Video Games have been compared to being interactive theatre, Daniel and Sidney Homan, writers of the article, ‘The Interactive Theatre of Video Games: The Gamer as Playwright, Director, and Actor’ spoke about how films, and novels, the audience is the observer, whereas, more recently, theatre and video games have been more experimental and is changing the view of narrative. (Homan, 2014)
The game ‘Life Is Strange’, ‘Life Is Strange: Before the Storm’ and ‘Life Is Strange 2’ are all in the same style and are all based off the original graphic novels written by Emma Vieceli and Garriss. The characters look the same as they do in the novels, making the gaming experience a lot more nostalgic and theatrical. The book comes to life before your eyes, but this time, it is up to you as the player to help guide the character through the story and turn it into your own.
Life Is Strange.
Life Is Strange: Before The Storm.
‘Life is Strange’ and ‘Life is Strange: Before The Storm’ have extreme emotional connections as the player make the decisions in the game and each one will have consequences and it is up to you, the player, to save the lives of various people to tragic events, such as bullying. The game leads the player to become very attached to the characters and will make you want to make the right choice in order to avoid the worst. The games themselves, aren’t photorealistic like many other recent games, but they are more in the style of graphic novels, this is because the games created are in fact, based upon the original Life is Strange stories that were first published as graphic novels. This makes the games much more aesthetically pleasing as the book comes to life before your eyes and it’s up then to the player to help the character find their way – it’s almost a mixture of the book and theatre, but instead of only viewing the character, the player must control the character and be with them throughout the life changing decisions, gains and losses.
The Life Is Strange game franchise is a different style to most games and is considered as art more than most other games. Christopher Boyd, writer for The Washington Post, wrote an article on the game and whether it should be considered as art. He concluded that this game is in fact art. He described the game as “a tragic journey towards disillusionment” and it made his eyes ‘mist up’. This proves that games can have the same emotional complexity as art, and if not more. (Hinton, 2016)