Gaming
Games
Be kind, rewind: The making of Life Is Strange
Behind the scenes of 2015’s emotionally-charged adventure series.
Life Is Strange
© Square Enix/Dontnod
Despite their power to immerse and enthral, video games aren't always a terribly convincing reflection of reality as, more often than not, they force you down a set path with little scope for deviation or user agency, with some guns.
It's understandable, as granting the player true freedom in a virtual world requires an incredible amount of effort and work, and it's little wonder that most developers use open-world settings to give the impression of freedom, but shackle players with rigidly-scripted cutscenes that ultimately ensure that the end result is largely the same, irrespective of what choices they happen to make.
Amid the accepted norm of video game development, French studio Dontnod's episodic adventure series Life Is Strange stands out as a truly unique endeavour. While there's a definite narrative arc to the game's storyline, players are free to make some pretty radical choices within each episode which have a sizeable short and long-term impact on how things pan out – as well as rewind time to discover new outcomes.
Creator Dontnod was founded in 2009 by Hervé Bonin, Aleksi Briclot, Alain Damasio, Oskar Guilbert and Jean-Maxime Moris – five visionaries intent on create AAA experiences from their Paris base of operations. The team's first title was Remember Me, an adventure title set in a futuristic version of France's capital city that contained segments called "Memory Remixes" in which the player could tinker with memories and alter the outcome. These sections would plant the seeds for Life Is Strange, which began under the working title What if.
"Hervé wanted to see if we could build a game around this feature," Luc Baghadoust, producer of Life Is Strange, tells Red Bull. "We thought that an adventure game based on choice and consequences could work really well with this feature, as it would become a gameplay and narrative tool that allows the player to explore different branches and variations of the story. But for this power to not be only a gimmick, we needed to find the perfect story and characters, as it is really important that everything is cohesive so we don't have any dichotomy between gameplay and storytelling. That's why for example we created main character Max as a shy and insecure student, nostalgic of the past, who has issues making decisions and going forward in her life. When we give her the rewind power it creates a really interesting storytelling device and complements her personality."
In Life Is Strange, every action has a consequence, but it's possible to rewind time and change choices – within reason. Baghadoust admits that it was difficult to plan all of the possible outcomes and pathways from a design perspective. "It gave headaches to all the designers," he says with a wry smile. "It would be really interesting to somehow share the complex discussions the team had and the complex drawings made during the design phases, as this is always the case when you play with time mechanics. This was also really exciting for the teams to work on those branches, with the objective in mind to give the players a real feeling that all their choices have consequences on the short and longer term, even if minor."
Given Life Is Strange's complex nature and its expansive, ever-changing storyline – which sees protagonist Max coming to terms with her newfound ability to rewind time and the unpredictable ramifications of her meddling with the flow of events – you'd be forgiven for assuming that chopping it up into smaller segments would make the development process even more difficult. However, Baghadoust insists that the team wanted the episodic approach from day one, and in actual fact producing a game in this manner offers many benefits.
"The story was imagined to be told over five episodes," he explains. "This format also offers great tools we wanted to play with: it gives you more control over the pacing and the player's experience, and forces you to concentrate your efforts to make each one of those two to three hours a great experience from the beginning to the end, while carefully planning how you want the story and characters to progress in each episode. Another benefit is that you can change things according to the players’ feedback, which is something not common for adventure games. Even if the full story was there from the start, thanks to the community reactions we were able to add some lines, and even scenes for characters, we changed some minor choices and added some consequences to other actions."
That's not to say that taking the segmented approach wasn't without its shortcomings – some of which came about as a result of this being Dontnod's first experience with the episodic format. "All the game features have to be there when the first episode is released, as it gets more complex to modify the code after," laments Baghadoust.
"Planning-wise also, we were really optimistic in the early stages about our capacity to work over many episodes at the same time. We realised along the way that it was really better to focus our energy on a single episode rather than spread it among episodes that were all at a different stages of production.”
The episodic format was also a challenge for the teams. “Everything is multiplied by five – five voiceover sessions, five motion capture sessions, five submissions phases. When a 'normal' game is about to be released, you see the finish line ahead and everyone participates to the effort in order to cross it on time with the best game possible. An episodic game is like a triathlon, where instead of running happily around the stadium after the finish, you have to dive into cold water for the second part of the race. The teams are exhausted by the trial, but the cheering of our fans gives us the strength to continue. We don't want to think how much harder it might have been if the reception had been really bad."
Life Is Strange
© Square Enix/Dontnod
Thankfully, the reception has been the exact opposite of bad – Life Is Strange has garnered an overwhelmingly positive reaction from press and players alike. However, Baghadoust explains that it's not just what people write which has revealed their appreciation of the title, but what they broadcast, too.
"We are really lucky that the game was released at a time where more and more players are streaming their games," he says. "We've spent a lot of our free time watching playthroughs and even compilations of reactions to the most emotional moments, and it has been a real pleasure for the whole team. We've seen some streamers pausing the game for few minutes just to explain the reasons behind their decisions, we also had tears watching other's tears. Overall, we're really proud to see that videogames can also lead to those kind of reactions."
This has also allowed the developers to take in feedback and improve future episodes. "It has been helpful for the designers to see how players behave and hear their reactions," Baghadoust continues. "One of the good things about episodic format is that it allowed us to apply some small changes to the game following the reactions of the audience, what we've read and seen over internet. But most of all, seeing the positive reactions of the players has been the morale boost we needed in the most intense and difficult production times. We have really been taken by surprise by the amount of positive reactions and how much the players love the game. We always share within the team the fan-created content and encouraging feedback we receive."
Surprisingly, despite this willingness to take feedback on board, Baghadoust says that Dontnod hasn't used actual play data to influence the direction of the season – data it collects at the end of each episode. As the credits roll you're given the option to see which choices your connected friends made throughout the story; one might assume this would be useful in deciding the arc of the story moving forward, much like fan reactions on social media can now shape the arc of a network TV how. However, the narrative is largely set in stone, and Baghadoust insists that this feature is more about making you question your own moral choices, and those of others.
"We did change some things following players’ reactions, but we did not base these decisions on the data we had," he says. "We had to create a consistent and great experience for all the players, whatever path they choose. We couldn't neglect the experience of a small percentage of players just because they chose an option few others did. Observing the statistics was really interesting. Some results were totally expected, whereas others really surprised us. The data of some moral choices are especially really interesting to see."
Life Is Strange's impact with English-speaking audiences is made all the more remarkable when you take into account that English isn't the first language of the design team. "The original story has been written in French by Jean-Luc Cano," says Baghadoust when quizzed about the writing process. "From this, co-game directors Raoul Barbet and Michel Koch's role was to transform the story into a game script with the help of the design team. During the design phase, English progressively replaces French in the design tools and documentation." For some developers, that would be good enough, but Dontnod enlisted the help of LA-based writer Christian Divine to fine-tune the script.
"On Remember Me, the script has been originally written in French, then translated and revised in English," continues Baghadoust. "We realised afterwards that many things were lost in the translation, and that doing the same for a narrative game such as Life Is Strange would be a huge mistake. We decided to hire an American writer to write all the dialogues and texts in order to reach the quality we were aiming for. We were in the process of reviewing many applications and profiles when had the chance to meet Christian Divine and instantly felt a magic connection; we had found exactly what we, and the game, needed. Choosing him for such an important role on Life Is Strange was one of the key decisions we made for the game. Our voice-over director Philip Bache also had a key role during the recordings, by accurately transmitting our intentions to the actors in a way we couldn't have done by ourselves. He also fell in love with the game and Christian's script and has been a tremendous help."
Music plays a massive role in establishing the unique atmosphere of Life Is Strange, and the game is unique in mixing licensed songs with a totally unique soundtrack created by Syd Matters member Jonathan Morali.
"Since the early prototypes of the game, the teams were using music tracks which helped define the mood of the scenes and the whole game," says Baghadoust. "Using licensed tracks is something not that common in games, and using them was a good tool to create a consistent and realistic world, to develop characters according to their musical tastes and to tell stories through each track. Structured songs sometimes have such a strong impact. Using licensed tracks is also a great opportunity to share with the world the work of artists you love."
Having said all of that, Baghadoust is adamant that the game needed its own bespoke soundtrack as well, and Morali understood exactly what was required. "Working with Jonathan has been an extraordinary experience. He was first contacted regarding the two Syd Matters tracks we wanted to use, and we learned that he was a real gamer and was really interested by the idea to create an original score. He is really passionate and curious, as this was a first experience on a video game for him. As a player, he fully understands the challenges and constraints, and his motivation and talent led to our amazing score."
Despite the incredible reaction to the title, there have been some minor complaints – mostly levelled at the lip-syncing. "The Life Is Strange budget is much smaller than Remember Me's, so we had to make decisions regarding where to focus our efforts based on what would be the most important for the game," Baghadoust explains. "The decision to use an automatic lip-syncing solution was made in the early production stages, as we had to deal with a lot of dialogue throughout the game – the script of one single episode is bigger than all of Remember Me – and that would have been too much work for our animation team to animate by hand. After hearing the complaints, we have been able to improve the technology in episode four and the upcoming episode five. We hope to update the previous episodes with this new technology, also."
The release date of the final episode of Life Is Strange is still to be confirmed, but with the series passing the one-million-sold marker in July and the incredible reaction from players, it's bound to perform briskly at retail. Dontnod's title has enraptured gamers in a way which is seldom seen, bringing some to tears and shocking others with its troubling moral choices. Baghadoust in unrepentant on this score, stating that games – just like movies and music – should strive to create a deep emotional response in those who experience them.
"We are convinced that games should make people think and react," he concludes. "Many other games have done this before us, and we're really happy to follow this path along with other studios who also want to offer the player new and different experiences. We are also thankful to the amazing creativity of the indie-game scene, which has proven that there was an audience for that."
