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Jan 18th, 2017 at 10:58:59 - Life is Strange (PS3) |
Today I started playing Life is Strange. I haven't touched this game since the last episode was released back in 2015, so this is going to be an experience with a whole new level of scrutiny. I was able to complete episode 1 in about 40 minutes and in that time I asked myself a couple of questions:
1. Is the whole concept of altering people's fates and perceptions of you through time travelling and redoing things a morally sound thing?
2. How solid are the depictions of the characters? Could I say any of them is problematic in how they're representing themselves and their demographic?
2 is something that I'll examine throughout the episodes since there are a fair number of characters throughout the game that don't necessarily get equal screen time. So, I guess question 1 is the only one I can really work on right now.
I think that from a real world moral standpoint, the choice to use time travel as a hack to fix mistakes without suffering any immediate consequences is wrong. The forcible change of events or perceptions surrounding other characters removes their agency in the situation. It also removes any outcomes, be they positive of nagative, from the timeline, thusly completely altering the way that a character may have wanted to move through life. It also gives the main character a fale upperhand in situations where she shouldn't have an advantage that she didn't work for. For example, the classroom scene where Max doesn't have the answer and literally steals it from Victoria because she already lived in the timeline where Victoria gave the right one. She not only chated, she did it by taking away a moment for Victoria to exhibit her knowlege on the subject.
Max also helps Chloe cheat death. This, if I remember correctly, is a constant thing throughout each episode. With each diversion of fate, she makes the world around her worse. The experience seems to tailor around the idea of diverting the player's attention from the obvious world changing consequences because they are not affecting Max/the player on an intimate level. That is a moral line that is going to be a balancing act. Is one person really worth the cost to the people and animals that have to suffer the consequences?
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