Review by C.J. Bunce
I admit I had a bit of a deja vu when I opened Life is Strange: Welcome to Caledon University, a new tie-in to the Life is Strange video game series, available from Titan Books now here at Amazon. That’s because it’s a continuation of sorts of Life is Strange: Welcome to Blackwell Academy (reviewed here) and the life of Max Caulfield and Chloe Price, the focal characters of Life is Strange, Life is Strange 2, and more recently Life is Strange: Double Exposure and Life is Strange: Reunion. This new book is a college guide like you’d find upon getting accepted to college and like the Academy book, is presented as a personal used copy, overlaid with handwritten notes, doodles, and sketches from both Max and Chloe. Max teaches at the University, and you’ll learn even more about her now.
This is both a souvenir of the latter games and an in-universe guide with deeply fleshed-out world-building that fans of the games will want to add to their video game roleplay experience.
Caledon University is a fictional U.S. college based in Vermont, with a history steeped in the world of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, filled with Gothic architecture and influences. Where Blackwell Academy felt like Miss Quill’s classroom in BBC’s series Class, specializing in the Sciences and Arts, with an undercurrent of the supernatural as you’d find in Hitchcock’s The Birds, Carpenter’s The Fog, David Lynch’s Twin Peaks, or Stephen King’s seaside Haven, this college campus feels just like Belgrave University in the supernatural TV series The Order (reviewed here). In fact if you like that TV show, you probably should check out the world of Life is Strange.
Written by Chris Farnell, who wrote the handbook on Star Trek: Lower Decks (reviewed here), this book is as realistic as an actual college introductory catalog, albeit an abridged version (real catalogs are several hundred pages with complete descriptions of all the courses, etc., and this hardcover volume is 160 pages). Farnell’s achievement captures all the fun of the flavor we saw in The Art of Spider-Man: Homecoming (reviewed here), another yearbook-type creation filled with insight into specific characters via interactions in those scribbled margin notes.
My favorite sections provided insight into the people who run the college, along with the college’s extensive art collection, including statuary, all explained with meaning tied to the game’s story. The book includes campus maps, information about various departments, discussions of the journalism program, and a look at the campus observatory and planetarium. Back to the comparison to The Order TV series, the books also provides insight into this college’s secret societies and the mysteries played out in the later Life is Strange games.
Life is Strange: Welcome to Caledon University, the latest tie-in to the Life is Strange video game series, is available now here at Amazon. It’s a fun look at campus life with a supernatural twist and a great jumping-on point for the video game series.
