I thought I had already seen the best of Life is Strange. But as I’m writing this I am walking away from the most intense experience I’ve ever had playing a video game. It’s hit me so hard I needed to walk away, I need a real break to process what I just learned about myself.
Trigger Warning
This article will talk about death and suicide.
Spoiler Warning
This article will spoil the first hour or so of Life is Strange: Chapter 4. If you haven’t played it yet, and don’t want to find out what happens then you can read something else instead.
A New Timeline
This chapter opens as I expected it to. Max is in a new timeline where she learns that while Chloe’s dad is alive, Chloe herself ended up in a car accident that left her paralysed from the neck down. Her family is in huge medical debt trying to support Chloe’s needs, though they put on a brave face and seem happy, given the circumstances.
Chloe and Max spend time together. They go for a walk on the beach and watch the sunset. Then they go back to Chloe’s room and watch Bladerunner together. The whole time reminiscing about their childhood together. Max eventually falls asleep, waking up the next morning in Chloe’s lap.
These early segments emphasise confinement. On the beach you only get to make a few dialogue choices. You aren’t able to leave Chloe’s room, and even when you do you are confined to Chloe’s family home. It emphasises Chloe’s situation, how immobile she is, how she can’t go to Paris to study like she wanted to.
After you wake up Chloe asks for some morphine, since the pain is too much. After Max gives it to her, they look through a photo album together, talk about their childhood. Then Chloes tells her she wants this day to be her last memory. “All you need to do is turn the morphine up to 11,” she says. Then the game asks you to make a choice.
I get up and walk away from the screen. I sit on the bed in my room. I stare at the wall for about a minute. Then, no matter how hard I try, I can’t stop myself from crying.
Choosing
When my grandfather started to lose his mind he ended up in a hospice. It wasn’t dementia, but it was something similar. His mind withered before his body did. I remember our last visit to him before he died. The caretakers wheeled a body out to our family, and it immediately emptied its bowels.
They took it away to clean it up, and brought it back. The body moved, still alive. It seemed to be able to see. But there was no thought behind those eyes. No sound coming from its mouth. It’s heart may have still been beating, but the brain stopped working a long time ago.
I watched as my family clutched at this zombie for any semblance of life. They would interpret any eye movement or hand gesture as some kind of proof that he was still in there. Maybe he still was, but all I could think was that if he was still trapped in this body he must be living some kind of nightmare.
At the funeral I told my sister that I didn’t want to end up like that. I told her that when the time came I wanted her to let me go on my own terms. I asked my sister to kill me.
And now a videogame has forced me to confront that choice from the other side. And I can’t make it. I know it’s just a game, but somehow it still feels important. I needed to know what choice I would actually make. I sat there for almost an hour trying to work through it logically, emotionally, morally.
Finally I came back to the screen. I’d been away so long the game had paused itself. I saw another choice. Reload Last Checkpoint. But this isn’t the time to go back and change things. The choice I make here will be the choice I always make.
I unpause the game. And I make the decision to kill my best friend.
Processing…
Of course, this is a game where the main character can change the past. Max does so, goes back in time and makes sure Chloe’s father finds his keys, and inevitably dies in an accident again. She burns the photo so she can never come back to this point in time. The choice has been made. It is final.
She finds herself back in the normal timeline. Chloe is alive, and she is enthusiastic about their investigation into Rachel’s disappearance. The choice, ultimately, didn’t really matter. And yet, to me, it felt like the most important choice I’ve made in the entire game.
I find that I can’t keep playing. I need to take a break. I shut down the game and I go back to the wall. I think about the choice I just made. To kill my best friend. So they can die on their own terms. Is that actually the choice I would make if it happened in real life? If so, what does that say about me?
I sit there for almost an hour trying to work out the answers to these questions. I still don’t have any answers. I don’t think I ever will. Euthanasia is such a messy and complex problem, clouded further in philosophy, law, and religion. I don’t think anyone can truly know what they will do unless they are faced with that situation.
I chose to kill my best friend in a video game. And I still don’t know if I would be brave enough or strong enough to do that in real life.
