It’s been a month since Life Is Strange dropped its second episode, and I’m still rolling the game around in my head. A lot has been made of the subject matter in the new episode, and I personally can’t stop thinking about it.

I should say right off the top, that this writeup is going to contain some spoilers. I’d normally like to avoid spoiling any part of this game, because I think all of its narrative decisions are so interesting that anyone who plays it deserves to go in blind, but this new chapter has caught so much attention that I think knowledge of what happens in the second episode must be pretty widespread by now.

The second entry into Life Is Strange’s episodic narrative pushes players further into the game’s emotional minefield. If the first episode’s choices seemed juvenile, sometimes even pointless, the second episode’s climax levels players with the revelation that even the smallest choices eventually add up. The series careens forward at a dizzying pace, and I’m eager to see where things go next.

But the game’s choice to cover tough ground hasn’t been universally praised. A lot of people find themselves struggling with the game’s decision to give the player agency over another character’s suicide at the end of the chapter. This is a fair criticism. Up until now, it’s been rare for video games as a medium to enter the realm of actual humanity in the way this game does. In a medium which is still largely reigned by Triple A titles where the body count enters the thousands by the time the player ever sees the credits roll, it’s rare that a single character’s death can shake you up as much as the possible death in this game does.

And I’ll admit, the suicide plotline is not a perfect one. Like everything else in Life Is Strange, this storyline stumbles a bit. If we pull back a bit, it’s easy see that the game itself has the same teenage awkwardity that it’s central characters struggle with. This is because the game occupies the rare space between the video games of our childhood, and the video games we yearn for as adults. It tries, quite nobly, to tell a story that is not simply “brawny action hero battles a million guys and saves the day.”

Its developers, writers, and more than likely its entire team, definitely have their hands full constructing a flesh and blood world with a beating heart, rather than a soulless arena for players to thoughtlessly shed blood in. And while it occasionally does fumble through its own Juno-esque dialogue and teenage social hierarchies, I think it succeeds at almost every juncture. Every time I dip into this game, I’m in a world. Even if limits me to two or three linear locales at a time, and even if I can rewind through most of my choices and bend most of the game to my will, it gives me a sense of place, and a sense of person.

Max, more than any other protagonist in recent history, is one I care about. Sure, she’s beholden to whatever I decide to make her do, but the game’s narrative is held together so tautly that every new decision makes me really think, not just about what I’d like to do, but which decision is likely to best serve Max Caulfield.

And this suicide angle is no exception. The game balances the spinning plates of the supernatural, the whirlwind youthful rebellion of Chloe Price, and the precarious social environment at Max’s art school. When you add in that Kate Marsh seems to be fundamentally at risk from the onset of Episode 2, the game forces you to make hard decisions about how best to navigate Max’s situation.

And so, you actually care. Regardless of how many problems one might have with its failings (which I personally think, are few), I think you can hardly play through the opening moments of the game without feeling connected to Max in a way that other video games simply can’t offer right now. You feel connected to Chloe, and connected to Kate. You feel inextricably linked to all of Max’s friends and enemies.

So when one of them contemplates suicide, you get a level of emotional carthasis other games can’t provide. And while I’ll readily admit that the game doesn’t handle the subject matter perfectly, I’d have to also contend that there’s no perfect way to handle such subject matter. Suicide is dark, and messy, and everyone’s experience with thoughts and actions of self-harm is different. Does the game slip up in allowing you to prevent the suicide from happening? Maybe.

But would the suicide matter as much, from a purely narrative and mechanical standpoint, if it happened in the background, giving the player no control over it? No. Then it would be a moment in a television show, and not a video game.

I don’t think there’s any solution to the emotional and spiritual problem that this episode of the game will present for some people. I can sympathize with anyone who this experience might be too harrowing for. And I can understand the criticism that issues of self-harm should not be gamified.

But, in a medium that struggles so much to make changes in the way it presents its plotlines, its character, and its core mechanics, I think a step in this direction, even one that falls flat on its face, is necessary. DONTNOD has made a bold move in trying to tackle this subject matter in the form of a video game, and even if you think they’ve failed (I don’t, personally), you have to respect them for moving the medium forward even a little bit.

The game’s narrative is far from perfect. But its creators’ willingness to move forward into completely unsure territory should be more important to us than the rough edges they might struggle with as a consequence.