Life is Strange finale may come out October 20, let’s talk about that
With any luck, the finale of Life is Strange may come out on October 20th, unless some awful certification issues stop it. The news comes directly from Luc Baghadoust, the game’s producer, who took to Square Enix’s own blog to assure fans the episode will be available in under a month. Luc was also the Associate Producer on Dontnod’s Remember Me, a bassist in a band, and a vegetarian. This is what happens when I go to someone’s Twitter profile to grab info for a news item.
He went on to give the following thanks, along with a small warning in case the episode does not hit it’s intended mark:
Many things can change in the lead up to release but the team are working really hard to try and hit this date. We know the wait may be a bit longer than some of you were hoping for but we want to ensure Episode 5 is the best it can be.
Your tweets, comments and messages have kept us going through this busy stage of development and we can’t thank you enough for your continued support.
We are super excited for you to play the finale and we hope you enjoy the ride! We couldn’t have foreseen the great reaction Life is Strange has had so far, the community is fantastic and we love seeing/reading your reactions to each episode.
This early reveal is the first time Square, Dontnod, or anyone involved with the series put a date on the episode so far before its actual release. All other episode dates were announced the week before release, alongside an official trailer, with the episode hitting online stores the Tuesday after. The wait between Episode 4 and 5 will also be the longest fans have had to wait between episodes. All other episodes had about a two month gap between them, whilst the wait between Episode 4 “Dark Room” and Episode 5 “Polarized” is skirting close to 3.
The wait between episodes has been excruciating for many fans
Why did Square Enix / Dontnod announce the episode so early? Well, other than to calm down the game’s fanbase, and me, September 21th has in-game significance. The main protagonist – Max Caulfield – celebrates her birthday on that day. She was born on September 21th 1995. If you want to dig a bit further, Max Caulfield shares her birthday with H. G. Wells. He authored The Time Machine, one of the most famous stories about time travel there is. If you want to go even deeper, Wells first released The Time Machine in 1895, exactly 100 years before the eventual birth of Max Caulfield. This may have no significance to the actual story, but it shows the creators were paying close attention to dates while building the game’s backstory.
Speaking of dates, what significance has October 20? Well, it is within the same week that Marty McFly and Doc Brown traveled to in Back to the Future II all the way back in 1989 – another much loved story about time travel. The date they traveled to was October 21, 2015 – close enough. If you want more useless information, Max Caulfield was born on the same year 12 Monkeys came out, and was born on the same date as Stephen King, who has dabbled with time-travel stories in the past.
If you have not played Life is Strange, then you should, as it is pretty great. I enjoyed (and reviewed) Episode One Chrysalis, Episode Two: Out of Time. Episode Three: Chaos Theory, and Episode Four: Dark Room separately, and better yet they all add up to a pretty impressive whole. It’s been a fantastic ride playing each episode as it hit, and finding out where the story will go. If Episode Five manages to land all of the narrative threads now up in the air it will be a fantastic way to end what has been a highly impressive, thoroughly memorable journey.
No pressure Dontnod!