A TV adaptation for the time-bending adventure game Life is Strange has been rumored to be in the works since 2016, but now we finally have confirmation: Prime Video announced on Sept. 5 that it’s greenlit a series adaptation of the franchise, with KAOS and The End of the F***ing World creator Charlie Covell as executive producer and showrunner.
That reveal has left some fans conflicted. Not only will the game’s original creation team from French studio Don’t Nod not be involved — that isn’t unusual for adaptations, but I can understand the disappointment all the same — but some Life is Strange fans have expressed concern about how a game that hinges so much on player choice could be adapted accurately without making one choice “canon” and invalidating the others. Life is Strange’s direct sequel, Life is Strange: Double Exposure, balanced this perfectly. And it could, because it was a video game. Can TV manage to do the same?
Trying to make a TV show work in the same way as a video game isn’t my main worry, though. For myself, I just want to see the Life is Strange adaptation focus on one particularly important element: the relationship between protagonist Max Caulfield and her best friend, Chloe Price.
Why Max and Chloe are the linchpin of Life is Strange
The original 2015 Life is Strange is a time-reversing sci-fi mystery that follows photography student Max as she returns home to Arcadia Bay for her senior year of high school at Blackwell Academy. When she returns, she learns that Rachel Amber, a popular Blackwell student, has gone missing. On her first day of the school year, Max sees school bully Nathan Prescott fatally shoot her friend Chloe. In a moment of panic, Max finds out she can reverse time, and she does everything she can to save Chloe — triggering a landslide of new events that causes the sinister secrets of Arcadia Bay to come to light.
[Ed. note: Spoilers ahead for the plot of the 2015 game Life is Strange.]
Max and Chloe are at the center of those secrets. It’s revealed that in saving Chloe’s life, Max changed a point in time so drastically that she caused a world-shattering storm to form and edge closer to the town of Arcadia Bay. At the end of the game, Max must make a choice: save Arcadia Bay, or let Chloe die. After five whole episodes with Chloe, where the two grow closer and Max pulls out all the stops to ensure Chloe lives, it’s a cruel, hard-hitting choice: Save Chloe, or everyone else.
Max and Chloe’s history is complicated
Chloe has been left behind and abandoned for a good chunk of her life, and throughout the game, Max becomes the one good thing Chloe can rely on. In the end, it’s up to you to decide whether to kill her. That final choice is the emotional well of the story, and it’s what makes it so paramount for the TV adaptation to focus on the two girls’ fraught but sentimental relationship. The time-travel and murder-mystery elements are vital too, but ultimately, these girls’ relationship is the heart of the game. If the creators of the adaptation don’t get that right, it’s going to be a major disappointment.
At the start of the original game, we learn Max and Chloe’s relationship is rocky. The two were separated at a young age when Max’s family moved away, seeking new pastures elsewhere. At first, the girls kept in touch as much as possible, but after so many years apart, with them both being young children at the time, they eventually fell out of touch. While Max thrived in her new environment, Chloe dealt with her dad’s death in a car accident alone, which led to her acting out against her mom Joyce and fighting with her stepfather.
When Rachel vanishes in the 2015 Life is Strange, Chloe is a mess: She and Rachel grew close in the 2017 prequel game Life is Strange: Before the Storm, with multiple story options where the player can choose whether or not their relationship is romantic. Either way, Rachel was there for Chloe throughout a difficult time in Chloe’s life. When Rachel goes missing, Chloe is left alone again. When Max arrives, Chloe doesn’t hide her resentment at Max for leaving her behind.
But they quickly fall back into each other’s orbit. They can’t help but reach out to each other. Their shifting relationship is what inevitably drives the original Life is Strange story forward. Max wants to help Chloe find Rachel because of how much Rachel means to Chloe. Neither of them knows this will lead them to some seriously terrifying places.
Life is Strange needs its queer inclusivity
I don’t just want to see the show acknowledge the emotional weight and complexity of their backstory: I also think it’s important that the TV version acknowledges Max and Chloe’s romantic feelings for each other, even though the game’s options might not lead them down that route. In the original game, Max can pursue a relationship with Chloe, Warren, one of Max’s classmates, or none of them.
This choice inevitably leads back to the fan concern about making certain storylines “canonical” in an adaptation when the original media was interactive and had multiple canonical story directions. Yet even if you don’t choose a relationship with Chloe in the game, Max still writes in her diary about wanting to kiss her. Max’s bisexuality, regardless of whether she pursues a relationship with Chloe, is a meaningful part of her character. Ignoring it would be a flaw of judgment, especially during a time where mainstream media inclusion of LGBTQ+ characters and relationships are declining.
The Life is Strange series is an undeniable staple within the queer gaming community, so much that Life is Strange: True Colors won multiple awards for its queer inclusivity. Life is Strange gave young queer teens — myself included — the option to see themselves portrayed in a popular video game that wasn’t derogatory, at a time before gay marriage was legalized.
I’m not going to say we should listen to fans and fans only about what should be brought from the original text into an adaptation, because that leads to the slippery slope of fandom feeling as though it’s their way or the highway, and souring the conversation about an adaptation before it even airs, or even harassing creators about it.
But ignoring the era and context of the time the game was released in, and why Max and Chloe’s relationship was important in a landscape where queer game characters didn’t have as much space in the limelight as they do now, feels as though it would miss the entire point of the way that relationship was portrayed in the original game.
The beauty of the Life is Strange series is just how much Don’t Nod and the franchise’s later developer, Deck Nine, aims the games’ stories to revolve around relationships. These games aren’t just about time travel and supernatural crisis: They’re about quiet moments where you can watch these characters sit and listen to good music, smoke pot, and just be. Leaning into these relationships, acknowledging these small moments of tranquility, is core to the series as a whole and what makes it so special. If the adaptation can capture that, they’ll at least have me on board, willing and eager to see what comes next.