Square Enix Reveals New IP Life is Strange, Coming to Xbox 360, Xbox One, PS3, PS4, and PC

Final Fantasy publisher Square Enix today announced a new IP called Life is Strange for consoles and PC. From Dontnod Entertainment, the makers of 2013 action game Remember Me, Life is Strange is "wholly different" to anything Square Enix has done before in terms of gameplay and narrative, the publisher says in the game's announcement on its website.

Life is Strange--coming to Xbox 360, Xbox One, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, and PC--will be released digitally using an episodic model. Every new chapter will build and evolve on the choices you made in the past episode, Square Enix says.

As for the game's story, Life is Strange stars a college-aged woman named Max Caulfield who returns home to discover that a fellow classmate has "disappeared under mysterious and rather uncomfortable circumstances." In her effort to find the truth, Max syncs up with an old friend named Chloe. Max discovers at this point that she has the ability to rewind time.

According to Square Enix, every single texture in Life is Strange was hand-drawn. In addition, every action you take will kick off the butterfly effect, an idea that posits that even the smallest of changes can have dramatic and significant differences later on. But of course, Max can turn back time. Square Enix teases, "With the power to rewind time, what would you change? And would it turn out to be a change for the better or worse?

Square Enix did not announce any kind of release date for Life is Strange, but pointed out that the game is on display this week at Gamescom for media. We're checking the game out and you can read our impressions in the days ahead.

The protagonist of Dontnod's last game, published by Capcom, was also a woman. Before landing at Capcom, Dontnod shopped Remember Me around to other publishers, which didn't want to work with them because they thought having a women in a leading role would limit the game's sales potential.