Life is Strange dev team discusses characters and challenges at E3

Today at E3, Dontnod Entertainment’s Community Manager, Scott Blows, hosted a Q&A session with the development team for Life is Strange.

Directors Raoul Barbet and Michel Koch, along with Producer, Luc Baghadoust answered community questions from Reddit, Twitter, and other social media outlets. Even Ashly Burch, the voice of character Chloe Price made a brief appearance.

The development team did not anticipate the overwhelmingly positive feedback, they have gotten thus far on the series. From the beginning, they concentrated more on creating likable, layered characters that felt relatable to the player than figuring out their target audience.

That being said, the dev team actively listens to fan feedback, and even implements fan suggestions into the final product.

Once the element of making tough choices was implemented into the game, they knew that they wanted the story to be revolve around teenagers.

Teenagers are still figuring out who they want to become and are making difficult decisions, so the team felt the this was the perfect age group to have a story of this nature.

Being a teenager is a very hard time, and Life is Strange creates a place to discuss the issues that teenagers face. Working with researchers, the development team tirelessly approached sensitive issues like suicide, teen pregnancy, and rape in a responsible way to make sure that the subjects were dealt in the least triggering way possible.

They have taken special care to ensure that all issues discussed in the game are handled well. They even created their own talk page for players to seek out whatever help they may need.

For making relatable characters, the dev team said that they started with some archetypes for the characters, but in each episode they aim to add more layers and complexities to them.

“In life nothing is black and white.” – Michel Koch

There are also no black or white choices. All choices have consequences.

While time is an important aspect to the gameplay in Life is Strange, it was also one of the biggest challenges for the developers.

Life is Strange became a much bigger game than originally expected and with limited resources and time constraints it became important for the team to reduce the number of choices the players can make each episode while still creating a sense of openness to the story.

The French developers also discussed the challenges that they faced when centering Life is Strange around American Teenagers. A lot of research went

A lot of research went into the script, to ensure that the experience was as genuine as possible. They always intended to tell an American story, set in a small town in Oregon, as they felt it best suited their visual concept.

Only a few hints were given about upcoming episodes 4 and 5, but know that the mysterious doe that seems to be guiding Max will be explained soon. Also, in a later episode we may see some further development to Victoria’s character. Perhaps she’s not as bad as fans think?

The full interview was recorded and should be online soon.