[Life Is Strange Mods
Melvin Amey
It didn't occur to me that people might mod Life Is Strange [official site] - I guess it seemed a better fit for Tumblr cosplay and fanfiction and fan art so I didn't really think about people tweaking the original until the Max Punk mod turned up.
The idea is that it converts Max's clothing, makeup and hair to present her more in line with the teen emo aesthetic. You can now imagine her listening to a lot of Evanescence and (and I'm aware of how badly I'm showing my age here) having a Livejournal. Actually, I think Max would probably have an Instagram and a Tumblr and maybe be part of all manner of classic camera communities ALSO she would probably be a really active part of the lomography community.
There are a few problems here which I'll quickly run through, but overall I think it's really interesting to see Max this way and it's not actually at odds with her character. There's a mild spoiler in one of these concerns so stop reading now if you want to go in totally blank.
Thing 1: The release blog note thingy says the eye makeup makes Max more attractive and that makes me feel kind of awkward because the creator's gender is given as male. I like the idea of Max as a female character and with interesting female friendships so I'm wary of a mod which makes her different and states that one of the reasons for those differences is making her more attractive.
I've experimented with emo styles of makeup and clothing before and attractiveness was part of the equation, but I was also the person in charge of the look - I had my own agency. In games and in mods this isn't about Max's agency because she's a character not a person. I guess I'm okay actually using the mod because it feels like I've chosen to use it because it's appropriate to how I view her character but the line about attractiveness did stick out and bother me given how I view Life Is Strange's strengths. There's also a chance it might just be a translation issue as the sentence is slightly clunky and the modder states they're from Russia - maybe it's language clunkiness. Interesting to think about where the agency lies when deploying optional mods though.
Thing 2: It's worth noting that Max not wearing her twee outfits and original hair and makeup means there's a moment well into the game which will lose some of its impact, as well as a couple of lines which, if memory serves, will make a bit less sense.
You can also make some points about showers being disastrous for eye makeup when you're going for the panda-eye look and the effect hair dye has on pillows but it's a game and that side of things is where I'm fine suspending my disbelief - god, imagine how tedious it would be if you had to reapply black eye makeup as often in a game as in real life.
Overall I just really like that this thing exists and I'm hoping that more people will maybe add mods to share how they think Max would have dressed. I'm not interested in massive changes or Saints Row-style characterisations. I want to see other iterations of teen girl - the subtle variations in hair and makeup and dress that denote particular phases on the way to forming an identity.
I am pretty well versed in Skyrim modding and I've learned over the years how to fix a myriad of CTDS and other glitches.... However something new has been happening with my Oldrim.... which never occured in SSE from what I remember.... Before I start I'd like everyone to know that I have over 550 mods running on my game, many of which have been merged into multiple ESPs to bypass the hard coded 255 limit.... I currently am at 249/255 ESPs too and I dont really lag ingame.... I also use Loot and Wyrebash too. However recently when I installed a mod... I went to try to load my game and it said mods where uninstalled and I knew that was odd as I didnt uninstall anything... so I go to load it and it CTD.... I then tried to make a new game and it loaded like normal however it gave me the default Bethesda intro... Which was strange as I run Alternate start.... I also noticed that only a fraction of mods seemed to be working on the cart ride down to the block. So I disabled that mod and I reloaded skyrim and it worked perfectly and everything was fine and when I went to make a new character it put me in the alternate start cell. I then decided that it could simply be a bad mod or it conflicted with my load order and so I ignored it then I went to install another mod... and the same result happened.... and I did the same and it fixed then I proceeded to try a third time and similiar results... With 3 different mods all repeating the results I can assume its not a single confliction or error that causes this issue... Is there a secret hidden limit to how many mods one can run even if you merge mods together? Or could it be the product of an outdated mod or something... I run Oldrim as I hate updating the game for every creation club addition. Well if anyone else has had this issue, still has this issue or knows a solution.... please comment below as I am truly stumpped and I hope I ant the only one cursed with this weird bug. Well have a great day and thanks in advance to anyone who reads this and has ideas, answers, or comments.
Edit: Yea I think your right on point.... My active mod list is exactly 581 and it works... and it seems anything else over that, results in that error... Is ghosting easy and would it be possible for merged ESPs and mods or?
Well, assuming you've got Wrye Bash downloaded and running, in the main window right-click where it says "file" at the top - under where you see the "Installer", "Mods", etc. tabs. Then click "Auto-Ghost" and give it a second to work.
795a8134c1