Life is Strange

Mind you, I don't understand why stakes always have to be raised.

Max is the kind of character who would always care if there's a single murder.

I do hope they go back to time travel and stay there, though. It's a perfect mechanic for save scumming and Chloe's backtalk just doesn't work.

edited 1st Dec '17 7:47:33 PM by CharlesPhipps

Backtalk just can't compare to time travel as far as dialogue option based-progression goes.

At the same time, I don't know what more you could do with it that Season One didn't already do. Especially if we've already put this whole 'USING POWERS IS BAD' theme. Living with the consequences of Arcadia Bay being destroyed? Ok, it fits the themes. Allowing it to happen again after that despite knowing the consequences? That's just going to push away people who already see the 'Bae' ending as already objectivly terrible to allow no matter how painful the alternative is.

Whatever they do, I hope they toss the "using powers is bad" theme in a barrel and set it on fire.

It's a stupid stupid lesson, especially for a young woman's coming of age drama.

I highly doubt that message was even intentional, but it's still a reason I prefer Bae.

Particuarly since there's no point to Max having the powers in the first place. We get the vision of the storm before Max has done anything and then she accidentally uses them to save Chloe's life. What was the point of the manifesting at all if she can't use them? Its 'DO NOT DO THIS COOL THING' in the most tragic way possible.

Hell, is it the powers being used in the first place or changing history? If its changing history, then I don't know how Max is supposed to change things back to 'normal' flow of time if she's forcing herself to NOT act based on information she WOULDN'T naturally know. You can't 'naturally' act on information you 'unnaturally' know. Its still changing time either way because time travel is an element you can't remove once its been added. If its the use of the powers, is there anything stopping her from rewinding time to the very beginning and just... not using her powers from then on and doing things without them?

It's the Fallout 3 and Mass Effect 3 situation.

They need an ending so they do "hero tragically dies" (or sidekick in this case) to seem deep and meaningful. Sometimes it works = John Marston in Red Dead Redemption dying is fine and thematic with the story.

The above two is obviously cheap and melodramatic as well as unnecessary.

edited 1st Dec '17 9:04:14 PM by CharlesPhipps

Max not having powers means Chloe dies in the bathroom thinking everybody she knows doesn't care about her and that her best friend abandoned her. Max never reconnects her and probably ends up permanently scarred.

With either ending, the girls get to spend one last week together.

Chloe still ultimately dies alone in that bathroom. She doesn't remember the week. Max does. Which kind of puts a bit of a selfish spin on the story to me.

There's still the issue of the storm vision appearing before Max has even done anything too. Also, the deer that later gets symbolized as 'Rachel's Ghost' appears in said vision when... those two events are pretty unrelated.

NICE RACHEL WE'RE HAVING.

Chloe getting shot without Max knowing it's her until after the fact is the mentally scarring one? Bullshit.

Going back to make sure that Chloe gets shot after spending a week of suffering and hellish nightmares like trying to save Chloe from getting run over by a train, facing a suicide attempt, saving Chloe's dad only to be faced with the choice to euthanize Chloe, followed by going back again and having to let her dad die again, then watching Chloe die, getting drugged, tortured, and almost murdered, then looping back multiple times to get things to go right, then getting mindraped by the universe? That's the permanently damaging one, and fuck the "she got to spend one last week of adventure with her best friend" bullshit.

One does not invalidate the other. Watching a best friend get shot in a bathroom vs spending a week in which several bad things happen to that same friend, either way, is damaging. But in the latter scenario, at least they reconnected. That's not bullshit. The game wasn't titled "Life Is Fair."

edited 2nd Dec '17 3:05:19 AM by Soble

Having one week with Chloe is cute, but why should Max or Chloe even get that?

I said it wasn't the mentally scarring one. Meant it as only mentally scarring one, but poor choice of words on my part, sorry.

All the endings would be mentally scarring, but from my point of view, the claim of "they got to reconnect for a week" first is willfully ignoring what those five days actually entailed and the impact it would have on Max's psyche going forward, and that timeline would be far worse for Max.

I know exactly what it feels like to lose a close childhood friend at the age who I hadn't had contact with in a number of years, and while no, I wasn't in the car with her, it still fucking hurt and is a major factor in issues I have today. And I would rather relive that experience, and its fallout, than have it be that we spent another week together going through the stuff of nightmares only to have her die alone anyways.

(2) I mean, why shouldn't they? Why should any random human being inexplicably receive superpowers or visions? Because it makes for an interesting story, possibly the discovery of the literal or the symbolic purpose behind their new abilities, a meditation on what conclusions the human mind will arrive at when given more power to act on its desires.

Look at Donnie Darko, which has a similar situation. ^note Why does Donnie Darko get to spend a day in an alternate universe that begins to fall apart due to strange phenomenon when he was ultimately just going to die anyway? If Donnie living in an alternate universe results in both universes dying, then why does the universe let him survive in the first place? There is no point to Max/Donnie receiving a "vision/power" because ultimately the story ends tragically, resetting things so that their powers ultimately don't "matter." But that doesn't make the implementation of those powers or the story that developed from their discovery pointless.

I wasn't trying to argue which incident is more traumatic. I was responding to someone saying that Max having powers is pointless. And arguing that getting to spend 1 more week with your best friend serves an emotional purpose.

edited 2nd Dec '17 6:31:44 AM by Soble

Donnie Darko is a non-interactive film, while Life is Strange sold itself as a choice based adventure game. It doesn't matter if Donnie lives pointlessly for another day because that's all the film is about, but DONTNOD wanted players to believe that their choices mattered when it came every major thing you did. We see Max making a real difference with her powers, like saving Kate from her suicide and finding Rachel's killer, so it isn't out if the question to think that saving Chloe is part of the premise as well. Then the ending comes along and makes all of that player choice irrelevant, because either path you take invalidates many of the choices you made along the way.

This is why it's worth criticizing Life is Strange for it, while I doubt anyone calls Donnie's death a bad thing.

I maintained the ending of the story should have been Chloe and Max doing their best to save as many people during the storm as possible.

Then Chloe coming to terms with Rachel's death.

It's not big and dramatic perhaps but it's sweet and well-written.

How can you know that would be 'well-written'? It's an idea you like, not automatically a bad idea, but that doesn't mean it'd be well executed.

I can't really argue that from a strictly mechanical point of view none of the decisions you make matter, but from a narrative point of view I still believe that the final choice you're presented with is a choice to have your previous choices matter or not.

Sorry, meant to say "Well written within the themes they'd presented."

I'm not trying to compliment myself but the writers of the previous episodes.

[Homer Doh]

edited 2nd Dec '17 1:52:07 PM by CharlesPhipps

The official twitter/FB accounts have put up an "Episode 3 coming soon" banner.

That would suggest an announcement in the next few days, and possibly the predicted release date of next week.

The full trailer's coming tomorrow at 5:30pm GMT / 9:30am PDT.

And sorry for the triple post, but here it is!

20th December release date, noted. I didn't watch the trailer, don't really want spoilers, I think, just skipped to the end to get the date :P

Well, my only takeaways from the trailer are:

• Frank's pretty cool.
• Chloe has the Chloe hair!

Oh, and the song in the trailer, if anyone wants to avoid watching it but still wants to hear it, is "All I Wanted" by Daughter.