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Maxine (Max) Caulfield is a fictional character appearing in the Life is Strange video game series. She is one of the protagonists in the video games Life Is Strange and its prequel Life Is Strange: Before the Storm. She is voiced by actress Hannah Telle.

Maxine Caulfield
Life is Strange character
First appearance	"Chrysalis" (2015)
Last appearance	"Life Is Strange: Coming Home" (2021)
Created by	Dontnod Entertainment
Voiced by	English Hannah Telle Japanese Kumi Tanaka
In-universe information
Gender	Female
Family	Ryan Caulfield (father) Vanessa Caulfield (mother)
Significant others	Chloe Price (determinant) Warren Graham (determinant)
Home	Arcadia Bay, Oregon

Character Development

The premise of Life is Strange is centered around the rewind mechanic idea, which developer Dontnod Entertainment had already explored in their previous game Remember Me. In order to enhance this mechanism in Life is Strange, the lead character (Caulfield) was given the ability to rewind time. The developers fought hard for their vision to have a female protagonist in the game, and were rejected by seven publishers before signing with Square Enix. According to writer and co-director Michel Koch, Caulfield’s ability to rewind time is meant to complement her coming-of-age story, as themes of looking backwards and wanting to change the past are explored. Additionally, Koch stated that Caulfield’s ability to rewind time is also used to contrast with the real-life problems the characters face. The voice actor for Caulfield, Hannah Telle, auditioned in July 2014 and was then offered the role.

Appearances

Video Game Series

Life is Strange

Life is Strange follows Max Caulfield and her return to her hometown of Arcadia Bay, a fictional city in Oregon. After she has a strange vision of the town being destroyed by a storm during her photography class taught by famous photographer Mark Jefferson, Max discovers she can rewind time after doing so to save a student from being shot and killed by Nathan Prescott in the bathroom of the prestigious Blackwell Academy. Max is then harassed by David Madsen, the school security guard who acts suspicious of her. After those incidents, Max speaks to Principal Wells and has the option to report Nathan or keep the truth hidden. Max then has various interactions with friends and classmates across campus before finding out that the student she saved was Chloe Price, her estranged childhood best friend. After reconnecting in Chloe’s home and finding out that Chloe’s best friend Rachel Amber has gone missing, Max and Chloe visit the lighthouse from Max’s vision. At the lighthouse, Max confides in Chloe about her newfound time powers as well as her catastrophic vision.

The next day, Max learns about her friend Kate Marsh’s poor mental health due to an explicit video of her that has been circulating the school. Following that, Max meets up with Chloe at the diner run by Joyce Madsen, Chloe’s mother. There, Max proves her ability to rewind time to Chloe, prompting Chloe to take them to a junkyard to experiment with Max’s ability. Max eventually becomes overwhelmed from the use of her power, gets a nosebleed, and faints. She then wakes up and is confronted by local drug dealer and old acquaintance of Chloe’s, Frank Bowers. He harrasses the two of them before being scared off by Max with Chloe’s gun. Max then returns to the Blackwell Academy campus and spends time with her friend Warren Graham before returning to her dorm to find Kate Marsh about to attempt suicide with the student body watching. Max tries to use her ability to rewind time to stop Kate from jumping off of the dormitory roof, but finds it is temporarily not working, so she makes an attempt to talk Kate down. She then speaks to Principal Wells and administers blame for the incident.

That same night, Max and Chloe break into the school after dark and find clues about Rachel Amber and Nathen Prescott in Principal Wells’ office. The next morning, the two continue their search for clues. With the help of Max’s time powers, they break into Frank’s RV. There they find various pieces of information as well as evidence that Rachel and Frank were in a relationship that was hidden from Chloe. This severely upsets Chloe and prompts her to blame all of her adversity on her father William’s death. She also expresses anger at Max for moving away and barely contacting her after his death. After Chloe drops her off at her dorm, Max discovers a new facet of her time powers. By concentrating on a polaroid photo from the day of William’s death, Max returns to that moment and stops the tragedy from happening. She then returns to the present day but in a timeline altered by William’s survival. Max goes to Chloe’s house and finds William still alive, but Chloe paralyzed from the neck down.

After spending the day with Chloe in the alternate timeline, Max uses the photo to reverse her decision and let William die. She is then returned to her original timeline, in which she and Chloe continue to gather clues. They are able to rummage through both David and Nathan’s belongings, which leads to an altercation with Nathan. They then receive a clue from Frank, which gives them enough evidence to begin piecing together the clues they have gathered. They are led to an old barn owned by the Prescott family and discover a hidden bunker that is set up to be a dark room. Within the dark room they find files with photos of drugged victims, including Kate Marsh and Rachel Amber. This leads Max and Chloe to find Rachel’s body buried in the junkyard. Chloe, driven by rage, grief, and the assumption that Nathan Prescott killed Rachel, goes to the “Vortex Party,” a party hosted by Nathan and his friends taking place in the school pool. Max accompanies her to the party and asks those inside about Nathan. Max and Chloe then leave the party after Chloe receives a text from Nathan saying that he will destroy any evidence of Rachel’s body. Upon arriving at the junkyard, Max gets drugged by an unknown assailant and then watches Chloe get shot in the head. The assailant is then revealed to be Mark Jefferson.

Max awakens inside the bunker with Mark Jefferson but uses her time powers to escape through a photograph to the class she was in before she saved Chloe at the beginning of the game. She then is able to promptly get Mark Jefferson arrested. Max also wins the photo contest in this timeline and flies to San Francisco to see her work displayed in an art gallery. While at the gallery she calls Chloe and learns that a storm is about to destroy Arcadia Bay which prompts Max to travel back in time through her gallery photo. Max then gets stuck traveling through various different realities and dreams that showcase the importance of both her friends and the town as well as her friendship and love for Chloe. During this sequence it is made clear to Max by Warren that her time traveling caused the storm that is threatening to destroy the town. Once she wakes up, Max finds herself by the lighthouse with Chloe surrounded by the raging storm. Max then has to decide to either travel back in time through a photo she took right before she initially saved Chloe in the bathroom and let her die in order to save the town, or to watch the town and her friends be destroyed by the storm in order to save Chloe.

If Max chooses to save Chloe and destroy the town, the two stay by the lighthouse during the storm and then drive through the destroyed town and ultimately leave. If Max chooses to save the town and kill Chloe, Max has a moment with Chloe that can either be romantic or platonic in the current timeline before she travels back and watches her death. Then Max gets Mark Jefferson arrested and sees how the timeline is different without Chloe. She then attends Chloe’s funeral alongside her family and friends.

Life is Strange: Before the Storm

Before the Storm is the prequel to Life is Strange. It takes place three years before the initial game and follows Max's best friend, Chloe Price. Max does appear in the prequel, though she is not the protagonist as she was in the main game. She is mentioned in Episode 1: Awake and Episode 2: Brave New World in letters written to her by Chloe Price as well as in Chloe's dreams. In Before The Storm's bonus episode, "Farewell," Max is once more a playable character. The bonus episode follows Max in the days leading up to her family's move to Seattle. Chloe doesn't know that Max and her family are moving and Max has to decide when and if to tell her. As the two sit in Chloe's room, they listen to an old recording of them talking about a buried treasure they buried earlier on in their childhoods and decide to try and find it. Soon after finding the treasure (a time capsule), Chloe's mother comes in and informs the girls that Chloe's father had died in a car accident. Days later, Max attends the funeral and her family leaves for Seattle, leaving Chloe to grieve alone and Max devastated. Max leaves Chloe a tape recording, which Chloe finds upon returning from the funeral, the content of which changes depending on the choices made throughout the game.

Life is Strange 2

Life is Strange 2 is a sequel to Life is Strange. While the game is set in the same world as its predecessor, its story focuses on a new set of characters. Max Caulfield only makes an appearance via a photograph in the game's fifth episode. She is also mentioned briefly in conversation by Chloe's stepfather.

Life is Strange: True Colors

Max Caulfield does not make an appearance in Life is Strange: True Colors.

Comic Series

The Life is Strange comic series follows Max and Chloe in the timeline where Max chooses to save Chloe and sacrifice Arcadia Bay. Max and Chloe are living in Seattle and befriend a band for whom Chloe does artwork. Max and Chloe find themselves returning to Arcadia Bay after it becomes apparent that Max can no longer control her time powers. The two return to Arcadia Bay and Max realizes that she is drifting in and out of different realities, a phenomenon that she refers to as “flickers.” After a conversation with Chloe about their romantic feelings towards each other and multiple experiences in different realities, Max decides to fully jump into a different timeline and abandon her original one in order to stop the chaos of the flickers. Doing so puts her in a timeline where Rachel Amber is still alive and in a relationship with Chloe.

Max then lives in that timeline for years and becomes close with Rachel and Chloe, who are unaware of her time traveling capabilities. Eventually, Max meets Tristan, a man who possesses the ability to become invisible. This prompts her to begin to make efforts to return to her original timeline with Tristan’s help after revealing to Chloe and Rachel the truth about who she is. Tristan is able to jump to Max’s original timeline and communicate with Chloe there that Max is attempting to return. Max then accompanies Rachel and the Chloe in her current timeline on a cross country road trip that coincides with a cross country road trip the Chloe in her original timeline is taking. Through Tristan, Max and her original Chloe are able to communicate with each other and Max begins to prepare herself to make the jump back to her original timeline.

Reception

Life is Strange reached both commercial and critical success and was highly praised for its character development in particular. Max Caulfield was ranked by Polygon staff as one of the best video game characters of the 2010s partnered with Chloe Price. Though Chloe is often considered the more pivotal character for the story arc, there is interest in seeing more of Max’s story. While Chloe is featured in Before the Storm, Max’s only other appearance in the video game series is in a photo in Life is Strange 2, and that moment is only seen if the player has imported a save in which they chose the ending that saves Chloe’s life in the original game.

Some critics have argued that Max's character and development feel generic and inauthentic, perhaps because she is a female character created by male writers. Jean-Maxine Moris, a creative lead in Life is Strange, argued against this criticism by stating that extensive research was done before creating the characters in the game and that it is backed by Square Enix because it was the only publishing partner that did not try and change critical aspects of the game such as the gender of the main characters.