In 2015, the world became enamored with teenage time traveler Max Caulfield’s (Hannah Telle) journey in Don’t Nod’s first successful video game, Life Is Strange. Max develops time traveling abilities after witnessing the murder of her queer best friend, Chloe (Ashly Burch), in her high school bathroom. Throughout the game, you as the player have many choices. This includes the ending, where you can decide whether to save let a storm developed from all the time traveling you’ve done run its course so Chloe can live, or let Chloe die to prevent all of your time traveling in the first place.
Although Chloe is coded as white in every iteration we see her in the Life Is Strange series, she is always voiced by Asian American voice actors; she was voiced by Rhianna DeVries in Life is Strange: Before the Storm.
Now, on October 29, 2024, since Deck Nine took over the Life is Strange series in 2017, Max Caulfield returns to us in Life is Strange: Double Exposure. Max develops a new supernatural power within her time traveling after witnessing the murder of her South Asian friend, Safi (Olivia AbiAssi). Throughout the game, you unlock what happened to Safi through two alternate timelines: one where Safi is still dead and one where Safi is still alive.
Despite the valid jokes online about how Max Caulfield shouldn’t have friends, I’m not laughing. Instead, I’m asking the question, why is it a common pattern that Don’t Nod and Deck Nine are obsessed with people of color and queer people suffering and/or dying?
In Don’t Nod’s Life Is Strange 2 (2018), the Diaz brothers (Roman Dean George and Gonzalo Martin) are on the run after witnessing their father being murdered by police in their own neighborhood. While navigating escape to Mexico along with how much younger brother Daniel Diaz should use his telekinetic abilities and whether or not older brother Sean Diaz has a love interest and of which gender, just like in the original Life Is Strange, you are given choices. All of those choices will lead to one of four endings: Sean getting arrested by ICE at the Mexican border while Daniel stays with grandparents on house arrest; Sean escaping to the border while Daniel stays with grandparents on house arrest; both brothers escaping to the border and growing up to live lives of crime; or Sean getting shot and dying leaving Daniel alone to grow up and live a life of crime.
In Deck Nine’s Life Is Strange 3 (2021), your protagonist Alex Chen (Erika Mori) is given more happy endings and intriguing love interests to choose from. However, none of those choices are able to prevent her older brother, Gabe (Han Soto), from dying in a landslide in the beginning or Alex during the climax of the game getting stuck in the mines. It also doesn’t prevent Gabe’s Black fiance, Charlotte (Exzinia Scott), from having to horrifically grieve her son Ethan’s (Ignacio Garcia-Canteli) two father figures: Ethan’s biological father who left and Ethan’s future stepfather who died, Gabe.
In Don’t Nod’s Twin Mirror (2020), Sam Higgs (Graham Hamilton) is a white journalist who has an alternate twin from the origins of his “Mind Palace,” and you as the player have to choose when and when not to use the Mind Palace. Anna (Erica Luttrell) is a Black woman who is Sam’s ex-girlfriend and former journalist partner who supports him in solving the mystery of his friend Nick’s murder. Regardless of how much you try to play the game’s climax differently, you are unable to prevent Anna from getting hurt. She either always gets shot in the arm and you call for help in time or she always gets brutally shot in the abdomen and dies.
Finally, in Don’t Nod’s most recent game Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden (2024), you have to witness Black people, Indigenous people, and queer people as ghosts who died violent deaths in colonial times. Although it’s one of my favorite games for how well it interrogates grief and what it means for a death to mean something, it doesn’t erase my discomfort with so many marginalized characters dying.
I’m not saying conflict-free games shouldn’t exist. I also don’t want to discount how Don’t Nod and Deck Nine’s diversity in race, gender identity, sexualities, and class has been well done over time. I’m especially impressed by Don’t Nod’s Tell Me Why for those representations, even amidst its critiques about the ending or how we’re reminded it’s okay for trans characters not to be perfect.
I’m saying that tropes are exhausting. Clearly, Don’t Nod and Deck Nine are full of them.
I don’t want to play Life is Strange: Double Exposure and have to deal with choosing to keep Safi dead or alive. I want to solve the mystery and keep Safi alive in all the timelines!
Excitement and nervousness courses through my veins leading up to Life is Strange: Double Exposure’s release. You can play it via Microsoft Windows, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S October 29, 2024.
