Life is Strange: Utilizing the Mundane

One of the greatest triumphs of Life is Strange is its ability to take the everyday life of a student and create from it an immersive environment. Now, things get non-everyday pretty quickly but the success of the game is based in its relatability. We see ourselves in the struggles represented in the game. Being able to place ourselves in those situations is paramount to successful immersion. Minor Life is Strange spoilers to follow.

There is one situation in particular which takes place in Episode 2: Out of Time. It has become somewhat of a joke online due do just how mundane this portion of the game is. Your task is to find bottles in a junkyard so Chloe can line them up and gun them down. Games will often struggle to find something meaningful for the player to do during downtime and this is a product of needing to build sisterhood between Max and Chloe without having a hair-raising, pulse-pounding action sequence. So they fall back on the old collection quest. Not the greatest choice but also not the worst.

What I want to talk about here is how Dontnod utilizes this time to infuse information and story into the game. Though the actual task of finding bottles is pretty boring, the places in which you look are loaded with environmental storytelling.



First off, we wander this junkyard that is an obvious hangout for the youth of the area. We get a small insight into the culture of the kids who live in this town -- at least those who hang out here. They're destructive, they need an outlet, and they need to do these things in a safe, private sanctuary.

Second, we get insight into the relationship between Chloe and Rachel. This is their place and Max is something of an intruder here, which is a mirror for the relationship established thus far. This point is further driven home when we stumble upon Rachel and Chloe's sanctuary. It is filled with fashion magazines with scantily clad women, hinting at the nature of their relationship, stolen traffic sings and beer bottles, showing their rebellious nature and no-care attitude, and graffiti indicating their philosophies on life.

During the relatively mundane task of finding bottles, we are given an environment which continues to tell a story even when the dialogue has stopped. This is more than a lesson in environmental storytelling; this is a lesson in how to never stop the narrative. Every moment can be a moment used to communicate to the player.