Life is Strange

I'm not arguing with you about it being an absurdly common cliche. It's the fact it's a show where characters are murdered all the time, though. You're 100% right about Tara's death being permanent as something that wasn't necessary, though. My point being that the problem was the genre of the show and the game.

Which does apply to LIS because the trauma and moodiness means there's a distinct lack of happy endings. And it being one of the few games which are gay friendly leads to a bad combination.

It also leads to my solution about the game: We need more gay characters than one or two.

Stephanie was a step in the right direction but she just vanishes from the plot.

edited 6th Jan '18 1:13:30 PM by CharlesPhipps

As I said in my second paragraph, though; just saying "that's how the show's meant to work" doesn't really excuse it because how it works is completely ultimately up to the writer.

• Horror? Still up to the writer if they want a Kill Em All or Final Girl, or a Dwindling Party (or, if everyone lives with mental scars). The point is to be scary.
• Murder Mystery? Could be one body, could be dozens. Could turn out the victim never died.
• No happy endings? Still up to the author how the unhappiness manifests.

You can cite the fact that someone could die in a given work, but you can't use that to argue a specific character must die. That's still up to the author.

edited 6th Jan '18 2:03:23 PM by Bisected8

According to the leaks, Steph was supposed to have a bigger role in episode 3. Or, for people who don't want to get trapped in tumblr:

edited 6th Jan '18 2:04:11 PM by Discar

I had a feeling.

...and this makes me skeptical that any of this is correct.

Extra scenes between Rachel and Chloe, maybe pad out the week and better develop their relationship/friendship nstead of Chloe magically becoming Rachel's bestie over a 24-hour period? Sure.

Sera being the source or somehow related to Chloe's dreams... eh, I could see it. Really, that scene where she and Chloe finally talk is weird. But if you hadn't told me there was cut content I would have accepted it.

More Steph and Mikey? Actual resolution to Steph's "I'm in lesbians with Rachel Amber," subplot? Yes.

But the rest sounds unnecessary. If the eventual GOTY/developer's commentary brings up this cut content, I'll take it back.

edited 7th Jan '18 5:06:28 PM by Soble

I could see it going either way. On the one hand, everything is kept very vague. On the other hand, there are a lot of supernatural implications that don't even get directly mentioned. It does feel a bit like they realized at the last minute that Chloe couldn't discover anything supernatural, because if she did it would contradict the first game.

Just some wishful thinking, but I'm hoping in the next games they try something different with the supernatural element instead of keeping it vague all the time. Otherwise, it could easily leads to Deus ex Machina, making it a Franchise Original Sin.

My hope would be that there are no more Life Is Strange games, to be honest. I enjoyed Before The Storm, but I think now that the last episode fell a little flat, and I think we're forgetting that Dontnod themselves have moved on. There is some buzz about their next game Vampyr, but it's still a bit under the radar as far as I've seen. I've said before that what I like about Dontnod is they're always trying something new, and I hope they can keep on doing that as long as they can. I believe we also agreed in this thread some time back that if Life Is Strange was to continue, it should be with new characters and little or no connection to previous games.

Well they confirmed last May that they've been working on Li S 2 since the release of the box edition. And in an interview from 2015, when asked about the possibility of a season 2, the developers straight up said a season 2 can happen, but Max and Chloe's story is done.

There were never going to be more games centered around Max and Chloe, we just knew there'd be a sequel.

Some people think they might cave to fan pressure for more Max and Chloe stuff.

Ah yeah, the sequel thing actually rings a bell now. I really hope they don't give in to fan pressure though, I feel like they've already done enough pandering with Before The Storm in making it possible for Chloe and Rachel to become romantically involved; like I've said before, the first game gave me no impression that they were in a relationship prior to her disappearance.

My brain got ahead of my fingers at this point and I've possibly torpedoed my own argument. I was going to say even if they were together at some point, then they probably broke up before Rachel's disappearance, else Chloe would have had a far worse reaction to finding out Rachel was doing whatever she was doing with Frank, and if they did break up you know that's going to be a mess; I find it hard to imagine that two such passionate and emotional and, in Chloe's case at least, not completely stable people could have stayed friends after a breakup.

Where I torpedoed myself is I don't recall Chloe ever saying she and Rachel were friends at the time of her disappearance. It's possible they could have drifted apart, but Chloe still cares despite that.

I dunno, I've sorta lost my thread, I could be just talking shit.

I think fans will accept no Max and Chloe—as the devs said, that story is done—but we probably need time travel again. Otherwise, what connects it to the previous games?

Technically it could still involve Chloe and Max, just not as central characters.

Of course, IIRC, they said there would be a new cast and setting, so...

That's what I'm saying. They can't have Max and Chloe because that would contradict either one of the endings. They can't have it in Arcadia Bay because that would contradict one of the endings. All that's left to connect the sequel to the original is time travel. They might be able to get away with giving the protagonist a different supernatural power, but there has to be something.

So in the original, there are a handful of hints that the Prescotts may be aware of the supernatural goings-on, including some rather terrifying deleted lines from Nathan. Some people think this was a remnant of a scrapped plotline that was cut due to the budget woes. How would that have gone, I wonder?

Given LIS has one of the all time least popular endings—who cares about contradicting it?

I think that's a bit of an exaggeration...

x4 Technically they could bring back Max and keep her away from Chloe/the bay. The only thing the writers need to worry about is the fact that she could only have experienced one ending.

Chloe could still appear as The Ghost without clarifying if she's still alive.

edited 8th Jan '18 8:29:42 PM by Bisected8

You know, reading these lyrics and watching the scene simultaneously, that implied sex scene isn't sounding so far-fetched now...

edited 10th Jan '18 6:11:14 PM by Soble

So apparently there was unused dialogue where Chloe asks Max, at the end, to save her over the town. Wonder what would've triggered that?

My guess is it would have tied into the same friendship meter that determines if Chloe replaces Rachel's picture in her cellphone.

Clearly a failed Backtalk Challenge.

edited 10th Jan '18 7:40:54 PM by Soble

So here's a... rather dark theory I've heard multiple times now:

None of the game is real apart from the first few minutes up until Chloe is shot for the first time. Learning that her best friend was not only murdered, but it happened right in front of her without her knowing at first, sent Max into a psychotic breakdown and she hallucinates the rest. That's why she spontaneously gains amazing superpowers that she uses to save Chloe and improve the lives of everyone around her, has a lifetime's worth of fantastic adventures with Chloe in the span of a week, thwarts dastardly villains who all coincidentally turn out to be people she knows, and so on.

edited 20th Jan '18 2:50:34 PM by HamburgerTime

She has the dream of the storm during those first 10 mins.

Also... that interpretation is nothing new. Or, should I say, its the same interpretitive lens that's put on EVERY STORY EVER. Harry Potter? Day dreams trying to work though his abusive childhood. The 'It Was All A Dream' trope really should be expanded to include 'It Was All A Mental Breakdown'. Sometimes this can turn out a good product, like American Mc Gee's Alice is for me. Othertimes, its... just universally depressing and doesn't offer much outside of that.

I'm not trying to go off at all and I apologize, but I have never seen the appeal of 'Let's take a happy story and reinterpret it as the most depressing thing we can think of and undermine the entire story'. It just... doesn't offer anything usually.

I wasn't saying I agree with this interpretation, just that I've heard it several times recently.