LIFE IS STRANGE
Format 360, Android, iOS, PC, PS3, PS4, Xbox One
Developer Dontnod Entertainment
Publisher Square Enix, Black Wing Foundation
Origin France
Release 2015 (360, PC, PS3, PS4, Xbox One), 2017 (iOS), 2018 (Android)
Max Caulfield and Chloe Price are two of the most beloved characters in videogames. The winsome awkwardness and authenticity of the teenage best friends-slash-sweethearts has inspired endless fan art, fiction and cosplay. They feel more real than most – which is why it’s so amusing to hear that the Oregon teens started as a pair of Frenchmen in mocap suits. “We did the first motion capture together,” director Raoul Barbet says, looking over at writer Jean-Luc Cano. “He played Max and I played Chloe.” Cano also played Price’s hardboiled step-father, David Madsen: the scene, set in Price’s bedroom and centred around a dispute over her marijuana stash, was the first to be blocked out in coming-of-age drama Life Is Strange. “That’s when we realised we are terrible actors,” Barbet laughs.
There was no helping it at the time. Barbet and Cano made up two-thirds of a skeleton team that Dontnod had sent off to work on an experimental side-project. The studio had just released Capcom-published action-adventure – “It wasn’t’,” Cano says. “‘So make a small game, and the only thing you have to do is use the rewind mechanic.’”
