Life is Strange

Then how is Sacrificing Chloe any better? By doing so, everything you've done up to that point, as well as all of Chloe's development and all the changes she went through, has been rendered moot. And sure, Max still has the memories, but she's the only one who will remember what happened. And like Tobias said, by giving up Chloe, you're basically saying "It was pointless to even try to rescue her in the first place".

Either ending I'm not a fan of, personally. The ideas are good, but the execution(Esp on Sacrificing the Bay) didn't really make me too happy.

You're second paragraph does a good job of summing him up. His use in the plot feels kinda minimal. All I can remember him doing that had some effect on the story was asking for his hard drive(So you can meet Nathan and Chloe in the Parking Lot), help you break into the Principal's office, and beat up Nathan. Beyond that, he feels as superfluous as the other minor students you meet.

As for his "Nice Guyness", the only moment in particular that really stood out to me was when you see him spying on Max's room in (IIRC) episode 2. That didn't really give off the best implications. And judging by Max's dream, I don't think the audience was the only one who weren't too happy with Warren's crush(I'm referring to when you see Warren's locker in the dream)

edited 19th Aug '16 2:39:10 PM by ScottPilgrim2013

My Tumblr "If theirs one thing I'm good at, it's blowing" Jesse Cox 2013

I'm a fan of the game's endings- you have to derive your own meaning from the events that unfolded. Whether it be a nihilistic take, or that the journey is more important than the end result.

My problem is that it completely clashes with everything else the game said and did.

"There's not a girl alive who wouldn't be happy being called cute." ~Tamamo-no-Mae

Like I said, I like the idea of the endings, but they weren't executed well and like has been said before, makes your choices pointless. I blame the budget and the episodic structure of the game.

I know people said that the endings are meant to be ambiguous, I'd like if we got to explore what our consequences did. Moreso with Sacrificing the Bay, since the ending feels lacking.

But while I may be Bae over Bay, I think that the Sacrifice Bay ending is worse then the Sacrifice Chloe ending. I'm guessing that's due to the latter having more work done to it then the former. Plus, while I may prefer the former, the latter somewhat works more thematically. Sorta.

However, I cared for Chloe way too much to rewind time and let her die in that bathroom.

edited 19th Aug '16 2:45:15 PM by ScottPilgrim2013

My Tumblr "If theirs one thing I'm good at, it's blowing" Jesse Cox 2013

This is when the ending becomes a sort of Space Whale Aesop, as I think someone mentioned earlier. All the disasters that happened afterwords are the result of Max using time travel; And indeed, the plot isn't even the result of a time paradox, which can be fun if done right. So the story essentially is "don't use time travel or else". Which doesn't really have much value in terms of storytelling.

But yes, while sacrificing Chloe does render everything you've done moot, not doing so kills possibly hundreds.

edited 19th Aug '16 3:43:55 PM by SilentColossus

A town of Arcadia Bay's size would have tens of thousands of people. With how sudden and large the tornado was, it's more like thousands upon thousands of people would die, since it's apparent no one had time to evacuate.

Of course we don't know for sure, so people can just headcanon "and no one died and everyone was happy the end" and what can you do? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

"There's not a girl alive who wouldn't be happy being called cute." ~Tamamo-no-Mae

Arcadia Bay is like, super tiny. Right? What you see in the start screen is the entire town.

edited 19th Aug '16 4:45:02 PM by SilentColossus

No. Ok, would a 'super tiny' town like Arcadia Bay have such a nationally prestigious school like Blackwell??? It honestly reminded me of my college town: Its big by population standards but doesn't feel like it and 'downtown' is pretty small.

Looks can be deceiving.

As for Warren, I get the impression he had a larger role, which was then made smaller when the fanbase didn't really like him. The writers have shown that they really measured fan responses for the next episodes so its not impossible.

In real life, no, it probably wouldn't. But this area of Arcadia Bay is also the only area we see. I recall a map also being shown, which included Chloe's house, the diner, and Blackwell, all in the same area that is visible.

Edit: I'm also wrong, now that I look at the wiki. Forget I said anything.

edited 19th Aug '16 5:39:30 PM by SilentColossus

Yeah, looking at the map on the wiki, My current college town (excluding the suburbs because that Bay map doesn't show those other) is probably the exact same size as the main area of Arcadia Bay we see. For the record, my college town has a population of around 70,000 people. They're spread across the town and into the mountains and hills and suburbs, but it still can feel 'small town' in the same way Arcadia Bay does.

How long had the fishing been going bad? That'd probably drive a good chunk of people to leave. There's also the family of that one asshole whose bunkers are selling like it's the middle of the Cold War, right?

edited 19th Aug '16 8:06:21 PM by GethKnight

And then, paradoxically, the consequences of the endings are reversed. The only way to prevent the terrible consequences of using time travel is to use time travel even harder. The only ending in which Max stops using time travel is the Tornado one.

If the endings were true to their setup, sacrificing Chloe would result in the tornado hitting the town with an even greater ferocity than it had before because sacrificing Chloe is just another attempt at abusing time travel to achieve an ideal outcome. There is no reason this abuse of time travel should be considered special and unwrite all previous time manipulations - especially since we clearly see in Episode 3's alternate timeline and multiple times through Episode 5 that using photo travel to change the timeline itself does not stop the weather distortions from occurring. They were still occurring in the Crippled Chloe universe and the "Max wins contest" one.

edited 23rd Aug '16 11:28:31 AM by TobiasDrake

My Tumblr. Currently liveblogging Haruhi Suzumiya and revisiting Danganronpa V3.

To be fair, Episode 5 pretty much goes out of it's way to make the connection that Chloe being alive is what's causing the Tornado (I specifically remember dialogue choices from Warren that say as such), and the longer she's alive the worse things are getting (which is why she "dies" almost every episode).

The issue is that the game doesn't explain why this is the case, as with everything else.

"There's not a girl alive who wouldn't be happy being called cute." ~Tamamo-no-Mae

No, Warren's conversation explains that Max using time travel a bunch is what's causing it. The idea that reality is rebelling against Chloe being alive when she was meant to die is entirely Fanon, invented as an attempt to make the Sacrifice Chloe ending into less self-contradicting nonsense.

It's a great Fanon, mind you. I think I might even have been the one that proposed it in this thread. But it's not what the game asserts.

edited 23rd Aug '16 11:55:10 AM by TobiasDrake

My Tumblr. Currently liveblogging Haruhi Suzumiya and revisiting Danganronpa V3.

no..? because by Sacrificing Chloe you also undo every other instance of Time Travel that Max used, which then unfucks up time completely.

like, I'm just being logical. You go from a ton of instances of time travel to zero after sacrificing Chloe.

edited 23rd Aug '16 11:59:59 AM by EpicBleye

"There's not a girl alive who wouldn't be happy being called cute." ~Tamamo-no-Mae

You undid every instance of time travel Max has ever done when you ratted out Jefferson to David on Day 1 too.

And when you prevented Chloe's dad from dying in the car crash.

But the tornado was still coming in those timelines. In fact, the tornado was coming before Max ever even discovered her powers; she had the first vision of the tornado before witnessing Nathan shot Chloe.

Ultimately, that Max is responsible for the tornado doesn't work with what is narratively shown, while using time travel to unwrite Max's repeated use of time travel contradicts what had previously been shown to be true. If Max could just go back and change the timeline to make the tornado go away, then the timeline where she wins the contest would be perfect and nobody would have to die for it. Literally the only reason she goes back again in this timeline is because no matter what she does to the past, the tornado is still coming.

Because time travel caused it, time travel can't stop it. The entire reason we're told the tornado is there is because time travel f*cks with quantum physics, and each successive use f*cks with it more and more. Max can only ever make the tornado worse with her powers, not better, because the tornado is a consequence of her powers f*cking up reality and thus it transcends timelines.

Until the end, when suddenly her powers gain the ability to fix it by doing the exact same thing that has been repeatedly shown to not work.

edited 23rd Aug '16 12:24:39 PM by TobiasDrake

My Tumblr. Currently liveblogging Haruhi Suzumiya and revisiting Danganronpa V3.

the issue with those other timelines is that they're caused by time travel- that is to say deviating from time's intended course.

the reason it doesn't apply for the final choice is because it means Max never used time travel at all, and thus time went along it's intended course- that is to say Max did what she would have without time travel powers (nothing). The other timelines required her to have used time travel, because she did something different from what she would have done normally.

edited 23rd Aug '16 12:27:38 PM by EpicBleye

"There's not a girl alive who wouldn't be happy being called cute." ~Tamamo-no-Mae

But Max did use time travel to make that timeline. Without using time travel, the natural course of events would have been Max discovering her ability to use time travel and using it to save Chloe.

Ultimately, it's impossible to divorce the Sacrifice Chloe ending from use of time travel. Which is why fans have latched onto the interpretation that the tornado had nothing to do with time travel and everything to do with the universe trying to put Chloe back in her grave, Final Destination style.

Which is supported by the way her life is threatened every time you turn around. Every episode, it seems like reality itself is trying its hardest to murder her.

My Tumblr. Currently liveblogging Haruhi Suzumiya and revisiting Danganronpa V3.

I'm not going to deny the fact that the game has serious issues with not explaining everything, much less anything

But Episode 5 directly points out to Max (and the player) that the only reason things turned out the way it did was because Max was doing stuff she wouldn't do had she not had the time travel powers- pointing towards the fact that her time travel powers are unnatural. (That was the whole point of the scene with two Maxes)

The issue is that the game explains nothing about her time travel powers (the most important being how she got them), so our interpretations of what's happening clash because both have their own sets of contradictions in regards to the story at large.

So while there is a lot of evidence pointing towards both interpretations, there's just as much contradicting them.

edited 23rd Aug '16 12:43:56 PM by EpicBleye

"There's not a girl alive who wouldn't be happy being called cute." ~Tamamo-no-Mae

Another problem is HOW are we defining 'the natural course' of things. Once time travel has been introduced, it is IMPOSSIBLE to remove time travel from the equation.

Because, if you really want to look at it, the 'natural course' introduced time travel in the first place. Max's natural reaction to someone being shot was to step out from behind the stalls and try to stop it... which caused time travel in the first place. Her traveling back to that moment and changing the events by forcing herself to not do anything is explicitly not being natural about anything.

That.

And another problem it has is that the finale is entirely based on supposition and guesswork from characters who don't know anything about how it works.

The tornado is Max's fault because Warren said it is. Warren who is not in the loop and has no idea how any of this works just comes up with the idea that maybe Max screwed up quantum physics and that's why the tornado's there.

Sacrificing Chloe works because Chloe said it would. Chloe who has never been present for photograph-based time travel and knows literally nothing about it other than that Max possessed herself that one time to tell her to go get David.

This plot point is communicated to the character through elaborate guesses made by characters who have no idea what they're talking about and are just rattling off ideas on-the-spot based off incomplete information, but the Sacrifice Chloe ending requires them both to be 100% correct - even though Chloe's half-baked conclusion actively contradicts Warren's.

Sacrifice Arcadia Bay sorta sidesteps this issue, in the sense that by not finding a way to resolve the tornado, the question of whether or not Warren or Chloe's theories were right ceases to matter.

edited 23rd Aug '16 3:32:35 PM by TobiasDrake

My Tumblr. Currently liveblogging Haruhi Suzumiya and revisiting Danganronpa V3.

I'm kind of shocked anyone thought that the universe would just stop going after Chloe once the Bay was destroyed though. With the assumption that the tornado exists to correct Chloe's existence, its already taken more lives than it ever needed to. What makes Max and Chloe think it'll just stop there?

What if the game tracked how often you used time travel to change your decisions, with the storm worsening in intensity depending on how much you abused it? Rescuing Chloe is irrelevant, just another instance of Max using her powers, and abusing time travel more won't fix anything. The problem is Max using time travel as a crutch for opening up, and the more she does, the more things break.

All while giving hints that the more you use time travel, the worse things get. Persuading players to only use it as necessary.

edited 23rd Aug '16 4:31:54 PM by SilentColossus

Difficult to pull off. You'd have to be really clear to players that doing so is a 'choice' and will affect things. And, in doing so, completionists are going to feel cheated from walking around and doing/seeing everything.

And, of course, some puzzles will be frustrating then. "I know I have to rewind and do something, but idk what I'm supposed to do and I can't rewind until I figure it out otherwise I'll have no more rewinds." Only solution to that is that the rules of what counts towards the 'too many rewinds' were to be more inconsistent and the player could be given unlimited amount of rewinds during puzzles and plot scripted rewinds where you have to rewind wouldn't count. But there'd be little way to cue the player in on that.

I think there's a moral to Max using Time Travel as a crutch to open up, but the game never directly addresses it. Sad because, with the way Rachel Amber seemingly charmed EVERYONE around her, I had her pegged to be another Time Traveler and a good Foil for Max.

edited 23rd Aug '16 4:59:00 PM by InkDagger

I was specifically talking about using time travel to change your decisions, rather than using it for puzzles and the like. But it was just an idea to get a discussion rolling. You're right in that it probably wouldn't work.

I'd have to rewatch the ending, but IIRC there's a body covered by a sheet. This implies both that people died, and that people survived^note unless you think that somehow this person's ghost covered their body with a sheet after they died. Plus Principal Wells and (presumably) Victoria, who are in San Francisco at the art event.

That’s the epitome of privilege right there, not considering armed nazis a threat to your life. - Silasw