Life is Strange

For me, it was about what happened during the story, not what happened at the end.

Eh, "journey not the destination." If I'd sat down to think about it for a moment I might have predicted the game would end with Chloe VS The Tornado. I was a bit too emotionally consumed by the death and misfortune to be that speculative, though.

I can agree it does make the tagline, "this action will have consequences" a tad ridiculous. But see I did predict that a small studio like Dontnod wouldn't have the resources to make 5 or 6 different endings to compliment the variety of choices made throughout the game, so maybe that softened my criticism of the ending. Anybody looking at a narrative-driven, voice-acted game expecting 10 different endings is lying to themselves. It'd be an incredible feat, and also a ridiculous expense due to voice-acting and at least 10 different scripts to bring the story to ten different, equally satisfying conclusions.

I wouldn't say they were terrible endings unless they failed to evoke any sort of emotion. And I mean, if you weren't a little bit moved or depressed after all of that then the condition of your soul might be called into question...

edited 11th Sep '17 11:50:41 AM by Soble

The main problem with the endings is that nothing you did all season long mattered in them.

Not even that. I could buy having similar endings if we knew that what we did continued on. But, both endings undo most of your work pretty explicitly.

Saved Chloe? The bay is destroyed and probably most of the cast is dead. I really don't care what the developers say on 'Player decides who died' in that ending; bullshit. Its too much distruction to just pass off 'Oh, but no one died. Its ok'. Even if most of them survived, most of the choices will be undone by simply the destruction caused dwarfing everything.

Saved the bay? We time traveled and things are changed too dramatically to make anything the matter. Kate probably won't commit suicide or even attempt to if Nathan has been caught, for starters. And anything with Chloe is out the window from the get go.

edited 11th Sep '17 1:08:15 PM by InkDagger

Yeah that's what I meant to say, but the exact wording escaped me.

You know, I'm a believer in The Needs of the Many in general, and I still find Save the Bae to be the more interesting ending. I'm not even sure if saving the town is the more utilitarian option - they repeatedly bash you over the head with the fact that the place is already half dead tornado or no tornado, and the town seems to have kind of a toxic influence on most of the people in it, exemplified by the Prescotts in particular. Harsh as it sounds, but maybe the Arcadians getting out of that dump and starting from scratch is the best thing for them; adversity builds character after all.

For why I always choose Chloe over Arcadia Bay, I'm going to paraphrase something Rantasmo said: Screw fate, the bullshit inconsistent time travel rules, and whoever decided Chloe's life was some cosmic ransom to be held. Choosing Chloe also has the added bonus of flipping off the Bury Your Gays trope, so it gets a from me.

Aaaaaaaand scene. Let's Play done. Definitely as much of an emotional roller coaster as advertised. I'm not the only one who thinks the Nightmare Sequence had a Silent Hill feel, am I? There's even a scene where Max stares at her reflection in a grody public restroom.

Looking back the more I think about the nightmare realm the more it pisses me off

it makes literally zero sense. it has no place in the story, it doesn't reinforce any major themes (well, except for one thing but i'll get to that), it's a huge confusing clusterfuck that's there to look cool and nothing else. The Time Crash trope is cool but all it accomplishes in this case is adding to why the effects of Max's time travel makes actually no sense

The one thing it does make abundantly clear is how oh-so perfect and important chloe is. there's one really cool scene in the time crash, where Evil Max^note which also makes no goddamn sense rightfully points out that Max wouldn't have actually done any of the things she did (standing up for Chloe, trying to stop Kate's suicide, tracking down a murderer, etc) if she didn't have the time travel powers to back her up- she would've just been a wallflower like always and just let those things happen, and her constantly stopping that completely set time off it's rightful course. Cool! But, of course, miss perfect chloe shows up and tells evil max that she's wrong about all that and it doesn't matter that chloe would've totally let those things happen had she not had the backup of the time travel powers.

...i've really soured on the game having finished playing it.

I felt the opposite, I didn't think Evil Max had a point at all and I was kind of uncomfortable with the fact that the game was insinuating she might.

I'll make it easy and say both are wastes of time. The nightmare is Padding made to lengthened the episode, a clear sign of budget issues. Alternate Max is yet another attempt to guilt trip the player on their choices, and most attempts it falls slat because you have the ability to play as nice as you can be with minimal power use and you get the same conversation everytime.

Anyone ever hear the theory that the Prescotts were the true cause of the supernatural stuff, whether deliberately through dark magic of some sort (Sean sure sounds like a cult leader in his letters) or inadvertently by disturbing that Indian Burial Ground? Advocates of saving Chloe really like this theory, I've seen.

First I've heard of it, but it sounds ridiculous honestly. It doesn't make any sense other than try to excuse Max/Chloe as the source of the disasters.

edited 12th Sep '17 11:19:22 AM by EpicBleye

That sounds super cliche and way too... 'Muahahaha. I'm so evil'

I like the 'Maybe magic, Maybe mundane' approach to the time powers. It felt right for the tone of the story and it didn't need to be explained. It shouldn't have been attempted to explain it.

The source of the powers, maybe. They definitely needed to explain the point of Max having them.

Well, if they just avoided the whole 'Chloe needs to die anyway' thing, then I could forgo having an explanation at all. I could just accept it as part of the story's premise or a metaphor or something. Carrie isn't a story where here ability to move things with her mind needs to be explained; its not really relevant.

But, yes, with the whole 'Here's some super awesome powers! Don't use them EVER' Pandora's box thing does kind of make the question relevant. Though, maybe more in a Plot Hole-Did you guys even think this through? kind of way.

I've heard there were some significant cuts from Episode 5 due to budget constraints. Perhaps there'd have been a more detailed explanation in some of the cut scenes?

In the original trailer for Episode 4, Nathan says. "the storm is coming, you're all going to die!" This line was cut from the final release. That's where that theory comes from.

It makes some sense because of how ominous Sean Prescott's letter was, and it's curious how would Nathan specifically say "the storm is coming" when the only storm we know about is the one from Max's dream.

The story completely abandons this train of thought, however. I'd like to think it was purposely ambiguous.

edited 12th Sep '17 7:50:50 PM by Soble

it was probably abandoned because they realized that he shouldn't know about the storm

Alternately, it was planned for the Prescotts to be in on it but the angle fell prey to the budget constraints.

I honestly don't even see how that's a possibility. The Prescotts were manipulative and evil because they were rich assholes that could do whatever they wanted, not because they manipulated the dark arts. Like, that actually makes no sense? Why would they summon a storm to destroy the town they own?

Two possible motives I can see would be buying up all the real estate cheap and/or forcing everyone to move into their buildings and pay rent to them.

So I guess... this was probably from that conversation with Skip that I, uh, skipped?

edited 12th Sep '17 9:29:09 PM by Soble

Half way through playing (at last!), but I've been spoiled on the ending anyway, so;

The way I see it, the endings are basically a choice between trying to fix your mistakes (sacrifice Chloe, representing the entire "good intentions lead to unexpected consequences" issue — summed up as a good choice in the way pre-character development Chloe is clinging to the past instead of moving on) vs. accepting them and moving on (accepting the natural disaster will hit the town and making the best of things — including not retconning everything that happened in the game and taking the good with the bad).

Incidentally, since Life is Strange 2 is apparently going to focus on a new cast/story, what do you think the inevitable Previous Player-Character Cameo will be like (I'm voting for Professional photographer Max showing up with at least some blue in her hair, with Chloe's fate/the canon ending left ambiguous)?

edited 13th Sep '17 12:56:48 AM by Bisected8

Well, as far as I'm aware but its been awhile, its been theorized that Season 2 will have a new cast and setting while leaving Chloe and Max's ending as is. I don't think it was confirmed so though.