Spoiler Warning: As counter-intuitive as it is to write an entire
post based on the ending of a game and then beg you not to read it –
please do not read this unless you have completed Life is Strange or
have no intention of ever playing it. I will be specifically talking
about the end of the game, so I personally recommend playing it
first; it is a really good and gripping story-rich game.
Life is Strange is a
story-rich game, to say the least. It starts with some interesting
characters and scarcely any game-play mechanics, save for one element
– the time reversal. In Life Is Strange it is possible to reverse
time for a limited way back and there are multiple uses of this, such
as learning new dialogue options to re-talk to people in a better
way. While this power might seem immediately useful to replay scenes
in order to choose the best scenario and therefore time-line, it isn't
as simple as that. Life Is Strange is all about multiple options of
equal value, so that either every scenario seems bad or all scenarios
seems okay – there is not much middle ground.
With this background it is easy to see how far this notion could be
pushed. For example, using multiple bad options we are able to see
which option most will think is the lesser of two evils, or which
option might seem bad now but looks to be the most beneficial for the
future. The entire game culminates in this kind of notion, too. After
each chapter, we are offered a page with all of the important choices
from the previous chapter and what percentage of people chose each
scenario. With judgement and moral choice, the percentages are often
close, however with some possibly skip-able scenarios in the game,
there are other scenarios which are heavily weighted on people
picking one choice. One of these choices is looking at Dana's
pregnancy test and getting told off for doing so, which only 2% of
people kept the decision of and 98% of people either missing it
entirely or rewinding so that Dana never knew you looked at it. The
one choice that stands out as particularly interesting, however, is
the last decision in the game.
Life is Strange ends with a
strange twist to a philosophy of ethics thought experiment called
'the trolley problem'. The trolley problem is an old scenario that
tests people's morality in a difficult situation and was popularised
by Philippa Foot; it goes as such:
There is a trolley (train) moving
on the tracks towards five people who are stuck and will be killed.
You happen to be stood next to a switch that you know will change the
direction of the tracks and move it away from the five people towards
the other tracks where there is one person working, who will then be
killed instead. Would you pull the switch?
As the notion of Utilitarianism suggests [1], when asked, a
significant portion of people say they would pull the switch and let
the one person die rather than the five. There have been variations
of this problem that changes the scenario to include factors that
might sway people's decisions, such as knowing some of the people on
the tracks, or actually having to push someone onto the tracks
yourself to stop the train. However, Life Is Strange ends with a
variation of this problem and is interesting for two main factors.
Firstly that people have played many hours empathising with the
characters so it is a closer situation to actually having to make the
decision in an informed way rather than just being asked a
hypothetical. Secondly it reverses the circumstance set out in the
problem entirely. At the end of the game you are asked if you want to
let your best friend die as fate appears to be trying to make happen,
or change that fate (by 'hitting the switch') but as a result you
sacrifice an entire town and the people inside of it.
What is most striking about this choice is that in any utilitarian
perspective it seems obvious – one life against an entire town of
hundreds / thousands. However, this is your best friend who has gone
through a lot of the game's difficulties with you, against a town of
people, about thirty of whom you know with some of them you don't
care for. When the page comes up to show the results of what people
chose, the split is almost half. Around 46% of people choose to save
one life and condemn hundreds (potentially thousands) to their
demise. Furthermore, the developers of the game said that they wanted
there to be no right decision, they wanted each ending to simply be
the player's choice and that it as fine. Under a logical notion,
though, it still seems like a difficult choice to justify.
So, we can use this statistic to
consider a few things about making this decision – as there is so
much more to the game's story that has gone unmentioned – what has
happened up to this choice would seem to make a big impact on the
decision made. Firstly we ought to consider that there will be some
people who could never let someone close to them die, even if it
means the sacrifice of many others, and for those people, there is
only one choice. For everyone else who picked that choice, it stands
to reason that something about their game and the choices they made
pushed them towards the decision.
In Life is Strange there are up to three other characters who
have the potential to die from the choices made and many of those who
don't die in the game are easy to dislike. If the decisions kept in
the game amounted to some of the characters you liked dying and big
mistakes having been made and an utter dislike for the town was
created – it starts to seem like a more viable option. There is
also the consideration that throughout the game you saved your best
friend multiple times, so feel the whole experience would have been
valueless if you decide to just go back and let her die anyway. With
this kinds of extra perspectives, the choice is a little harder to
make for some and it might be easier to see why some were tempted by
the seemingly less moral choice. If, however, you like Warren and
Joyce and Kate, then you know they are in the town and it is a matter
of not wanting to let people such as that die as they are greater in
number, again, the choice seems obvious to that player.
Overall, it is possible to understand from the perspective of the
player that all the choices they made throughout the game factor into
this last choice. [2] Of course, it is also important to take into account the null-choices of people who didn't fully enjoy the game and just wanted to see what would happen, but if they got to the end of the game I'm going to unprofessionally assume this is a low number.
Foot first raised the thought experiment of the trolley problem to
emphasise the idea that there are not always good options in moral
decision making and, in the many variations of the problem that have
arisen, it seems that each variant has different numbers of people
taking action or not. One of the most important factors in your
decision of any varient, it has been shown, is having encountered this kind of
hypothetical before. [3] Those who have never heard of utilitarianism are
more willing to let the five die over the one, and those who have
heard of it and have been asked these questions are more likely to
kill the one instead of let the five die in any circumstance. As it
is likely that most of the people who have played Life is Strange
have probably not studied ethical theory or know much about
Utilitarianism at all – then the statistics support this idea. To
those who have not encountered this kind of theory of hypothetical
before, the choice may present itself in their heads not as a numbers
difference but in some other kind of way. If it simply seems like a
choice between two equally bad options and you simply choose your
best friend whom you have been through so much with and is right next
to you, maybe that is just as viable decision.
Another factor not yet considered is that nobody would remember most
of the events that happened as resetting the time means the time-line
will be rewritten. Naturally, this is impossible to factor in with
real life situations, but it may well affect the decision made at the
end. Though with a 46 to 54 percent split on what seems to be easy
choice for a utilitarian, it shows that the world doesn't work the
way logic would suggest. When put on the spot, people's choices are
their own and perhaps that is okay, or perhaps everyone simply needs
a little more moral education. [4]
Footnotes:
- Utilitarianism in it's most simplistic form is to 'act in such a way that brings about the greatest amount of happiness for the greatest number of people.'
- There are some who have criticised the game for the choices made throughout not changing the ending as there are only two endings based on this final choice – though the entire journey along the way changes according to those choices and the journey affects which of the two choices you make – so I would argue that it does matter and is a satisfying ending.
- Unger, Peter. “Causing and Preventing Serious Harm.” Philosophical Studies: An International Journal for Philosophy in the Analytic Tradition 65(1992):227–255
- Thanks for reading this meta-exploratoring of Life is Strange, I would quite like to return to this game and perhaps look into the story a little deeper in a less meta way. If this is something you might be interested in – send me a message and let me know! Thanks again, ciao for now!
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