Life Is Strange
History
Life Is Strange was conceived around the rewind mechanic, a concept which had already been briefly explored in Remember Me. Life Is Strange's protagonist Max Caulfield was created with the ability to rewind time to supplement this mechanism. Development began in April 2013 with a team of 15 people, with further people added as the collaboration with Square Enix began. Before signing with Square Enix, Dontnod imagined Life Is Strange as a full-length video game similar to Remember Me that Dontnod would self-publish; however, Square Enix realized it would be more successful as an episodic title, both for creative reasons, financial restrictions and marketing purposes. This allowed them to tell the story at a slower pace.
History
Development began under the working title What If, before being retitled to avoid confusion with the film of the same name). It was Dontnod's second title with a female protagonist, and most prospective publishers were unwilling to publish a game unless it had a male protagonist. Guilbert also challenged the idea at the start. Dontnod creative director Jean-Maxime Moris explained that Square Enix was the only publisher with no intention to change this. "Square [Enix] is basically the only publisher who didn't want to change anything about the game... we had other publishers telling us to make it a male lead character, and Square didn't even question that once."
History
The Pacific Northwest was chosen for the setting to convey a nostalgic and autumnal feel, with the team eventually settling on Oregon as the location of the fictional town of Arcadia Bay. It was decided early on that most of the budget be spent on the writing and voice actors. The story was originally written in French by Jean-Luc Cano, and converted into a game script by the game's co-directors and design team. This was then handed over to Christian Divine and Cano to be finetuned in English. Recording sessions were done in Los Angeles, California, with the French developer brought in via Skype. The textures were hand painted, adapted to achieve what art director Michel Koch called "impressionistic rendering". Sources of inspiration include the visual novel Danganronpa, in terms of balancing gameplay and story, and the novel The Catcher in the Rye, whose protagonist Holden Caulfield shares a surname with Max, the lead character. For the sake of realism), the supernatural elements were designed as a metaphor for the characters' inner conflict, and experts were consulted to tackle difficult subjects such as teen suicide.
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