With “Life is Strange: Reunion” and the coming-of-age story “Mixtape” taking up so much of my brain space in recent weeks, I’ve been thinking a lot about why this series has lasted so long, and why I keep coming back to it.

With six full-fledged games on the books and a long-threatened TV show on the way, I simply cannot deny the hold it has had on narrative games, online fandom, and me. I’m not even that big of a cheerleader for the most popular aspects of the series, so it’s as confusing to me as it likely is for you.

Remastered

A few years back, Deck Nine put out a remastered version of “LiS 1” and the prequel “Before the Storm,” and I got them alongside the release of “True Colors.” That spin-off game ruled, but the remastered launched in a rough state. So bad, in fact, I never ended up actually playing through them until now.

So I booted up episode one, “Chrysalis,” earlier this week, and wrote down some notes as I progressed through this beefy introductory chapter. There’s a whole lot of table setting to do, but I think the introduction to the time rewind mechanic is handled about as gracefully as is possible for 2015 in video games. After a fairly brisk and moody intro, I’m fairly bought in.

Well, except for all the dialogue. That part is truly miserable.

Did a cop write this?

While I don’t expect a proper commercial video game to be written authentically by teenagers, it was clearly written by people with no hold on youth culture at all. They’re constantly hung up on such exciting words as “hipster,” “selfie,” and, for some reason “hippie.” It feels like a bunch of grandparents whining to each other about kids these days.

To this point, Max’s inner monologue does a whole bit at one point about kids always being on they phones. Max, someone who literally just turned 18, is shaking her head at the youth of today. Well, the youth of the mid-2010s. It sucks, and it makes Max seem absolutely insufferable in spite of her being the player character and the protagonist. Such an odd choice. Such an annoying choice.

There’s also a whole bunch of popular media name dropping, which is annoying, but it’s mostly believable from pretentious teens at art school. They really want you to know they took history of photography classes and read film forums. But this Square-Enix game somehow has the audacity to provide a defense of “Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within” — one of the most soulless creations of all time. How dare they?

“Would Man Ray call them selfie portraits?” All you can see are the whites of my eyes now.

And yet

Exploring Chloe’s house again feels like walking around the childhood home of a friend from high school all these years later. The layout is burned into my brain, and there’s something weirdly exciting about snooping through people’s stuff; virtual or not. The walking sim part of the game still rules even when Max’s commentary does not.

There are also little moments here and there that make me really feel affection for this dweeb. She covers up a mean note aimed at a quiet girl from her class. She dances like Commander Shepard. She’s extremely empathetic about a classmate’s unplanned pregnancy and decision to abort.

Max is a good egg even if she makes me grit my teeth sometimes.

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Image credit: “Life is Strange Remastered”