Life is Strange

Pretty interesting video about Life Is Strange's development.

Worth watching for about the first four minutes; after that it just turns into gushing about how perfect and great the game is. sigh.

I've really gotta hand it to the developers for not backing down.

The original title (What if?) also lends itself to what the game is really about (What if i had done something different?) even if I don't think it delivered on that front. Still, Life is Strange is certainly the better title.

I really need to watch those in-game director's commentary videos. I'm doing just about everything to stay in this game's universe except looking at how it was made.

And that is why I like the Funeral ending - tragedy, loss. Every life Max has touched is now set back to zero. There's tragic irony in the fact that a future version of Chloe ultimately grows enough to stop blaming everyone else for her problems, to the point that she's willing to make the ultimate sacrifice - and she's not completely willing, she even warns Max to leave before she freaks - and then Max goes back and this Chloe never knew what the other one did. There's something beautiful in that tragedy. Beautiful and sad. Chloe died without knowing what her dad did for Max, without knowing Rachel's fate or ever reconnecting with Max. It's terrible, but human tragedy is always appealing for some reason.

Fair. They pretty blatantly ignore the explanation of how it works and mainly incorporate time travel to the necessity of the plot - I Hand Wave that as due to the story being coming-of-age rather than science fiction where they would (or at least should) try to explain and remember the rules. Why does she have the powers? Well...

Or it's not punishing her at all, it's punishing Max in the same way a tornado or a hurricane torments people from Alabama - maybe she's not being punished, maybe the tornado just gave her the chance to spend one final week with Chloe.. Max doing nothing isn't unnatural to the timeline because Chloe was supposed to die there, saving her is what disrupts things. Max's natural reaction would not have prevented Chloe's death because Nathan still has a gun pointed to Chloe's stomach - her natural reaction when Nathan walked in was to hide and wait and see what happened. Stopping the event in a "natural" way is still disrupting "destiny."

I've seen others question why "abusing the power one more time fixes everything" - she's fixing it by never using it at all. Time resets, there is now a timeline in which Max never traveled except for that one time - technically never.

The timeline is fickle...I guess...?

I had a similar vibe, but, not because of that. The twin moons seemed to indicate: A) time is royally f'cked, as Max speculates during the nightmare, and B) the tornado is supernatural, and no one had any way of predicting it or stopping it. All of these things were warning signs leading up to the tornado.

The vibe I got was when we first saw the second Max - until she opened her mouth and started guilt-tripping Max.

It's interesting you type that because for me it was the opposite - that was the point to me where I realized it had to be a dream. Max panics thinking that she's officially broken the timeline, but when she's speaking to herself the dialogue doesn't give me the vibe that the timelines are fracturing. Why would there be an alternate Max criticizing herself, the other Max would be equally terrified (it did feel like a missed opportunity to have some real timeline shenanigans though).

There was some unused dialogue that actually had the "real" Chloe talking to Max during the nightmare sequence (in the Dark Room, and arguing with the second Max in the diner) which seems to indicate it was supposed to be a nightmare, and Max's fear that it was a 25-timeline pileup was a red herring.

Kate died in my playthrough, and she appears in Max's dream as a symbol of Max's guilt - that, and the Jefferson sequence pretty strongly suggest the dreamlike nature over "massive time-hole in the universe."

Supernatural occurrence used to indicate that the laws of nature are being broken - a blizzard happens (winter coming early), birds are dying (instead of leaving for warmer climate), a second moon shows up (impossibru). Made sense to me. It's like any supernatural thriller where bizarre events happen for no apparent reason other than to scare the POV character.

Doesn't necessarily discount Max having a nightmare - when she rips up her Everyday Heroes photo the glossy wall of light seems smaller and more fractured. That's one of two times where the timeline has been severely damaged -

Oh believe me, I can gush some more. I'm listening to the soundtrack obsessively.

It's a flawed game but I enjoyed it more than I expected.

edited 31st Jan '17 2:01:25 PM by Soble

I do love how Chloe first mentions Rachel.

The moment she said that Rachel "met somebody who changed her life then vanished" the tropey-part of my brain said, "Shit, I bet Max is going to time travel at some point and bring her to some other point in time." But, would that be too obvious? And why would Max do that?

Episode 3 made this even more suspicious with Max finally making a big leap through time.

AH but no. When a teenage girl goes missing for six months and nobody knows what happens to her - [[RealityEnsues there's a pretty simple conclusion to make. I like how that subplot ended.

edited 21st Feb '17 11:38:04 AM by Soble

Sequel announced.

-hyperventilates-

Hella yes!

It won't be at E3, so I'm guessing a 2018 release.

Holy fuck. Confirmed, finally.

Wait a moment, they never said 'sequel', they just said 'another Life Is Strange' game. Wasn't there an agreement a while back that we didn't want a straight sequel? I don't know what more they can do with Max, and a sequel would imply choosing a canon ending, though with time travel there's ways around that.

New characters and new story might be the best way forward, I think.

It's still considered a sequel even if it's only thematically related.

I thought they were going to do a tv series?

I don't think so. No one call the Final Fantasy games sequels unless they are directly related, right?

Yeah, to me, a sequel follows on the story directly, or at the very least has the same characters. You can have a series without them being sequels (thanks for mentioning Final Fantasy, I knew there was an example of this I was just drawing a blank on :P)

I can name a few more. Fire Emblem, When They Cry, Gundam. Even things like James Bond movies and Hercule Poirot are usually not considered sequels, to my knowledge, despite actually staring the same character(s).

No need to be pedantic. It's fine to call it a sequel.

I've heard unrelated entries in a franchise called sequels plenty. That's why the "direct" qualifier can be attached to sequels; it establishes that this specifically continues the story from another entry when in a franchise where new entries have tenuous connections.

Like, Final Fantasy XII is a sequel to Final Fantasy X, while Final Fantasy X-2 is a direct sequel to X.

edited 18th May '17 7:00:54 PM by TobiasDrake

Jumping jiminy people, it's called a "spiritual sequel" and it's not a new concept .

edited 18th May '17 8:36:32 PM by Soble

I hate this game and I hate everyone who plays it

On the grounds that it refuses to launch for me

So the same reason I hate the entire concept of PC gaming, basically.

edited 19th May '17 8:38:21 AM by TobiasDrake

(2) Ohhhhh... yup, that's understandable.

Even if you get it to launch good luck getting the voices to sync up. Dontnod even admitted they weren't going to try and patch it again. All things considered I guess I was rather lucky, the Steam forums were full of people who couldn't launch the game or couldn't download an episode.

Normally, as a console player, I'd be internally smug and amused that PC players were having problems, but in this case I'm bummed that some people didn't get to play this game, or had a sub-par experience with it.

i played the whole game on a very shitty laptop i guess i was lucky that there werent any major issues

Prequel rumor.

So if the prequel rumors are true, we'd probably be playing as Rachel Amber, who really did have time travel powers.

Also worth noting that the rumors say that the prequel is made by a separate studio and is separate from the new LiS game that DONTNOD announced the other day.

Since when did Rachel Amber have time travel powers?

For a sequel, having a second time-traveller, in addition to Max (if she's back), could be interesting. Especially if they were an antagonist.