i was so prepared to go on a long spiel about how you can never divorce your subjective experience from a piece of art or give it a balanced and objective overview, to explain how i still value a game that i no longer regard as good. but after going through this one again, i can’t honestly say that i feel negatively about it. is it as effective as when i was a young teen? absolutely not; it has a fuckton of issues to be sure. but even if the details are frequently terrible, the broad strokes are there, and they work. this whole thing hinges on max and chloe’s bond being deeply felt by the player. it counts on you yearning for these two to find and hold on to each other no matter how hard fate tries to separate them - and in spite of the stilted dialogue, saccharine plot beats, one-dimensional writing, continuity errors, derivative story structure, it being hopelessly unprepared to explore the psychology of its characters or the ramifications of its premise - my god if it doesn’t get me to that point by the end.

is life is strange great? is it even good? i couldn’t say. but it is mine. it tethers who i am to who i was – a sad, lonely, volatile 14-year-old who saw something of themselves in the cosmic tragedy laid out here; for better or worse, it’s been written into the fabric of my soul. and, i don’t know, maybe only a game as messy, flawed, and frequently misguided as this one could’ve ever managed to speak so powerfully to my inner life at the time. it’s a game with a decidedly teenage sensibility; not just because it tries and fails so sincerely to be cool, but because it’s absolutely mired in melodramatic solipsism – to a point where it’s sort of surprising it was even written by adults at all. and though it strangely claims its characters are early adults, i think it’s crucial to recognize that in appearance and behavior, the age group they actually correspond to are early adolescents.

it's this innate teenage-ness that makes the game work for me. through this lens, even its many missteps can start to seem part of a larger, more meaningful picture. it all culminates in a final choice so utterly, wonderfully psychotic that the only way to coherently understand the catharsis is through the distorted logic of adolescence.

sacrificing arcadia bay, though a morally indefensible, perplexing option to be given on the surface, is the game’s myopic and naïve teenage logic taken to a natural conclusion. the time travel powers, especially early on, serve largely as a mechanism for wish-fulfillment wherein any negative consequence of navigating the messy social dynamics of teenage life is nulled. here, you get to keep them. here, you get to hold on to love, no matter the cost. it’s a twisted sort of happy ending, a beautiful fantasy tinged with the blood of innocents. to defy fate - to ride out from the destruction and carnage forever young. you think you know better than to choose it, but can you really resist the tantalizing pureness of it?

sacrificing chloe is the cold reality. it’s growing up. it’s accepting that the universe has a plan for you, and it’s not always nice. it’s accepting that with life comes tragedy – comes death. it’s unfair. achingly unfair.