The new Life Is Strange game is finally out. That means that after 10 years of hoping and waiting and yearning for it to happen, Max and Chloe are finally back together again. Sure there was the comic book series about their adventures post Bae ending of the original game but that would require reading so those don’t count.

Before I even got home from the game store, I was overcome with emotion. I mean right there in my passenger seat is Chloe Price. I condemned an entire town to death for her and I would do it again in a heartbeat. Then on the radio, a melancholy indie rock song from a band I’d never heard of started playing and I just started bawling my eyes out. All my depression came rushing back to me. So the game is already off to a great start. After all, if it doesn’t give you severe clinical depression then it isn’t a real Life Is Strange game.

Once I got home, I was still too emotionally wrought to pop the disc into my PS5, so I had another good cry for about twenty minutes, then watched Notting Hill while eating an entire pint of Ben & Jerry’s Cookie Dough ice cream and pining for the lost love of my youth that I’ll never get back. Deck Nine have absolutely nailed it in this regard. I was a bit worried after Double Exposure left me feeling disappointment instead of existential sadness but it’s a victory for the studio. After three hours of owning this game I was an emotional wreck and I hadn’t even installed it yet. That’s exactly what every Life Is Strange fan wants in a video game.

By the time I had finally composed myself, it was quite late in the day and I was exhausted. When you bottle up your emotions for years at a time, only letting them out when a Life Is Strange game comes out, it takes all of your energy to let that much baggage go. So I finally put the disc into my PS5 and let it install while I slept. It was the best sleep I had in years because I dreamt of all the happy new memories that Max and Chloe would make now that they were finally reuniting. 

That’s when I woke up and it dawned on me. If I press play, there was a good chance that hardship would befall Max and Chloe and I couldn’t let that happen. Not again. They don’t deserve that. They deserve to be happy. To ride off into the sunset. As I stared at my PS5 home screen, and looked at the Life Is Strange: Reunion tile, all I could think about was the fact that if I hit the X button, I would be condemning them. Condemning them to more stress, to more drama and to more sadness. Sure, maybe the game would have a happy ending. Maybe through my in-game choices I’d be able to ensure they get their sunset. But the smallest things in Life Is Strange can cause ripple effects in the story that you don’t realize until it’s too late. The only way to know for sure that I was playing the game in a way that ensured their happiness was to use a guide. But that would mean opening myself up to spoilers.

In the end, I just couldn’t do it. I refused to put these fictional characters through any more fictional hardship. They’re too important to me. Even thinking about it now gets me choked up. So in the end I uninstalled the game. I never started it up and it’s peacefully sitting in its case on my shelf next to the rest of the series. I am now secure in the knowledge that Max and Chloe to me will only exist in peace. Trapped in a stasis where they will simply continue to be happy because I never opened the game to eventually cause their sadness. What a wonderfully emotional experience this game provided me. Truly the climax that the series deserved.

RATING: If BetterHelp is a 10, and Dying Alone is a 1, I rate this game a Prozac.