Let's Play: Life is Strange Episode 1

Chrysalis, 3D Scanning, and Memorabilia

Last semester, I had a chance to play the first episode of Life is Strange. Although I've referenced the game in almost all my projects through the entirety of my university experience, I actually hadn't played it at all ever. But I have now!

For some reason, I've had so many issues getting the whole recording of this playthrough to upload to Premiere Pro and that's why I hadn't posted this blog until now. My Twitch streamer video game YouTuber career is not looking good, is it?

The main thing I like about Life is Strange is the sheer amount of detail within the environment, I mean the world-building is just insanely thorough. While it takes on a more realistic style that calls for this amount of interactivity in the environment outside of main gameplay, it is still something I would love to incorporate into our game. I think the biographical nature of the project would really benefit from opportunities to include details within the map that can tell this character's story without having to conform to the linearity of the gameplay. Other than that, I really enjoyed the soundtrack. Music seems to be important to the main characters of Life is Strange and the way the the soundtrack seems to just be Max's playlist or Chloe's transforms the game's world into one you can clearly see from their perspectives; music taste being a glimpse into a person's psyche, kind of thing. It also seems like the easiest way to incorporate music that isn't just instrumentals composed specifically to be the background music to more complex gameplay. Something to consider.

3D Scanning & Personal Items

In the first weeks of last semester's Major Project Research module, our group tested out an app Joud found called Kiri. While it was fun to see a quick and easy way to turn real life objects into 3D virtual objects with just our own phones, the scans were rough and not entirely accurate. However, Julie did suggest this incorporation of rough real-life textures mixed with those constructed in 3D modelling software could be a really interesting way to present our ideas -- e.g. symbolic of real and imaginary. We scanned things like my Polaroid camera and the stuffed rabbit I've had since I was a child. We also scanned me -- for funsies :)

Photo collage walls in bedrooms

Combining real and imagined spaces: Porter Robinson's Nurture + The Dream

As is evident in my repeated reference to it throughout my studies, Porter Robinson's Nurture website for his second studio album has been a major source of inspiration for my projects. nurtu.re featured 3D interactive multiplayer environments created by Active Theory as visual representations of the album's singles. Since it was released during the COVID-19 lockdowns, the site allowed people to connect with other players and explore the environments as a white line avatar. I really liked the way the environments reflected their respective music videos and overall contributed to an incredibly strong visual identity for the album and Porter as an artist. Not only did the interactivity immerse listeners in the music on a whole new level, but the multiplayer aspect allowed for a collective experience of the music in a time when live music events were not possible. Overall, I think Porter's work is an incredible example of the potential digital and emerging technology can have for enhancing the experience of music on a whole new level.

The first single from Nurture was Mirror and the corresponding 3D environment is by far the most detailed and complete experience. It features a walkthrough of the whole song following a virtual version of the forest path in the official music video. The scribbled, sketched artwork you can see as AR assets in the music video are also scattered throughout the path and animated at specific points in the song. Overall, this environment is the most accurate recreation of the music video in 3D out of all of the ones in nurtu.re.

Environment Walkthrough

Environment Images

Above is the music video to Something Comforting, the second single release off of Nurture leading up to the album's release. nurtu.re originally only featured environments for this and Mirror. The virtual environment is a field of grass with a few trees and rocks similar to the set in the video. In the website, there are origami birds flying around the scene and the yellow flowers blow away as your avatar walks through them.

Environment Walkthrough

Environment Images

3D Artists

Alexis Christodoulou | The Art of Dreaming Up A World

“I’m trying to bring nature into my work a lot more nowadays. We’ve invaded it so much as a human species, perhaps we could let it invade our digital worlds a bit more.”

Rebecca Lee | LEEBECCA STUDIO

“Rebecca Lee creates dreamlike surreal environments that take viewers on a journey into an idealized world. Through the suggestion of subtle movements and passing of time, she speaks to the ephemeral nature of a fleeting moment. She takes inspiration from architecture and nature to explore the balance between what we conceive as real and unreal.”

Mue Studio | MUE.

Non-linear, not concrete, intangible, disassembled memory space, exploratory virtuality

• memory garden, ephemeral rooms e.g. voice over tidbits of memories

• pete jiadong qiang e.g. rain going from right to left guides people, no collision https://store.steampowered.com/app/2884170/HyperBody/

• superliminal whitespace e.g. callback to levels

Following Tadej's suggestion, we're thinking the Dream level can be similar to Ephemeral's Memory Garden and Pete Jiadong Qiang's VR game, Hyperbody in that it's a less tangible representation of memory in a surreal space - disjointed, exploratory, non-linear, etc.

Hyperbody:

Ephemeral:

There were a couple entries in my journal that didn't fit in the City or House levels that I am considering turning into voiceover for the Dream. They are relevant in that they make references or statements that would be very meta in the video game - "Why do I feel like I am living through a character whose thoughts and feelings I am aware of but don't own?"

I also wrote something when I was trying to get myself to just sit down and write something introspective reflecting on this game. I was originally thinking of using the first three lines for a promotional video that switched between the canopy bed in the meadow and the house and just extended it, trying not to overthink what I was writing so that it could possibly produce a more honest, short concluding monologue.

The problem was there was no conclusion I could think of. The introspection that went into this project hasn't been as fruitful as I'd hoped it would be so it's ended up more of a rough and raw presentation of my innermost thoughts than a polished, wrapped up storyline.

Bed transition video test:

Location-based Storytelling: Mapping out place and time in the city design

The second level is a city made up of significant locations from each city I've moved to: London, Vancouver, and Honolulu. As I've worked on different documents to add to the game, I've had a better idea of what exact buildings/locations could be used to represent the time and place related to the objects from my memory box. I've used a combination of Google Earth and Google Maps screenshots as well as photos from my own photo album to create a map and other reference photos for Joud and Stanley to recreate for the game.

STEP 1

I asked Stanley for a birds eye view of the current city layout to give me a rough idea of the space.

STEP 2-3

Since I'm no cartographer, I have no idea where to start designing a map. So I started by sketching a general idea of where each area might fit. The result is a nonsensical map of scribbles but the vision is there.

Pink = Cafe Nero/Maggie's Corner

Purple = Mag One

Light Green = Golders Hill Park

Dark Green = Koko Crater

Brown = Band Stand

Navy Blue = Kaiser High School

Light Blue = White Rock Pier/Beach

Teal = Kuapa Pond/the marina

Yellow = Charlie Don't Surf

STEP 4

I took rough cutouts of the areas I wanted to include and overlayed them on the city according to my previous scribbly ideas.

STEP 5

Golders Hill Park - I began trying to match the landscapes and roads up with the existing spaces.

STEP 6-7

Koko Crater & Kaiser High School - Since the high school I graduated from was at the base of a mountain in Hawaii, I thought that landscape could match up best with the grassy area of the park.

STEP 8

Rosslyn Hill Rd. & Hampstead High St. - I added the roads across the street from my secondary school in Hampstead where the buildings Joud made are and connected them to the roads of the other areas already in place.

STEP 9

White Rock Pier - I decided to combine the waters of White Rock Beach and the water running through my neighbourhood in Hawaii to add a ocean front/shore side of the city.

STEP 10-13

I then traced over the main roads to make them clearer and used white to mark where each significant building checkpoint would be before labelling them in red. I tried to spread them out as evenly as possible. This is the final map I sent to Stanley for reference.

STEP 14

I added starred points in blue for reference photos of specific features in the area for extra detail.

Reference photos:

In-game City Walkthrough:

In-game Bird's Eye View of City:

Sorting Memory Box Items by Location

Celeste sent me some later diary entries where I had written a catch-up of sorts years later every time I found my diaries again. Since the only time I'd remember their existence was when I came across them packing or unpacking in another move, the entries were pretty regular updates between the ages of 14, 15, and 16 and structured similarly. I thought this was a perfect representation of past version of myself communicating with future ones and decided to recreate the pages for the city checkpoints. I then went through some of my more current diary entries and songbooks to bridge the gap of 18 and 19, providing a more complete story of my own development from my teenage years to adulthood.

Reading all of these now feels like I always planned to exhibit my innermost thoughts in this way. It's a perfect chronological timeline of my journey of mental health and identity formation that maps out my state of mind the same way I've mapped out this world representing my memories. I fear it'll be too wordy and disrupt the more fast-paced gameplay of the city but I think it says something important about my story that I don't have time to represent more symbolically.

As I added more documents and diary pages I kept changing my mind about what areas I wanted them to be in:

CHARLIE DON'T SURF (Vancouver, BC)

• (14 years old) June 25th 2015

• Cedarwood pamphlet

• Nonno's 84th birthday photo

• BC student withdrawal

NERO/MAGGIE'S CORNER (London, UK)

• (15 years old) November. 6/2016

• (16 years old) Saturday 02/06/18

• Dear Arwen letter

MAG ONE (London, UK)

• Note about Art homework

• 15th Birthday card

• Milton painting

GOLDERS HILL PARK (London, UK)

• Ex letter

• Photograph with ex

KAISER HIGH SCHOOL (Honolulu, HI)

• (18 years old) TUES 31/03/2020

• (19 years old) 04/07/2021

• Purple painting

• Cellophane tabs