characters' inner conflict,[17] and experts were consulted to tackle difficult subjects such as teen suicide.[18]
Following the release and rapid success of the first Life is Strange, publisher Square Enix chose American developer Deck Nine to develop a prequel game focusing on the life of Chloe Price,[19] while the Dontnod team began developing a direct sequel. Development on the project began in 2016 with assistance from Square Enix' London Studios.[20] Ashly Burch, who voiced Chloe in Life Is Strange, was replaced by Rhianna DeVries due to the SAG-AFTRA strike.[21] However, Burch and Hannah Telle, who voiced Max Caulfield, both reprised their roles for the bonus episode Farewell.[22] The project went under various working titles during development.[23] The writers researched memoirs and psychology to understand Chloe's grieving process,[24] and the script for the game was over 1,500 pages, written by lead writer Zak Garriss and a writers' room. Prior to its official announcement, images had leaked online indicating that a prequel to Life Is Strange was in development.[25] Square Enix revealed Life Is Strange: Before the Storm on 11 June during Microsoft's E3 2017 presentation.[26]
Development on Life Is Strange 2 began in early 2016 as the first game shipped its physical edition.[30][31] Michel Koch and Raoul Barbet returned to direct the sequel,[32] with Christian Divine and Jean-Luc Cano reprising their roles as co-writers.[33][34][35] The concept was influenced by the photography of Mike Brodie, who would freighthop across the United States and take pictures of drifters.[36] The game is structured like a road movie, inspired by the film Into the Wild and novella Of Mice and Men. Dontnod conducted field research on the West Coast of the United States, meeting people and taking pictures there.[34][37] The two primary themes of the game are education and brotherhood.[38] Using the Unreal Engine 4, they upgraded the animation system, physics, and shaders. According to Dontnod, one of the biggest challenges of development was the artificial intelligence of the character Daniel.[34]
Deck Nine began work on True Colors after completing Before the Storm in 2017.[39] A common theme of the Life is Strange series has been based on characters with a type of super-human ability, though not like superheroes, that the developers can then provide "meditations on real experiences that regular people go through", according to Felice Kuan, senior writer at Deck Nine.[40] For True Colors, they had determined early on they wanted their protagonist to be based on a power around empathy, not only to be able to sense what others were experiencing but to be vulnerable herself and would be able to grow past this as the story progressed, "giving her a path to greater self-acceptance and greater trust in her own abilities" according to Kuan.[40] This led to creating the story around Alex losing her brother early in the game as a driver for her to explore her empathy powers and reveal more about her past as she uses them.[40] Erika Mori portrays Alex through full performance capture, which Mori said was "instrumental in successfully creating this game about empathy because it allowed us to get really high-fidelity facial expressions that were organically connected to whatever was going on with my voice and body in a particular scene."[41]
The Life Is Strange games are graphic adventures played from a third-person view. The player can examine and interact with objects, which enables puzzle solving in the form of fetch quests and making changes to the environment. The player can explore locations and communicate with non-playable characters. Dialogue exchanges feature branching options in conversation. In some instances, choices in dialogue will alter and affect the story through short- or long-term consequences. For each one of the choices, something good in the short term could turn out worse later.
Each individual game in the series features a central mechanic unique to that game. In Life is Strange, the player (as Max) has access to a "rewind" ability, which allows them to rewind time and alter the course of events. The rewind mechanic is accessible in conversation, allowing players to navigate branching dialogue options and change the outcome of a conversation to be beneficial to the player. Items picked up are kept in the inventory after a rewind, and changes in the environment remain in place. In Before the Storm, Chloe has a "backtalk" mechanic that allows her to persuade and intimidate other characters through conversation, with either positive or negative effects. In Life is Strange 2, the player (as Sean) must guide Daniel, who has the power of telekinesis, through various moral and ethical choices that will influence how he will use his powers to help or hinder the player as the game progresses. In True Colors, the player (as Alex) has psychic empathy powers that allow her to read and manipulate emotions, which she perceives as colorful auras, to physically see how others feel around her at the cost of being "infected" by their emotions. Some of the non-player characters will have more intense auras indicating trauma or hardship they may be going through. When Alex interacts with them, this creates a "nova" that appears to transform the world around Alex and the character to reflect elements of this trauma, giving the opportunity for the player to figure out what caused their emotions and to opt to guide Alex in helping to comfort the character.
The game was released in five episodes across 2015 for Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Microsoft Windows, with iOS, Android and MacOS, Linux versions released later on. Episode 1: Chrysalis was released on 30 January,[42] Episode 2: Out Of Time on 24 March,[43] Episode 3: Chaos Theory on 19 May,[44] Episode 4: Dark Room on 28 July,[45] and Episode 5: Polarized on 20 October.[46] Retail editions of the complete season for Xbox One, PS4 and PC were released on 22 January 2016 in Europe, and 19 January 2016 in North America.[47][48]
The game was released in three episodes across 2017 for Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and Microsoft Windows, with iOS, Android and MacOS, Linux versions released later on. Episode 1: Awake was released on 31 August, Episode 2: Brave New World on 19 October,[49] and Episode 3: Hell Is Empty on 20 December.[50] The Deluxe Edition included the DLC bonus episode Farewell, released on 6 March 2018.[51] In it, Max struggles to tell Chloe of her imminent move to Seattle. To distract herself, she lets Chloe take them on a pirate treasure hunt in search of "treasure" buried by Chloe's father, William. Their day is ultimately cut short by the news of William's death.
d0d94e66b7