RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Life is Strange game studio and DONTNOD Entertainment are releasing the first game in history featuring a transgender character. The announcement was made during Microsoft’s X019 event in London last week.
The game “Tell me Why”, which should reach the market in 2020, is set in Alaska and features 21-year-old twin siblings Tyler, who is transgender, and Alyson Ronan. In the story of the game, they reunited after having lived apart for ten years.
To launch this first playable LGBTQ character in games, the studio recruited a transgender to dub the voice and consulted specialized agencies to make sure that they would have a true representation of the character.
The story of the game is based on the assumption that twin siblings can easily share the same thoughts and memories, and these skills are used by players to discover some of their childhood mysteries.
“Players will be able to explore the memories of identical twins, access some important events from their pasts, and decide which memory to believe in. Basically, the choices made by the players will determine the strength of this bond between the siblings and change the course of the characters’ lives,” Florent Guilllaume, the game’s director, told the press.
The executive claims that Tyler is a captivating and accomplished character, whose story is not reduced to stereotypes.
“I think what they are doing is truly special. It is the first playable transgender character in a game. It’s amazing that we can introduce such a product to the market in a really careful and inclusive way,” said Aaron Greenberg, marketing manager for Xbox Games Marketing, in an interview with Mashable.
The game will be released for Xbox One, Windows 10 PC, Xbox Game Pass and Steam in 2020. There will be three chapters released in sequence.