So, you've decided to make a Life is Strange TV show. As a major fan of the narrative adventure series, I'm torn. On the one hand, I'd be very excited to revisit a game I love in a new medium, and while I've replayed it several times over the years, it has been a while since I took a trip back to Arcadia Bay. There's also room to be hopeful looking at recent high quality video game adaptations like Fallout, Arcane, or The Last of Us season one.

On the other, I'm pretty worried about a thing I love being mangled beyond all recognition. I was deeply disappointed with how Chloe's story was handled by Life is Strange: Double Exposure, and I also wonder how exactly an episodic, choice-based game is adapted to television in a way that is at all interesting. There's also a lot of room to be fearful looking at recent terrible video game adaptations like Borderlands, Halo, or The Last of Us season two.

But let's leave all the doubts aside. You're making it. The ‘whether you should or not’ is already settled. The decision has been made. As has the decision to exclude the original creators, which I'm sort of torn on - adaptations should adapt, but fresh hands risk misunderstanding the core themes. With all those worries up in the air, let's move on to how to make Life is Strange not suck.

Don't Cast Sophie Thatcher As Chloe Price

Look, I love Sophie Thatcher. I love her so much I routinely call her 'Soapy', then look at people with an air of superiority when they ask me 'who?'. I tell them I of course mean Critics' Choice Super Award-winning actor Sophie Bathsheba Thatcher. We're just on such good terms I call her Soapy.

She's great. But she's not Chloe. She's too recognisable (a show like this is better with a fresh cast who can make their mark), and you're either fancasting her because she's the star of the hour, or because you're typecasting her as Natalie Scatorccio, which isn't even all that close to Chloe anyway. I'm sure she'd do a good job, but if you really want your Yellowjackets fix, Jane Widdop as Max Caulfield is right there.

I feel similarly but less strongly about Emma Myers as Max, because she has the look down and does suit the role extremely well, and has previously expressed interest.

In Fact, Don't Mischaracterise Chloe At All

I realise this suggestion is basically 'don't do the writing bad', but it's more specific than that, I promise. Obviously you want every character to be well written, every episode well paced, et cetera et cetera. But I'm extremely worried that Chloe will be mischaracterised as a general rebel ne'erdowell punk, which is what you'd think of her if you played Life is Strange via TikTok clips.

I'm going to give showrunner Charlie Covell more credit than that (they previously did The End of the F***ing World, which was in a word: pretty good. Oh that's two words. Dammit.), but I'm still mindful that there's a version of Chloe that exists in the fandom at large that emphasises her 'cooler' traits and minimises her more vulnerable ones (oh, now she sounds like Natalie Scatorccio...). The show needs to resist that interpretation and allow Chloe to be weak and pathetic at times. This makes her real and endearing, even if it's more fun to remember her always kicking ass.

Don't Use Rachel Amber Flashbacks

I'm very surprised to see this being suggested as a 'must' for the show to expand upon, and it's perhaps because of the fondness many have for the prequel Before The Storm, where Rachel gets actual screentime and thus more depth. But in the original Life is Strange, her (lack of) presence haunts the narrative. It's more effective that she lingers unseen.

It's cliche to compare every dead/missing teenage girl in small town America to Laura Palmer, but Life is Strange is no stranger to cliche. Rachel Amber lingers like the ghost of Laura Palmer did over Twin Peaks, that unspoken dread amongst the other girls, the animosity fuelled by the town's desire to move on, the unresolved emptiness that comes with a lack of closure... these are all key to her story, and are all weakened by making her the focus instead of an imperceptible spectre.

Don't Do The Euthanasia Scene

Life is Strange is all about split timelines, and in one timeline, Chloe ends up in a terrible car wreck. She's in pain, she doesn't have a lot of time to live, and the various machines keeping her alive are bankrupting her parents. She knows this, and begs you to kill her.

On the one hand, this doesn't matter. It's not the main timeline, so your true storyline does not include this event. But then, obviously it matters, because the love of your life is begging for death, and you have to be the one to do it - or to choose not to, considering it too difficult. But then but then, no actually. It doesn't matter. The narrative continues unabated regardless of your choice, making this as consequential to the actual outcome of a game defined by major choices as whether you want pancakes or waffles.

My thoughts on this scene run a lot longer, but here's the basics - it was not handled as sensitively as it should have been, and it's hard to see that changing. Considering it's not as impactful as it deserves and majorly disrupts the overall game's pacing, it would be better to replace this memory with something more fitting with the game's cryptic tone and something way less heavy handed.

In the game, we discover Chloe is in this condition as a cliffhanger at the end of one ‘episode’. It works in the moment, despite being gratuitous shock value, but the follow up lacks substance. I fear the show would go the same way.

Make A Choice

I just said Life is Strange is a choice-based game, and that brings us to the most important choice for the show to make. It needs to canonise some choices, and let me say right now, it won't canonise all of yours. We need to be okay with that. If we get over the hurdle that this show exists, it needs to exist properly.

We're not going to get to make choices ourselves. We won't be able to email in every week to decide what Max does next. The show will choose for us. We won't always agree. But as long as it actually chooses, it will all be okay. The worst thing it can do is half-ass the whole approach, changing choices to be a compromise of the existing options, bastardising the story. Pick a path and stick to it. It's an action that will have consequences, but one the show needs to take.

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Life is Strange

Adventure Systems 8.0/10 OpenCritic Reviews Top Critic Avg: 81/100 Critics Rec: 76% Released January 30, 2015 ESRB M For Mature 17+ Due To Blood, Intense Violence, Sexual Themes, Strong Language, Use of Drugs and Alcohol Developer(s) Dontnod Entertainment Publisher(s) Square Enix Engine unreal engine 3, unreal engine 4
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