Life is Strange Remastered

With the upcoming Life is Strange title bringing back the first game’s protagonist, you may as well catch up on the life and all-too strange times of Max Caulfield. Taking place in a Pacific Northwestern town called Arcadia Bay, Life is Strange follows Max and her best friend Chloe as they make sense of being teenagers, their own thorny relationships, and Max’s newfound ability to rewind time. Quintessential teen shit, y’know?

Life is Strange was acclaimed at the time for its subject matter and fresh perspective, centering a queer teenage girl and her peers who dealt with depression, suicide, sexual assault, and abuse among other things. However, the series is probably most beloved for its soft, sometimes even twee, aesthetics and deliberately nostalgic vibes. Even just writing about it prompted me to queue folksy indie songs featured throughout the series. Something about it just makes me long for it to be 2015 again. It instills in me this intense desire to walk down the hallways of my old high school, be surrounded by some of those faces I haven’t seen in nearly a decade, and not have to worry about a thing beyond my grades and the girl I was crushing on. Life is Strange feels like simpler times, even if it isn’t and that is perhaps the series’ greatest feat. You can pick up both the remaster of the first game and its prequel, Before the Storm, in this collection for $20.