New studio, new heroine, but the same commitment to a courageous and emotional narrative. The video game saga “Life is Strange” returns with a new installment that gives greater importance to LGTB + characters.
With the subtitle “True Colors”, this narrative game proposes to embody a young woman, with the special ability to know the feelings of other people, who is investigating the death of her brother in a small town in Colorado (United States).
As the story progresses, the player will have some freedom to establish friendships and romantic relationships with other characters, regardless of their gender.
“We really wanted to continue claiming homosexual characters in Life is Strange,” Jon Zimmerman, narrative director at Deck Zine, the studio behind the title, told AFP.
This game was released worldwide on Friday, September 10 on PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X / S and the Steam and Stadia services (computer). The Nintendo Switch version will be out in late 2021.
The first “Life is Strange”, developed by the French DontNod, hit stores in 2015 and sold three million copies.
Then he impressed with his sensitivity and credible representation of LGTB + characters, something unusual until that moment in the world of video games.
“For me, Life is Strange was a turning point,” acknowledges Mai Torras, a developer at a studio in Buenos Aries and a fan of the series.
“In 2015 I had not yet come out of the closet. The game allowed me to realize many things. Feeling represented is important,” he says.
Following the commercial and critical success of the first game, the series continued with a prequel in 2017 and a sequel in 2018.
– Presence of homosexuality –
The Japanese company Square Enix, publisher of the game, entrusted the development of the third installment to Deck Nine Games, which had already made the prequel.
Addressing issues like homosexuality or human feelings in depth “is one of the hardest things to do,” Zimmerman acknowledges, “as this may be related to trauma or pain.”
For years, the representation of LGTB + characters was limited to independent games and large productions bet on more stereotyped models.
But this changed in recent years and was thus reflected with the character of Ellie in “The Last of Us: Part II”, considered one of the best video games of 2020.
However, the representation of homosexuality generated great controversy in this medium.
The Ubisoft company gave up showing homosexual relationships in “Assassin’s Creed Odyssey”, the installment set in Greece of its famous saga, which generated a great controversy and forced its creative director to apologize.
– “Represent society as it is” –
“I think that more and more video game creators are realizing that they have an impact on society and that society needs to be represented as it is,” explains Elizabeth Maler, co-author of “A Normal Lost phone”, a French game released in 2017 that was about trans identities.
However, this inclusive vision is often confronted with the reluctance of some more conservative players, who for this reason alone tend to put negative reviews.
“I do not play a video game because the ideology of others imposes on me”, you can read in some comments about “Life is Strange: True Colors” on Steam, the famous online sales platform.
Although many studios try to include greater diversity in their productions, this is not reflected among their staff.
“We continue to be a very sexist industry that can be racist,” laments Elizabeth Maler, who founded Abiding Bridge, a small company that supports independent creations, in 2019.
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