"Life is Strange: Wavelengths"

 

In my review of Life is Strange: True Colors I complained (as many people have) that, as someone who comes to Life is Strange significantly for the slice-of-life (is strange) stuff, I would have liked more of that and less plot-driven investigation of the game's central mystery. I guess maybe this was intentional because it feels like a huge chunk of that element was reserved for the additional Wavelengths DLC, which was released a few weeks after the main game.

In Wavelengths, you play as Steph, fan favourite character from Life is Strange: Before the Storm and supporting protagonist of True Colors, over the course of her life working at the Haven Springs record store, Rocky Mountain Record Traders, and its attached local radio station, KRCT. Even though it's set in 2018, Wavelengths feels like the ultimate game for the pandemic lockdown era; in the course of its three-to-four-ish-hour runtime you, as Steph, spend your entire time in said radio station and record store. With the exception of the ending cutscene, you see and interact with absolutely no-one in person, all of your human contact occurring via phone calls, text messaging, dating apps and a video chat. Time, lockdown and and budgetary limitations aside (it's a bit weird that you never serve customers in the game), this is all strongly tied to the game's central exploration of the self-perpetuating effects of loneliness and the causes of self-destructive behaviour, as encapsulated in the character of Steph and her tendency to run away from any situation in life which risks becoming too serious, permanent, or intimate. I've heard it rumoured that at some point in the development there were going to be more face-to-face interactions and/or scenes outside the store and booth, but the lockdown made this impossible; if that's true, I don't think the game really suffered from lacking those elements, and is probably actually stronger as a result of it.

On the surface, Wavelengths is your usual Life is Strange fare: you wander around your environment, interact with objects to hear the player character's thoughts on them, communicate with characters (in this case purely electronically), solve simple puzzles and make choices which shape your experience of the story. And yet in some respects Wavelengths really invests in how this kind of gameplay evokes the experience of undertaking routine, predictable tasks as you perform these actions in order for Steph to do her job. This isn't exactly something new in video games, but it uses it to really capture the slice-of-life element to which I referred in my opening. Ever imagined what it would be like to run a local radio station? Well, a lot of it involves queuing music, reading boring ad copy and sitting in a small room waiting for time to pass.

I have to admit that Wavelengths, and Steph's presence in the main game, were two of the things that motivated my interest in True Colors, and I thought it was a sensible choice to take a beloved but relatively fringe character from one of the spinoffs and elevate her to a bigger role. Being able to actually play as Steph and get inside her head is better still, as the game deliberately takes what we knew about her and complicates it. Before the Storm presents her as an imaginative student, wise beyond her years with a variety of interests and a big heart. True Colors presents her as charismatic and confident, to the extent that I almost felt that the Steph of True Colors was difficult to recognise as the same character from Before the Storm. So Wavelengths really goes into examining how Steph changed over the nine years between when those two games take place, and how her struggles to deal with the experience of loss shaped her approach to life.

Initially, I expected Wavelengths to just be a humorous "here are a few days in the life of Steph" thing where you hung out at the radio station, listened to indie music and said silly stuff on the air. But it actually goes into a lot more than that about what it's like to feel unsure of yourself and your life's direction, to push people away, and to carry around unresolved grief. I really didn't expect this relatively short piece of DLC to have as much emotional weight as it did, but I honestly found it quite powerful, perhaps moreso than the main game, in which the central drama was so totally foregrounded in the marketing.

A bit like Before the Storm's "Farewell" DLC, Wavelengths differs from the main game in that there's no mystery and the narrative is pushed forward not by any kind of plot contrivance but rather by the characters' own trajectory. In this case, it takes the shape of understanding why Steph is who she is, in a way tied into the original Life is Strange (a game in which Steph didn't actually feature, as she hadn't been invented yet when that game was made). The game begins by asking if you've played the original, and if so whether you chose to save the town or not. I've obviously played the original multiple times and chosen both endings at least once, but originally decided to go with the "didn't save the town" (i.e., saved Chloe) ending, and I certainly did not expect that to feature the way it did, with Steph in that decision's course of events dealing with the death of her mother in the storm implicitly caused by Max Caulfield's use of time travel in the original game. The second time I went with "saved the town", in which Steph's trauma is instead the murders of Rachel and Chloe.

I think the first option I chose was a pretty clever move on the part of the developers because one advantage the "Sacrifice Arcadia Bay" ending has always had is that it doesn't really show you significant consequences for Max's choice. It's implied that everyone in the town was killed (and Life is Strange 2 confirmed that very many of them were) but you never really saw the consequences of that unless you played Life is Strange 2 or now; here I was transposed from the shoes of Max, sacrificing the town to save Chloe's life, in the original, to Steph's, dealing for years afterwards with the thought of her mother having been killed in the freak weather event of the original game.

As a way of exploring more from the original game's narrative I really think this was a pretty decent move on Deck Nine's part, as you find Steph scared of getting close to anyone for fear that she will lose them unexpectedly like she did her mother (or Rachel and Chloe, but more on that below), and with even her friend Mikey from Before the Storm being pushed away. We see via text message that Steph does socialise with Gabe, Ryan and Charlotte from True Colors, but by setting the entire game inside the record store we get the sense that that's where she spends a lot of her time, shut away from everyone, keeping them at a distance, on the other side of the glass, caught between staying in Haven Springs as part of some seemingly half-hearted effort to get a new start and feeling the pull to again run away and do something new (which moving to Haven seems to have been in the first place).

Like all of the Life is Strange games it's testament to how well they engage with a certain kind of player (like myself) that I can have so much to say about a four hour piece of downloadable content, but the empathetic writing and the simultaneous presentation of what seems like an escape from reality with the less pleasant causes and consequences of that escape are more than powerful enough to make the experience worth contemplating. Wavelengths succeeds in this real-life stuff while also expanding upon what was only implicit in True Colors, namely that Steph was flaky and tended to drift from place to place, avoiding putting down roots. This explains why. And I wonder if this was set out from the start, and is why we were given less stuff about her backstory in the main game, or, if what I've heard is true, that the decision for the DLC to be about Steph's life was made later in the game's development, and that it's just a happy accident.

Wavelengths takes place over four seasons, starting in Spring shortly after Steph has decided to stay in Haven Springs and ending in winter on New Year's Eve of 2018, a few months before Alex's arrival in the main game, which is shown in the final cutscene. Each season is about thirty to sixty minutes of gameplay depending on how slowly you choose to take them, as you're free to wander around the record store, banter on the air and chat with the girls Steph rather futilely matches with on a dating app. It's all pretty mundane stuff, but that's what I'm here for. Spring is basically an intro to the radio station's mechanics: playing and queuing records, answering the station phone, helping people make decisions by rolling a D20 and reading ad copy, that Steph can choose to either take seriously or mock. Summer starts building upon the game's themes, with the last day of Pride Month causing Steph to reminisce about the experience of growing up as a gay woman in the northwest of the USA. Autumn (or Fall if you prefer) becomes much more somber, with a more direct representation of the consequences of Life is Strange the first on Steph's life. I have to say that the developers did a pretty good job here of demonstrating how the events of the first game might have impacted a character who hadn't been invented when the first game was developed, and I sure as hell felt bad for her. Finally, Winter concludes with Steph maybe finding a little solace after the rather difficult feelings brought up by the previous season, although still dwelling, appropriately, on the lonesome image of her popping champagne by herself at midnight, alone in the record store.

I like to play Life is Strange games slowly, one chapter or episode a day whenever I'm coming to one fresh or doing a replay, and while Wavelengths realistically is too short for this to be a sensible approach if you want a big hit of gameplay and/or of the character in one go, I did find it to be quite evocative of the "nostalgic" experience of life that the series has always captured so well, in which you know the ending is coming, and you want to see it, but at the same time you don't want it to end. I felt pretty deflated when Wavelengths did end, not because I didn't like it but rather because I enjoyed my time as Steph and wanted more, just like I did with True Colors proper. In fact, I think I probably enjoyed Wavelengths more than the main game given its slice-of-life focus and intensity of the kind of indie music that has always been so fundamental to the franchise's atmosphere. Being able to actually queue up the records every season and have them play in the background is great, and the official album or single artwork for each release is even rendered in the series' distinctive impressionist-watercolour art style. I would have liked more songs, especially in Spring where the auto-DJ defaults to crappy country and western library music, but I appreciate that that was kind of the point, and as the game goes on and Steph customises the playlist further, the automatic music becomes much more in keeping with her style.

Another significant feature of this DLC is the return of Steph's friend Mikey, also from Before the Storm, with whom she plays tabletop RPGs, this time over video chat, another pre-emptive retroactive nod to the years of lockdowns and working from home. It's good to see the character return and he's used effectively to demonstrate Steph's genuine and lasting friendships and how she doesn't always need to run away. There are also very, very brief voice cameos in Steph's recollections of Chloe and Rachel, both voiced by their Before the Storm voice actors, but this is pretty perfunctory, not that I really expected more. I think it's better to keep this stuff limited, especially as Steph is a character retconned into the story by the prequel; this implies that after Before the Storm she and Mikey would hang out with Chloe and Rachel sometimes but seemingly left before Rachel disappeared (and, depending on your choice, Chloe was murdered). It's a nice touch without going into too much detail if you haven't played the original game. I think either way it works, although the version in which she lost her mother to the storm is probably a little more believable than the loss of two friends with whom, by the time of the original game, she was presumably (had she been invented yet) no longer closely in touch.

I suppose Wavelengths gives True Colors the greater longevity and development of its secondary characters that I thought it needed, but despite featuring one of the same characters and taking place in part of the same setting it almost feels more like a separate experience in its own right, independent of the central game. I think it demonstrates a direction that the series could continue on further, i.e. focusing more on the day-to-day and exploring characters' lives in detail, and working that into a narrative in its own right. In the event that Deck Nine makes another Life is Strange game in a few years, I wouldn't object to it taking a healthy dose of inspiration from Wavelengths. I've played it through twice now, and I feel that there's probably still more optional dialogue I could unearth, but it kind of feels melancholy to think that now I really, truly have completed True Colors. I don't even want to finish writing this review because that means it's really over. Life is Strange is notorious for leaving its fans with that feeling, and this is no exception. I return to the same question I asked of True Colors: what do these games offer us that is missing in our own lives? And would we really be happier if we could be like Steph, feeling isolated and alone in a small-town radio station? What do we actually want, and where do we want life to take us? If something like Wavelengths has so much appeal, I think it speaks more powerfully than ever to the series' connection with the desire for what is simply a more emotional life, and a more emotionally experiential one, in which we can feel something, rather than just being.

Why I Can't Get Behind Video Game Controversies

Video games, right? Sometimes their "culture" has "issues." I guess every medium goes through a phase - sort of like music did when rock 'n' roll started or literature did in the rise of the "populist" novel. I can't help but feel like these things are big issues for people living very different lives to my own. I can't really get behind most of these issues because I struggle to see why they're issues at all. Let's have a look.

1. The Unfortunate Practical Consequences of Video Game Reviews are Not the Fault of Reviews or Reviewers

Apparently some video game developers or publishers, basically the bosses, see scores on Metacritic and such and go "Eight out of ten? Better fire that whole team then." And that sucks. But it's not the fault of the review. Beyond the fact that I think in the present day games rise and fall based on hype and marketing rather than reviews, the fact of the matter is that that situation is the fault of the skewed priorities of businesses and the nature of neoliberal economics. It doesn't matter why a game got slagged off - maybe it was accused of being buggy, maybe it was accused of being sexist, whatever - if people lose their jobs, it's not the review or reviewer's fault. Imagine if Stephen Moffat was surfing the web and saw my review of Robot of Sherwood where I basically said it wasn't very good and thought "Well that's going to devalue the Doctor Who brand, better fire Mark Gatiss then." I feel as if I probably wouldn't be to blame.

2. Criticism, no matter how polemic, is not an Attack, and even if it is, it Doesn't Matter

Let's just say for example that an item of criticism argues that certain recurring elements in video games normalise and desensitise people to violence. I'm dancing around the issue here by going for violence, but I think that's for the best. Let's say an article or what have you says that all these pugnacious male protagonists in video games normalise male violence. Does that mean that the author is saying you, if you are a male person, are violent, predisposed to violence or becoming accepting of violence? No, it's just trying to say that it might be a trend in society. Let's say a critic comes out and says violent video games with male protagonists represent the fact that all men are naturally violent. So what, again? People make stupid generalisations all the time - I'm constantly impressed by the relentless quantity of them that I read in the comments sections of articles I irresistibly view through the trending section of Facebook to remind myself that much of the human race is pointlessly horrible and wilfully ignorant. Even the most vituperative critic doesn't know you personally. Until such time as that kind of criticism causes you to be ostracised by your friends, family, colleagues and so forth or gets you locked up - which is to say when hell freezes over - it doesn't matter.

3. Critics can't force anything to happen and aren't trying to anyway

Like I said, criticism is just criticism: just words, intended to persuade, perhaps, but not authoritative. I've seen it argued, bizarrely, that critical theory is a force of "social engineering." It's not. Empiricism can be - hopefully for the better, but that rather depends on the ideology behind it. In any event it's not forcing games to be made a certain way, or for people to behave a certain way, it's just commentary. Even people being lambasted on social media doesn't equate to censorship, and it works both ways too.

4. Video games being 'entertainment' doesn't mean anything

Entertainment means different things to different people. Video games aren't obliged to be "just entertaining", whatever that means, certainly not according to a narrow "just having fun" definition of entertainment. They can be as moralising or meaningful or philosophical or intellectual as they want. Even games as products, which is in fact most of them, are going to provide for a consumer base that they think will turn the most profit. If a for-profit video game (again, most of them) "panders" to a particular political agenda, for example, it's only because they think it will make them more money, not because they're trying to shape society. Even if they are, you don't have to listen. I think a big part of this has to do with an anti-intellectual streak in certain parts of society who think that because they don't understand or aren't interested in discourse (or take it too personally, see above) then it shouldn't exist. Why not?

5. Living in a smug echo chamber doesn't achieve anything

Even the most moderate people involved in these kinds of controversies seem to ultimately still think that they're pretty much completely right about everything and that their equivalent "opponents" are poor deluded fools. Generally they (the other moderates I mean) are just ordinary people hoping for the best. Obviously the rest are just a bunch of ideologues whose entire identity is bound up in their views and trolls stirring the pot but that's simply the way it is. Obviously bullies, harassers and so forth need to be dealt with, but the people spouting crap constantly are just getting worked up into a fuss over nothing, like I do about New Who.

6. "Gamers" and "game culture" are not homogeneous

I've read a tonne of stupid definitions of what constitutes a "gamer" in my time. I don't like the term "gamer" because I don't like labels. Labels mean applying someone else's definition to yourself, which in my opinion is a wilful reduction of your own agency (usually to achieve a sense of belonging). No one person or group of people can speak for "gamers," "game culture" or "gaming" as a hobby. That's just another kind of conformity. Then again, conformity has infected all permutations of "geek culture" for a long time - it's a form of tribalism which serves the interests of big corporations that make films, video games, merchandise and so on.
I've seen it argued that the problem with the generalisations from the other "side" is that no one is there to positively represent "gamers as a whole." Sorry, but there is no "gamers as a whole." If you feel the need to identify as a "gamer" that's your business, but "gamers" are not "a whole" except by stupid definitions like "well, people who just play casual games on mobile aren't..." and all that other pointless tribalistic crap. Why do you feel the need to fit into a group so badly?

Ultimately I will admit that I don't support the "video game controversy" for a few reasons:

1. I don't object whatsoever if there is "progressive" or what-have-you stuff in games or game reviews because it interests me, and also because honestly I think most of it is justified - that doesn't make me some kind of pro-totalitarian "cultural Marxist" trying to turn the world into one big Political Correctness State. Well, maybe some people would argue that it does, but whatev. Even if I was, it isn't a crime. I know some of the controversy people are actually "progressive" themselves. I don't really get what their issue is exactly, but at least see Point 4 below and Point 1 above. Furthermore, if you value "free speech" (whatever that means) you have to accept that it includes the freedom to criticise free speech (although I don't think these commentators are actually denying free speech, mostly just encouraging people not to be dicks).

2. I don't take it personally when people make generalisations about my sex/gender or ethnicity (because I realise they represent a generality and not specifics - in case you're wondering, they're the "privileged" ones)

3. While I enjoy entertaining gameplay, I also enjoy it when any and all of my entertainment interrogates sociopolitical issues because they interest me

4. I think the rampant cronyism between Triple-A publishers and major review sites like IGN is a far bigger problem than reviewers and indie developers having close ties or any consequent cronyism that may or may not be going on in that sector. Hell, I gave Depression Quest a positive review and I certainly don't know anyone involved in making it, I found it when trawling Steam Greenlight. Don't know what that makes me.

5. Too much of the taking-issue-side seems to involve "being a dick because I'm insecure and therefore angry" to an equal if not greater extent than justifiable complaints

6. I think both "sides" think the extremists on either "side" represent the "whole" (although I still think one "side" is more justified than the other, who mostly even in the most moderate cases just seem upset that their favourite game didn't get a good enough number out of 10 on one website or another - pro tip: most games, especially Triple A games, are shit)

7. I kind of think the whole thing shifts the blame away from neoliberal economics, which is the Blofeld-like spider at the heart of most of Western popular culture's problems, deploying useful idiots to distract from itself. I think the biggest problem with The Video Game Controversy is that its aims would notionally allow the Triple A industry to keep peddling glossy but empty corporate slop - the idea that people actually want slop, or at least defend slop because they're intimidated by the idea of more than slop, bothers me a bit. You're free to enjoy or even want slop, but don't pretend that there's anything noble about it.

Maybe this all seems like I'm namby-pambying around the issue but I can't help but think that a bit of namby-pambying wouldn't go astray. In any event it's just the opinion of this humble commentator. I'm not fond of conformity, even the kind that claims to be opposed to another (alleged) source of conformity, and I find people getting worked up into a frenzy about these kind of issues fairly exasperating. I know each "side" can accuse the other "side" of doing the same things it's done (although the idea that either "side" is a homogeneous entity seems fairly inaccurate) but ultimately I find it all to be largely ideological rather than rational and based on a lot of insecurity and other petty things. I think ultimately, the main points are these: criticism is not a personal attack (even if it seems like it is), the fault is not with reviewers (all criticism has its place, even the kind that basically just says "this is shit") and, most importantly of all, I now can feel secure that I posted something in January after delaying my Hobbit 3 and Doctor Who reviews.

"Entertainment"

Being "entertaining" is another of the catch-all dismissals of criticism. "So what if it didn't follow through on its themes? It was entertaining!" If something is "entertainment" and it is "entertaining" then it succeeds in its purpose: that's the argument. It's connected to the other refuges: "You're just being negative," and "Can't you appreciate what it is?" But what is "entertainment" and what does it mean to be "entertaining"? Let's be trite and use the Oxford English Dictionary.

Here's "entertainment":

 

8.

• a.The action of occupying (a person's) attention agreeably; interesting employment; amusement.

• b.That which affords interest or amusement.

It seems fairly straightforward, does it not? Here's "entertaining":

 

2. Agreeable; interesting; now chiefly, amusing.

Let's put aside whether or not "entertainment" is a high virtue. Entertainment is an enjoyable pastime. If something is "entertaining" it is enjoyable. The problem is, what we find enjoyable is highly variable. People who try to shut down criticism of media simply on the grounds that the media was "entertaining" and therefore fulfilled its objective are making the mistake of assuming that entertainment is one thing to all people. According to this idea, everyone is entertained by the same things, a notion which is patently untrue.

What characterises a typical description of something being "entertaining," then? Hollywood films and Triple-A video games occupy this generic "entertainment" space: rapidly delivered bursts of sensory engagement, usually featuring motion and violent action: fast vehicles, explosions, combat, intense romantic passion and emotional experience, usually of anger or heartbreak, quick-fire humour. I won't go so far as to describe it as "shallow" but it is only a singular definition of "entertainment." "Entertainment" in this context is in fact referring specifically to a culturally dominant, and yet precisely engineered, form of impulse-driven sensory stimulation. I say "precisely engineered" because it is constructed as a profit-creating corporate model of consumer psychology: it is appetite-focused.

Yet this is hardly the only definition of what constitutes "entertainment." I do not always find chase scenes, explosions, gunfights, sex and witticisms to be entertaining. In fact I sometimes find them utterly dull. I am not a machine, and am perfectly capable of finding entertainment in certain kinds of this impulse-driven input, but I also find entertainment elsewhere. "Entertainment" according to the OED above also finds "interest" and "amusement" in its purview. "Entertaining" things are "agreeable." If that is the case, I find thinking to be entertaining. I derive entertainment from being introduced to new ideas, in seeking answers to questions, in trying to find connections between things. A difficulty already arises in the fact that "entertainment" in this context comes across as flippant: if something is entertaining, you do not take it seriously. The cultural connotations of "entertaining" suggest that something cannot be both enjoyable and meaningful, that if one finds enjoyment in meaningful activity they are in a sense not doing it correctly. It is, of course, more complex than that. I can simultaneously seek an answer to a question because I believe the answer will be enlightening or have practical benefits in some area and because it is enjoyable. Kant was critical of this view, arguing that any work which was simultaneously pleasurable was therefore selfish, but I don't believe that - in addition to the fact that that's only a problem in an outdated value system which sees self-interest and altruism as mutually exclusive. I rather see it as an added motivation.

The question of entertainment, then, I think refers back to what I was discussing in my previous post: insecurity. Insecure people are desperate for a sense of identity and a sense of belonging. They want everyone to find the same things entertaining as they do, so they give "entertainment" a single, simple meaning and expect everyone to conform to it. The safety of the herd diminishes the experience of fear. Why, then, do they find this particular impulsive form of "entertainment" so appealing, then? Other forms seemingly do not cross their mind. I would argue that it is because insecurity and absolute satisfaction with impulse-entertainment are both rooted in the instinctive mind. Insecurity is defensive, and related to hyperarousal, or the "fight or flight" response. Impulse-entertainment, as I am terming it, associates itself with similar emotional responses, albeit displaced through representation. Thus the audience fears for the life of a character in danger, thrills in fight-or-flight scenes of combat and chase, ponders with desire the romantic and sexual liaisons of attractive people, and generally experiences chemical, hormonal stimulation of an instinctive kind. It is entirely related to the stimulation associated with insecurity. Other forms of entertainment, which tend to involve themselves with more abstract levels of consideration of human experience than the immediate (and I stress here immediate) kind of stimulus regarding life, death, procreation and so on, operate on a less impulsive level than that of insecurity also. Hence the insecure mind is more likely to find entertainment in seeing characters in a fierce battle than they are in, for example, considering the situations in which war is justified. On the other hand, the latter form of activity can itself be an engrossing pastime to certain people.

My argument, therefore, is not to dismiss this kind of entertainment, but to reject the notion that this entertainment is the extent of entertainment, or that something being "entertaining" in this sense is thus objectively "entertaining" in the only sense that matters, and that therefore one ought to give a work a free ride for conforming to this rather specific and narrow definition of entertainment. There is more than one kind of entertainment, and just because something conforms to a particular mass-market or consumer-culture definition of "entertainment" does not mean that it is going to be equally entertaining to all people. It also means, importantly, that criticism cannot be shut down just by something being "entertaining," because if something is only "entertaining" according to one specific set of criteria, it is in fact not fulfilling the objective of being entertaining at all - what about all the other ways of being entertained?