Prime Video has an exciting video game adaptation lined up, but it is hard not to see how it already has a major challenge to overcome.
For a long time, live-action video game adaptations were seen with immense skepticism, and rightfully so. However, in recent years, the perception surrounding them has slightly shifted, especially on the small screen after the success of video game TV adaptations like The Last of Us and Fallout. Owing to this shift, it is hard not to look forward to another video game TV adaptation lined up on Prime Video.
However, unlike its predecessors, this game adaptation faces a unique challenge that almost seems impossible to overcome.
Prime Video’s Life Is Strange Adaptation Is Exciting But Faces 1 Major Challenge
Life is Strange‘s time travel mechanics would translate incredibly well to the small screen, especially because it focuses less on science and more on a fantastical portrayal of choice, consequence, and emotional causality. However, the problem lies in the game’s depiction of choices. Its core identity and the entire personality of the central character is shaped by player agency.
Throughout the games, players are allowed to become active participants in the main character’s time travel adventures, allowing them to shape every decision that ripples into a new future.
Since there is no objectively correct path for Max in Life is Strange, one player might have chosen a path for her where she sacrifices everything for Chloe. Meanwhile, someone else might have led her down a path where she understands that she must change the future even though the cost is too high.
Prime Video’s upcoming adaptation of the game cannot give this choice to viewers. Owing to this, the events it will eventually choose to canonize could leave viewers divided. Some viewers might eventually feel alienated by this approach because they might have felt emotionally attached to a different outcome while playing the game.
The Life is Strange live-action adaptation cannot tread the same path as Black Mirror: Bandersnatch on Netflix and provide audiences with choices like the original game. However, it can still please more viewers with one creative decision.
Life Is Strange’s Live-Action Can Overcome This Issue In 1 Way
For starters, the live-action adaptation must stay true to the game’s atmosphere by featuring everything from its quiet “feel good” sequences and melancholic soundtrack, including songs from artists like Syd Matter and Jose Gonzalez. To fix the time travel issue mentioned above, Life is Strange‘s TV adaptation can portray a “what if?” timeline by capturing how each decision only creates a new fork in reality instead of erasing the old one.
The rewind tool in the game serves more as an immersive tool to undo mistakes or explore alternate storylines.
While the show can obviously not portray the same, it can still effectively use Max’s ability to go back in time to highlight the stakes of her choices and show how even small decisions spiral into vastly different outcomes. It will still be challenging for Prime Video‘s adaptation to please all viewers, but it could work well if it embraces the game’s vibe and depiction of the nature of consequences.
