Headscratchers / Life Is Strange

• Life Is Strange: Before the Storm
• Life Is Strange 2
• Life Is Strange: True Colors

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• Why doesn't Max even TRY to at least confront the bullies who are bullying Daniel?
  • Because they're jocks and she's a tiny girl, not to mention she doesn't have her rewind powers. And when she does she has bigger concerns.
  • When Max sees Daniel getting beat up, it's at the very beginning of the game, when she's already been established as rather withdrawn, prone to getting distracted, and not very proactive when it comes to pursuing her desires or reaching out to other people. Getting her powers enables her to become the kind of person who will try to stop bullying when she sees it.
  • Yes. Also, if Max talks to one of his bullies during the Chapter 4 party, she will call them out. Like all other party interactions, this one is meant to show how much she has grown and changed over the past week: the Max who can, say, answer Victoria's insults in kind is not the same Max who stood idly by as Kate was being hurt in episode 1.
• Why can't Max travel to the future?
  • Because it hasn't happened yet?
  • Why would she be able to? We don't even know how she can go to the past to begin with, much less have enough knowledge to call out the opposite not being possible.
  • I had the impression she partially could; if you press the space bar during a scene you already played, it awfully looks like you wind forward.
• How is Chloe able to steal, keep and play with a gun, if David has surveillance installed all over the house? And doesn't it make it pointless hiding when he tries to enter Chloe's room?
  • He doesn't have a camera in Chloe's room, he hasn't been home long enough to review the tapes, and even if he did see Chloe take it, calling her on it would require admitting that he's got hidden cameras, which he clearly isn't willing to do.
    • I'm pretty sure he did have a camera in Chloe's room; I specifically noted that as one of the places I saw on the monitor. However, watching the tapes would be pretty time-consuming; even at 20-1 speed, it would take over an hour each day to review the footage, and there are a whole bunch of cameras. David would have to watch them on an as-needed basis.
    • There's a camera in a vent in a bedroom, but it's not Chloe's. If you watch the feed cycle, it eventually loops without ever showing Chloe's room. David's paranoid, but he clearly isn't willing to install hidden cameras in his teenage daughter's bedroom.
• Why does the principal start asking Max questions about her reasons for being in the bathroom? Him jumping to the conclusion that she's a troublemaker requires some weapons-grade Insane Troll Logic, and why doesn't Max simply point out that classes are over and that his accusation thus makes no sense? It feels the game needs drama somehow, and can't come up with a way that'd make sense to introduce it.
  • Given the possibility that he's a drunk and the fact that Max was the last student out of the building, being somewhat suspicious of her actions isn't implausible. He's also reacting to David's ridiculous interrogation in a less angry manner.
    • Also, in one case, Max is accusing Nathan of having a gun, but the Principal suspects foul play from her because he automatically believes Nathan over her because he wants funding for the school. In the other instance, Max is clearly hiding something, but while most people will blow it off, since David called attention to it, the principal is now suspicious.
  • Why didn't Max just say she had to, you know, go to the bathroom (what else would one do in the bathroom, right?) instead of using the lame "female trouble" excuse? I mean, if you're on the toilet and you gotta do a #2, you can't just stand up and run as soon as the alarm goes off, right?
    • You can't just stand up and run if you're having period issues, either. What makes one excuse weaker than the other?
    • Because one is simpler and more daily.
    • Cause one's not gonna stop for a long time, you can shove some toilet paper around there. Also the principal and the security guard are men.
  • Max is looking pretty damned nervous. Her face practically screams "GUILTY!"
• In Chloe's house, two of the choices with consequences are the decision to save a bird by opening the window, and making sure that you leave no evidence of searching the house so David doesn't catch you. It is still possible to leave no evidence even if save the bird, even though the bird won't leave the room after you let it in, and you're forced to shut the window trapping the bird inside. This implies that, paranoid as David is, he somehow didn't notice a freaking bird in his bedroom.
  • The "evidence" in question is evidence of looking through the garage. It's not out of the question that Chloe would let a bird into the house. If he suspects her of going through his files/noticing his cameras, he might try to kick her out of the house. In three of the choices you make in Chloe's room, David finds out you were in the house anyway—what really matters is that he doesn't find out someone noticed his surveillance fetish.
  • Saving the bird leads to it appearing near the lighthouse later for Max to take a photograph of it - it's likely the bird just flew out of the room before David even went in there.
• Let's start near the beginning. How, after seeing Chloe die in the bathroom and first using her rewind powers can Max go back to the classroom? One point made out by the game is that when you rewind, you sort of stay in place. This sort of after-image thing goes after you, so it doesn't look like you're teleporting everywhere (I guess). So how did Max make it back to class? I don't think she was actually dreaming that time.
  • Her powers don't function consistently. She can see the tornado no matter where she is several days ahead, but rewinds normally when she does it intentionally. Max didn't rewind on purpose that time.
  • During her major jump in Episode 3, Max seemingly subverts the rule that she stays in place when travelling through time by moving her consciousness into her hold body five years ago, bringing her list of powers up to three: moving her body back through time, seeing visions forward through time and sending her consciousness back into her old body.
  • Given new powers seem to manifest as needed, it's probable that there is some kind of conscious control involved. Her powers might be a lot more dynamic than presented, and Max is simply limited by inexperience and a reluctance to experiment too much.
  • That event was actually an anomaly. It was different from the normal uses of Max's powers. It wasn't a rewind (as she ended up in the classroom) and it wasn't a photo-based travel. The event when Max reached out after seeing Chloe being shot is what activated her powers and what caused the world to glitch. This glitch probably caused her being sent back to the classroom, just as it caused the eclipse, double moon, and tornado.
  • It's possible that the initial bit of time travel actually works like her photo thing. The photos act as a focus for distant or otherwise unclear memories, but she may be able to travel to moments she remembers clearly without them. It could be that she just isn't able to do it at will because she's still kind of fumbling along with her powers and doesn't actually understand how to use them.
• How do you lock someone inside their dorm room from the outside?
  • Even though Juliet says that she locked Dana in the room, I don't think the rooms have any locks. Juliet is just using a shorthand for "I'm barricading the door until I'm satisfied with Dana," and it's somewhat clunky.
  • Take a good look at the doors. The have old-school locks. Take the key and you can lock it from either side, without the key, you can't unlock it from either side.
  • It's common in Europe for doors to lock in such a way that the person inside cannot get out if they don't have the key. Seeing as DONTNOD is based out of Paris, France, it's possible this was something lost in translation.
• You might think that leaving your room unlocked in a dormitory of a school half of which students hate your guts might not be the best idea in the world. Goes for both Max, whose room can be trashed by Nathan and/or Victoria in Episode 2, and Victoria, who does so twice, even though the value of the stuff she keeps in her room probably exceeds that of the other rooms combined.
  • It seems quite possible that the rooms may not even have locks, which isn't safe either.
    • They do, if you look closely.
  • Max might have been too preoccupied to even think about Victoria and Nathan getting revenge on her. She's recently discovered this new power of hers, she's met up with Chloe after so many years apart and she's concerned about Kate too. Additionally, Max may have tried locking her door in the past only to have Victoria get in there anyway; she's not the kind of person to let a locked door stop her. But it's more likely she was too busy thinking about other things. As for Victoria? She's rich, it's not as if it would be hard to replace anything that got taken or broken. She also more than likely knows that her fellow students either worship her or simply know that messing with her things would be an extremely bad idea.
• Spoiler warning for Episode 3: Chaos Theory I don't get the ending... Did Chloe end up in the accident over her actual father, only that she lived?
  • We don't know. That's the point of the cliffhanger.
  • It is a different accident altogether. Just as the new timeline was forming, we got to see some old Chloe family photos to change. She looked fine in most of them, until the very last one in which it is her birthday and she opened a present with a car key. I think the implication is that sometime after that she went driving on her own and had her accident.
  • For the record, in the next episode Chloe says some asshole T-boned her in the new truck.
• Why when you get to steal the handicapped fund, why can't you just take some of it and not all of it? Why just take what you need?
  • Because you'd be stealing half of it, minimum. It's not like she'd be skimming a couple hundred off the top.
• Why did Max leave her best friend and her best friend's family behind in Arcadia Bay without ever calling them, texting them, or contacting them in any way at all for five years, even when she arrived back in town?
  • Leaving wasn't her choice, and that kind of thing happens.
  • There's a reason why nigh every other character in episode 1 (and her subconscious self in episode 5) comments on how shy and passive Max is. Anxiety is her character flaw: she can't enter the photo competition for fear of being rejected, she can't stand up to Daniel's (or her own, or Kate's) bullies, and one of the reasons she loves her powers so much is because they allow her to show initiative without living with the consequences. It's an expression of this flaw (and Max's sadness over William's death) that she can't bring herself to face Chloe. Even though moving wasn't her fault, Chloe is (and would have been) irrationally angry at Max because of it, something Max probably knew.
    • In the bonus episode of Before the Storm, she doesn't even tell Chloe she's leaving until a few days beforehand, if then. Chloe knew already, but it demonstrates that not knowing how to handle difficult conversations isn't exactly new for Max.
  • The lack of contact may have to do with William's death, especially considering that the alternate timeline Max, while she was still distant, seems to have sent Chloe at least few more letters and what not. Max was grieving herself, since she was close to the Price family, and on top of that didn't know how to be there for Chloe when she couldn't actually be there. After a while with little to no contact, she would have started to feel guilty about it and might have continued to avoid contact because she didn't know how to address that. As mentioned, anxiety is a significant part of her character.
  • In addition to the other reasons, maybe she realized subconsciously that her feelings for Chloe were more than friendly, and wasn't able to handle that yet. And then after too much time went by she would have felt too awkward to break the silence.
• In Max's first journal entry, she states that Blackwell is "a unique and famous private school for seniors." How then, does everyone seem to know each other? How did everyone know Rachel, who was a year older, in the same year as Chloe, and disappeared last school year? It isn't just them living in a small town, because the conversation with Hayden in Episode 1 implies he (along with Victoria at least) was in the Vortex club last year. Daniel also says he had drawn Rachel before, and Evan has pictures of her in his portfolio. What gives?
  • Maybe they know each other from their old school(s) — or, like you said, just from around town. You bring up the Vortex Club, but in fairness, I don't think we're ever told how admission to the Vortex Club actually works. Maybe they accept kids from more than just Blackwell if existing Vortex Club members can vouch for them.
  • Likely not supremely reliable, but in Max's nightmare (the endless hall sequence), she gets transported to what seems to be the dorms a year earlier, with the map indicating Rachel's room, as well as a few current students, including Victoria and Dana. Perhaps Blackwell allows some privileged students to attend two years rather than one?
    • Chloe used to attend Blackwell Academy before being expelled, Before the Storm shows that Chloe attended 2+ years before LiS, as did Victoria, Rachel, Nathan and Dana, as of episode one., even though she’s only in the year above Max. It’s been suggested elsewhere it’s a normal 4 year high school but with a two year senior programme. And
• In episode 2 there's a grumpy guy who wants to look out the window. What doesn't make sense is why he doesn't sit near any of the windows. You may be asking, "But wait! What if the seats were full when he came in?" Well, why didn't he just move after the people left?
  • The trucker claimed to have been driving for a long time, so maybe he was too tired to move to a new seat, or Max was annoying him so much that he was just complaining to try to get rid of her. Alternatively, while Joyce wouldn't give the man a beer, if it is possible that Frank brought his own beer in Episode 3, then maybe the trucker had his own too and was drunk as a result. Or maybe there was simply a mistake in the game.
  • Diners generally frown on people moving around wherever they want after being seated, especially if it's one person moving to occupy a table with multiple seats. That was probably at the tail end of the breakfast rush, which would make them even more reluctant to let him move around.
• In episode 3 you can spill beer on Frank. The thing is, in the previous episode someone asked for beer and Joyce says, "This is a diner! Not a bar!" So where did he get the beer from?
  • He probably knows to bring his own beer to diners so he doesn't end up like beerless guy from episode 2.
• Why when after you kill Frank and his dog why doesn't Max keep the stuff that they took from him, then rewind. That way, you can keep the stuff.
  • Same thing goes for when you don't have a gun and Frank pulls a knife on you and then gets stabbed. Once he gave you the stuff you could've had Max take it and then rewinded so that the whole confrontation never happened.
    • It's given to/taken by Chloe. Max never had it in her possession.
    • That would be a reason for Max to, you know, take it.
• There's a girl at the Vortex Club party who is wasted and is knocked out on the couch. Why doesn't Max do anything for her?
  • At this point Max is in a hurry to find Nathan and has more pressing matters to attend to. She can't rewind for extra time either, since that would undo whatever she would've done for the girl.
• What happens when you go into a ripped photo? Like, say Max wanted to go into her photo that she ripped up in the girls' bathroom. What would happen if she focused on it and went in?
  • Max's power likely isn't literally going 'into' a photo, but using it as a focal point for her time travel, to go back to a specific time and location to make changes.
  • It's pretty clearly implied that she cannot do it. This is why she burned one and ripped up another.
• Why did Jefferson and Nathan kill Rachel Amber? The fact that there aren't other missing persons reported implies they usually don't kill the girls and they let Kate go. Though admittedly, one of them isn't broken up when she attempts suicide.
  • Chloe notes that Rachel seems awake and pissed in one photo. He Knows Too Much would be in full effect.
  • In Episode 5, it turns out that Nathan accidentally gave Rachel an overdose. They weren't planning to kill Rachel, but they had to hide the body in order to protect their "operation".
• In Episode 4, Chloe and Max get a text from Nathan at the Vortex Club Party, yet they stole his phone earlier in the chapter. Although it's plausible he got another - it clearly says it's from Nathan, rather than any 'unknown number' (like in previous episodes).
  • The one they stole is his second phone, for the stuff you don't want on your main phone. Nathan uses his regular phone for the texts after that point.
  • Chloe and Max also uncover a note at some point from Nathan's father, urging his son to use the flip phones for certain matters. This is a common strategy criminals, such as drug dealers tend to use. Buy a cheap prepaid phone, use it for a while, then destroy it and purchase a new one. He could easily replace a lost one.
    • That's not from Nathan's father. The note is from Jefferson, who has told Nathan only to contact him through burner phones, which can't be traced.
• If Jefferson and Nathan have killed Rachel why did Nathan mistake Max for Rachel at the diner in Episode 3?
  • On that note, why didn't he seem more shocked or angry about that? He seemed quite... content and surprised. Maybe even happy.
  • Do we know that Nathan was directly involved in the murders? All we really know is that the Prescott family had a bunker where the victims were brutalized and photos were taken of them, and that Nathan's truck had been there. Maybe Nathan was expecting Rachel to be like Kate, and it was Mr. Jefferson who murdered her and buried her in the junkyard without Nathan's knowledge.
  • Nathan is clearly involved with Jefferson's scheme to some degree. It looked as though the picture where Rachel was in the junkyard (the one which clued Chloe in to the spot where she was buried) had her posing with Nathan while lying on the ground. Since Nathan is on some pretty strong pharmaceuticals before he mixes them with recreational drugs, it's entirely possible even despite this he doesn't know or remember what happened to Rachel. If that's the case, then seeing her alive would be both a shock and relief.
  • A guilty conscience could have made him want to believe it was her.
  • Nathan is acting very odd in general through that scene, it's quite possibly he's either tripping on something or having a psychotic episode. Expecting consistent logic from him in general is a little optimistic, that's Nathan's whole issue.
  • Max was wearing one of Rachel's outfits, so it's entirely possible Nathan had seen Rachel in that outfit and was being sarcastic to make a snide remark about it.
  • Nathan temporarily mistook Max for Rachel because of the clothes, and he was happy to see her because, well, he didn't want Rachel to die in the first place. It was an accident. He feels bad. That's pretty much it.
• Let's talk Episode 4's Ending. Obvious spoilers: Just how did Mr. Jefferson get to the Junkyard so fast!? Max and Chloe tore out of there in the pickup ASAP while Mr. Jefferson was finishing up his speech and announcing the winner. He would had to have run out of there like a bullet, jump in his car and take off like a rocket to get there.
  • It is heavily implied Jefferson is aware that Chloe and Max have caught on to his plans, or at least know where Rachel's body is buried, hence him making the remark about Chloe and Max seemingly being on a mission. He probably hurried after them in his car while Victoria unknowingly distracts the crowd with her speech.
  • He probably did. Maybe when he encountered them and they asked where Nathan was, he had a feeling they were onto something. He gave the speech so nobody would notice his disappearance, then left calmly, hopped in his car, drove off... and then immediately floored it to the junkyard. His car is likely faster than Chloe's.
  • Rewind powers maybe?
  • He's rich af and Chloe drives a junker. If anything, it's more surprising he got there AFTER them.
• In Episode 3 "Chaos Theory" when Chloe and Max broke into Blackwell why didn't they wear gloves and masks?
  • Probably because A) they weren't expecting to get caught (as evidenced by how Chloe doesn't think to hightail it out of the school immediately, instead wanting to go for a dip in the pool), B) they hadn't planned on stealing anything initially (they didn't know about the handicap fund before they broke in), which means that if things went smoothly nobody would likely notice differences, C) a simple break-in probably wouldn't have anyone going down to dust for prints given Blackwell's in a small seaside town with the break-in seeming not so suspicious and D) they're teenagers, reckless ones at that who likely didn't think about it.
  • Also, aside from the principal's office, there's nowhere they'd need gloves - Max's fingerprints are all over the place anyway since she goes to class there, and though Chloe's not a student she has friends and a step father who go to or work at the school (and is comfortable showing up there and going into the buildings). The only way masks would have mattered is if someone got a good look at them in person (David's surveillance plans either weren't approved or only got approved a day or two earlier, so cameras are unlikely to be an issue), which they thought they'd be able to avoid. Peeling out of the parking lot in a fairly distinctive truck was probably a bigger mistake.
• At the Vortex Club party in episode 4 why, when Max moves the pool thing and bumps a speaker into the water, does everyone freak out? Like, there should be more than one speaker put up.
  • Because if you short out one speaker it's going to disrupt the rest. That's why the music stops.
  • Professional music equipment has a surprising amount of current going through it. There are many stories of singers being electrocuted while holding a microphone in the rain or touching metal when equipment was ungrounded. I’d freak out too if a speaker fell into the pool I was in. Imagine a giant toaster.
• Why, after you save William and change the timeline, why does Max seem so damn different in the new timeline? Why would saving William change how she was?
  • That event affected Max, too. Without it, she could conceivably be more outgoing.
  • That's the Butterfly Effect for you. The smallest event can end up making huge changes. If William hadn't died, then Max would be a lot less anxious about moving to Seattle as she wouldn't be leaving her grieving best friend behind. It's also likely that William's death affected Max as well since she seems very close to him during their scenes together, so add onto the fact that she wouldn't be grieving herself. A Max without that weighing her down might well end up becoming more confident in Seattle, more popular, which in turn leads to her turning out more like Victoria and the Vortex Club when she ends up returning to Arcadia Bay.
• During Episode 4, after Max and Chloe discover the photos, Max mentions that Rachel has something in her mouth. Maybe it's a drug but aren't they drugged with syringes?
  • Assuming they always used syringes, Max might be referring to a gag or blood. Then again, if Attempted Rape is in play...
  • They also mix the syringe drugs with recreational drugs provided by Nathan / Frank. That mix may have even been what killed Rachel while the other girls survived.
  • Since her death was caused by an overdose, it could have been vomit.
• What the heck does Jefferson intend to do with the photos he takes? Are he and the Prescotts in the business of creating blackmail material? Or is it some sort of black market pornography? And given that Kate Marsh survived the photo op, do they normally drug girls up so much they don't remember anything?
  • It might also be that Jefferson is into that sort of thing...
  • He's a sicko. It's all for his perverse pleasure.
  • Alternately, since he believes himself to be making actual art, he may have been intending to release all of his photos anonymously, or after he's already dead, so that he'll posthumously get all the glory for his art without suffering the legal ramifications. Not that I know how that would actually turn out (you probably wouldn't display photos of models that were taken without their consent.)
• How did Max even get her powers? Episode 5 explains that saving Chloe when she was fated to die is why the storm comes to Arcadia Bay, but no matter what ending you go with, you get absolutely no explanation as to why Max has her powers.
  • The lack of an explanation for her abilities may be Dontnod worrying that if they reveal the truth about Max's abilities, many might find it lackluster or unsatisfying.
  • It doesn't really make sense even if you save Chloe. You had the vision of the storm before saving her. Did someone give her her powers so that Max would make that mistake?
  • Maybe she just came out of a photo-recall-jump-thing. We know she can't remember what happens during those after they're done.
  • Simple. In real life (our reality), it has not happened, and this game comes pretty close to the bounds of our reality, and showing how "time travel" would work (even if it is still in theory), but they could not be arrogant enough to think they would know for a fact how it would work... which is why there is no explanation as to why Max got her rewind power (or why she was picked above all others). The game itself, more importantly, was trying to send a message about choice, and the consequences that follow it; no matter how much you want to change something regardless of intent, there will never be only good or only bad things to come out of that decision. That's why Max had to let Chloe die (if you chose to out of 2 endings), in order to prevent other realities from mixing together and eventually breaking apart, which is why the storm appeared in order to put an end to the unnatural "time-bending". If anything, the storm itself IS the different realities Max went through... and perhaps Max from an alternate reality already had this power before her, which is why that storm was seen by the Max we played as in her "dreams", which is why we saw an alternate (and cynical) version of Max lecturing herself. Sure, it still does not explain why Max got her powers, but we know that it may never be able to be explained... the important thing is what the message is that "Life Is Strange" was trying to get across.
  • It's possible that Max's powers are some sort of gift from the spirit of Rachel. In episode 5, Chloe describes the storm as "Rachel's Revenge" on Arcadia Bay, presumably for ruining her life and eventually taking away Chloe's life. Rachel – in the form of the spirit doe – somehow gives Max her powers as a way to (1) save Chloe from getting shot by Nathan, and (2) get both Max and Chloe to safety in the lighthouse while she unleashes her wraith on the town hates, hence why she kept guiding Max towards the lighthouse in the visions.
• The game suggests that the Prescotts knew about the storm. Nathan even warns you about it. But given all that happens in Polarized, there's nothing explaining how they knew, and the implication is that they had nothing to do with anything besides indirectly creating the Dark Room. So was this just a forgotten plot point and the Prescotts were meant to play a bigger role?
  • Much like seeing a tropical storm on the weather channel, it wouldn't be much of a stretch to assume that an unnaturally large storm can also be found on weather reports. Plus, even before Max got the rewind power, a lot of people were already talking about the "Chaos Theory" for science or just for fun, so it's no surprise that the Prescotts came to the same conclusion that a once speculated and recently talked-about subject is what they were facing. Of course, there are some people who are mentally ill and just make stuff up... even if they are right, sometimes.
  • Sean Prescott is still a big mystery really. We learn very little about him, but he does seem to be involved in some pretty strange stuff. Maybe we'll learn more about him in Life Is Strange 2?
• Why didn't Max formally invite Frank to attend Chloe's funeral in the "sacrifice Chloe" ending? Did she just forget or something?
  • Because Max undid the string of events with Chloe, Frank goes back to not knowing who Max is and thinking she's probably some punk-ass bitch. I also feel that a stranger he doesn't know walking up to him and asking to attend the funeral of someone who owes him money would piss him off a bit.
  • Yeah..I kinda forgot that happened during that ending. Woops!
  • So why did Frank come then? Max could've told Frank that Chloe helped out somehow in getting the murderers of Rachel captured. Was it because Max didn't want to give away about Frank's relationship with Rachel? Could Max have thought it through more to make a plausible lie for Frank?
  • Nathan gets arrested for the murder of Chloe and it likely showed up in the newspapers if not at that time, then when Mr. Jefferson was ratted out. Frank was supplying him with party supplies so an article with the name "Prescott" would probably catch his attention.
    • Not only this, but it's possible that Rachel's body was found soon enough and they could resolve the missing person case on her.
  • Frank may have just assumed that his presence wouldn't be welcomed by Joyce, David, and/or others there, so he decided himself to pay his respects from a distance to avoid causing a scene. As to why he was there, either someone (Max or a customer of his, perhaps, since more than one was a student at Blackwell, where she was shot) told him or he just read about it in the obituaries.
• Max's first vision ended with her almost being hit by a big chunk of debris. Shows up nowhere in episode 5. What was up with that?
  • When Max revisits the storm and the lighthouse in a later vision (when she's being led by the Doe in Episode 2), you can watch the "chunk of debris" fall from a perspective other than right below it. It's the top of the lighthouse, broken off by a boat the storm throws at it. When you get to the lighthouse again at the very end of Episode 5, you can see that it's already been broken off and knocked down.
• In episode 5 Max goes back in time and submits her photo to Jefferson so she is sent to San Fransisco. She gets a call from Chloe while in the art gallery, about the storm. Why is Chloe still alive in this timeline? Did it still change everything in broad strokes but leave details in place, such as Max going into the bathroom and saving Chloe and knowing her long enough to receive a call from her?
  • Max turning in the photo doesn't have an immediate effect, only a delayed one. Events play out the same until the next day.
  • Turning in the photo is pretty much Max's "If I'm going to take Jefferson down, I might as well profit before I do so." That's why she goes to send David the warning text and then deletes it. It is implied she sent that text after turning in the photo that way she still enters the contest and wins. If she had ratted Jefferson out before turning in the photo, she would have missed her opportunity to go to San Fran.
    • I was under the impression that she just deleted the text after sending it so it wouldn't be on her phone to avoid her past self seeing it.
  • The way this troper saw it, Max sent David an anonymous tip and let David piece it together. As for why Max would still win even though Mr. Jefferson was arrested, some other teacher could have picked the winner.
• If Max is really willing to do almost anything to save Chloe, including putting herself at risk, why doesn't she simply attack Nathan in the bathroom in the Sacrifice Chloe ending? If the tornado is caused by her using her powers, rather than Chloe's survival, then it should be fine, right?
  • It was too late and would've brought the same result as before, since time travel was in play in the form of Max photo jumping. At that point, Chloe was fated to die so the only thing Max could do was undo saving Chloe by using her time travel powers to let the events run it's course. Trying to change it any differently than how it's fated to play out would just result in another distortion in the timeline to add to the ever increasing pile of mistakes Max has been trying to fix, which is what's causing the tornado in the first place.
    • This doesn't even make sense though. Warren even says "Going back in time is what caused the storm." So if that's the case, now that Max has gone back to a point before where she used her time travel powers, shouldn't she be able to save Chloe without rewinding or causing the storm? She could have even run out of the bathroom and stopped Chloe before Nathan came in.
• I know that we're listing some sexual abuse tropes on this game's pages in regards to what Jefferson and Nathan were doing, but do we really have any proof that they raped the girls they kidnapped? Aside from Jefferson seeming far more interested in simply taking photos of girls in desperation, I distinctly recall a report from one of the timelines where he was caught and arrested mentioning that none of his victims showed signs of physical or sexual abuse. Am I missing something?
  • Maybe it has that theme of rape? Jefferson's actions could come off as in-line with it what with Jefferson enjoying it and his victims being drugged up and/or scared. As for Nathan, it's implied that he was sexually abusing Chloe when she got drugged up if her side of the story is any indication.
  • It's made pretty clear in the game that Jefferson doesn't rape the girls he abducts, but the degradation and humiliation he subjects them to is enough to traumatize them.
• What would have happened if Max sacrificed herself in place of Chloe? If she shocked/antagonised Nathan in the bathroom making him scared and shoot her. Presumably, with Max gone, her powers never come into play and the rest of the events would generally play out the same. Nathan would realise what he's done and stop on the floor, he'd get arrested for murder, confess. All what would change is that Chloe would survive and never know why Max was there and why she did what she did.
  • While she likely never thought of it, that would likely cause the tornado anyway because it's triggered by her creating alternate timelines. A scenario where Max dies in place of Chloe means another unique timeline now exists— one they couldn't create with Max dead. Basically, it's way too big a gamble because if you mess up, everyone dies anyway.
• I know that the game tries to play hard on the for-want-of-a-nail trope, and that Episode 4 is supposed to hammer it down with the alternate timeline, but just how in the world could William being alive justify most anything shown about it? I'm not just referring to Chloe being paralyzed, because that's implied to be because she got in that accident while driving a car her family could only afford to get her because of William's high-paying job (a bit of a stretch, in This Troper's opinion, but at least somewhat understandable), I'm referring to things like David becoming a bus driver (where there's every indication that, even before meeting Joyce, every facet of his personality, from his hobbies to his professional background, practically has to have led him to a field like security), or Max becoming a snobbish Vortex Club bully, or Alyssa becoming a bully, or Victoria becoming an adoring, borderline stalker-ish Max fan.
  • Keep in mind, we aren't privy to what else changed in those subsequent five years. William surviving essentially rewrites history in a far more significant way than any other instance Max uses her power. For example, we're shown in the alternate reality Max has a strained relationship with her parents. Maybe they grew closer over William's death due to how close Max was to him and Chloe at the time. This could also explain her reclusive personality. A loss of someone important has a profound effect, especially on a child. Look at how different Chloe is. For all we know, William surviving meant Max developed a string of confidence and upon going to Blackwell happened to run into the Vortex Crowd before other groups influenced her. Think of it this way. How much of an impact have your friends had on your life? Now imagine never meeting just one of them, and how much things might change. Under the right circumstances, even just one person can change a lot about you, which is what this game heavily implies.
  • Someone up the page suggested that David wound up as a security guard because the best friend of his stepdaughter vanished there — him never knowing Chloe and never trying to awkwardly bond with her would mean he feels no urge to protect the students at Blackwell, and so enters whatever field is most convenient.
  • Also, part of the reason Chloe got the new car, which she crashed in, is probably that David would never want to buy her a car that nice for her birthday to begin with.
• For that matter, how does any of what Max does with time affect the changes to the environment, like the weather turning weird or the animals dying, or another moon appearing in the sky? I'd get it if they said that her use of her powers was simply damaging the timeline, but according to Warren, all of these were the results of "Chaos Theory" or "The Butterfly Effect" or otherwise somehow the unintended consequences of Max's actions. But what actions could those have possibly been? What could Max have done in any timeline that would've logically resulted in another moon appearing in the sky, no matter how far you stretched it?
  • This troper calls bull on the environment changes too, but a somewhat plausible theory on the dual moons in the sky could be something to do with Max travelling back to that point via photograph and altering the path they went down.
  • The game subtlety implies each instance of Max altering time is damaging the universal timeline— ultimately culminating into these separate realities crashing into one another. Basically, multiple worlds are attempting to coexist as one, which is what a second moon signifies. My personal theory is the dead animals reference things unable to blend into the new realities created, and that this would eventually happen with people as well. In fact, the storm itself essentially becomes this.
• Nathan has an e-mail on his computer from his dad referring to the "burdens" of being a Prescott, and to him having to be strong in order to inherit the family legacy. Could be thought of as overdramatic metaphors for becoming the inheritor of a fortune, but then Mr. Prescott also mentions that Nathan would have to overcome his fears of "the Room" (heavily implied to be the Dark Room), like he and his father before him! This seems to imply that the Prescotts have some kind of twisted family tradition of taking women to the Dark Room to torture, which makes no sense but could still be somehow excused by being the insane eccentricity of a terrible family. Then, however, it turns out that the Dark Room was Jefferson's idea, and that he could only build it with money he got by manipulating Nathan. He couldn't possibly have done the same with Mr. Prescott and certainly not with his father (he might not have even been born back then), so what the hell does Mr. Prescott mean? You could argue that the mail was actually from Jefferson himself, taking advantage of Nathan's mental instability by posing as his father, but there's little to otherwise justify this theory.
  • Maybe the bunker has existed for generations, and Jefferson was just the guy who came up with the "kidnap and photograph" scheme. So he manipulated Nathan to get money for cameras and such, but the bunker itself already existed.
  • That's unlikely. Max mentions that hatch and lock are new (presumably judging from their appearance) and shortly after, you see a receipt for the building of a storm shelter in the name of Sean Prescott. An older one would have most likely been contracted by Harry Prescott (the owner of the barn). The game seems to be suggesting that the shelter was built recently.
  • "The Room" could simply be a metaphor meant to imply Nathan would have to "lead a room full of people." There are subtle clues Nathan is actually incredibly anti-social and only acts out when drunk or high. His father also seems the type to be overly dramatic.
  • I took it to mean not the Dark Room specifically, but the bunker itself. There's an entire missing plot thread about how the Prescotts are disaster profiteers, developing survival-response properties in order to sell them to people who can afford to prepare in style. Your mileage may vary on how deep you think that rabbit hole goes, but the Prescotts make a subtle goal of being the last one standing when everything else collapses because it will advance their own power if they can be seen as a source of safety and structure in the wake of tragedy. The "burden" of being a Prescott is being the load-bearing pillar of the community, it just ambiguous as to what they're really holding up.
• Jefferson claims that he could afford to build the Dark Room with money and connections he got by manipulating Nathan Prescott, but as Nathan himself points out lately on, this isn't his money, it's his family's. Sure, he might have pretty free rein with it for a teenager, so it's justified he could use it to buy as many drugs and expensive cameras as he wanted, but according to the files in the bunker the Dark Room costed almost a million and a half dollars, not including the ultra-expensive equipment! There's no way in the world Sean Prescott could've allowed Nathan to draw that much money from him. Spoiled rich brats are one thing, but nobody, in any world, lets their kid (especially their mentally unstable problem child whom they've been shown to be disappointed with) just borrow that much money without even asking what it's for. What did he assume? That Nathan needed pocket change to buy a private jet? At the very least, if Nathan had somehow gotten access to his credit card or something, he'd have known if it happened, and checked it out. If we're assuming that he wasn't in on the operation, this leaves some very weird questions about how Nathan got the money.
  • I need only cite Paris Hilton or Kim Kardashian to say that, yes, some absurdly rich families do spoil their kids to this extent, particularly those that take a neglectful approach to their parenting. Furthermore, it's reasonable to assume Nathan didn't pay for everything, but perhaps only equipment. Jefferson likely kept things like electricity and his more nefarious activities as a personal expense.
  • The Prescotts have apparently been involved in the business of selling/constructing bomb shelters at some point. His relationship with Nathan may have included contact with Nathan's father, who he may have been able to manipulate into building the bunker for other reasons. If the Prescott bomb shelter business came from the family being doomsday preppers, it might not have taken much work - then he'd just need to convince them to let him use the empty space as a studio (without telling them what he was photographing) while it wasn't yet needed as a shelter.
• So in chapter two, despite firing 3 or 4 shots (I forgot how many exactly) at the junkyard, why is it that you suddenly have no ammo left in the revolver when Chloe is confronted? I know, it's possible to load a revolver with less than 6 rounds, but if Chloe had done that, why do you gather 6 bottles? That revolver still has ammo.
  • It's possible to misfire since Max is actually the one who used it and had no idea how to properly fire a handgun. Another possibility is Chloe did mistakenly load less rounds than she thought. You do later find a magazine she has explaining how to use guns.
• In the principal's office at the end of chapter 2, when accusing Nathan, why doesn't Max report that she heard Victoria and Taylor talking about how they knew Nathan "hooked [Kate] up"? Also, Kate mentioned being driven for a long time. Why doesn't Max press Nathan on this either?
  • Because she knows he/they will only deny it, and she's see how far no direct proof gets her. By that point, I think Max just wanted to end the conversation quickly and handle it all herself.
• This is admittedly a minor point, but by Jefferson's own admission, he prefers to take advantage of pure and innocent girls, girls like Rachel, Kate, Max, and...Victoria. Victoria is a lot of things, but if there's one thing she's not, it's "innocent". Given the way he talks about Chloe, Jefferson seems to find cynical, worldly, and/or sexually aggressive women repulsive (and probably threatening), so why would he ever want to prey on somebody who displayed both sexual aggression and cynicism by not only trying to tear his clothes off to advance her own prospective career, but also by attempting to blackmail him over it? Victoria has nothing in common with Jefferson's other victims.
  • That's the thing. Jefferson wasn't after Victoria; he was after Max. Mr. Jefferson's had his eye on Max ever since that photo she took and was pushing her to submit it soon. Instead all he could do was award the prize to someone else and most likely have to take them on that promised trip since as you said, it's too dangerous for him to go preying on young ladies like her. The only reason he even does kidnap Victoria in the end is if you give her the warning, which threatens his operation and leaves him no choice but to silence her. As for the files in the Dark Room, there's a possibility that Nathan was the one who was going to kidnap Victoria. He already jeopardised Jefferson's work by trying to replicate him, but ends up killing Rachel as a result. This doesn't sink in apparently as after this he goes after Chloe, who isn't exactly innocent so to speak.
  • Nathan's pretty bad, but would he really go after his best friend/possible girlfriend? I feel like we're meant to understand that he has enough standards that he wouldn't do something like that.
  • It's only a folder, one that is never used. Victoria is known to both Nathan and Jefferson, and both might have reason to consider her. Jefferson might have misjudged her innocence, and Nathan might have just got really high and went to a darker place than normal.
  • "Innocence" is a bit subjective. If he's more interested in the naive aspect of it than the not guilty of causing harm aspect, she could fit. Despite her cynicism about the art world, she has a fairly simplistic view of the world. Her reaction upon waking up in the Dark Room is pretty much exactly what he said he was looking for in his "subjects."
    • While Jefferson might get a kick out of seeing Victoria humbled and afraid, it's doubtful he thinks of her as modeling material. She's not on the tarp in front of the camera; Max is. Jefferson himself says she's "too harsh" for his "lens." Victoria wasn't brought to the Dark Room as a subject, she was brought there until Jefferson could dispose of her. Plus, if you look at Jefferson's interactions with Max even before the Dark Room, it's obvious in retrospect that he's always "liked" her (something similar happened with Kate; she was Jefferson's assistant for a while). But while he may praise Victoria in class, like any good teacher would, whenever they speak outside of that environment, he's anywhere from formal to outright disgusted with her, which is probably not how he'd treat an ideal victim.
  • For that matter, why Rachel? She hung out with people like Chloe and Frank; she may have been seen as unbelievably perfect by everyone around her, but she was still comfortable in the presence of shady people, and depending on how you want to read Chloe and Rachel's relationship, may well have been a relatively-promiscuous bisexual with a thing for danger. She was a lot of things, but submissive and virginal aren't really among them.
    • Nathan's M.O. isn't necessarily the exact same as Jefferson's, but even if it was he's too self-absorbed and unstable to fully grasp the understanding of it.
    • Nathan only accidentally killed Rachel, but I don't think he chose or masterminded her kidnapping. Jefferson was still mentoring him as his creepy abduction protege and he was apparently choosing the victims before and after that point. Did Nathan just randomly abduct Rachel for his own purposes without telling Jefferson or something?
    • Yes. It's already heavily implied that Nathan has drugged and photographed/filmed two other victims, Chloe Price (who confirms that Nathan had drugged her) and Kate Marsh (who states that the last thing she remembered was Nathan giving her a hand). Nathan felt lust towards Rachel and, trying to follow in Jefferson's footsteps attempts to replicate his work. Either Rachel died from an overdose or like the photos of her imply, she wasn't drugged up enough, knew who kidnapped her and Jefferson silenced her. Besides, Rachel as Jefferson's victim simply doesn't fit his preferred victims while Nathan has less standards than that.
    • Wait, then why does Rachel have a folder? They're made in advance. Victoria's is empty and we know he's aiming for Max, there's one for every one of Jefferson's victims going back much further than he could have been working with Nathan, and the pictures of Rachel include one taken with Nathan, which almost certainly means Jefferson was taking them. Yeah, Nathan screwed up with Rachel, but Jefferson was apparently involved at all the important steps, particularly disposing of the body but not any of the evidence. If the whole point is for Jefferson to teach a student in his creepy ways, why would he even let Nathan get that far with an unfit model in the first place?
    • Better question: why does Rachel have a folder, when Chloe doesn't? They're not submissive virginal types and Nathan attacked them both, so if Nathan's entire problem is that he's trying to emulate Jefferson, then it makes sense for Rachel to have a folder, but it doesn't make sense that Chloe doesn't have one. If Jefferson wasn't involved at all, then it makes sense for Chloe to not have a folder, but makes no sense for Rachel to have one. And we know the folders must be made in advance and kept afterward because of Victoria's folder.. this whole plot thread is a complete mess.
    • A folder is not indicative of who made it, despite Jefferson's involvement with many of the victims. Nathan could have just as easily made the folder too and keep in mind it is his family's bomb shelter. One being taken with Nathan doesn't automatically mean Jefferson had to be there either since timers are a thing in photography. Jefferson gets Nathan to help him by providing him with drugs for his victims and the bomb shelter and equipment in exchange for presumably good grades or something similar. Jefferson had little to no intention teaching Nathan. Instead Nathan's the one following Jefferson's work. When Jefferson finds out what he's attempted he helps him dispose of the body. In a nutshell Jefferson's cleaning up Nathan's own mess and he's none too happy about it, nor the fact that he's trying to replicate him.
    • That raises other questions. If that's true, then why didn't Jefferson do anything to keep his project clean of Nathan's crap? If Jefferson didn't have anything to do with Rachel's kidnapping and was only cleaning up after Nathan, then Nathan made the Rachel and Victoria folders himself, and also labelled them identically to and filed them chronologically with all of Jefferson's. That's something a weird, obsessive fanboy would do, but that still means Jefferson not only never noticed the extra victims in his scrapbook cabinet but never removed them, or the incredibly damning evidence they represent. That wouldn't be weird except he literally hides Rachel's body in an attempt to cover up the crime, you'd think he wouldn't balk at destroying photos he thinks are crap and could jeopardize his operation. I know we have to have the pictures for plot reasons, but it's still a weird reveal in retrospect.
    • Jefferson already has a lot of damning evidence as it is that he decides to keep in the shelter anyway, so probably a case of salvaging something good from the disaster, or he could've kept it to blackmail Nathan and hopefully keep him in line. Either way the real problem was as you said, Nathan jeopardising his operation. The only reason he kept Nathan around despite the risks was simply because he was an easily manipulative rich kid who could provide him with a station for his work, so it wouldn't do him much favours with Nathan against him or missing. But even then we find out in Episode 5: Polarized that Jefferson does kill Nathan and intends to use him as a scapegoat for his own crimes, so Jefferson did have a plan if Nathan became too bothersome.
    • Why would he try to scapegoat Nathan for crimes he couldn't possibly have committed? It would practically guarantee that Nathan would be exonerated and bring the heat down on himself. Those victims couldn't all be from Arcadia Bay, could they? If Jefferson really had nothing to do with Rachel's abduction and he wanted Nathan out of the way, he could have just let him go down for Rachel's murder and been done with him without doing anything himself. The only evidence that Jefferson ever committed a crime is in those binders, and those are definitely easier to hide or destroy than a popular girl's body. Sure, he would have lost the bunker for a while, but he's obviously been able to do his thing without a million-dollar shelter in the past, and if Nathan accused him of anything, all he'd have to do is cite his own lectures to suggest that Nathan, being well-known to be mentally ill, misinterpreted his lessons and used them as an excuse to attack helpless girls. Even the physical evidence in the bunker pointing to him can just be explained as a teacher trying to help a struggling student work through his issues through photography, he's made a career on being a deep and soulful artist.
    • Most of the game involves the player (and by extension Max/Chloe) assuming Nathan is the one who kidnapped Victoria and possibly other victims (later seems confirmed when they discover his Dark Room). All the evidence even if some victims aren't from inside Arcadia Bay is just sitting inside of a Prescott family bomb shelter. How could anyone possibly know that Nathan wasn't the one who committed those crimes and, in a moment of insanity or despair decided to end it all? Who's to say Jefferson hasn't been doing this for awhile in the Prescott's shelter while they just turned the other way, so long as Nathan was taken care of school-wise?
    • Sure, but Max and Chloe are teenagers with no resources. Actual police would be able to do more than Scooby Doo speculations. It would be easy to prove that at least some of the victims couldn't have been Nathan's because, rich teenager or not, he most likely couldn't have been in all the places that those other victims are from, and like I said, Jefferson has an alibi for whatever evidence they find that can put him in the shelter. Any victims that were from Arcadia Bay can be pinned on Nathan, any victims that weren't from Arcadia Bay couldn't have been in the shelter in the first place, leaving Jefferson as the only possible suspect. He's a famous photographer, he travels and goes on tours. Assuming that they can even prove that the girls in his photos aren't modelling consensually, which they probably can't, all the cops have to do is identify one of the girls in a city that Jefferson's been to that Nathan never has, or find one from a point in time when Nathan was just not capable. Depending on how many victims he goes through in a year, Jefferson might have been doing this since Nathan was in elementary school. Hiding the folders and letting Nathan go down for Rachel's murder would have been the smart thing to do, unless he was involved in Rachel's kidnapping and death in a way that required him to cover it up.
    • Apparently all of Jefferson's victims were in Arcadia Bay; his early photography from teaching around the world was consensual and featured on covers of magazines, after which he settles down in Arcadia Bay to become a teacher. You can even see his works in the campus on display, and in his classroom. So some of his victims not being from Arcadia Bay is practically a non-existent issue, not to mention stupidly risky for him. Also keep in mind that Jefferson doesn't normally like to kill; he only does it if his crimes are going to be exposed or he's identified by his victims, hence why he drugs them. This is why he kills Victoria if you warn her despite A) not fitting Jefferson's victim description and B) not even being his current target. It wouldn't be too much of a stretch to then assume that Jefferson was identified in cahoots with Nathan by Rachel, as we find in one photo that she is "alert and pissed at something". At that point there would be no choice but to kill her and dispose of her body, something he's not too familiar with.
    • None of that is really relevant here. His legit work is being featured at Blackwell, but that doesn't mean that he's never done photography anywhere else, and those definitely aren't his victims. I'll put it like this: there's an entire cabinet full of labeled binders full of victim photos. For everything to be the way you describe, that means there have been a lot of victims fitting a very specific profile, being taken from a very small community in a very short window of time, but only Kate experienced any adverse effects and only David noticed this was a trend? I suppose it's possible that Jefferson is just that good and knows how to abduct several sheltered, virginal girls from the same small town, drug them over hours or days to break them emotionally and then send her home with no adverse effects or memories, and Kate was just a fluke because Nathan botched the job, but that is a ridiculously huge stretch, even for this story.
    • And again, we can't really know how many of them have actually been filled out. For all we know they may be victims he intends to kidnap, drug up and shoot photos of. Kate isn't a target by Jefferson, she was a victim of Nathan. That's why Max and Chloe start inspecting Nathan in the first place, since he was the last seen person with Kate. The alternative is suggesting that against all common sense, Jefferson kidnapped Rachel and killed her after shooting because he somehow messed up the dosage. Jefferson wouldn't make that kind of mistake, but we know that Nathan has been following in his footsteps, is unstable and inexperienced in the field so it makes a whole lot more sense that he was the one who kidnapped Rachel than it does Jefferson, implications and all.
    • Kate is the perfect victim for Jefferson. Meek, withdrawn, kind-hearted, and from a religious background that basically forces "innocence" as her lifestyle. Actually, after replaying Episode 2, all I could see him thinking when he was "trying to help her out" and driving her further towards suicide in the hall was "Man, I wish I could take the picture of this broken girl now, it would be a masterpiece". But even with his personal rule, he simply cannot take that shot. Which is why he resents Kate enough to want to push her off the roof.
    • Not really. The binders are organized in chronological order, so it seems a little silly to assume that all the ones that come before Rachel are empty. And I'm not saying that Jefferson is responsible for what happened to Rachel, only that Nathan didn't act alone or without his knowledge. It doesn't make any better sense that Jefferson should tolerate Nathan's incompetence on multiple occasions if he didn't absolutely have to.
    • Perhaps not all, but we don't exactly know how many are empty/full. In which case Jefferson found out about Rachel being kidnapped, probably stumbling upon the situation or Nathan called him via phone. Perhaps Nathan was trying to impress Jefferson only to be scolded?
    • What would be the point of keeping the labels on the empty ones? The whole thing just sticks in my craw. There's so much missing from the actual events that the context for it all just kind of falls apart into mush.
    • He could just take away any evidence that doesn't fit the story he wants to tell.
• How does Frank never figure out that Max and Chloe broke into his RV somehow? His dog is loose, the hiding place for his account books has been tampered with, his keys are on the roof of the diner, and most damningly of all, he saw Max and Chloe leave. Frank may not be the brightest bulb, but even he should be able to put two and two together.
  • Why would he though? He never saw them nor would have no reason to believe they somehow stole his keys since Max used her rewind. He probably just assumed another drug dealer went through his stuff. That's bound to have happened a lot with the kind of people Frank associates with.
• If Max has an item on her person (like her camera or something plot-relevant), she can take it back in time with her. So why does she never think to ask Chloe to hold her hand or wrap her arms around before she goes back? It might not actually work (maybe Chloe is just too big), but if Max could take Chloe back in time with her, it would save both of them a lot of trouble, so it seems odd that she never even tries.
  • Inanimate objects work but living breathing beings are a different problem excepting Max herself.
    • There's nothing in the game that says she can't take living beings with her. She just never tries.
    • What if Chloe was living tissue over a metal endoskeleton?
  • She doesn't know how it works. It might be something she just isn't willing to risk without a better understanding of the power. It's entirely possible that a tiny amount of matter doesn't make it or gets shifted when she does that - not really an issue with most inanimate objects, but the wrong few cells in a living creature could be a major problem. Alternately, it might not work with as much mass as is in an adult human (she never takes something that big with her). Or she just didn't think of it since she was in high stress situations most of the time it would come up.
• Why doesn't the game at least give you an option to tell off Victoria and Taylor when they're bullying Kate in the shower room? One episode ago, Max demonstrated a willingness to rewind time to save the life of someone she thought was a complete stranger, but she won't step in to defend a friend who's being bullied? She's clearly not a coward, since she has the option to cruelly make fun of Victoria, tell the principal about Nathan having a gun, and make David Madsen back off of Kate, despite having every reason to believe that these things will only lead to trouble for her. Her sudden case of Bystander Syndrome makes no sense.
  • Because at the time, she's naked in the shower. Her yelling while trying to keep herself covered will likely just spur Victoria and Taylor on. She probably figured she could go talk to Kate later. The sad reality is even people who mean well never truly realize how seemingly small acts can have a profound impact— positive or negative — on someone in a deep depression.
• When Max talks to Frank for the first time in the diner, he threatens to break her camera if she takes his picture. This is the first time they've actually met and, while he did follow you in the junkyard, whether or not he saw you with a camera depends on the players actions. So if you didn't take the optional photos in the junkyard, how does Frank know that Max is a photographer?
  • He frequently deals drugs to some of the students at Blackwell, and may well have either seen Max in passing or heard about her from someone else.
  • Actually, he his caravan was even there when Max first met Chloe at the parking lot, when Warren ended up with a black eye.
• Ok, if the entire storm and all the other weird stuff are a consequence of Max changing time to save Chloe in the beginning, then why doesn't saving Kate Marsh have the same effect? Chloe is apparently 'marked for death' and the only way to avoid the destruction is to let her die. But Kate would also have died without Max's powers, given that she originally jumps from the roof as soon as you are close enough to see it. Max then rewinds time once and has a chance to save her. If you save Kate, it does not seem like she is destined to die like Chloe is. Why does saving one person by time reversal have such a huge consequence and another none at all?
  • Seeing as how the "Save Arcadia Bay" ending reflects what would've happened if Max had never intervened in the first place, minus her memories of the week spent with Chloe, Kate probably would've never attempted suicide if Chloe had been killed, most likely because none of the events that drove her deeper into her depression would've happened. David would've never yelled at her because he would've been handling the shooting; Mr. Jefferson would've never blamed her because he would've been arrested, along with Nathan; Victoria would've never taunted her because she would've been too distracted by everything else. In short, Chloe dying to begin with would have solved the whole mystery, allowed Kate's tormentors to be brought to justice, and taken the focus off the video, which would've lifted her spirits and led to her attending the funeral on Friday. So the reason saving Kate from suicide doesn't have such drastic consequences is because the suicide attempt itself is an indirect consequence of Chloe still being alive when she's not supposed to be.
• What kind of kids are on a First-Name Basis with their parents and friends' parents?
  • Kids who know their friend's parents really well? Max grew up with Joyce, it's not that hard to imagine her calling her by her first name. The reason Chloe also calls her Joyce is because she's being an edgy teenage rebel.
  • Kids who weren't raised in the South.
  • Original poster here, just wanting to point out that I live in Northeast Ohio where such forms of address are the norm.
• If Max's powers caused the tornado, why did she dream about the tornado in Jefferson's class before she had obtained her powers? There's no way that the tornado could have been part of any possible future at that point unless it was already going to hit Arcadia Bay regardless of what Max did or didn't do with her powers.
  • It's a stretch, but maybe the Tornado Dreams are supposed to be warnings to Max not to mess with the timeline, and that she had one in Jefferson's class because the universe (which the game sometimes seems to treat as an entity in itself) knew that she would soon not only awaken her powers, but have a very good reason to use them.
  • The visions are never really explained, so we don't know exactly why they happen (or if it's even Max's power causing them). It's also possible that the bathroom isn't the first time she used her powers - odds are that anything less intense she'd have written off as daydreaming or something, since she was unsure of what was happening for a while after going back to her classroom.
  • This isn't from anything in game, just a theory, but it's possible there's a timeline where she didn't have the vision. In that timeline, she may not have gone to the bathroom, but learning of Chloe's death triggered her powers and she jumped back to the class just long enough to take over her younger self for a moment. We don't know what the past version of Max experiences when the future version takes her over - it's possible that something like that triggered the vision.
• Why didn't Chloe just have Warren take a picture of the photo she needed with his phone? She uses the instant photos because that's just what she has handy, but the important bit is focusing on a picture, there's nothing special about the instant photos themselves. Their cell phones clearly work, so they shouldn't have a problem sending an image.
  • Talking to someone with bad reception is different from sending a file. It could get corrupted or fail to send if the signal is interrupted for a moment, even if the interference would just make someone talking on a call a little hard to hear. Also, Max doesn't really understand her powers, so she may think she needs to have a physical photograph or assume - possibly correctly - that a cell phone photo of it wouldn't be clear enough (or just didn't think of it since she was panicking). She could have tried it anyway then rushed to the diner if it failed, sure, but if the developers considered that they may have just had to cut it for time or something.
• How in God's name did no one catch on to Jefferson's evil hipster bullshit? Yeah, he has the Prescott money to fund his hobby now, but he had a very public career and never actually published any of his creeper stuff. Photographers don't get paid that much, how did he not get found out when he has scores of victims but no evil lair to victimize them in?
  • Date rapists get away with it all the time, especially good looking, successful date rapists. Jefferson isn't a serial killer, he simply likes to drug women and take pictures of them. Given that all his known kills happen within twenty four hours, he's more a spree killer. He also doesn't seem to get a thrill out of the kill as such, in every case it's done to cover his tracks. Said tracks needed covering because Nathan's money allowed him to be much more daring than normal, coupled with Nathan being far less subtle and attracting unwanted attention.
    • Yeah, but date rapists go on dates with their victims, I'm not talking about that. Jefferson needs what is apparently a several-hours-long photo shoot, in a studio, and he only chooses victims who are too shy/innocent/introverted to want to model. The Dark Room is more or less a secret bunker that no one knows about so the drugs and other stuff can just be stored there normally, but he was doing all this long before he had access to it. Having a secret lair is the only thing that made it possible to do in secret, so what was he doing before he had one?
  • Jefferson is rich enough to be able to afford a big apartment with a dedicated photography room, along with the drugs he needs. He invites some innocent young girl over to talk about photography, gives her a drink, the time seems to go by very fast and at some point she's sure she must have dozed off, but her memory is all a little fuzzy. Unfortunately with this set up he certainly doesn't have several hours to do his thing, more an hour if he's lucky, and it would draw attention to him if he got too overt with inviting women over.
• In a game about time-manipulation and the ability to change events through time travel, what the fuck is up with Chloe being Marked to Die? If you can't fight fate, what's the point of giving Max the powers in the first place?
  • Max is different at the end, and most importantly, she remembers Chloe. As Nathan observes no one would have missed Chloe, and even her parents would likely had just concluded she died through her own misadventure. Max can counter that, and give her parents (especially David) the support they need. Jefferson might have gotten away with everything too, even if Nathan fingered him he might well have been able to cover up the evidence if Max didn't guide the cops in the right direction. Likely Max would have also continued being isolated and never realizing her potential, hiding behind her headphones and looking the other way to bullies and jerks.
    • So... Chloe dies and the universe gives Max superpowers just to teach her not to use them so she can grow up in one day? ... Eesh.
    • It's more like this: Max has superpowers all along for whatever reason, but she only awakens to them as a result of a very traumatic event (Chloe's original death). Max's whole problem with life at that moment is that, due to problems with herself, she does not "go with life", instead trying to stay in a single place; her powers are an exaggerated version of that, allowing her to go "against" life. This obviously is not a good thing to do, because even though using the powers is making her change as a person, the very usage of the powers is an act that is even worse, not just because of what happens to the world but also because to live a life means to constantly do things that you cannot take back. Also note one additional thing, namely the fact that Max awakened her power after Chloe's death, so as far as the powers are concerned Chloe's death is the very last thing that belongs to the past. And you cannot change the past, but you can learn from it and continue to live your life; the whole story is about Max learning this particular lesson. There is not necessarily "fate", but there is "past" which is set in stone and "future" which we should walk towards rather than away from.
    • That makes even less sense. The past isn't set in stone, Max has the power to go back to any point she has a picture of. She doesn't access her powers until Chloe dies, but she absolutely can go back further than that, and she absolutely can change her present by doing so.
  • You can fight fate. You just have to be willing to pay a terrible price. As Leslie Gelb and Richard Betts wrote in a very different context, "the price of holding back destiny is always great." That is what the game is about. Your powers work. You can change fate. But nothing comes for free.
    • But the price being paid is completely arbitrary. Manipulating time causes a tornado that wipes out the town, but once it's gone, it's gone, even though Chloe is still alive. Sacrificing Arcadia Bay and saving Chloe doesn't mean anything's changed for Chloe personally. Her deaths aren't anywhere near as random as the tornado, whenever she dies, she dies because she did something dangerous or stupid and Max time-bails her out. Why does the tornado stop there if Chloe is being compelled by destiny to get herself killed? And if Chloe isn't being compelled to get herself killed, why isn't she?
    • The cyclone is not random. First of all, Max has a vision of it at the very beginning of the game. The first thing you have to do in the game is get to the lighthouse. Furthermore, all along the game is showing unnatural occurrences of increasing destructiveness as the game goes on and Max uses her powers more and more. Max's powers are disrupting the natural order, and that is clearly part of the game from the beginning. Think about it this way: millions of people die every day, and thousands by violent means. No one turns back time to save them. If Max is going to upend the natural order to save Chloe, then she is saying, in effect, that Chloe's importance to her, that is, to Max, outweighs every other consideration. Which is the problem that the game poses to you at the end: will you sacrifice thousands of lives to save your friend?
    • That's exactly the problem. The cyclone is random. We the players know there's a karmic payoff at work, but in-universe, Max's powers have only vague mumbling about chaos theory to connect them to the cyclone, and it raises a new problem: if Chloe is destined to die because of the natural order, then why do the consequences stop at destroying Arcadia Bay? Either Chloe is doomed to die, or she isn't; if she is, then the cyclone makes sense, but the cyclone would never go away because the only reason it exists is because Chloe is alive. If she isn't, then it makes sense that there would only be a finite amount of consequence for saving her so much, but it also means that Max wasn't defying destiny in doing so, which means the cyclone had nothing to do with Chloe.
    • The assumption that Chloe is doomed or not precludes a sensible third option: fate is that Chloe dies at the time and place shown at the beginning, and fixing the timeline scramble can only happen by Max returning to that spot and allowing it to play out. The cyclone wipes out Arcadia Bay but it's just one manifestation of the scramble (like the double moon that resolves itself as we watch), not a permanent fixture.
    • To clarify: Chloe's greatest contribution to Arcadia Bay is her death. If Nathan kills her, it resolves almost everything happening at Blackwell and makes her family life better because she's the biggest problem her parents deal with, and she becomes a karmic linchpin whose death serves a greater purpose. But if Max saves her, she's constantly putting herself in mortal danger anyway and those deaths are all pointless, so it can't be a matter of destiny needing Chloe to die in order to serve the greater good of Arcadia Bay.
    • Or, to add to that: Think about when exactly did Max's powers awaken. It might very well be that as far as the power (and thus also the world) is concerned, Chloe's death is a thing of the past, and while you can take some time back to make better choices in your future, the past is immutable. If that were the case then it wouldn't really be a case of "Fate" but more of an instance of the world going "wait, I do remember her dying, what the heck, got to fix that bug" because it would be just minimally in the past, just barely and yet just enough.
    • Right, exactly. If fate or the universe or whatever is deliberately killing Chloe because she's supposed to die, then there's no reason for the cyclone because it's specifically her death that needs to happen, there's no karmic weight to be considered.
• While in Kate's room in chapter two, you can look at Kate's Bible and note that she has bookmarked two passages, one from Matthew, the other from Proverbs. The problem is that in Kate's Bible, Matthew comes to the left of Proverbs, but Matthew is one of the Christian gospels, while Proverbs is part of the Hebrew Bible. Kate's Bible is in English, so it would be written left to right, so why does Matthew come before Proverbs? What's going on with that?
  • Probably just a mistake of a not very religious developer. They might have remembered that Matthew is near the beginning (of the new testament) and then gotten through the index of the whole thing (or just old testament) to find where Proverbs is.
• In Episode 3, when Max is wearing Rachel Amber's old clothes, how do people immediately recognize them as hers? Seriously, does no one else in Arcadia Bay own a plaid shirt?
  • I think people are recognising the outfit as a whole, and it seems to be one that Rachel often wore. Not to mention that Max is almost the exact same size as Rachel was, so the clothes even fit her the same way that they did Rachel.
• Why does everyone seem to think that a light snowfall in the Pacific Northwest in October is so unusual? It's one of the snowiest places in America, if not the world, and while October is a little early in the year for snow, it's not all that strange.
  • Because when a place is snowy, it's because it gets a lot of snow, but that snow still doesn't happen until winter. In Oregon, it generally doesn't start snowing until November or December depending on how close you are to the coast (Arcadia Bay, given that it's... a bay, probably starts around December). That aside, though, it's way too warm for snow. Most of the students are still in T-shirts, shorts, or light jackets, and it's apparently early enough in October to still be late summer instead of autumn.
• Why does Chloe get so snippy whenever you use emojis?
  • It could just be a minor thing that annoys her.
• Why was Max's photo accepted into the Everyday Heroes gallery? The rest of the pictures are of people being obviously heroic- people in the military, people being "out" in public, etc. But Max's entry doesn't seem show her participating in any heroic action other than looking at a wall of photographs she has taken. The player might view Max as an "everyday hero" because we know about her superpowers, but what reason did the contest have to accept her picture, which doesn't seem to fit with their theme at all?
  • Mr Jefferson playing favourites. Artists bullshit symbolism all the time, Mr Jefferson could easily do that to justify his choice. Just off the top of my head I can see Max's photo as symbolising a normal person reflecting on a colourful past, and how people are often heroes just for getting through a hard life. In the art world, meaning and symbols often go farther than what a piece actually looks like to the average person. It's snobby that way.
  • I think this is actually discussed by one of the gallery patrons, to wit: Max's photo isn't focused on herself, but rather, on the photo wall, presumably populated by subjects whom Max herself considers everyday heroes. The framing of the photo invites the observer to consider all the everyday heroes in their own life. It's meta, see? Art snobs love that extra degree of pretention.
• Why is choosing Chloe in the end even an option? In game it's pretty well established that the longer Chloe stays alive, the more dramatic and destructive the side effects become — dramatic in the case of two moons, destructive in the case of beached whales, dead birds and the tornado. The longer she stays alive, the more the universe tries to "right" itself by killing her — whether she's shot, rendered quadriplegic and dying, or run over by a train. How many more times is the universe going to try and kill Chloe after the game? What's going to happen when Max is no longer at her side to keep her alive, like she wants to go to a doctor's appointment and Chloe dies in a home invasion in the meantime? Let's say Max keeps Chloe alive for a year — if a tornado destroys an entire town after a week, what's going to happen after a year? A comet slamming into the earth? The sun going prematurely supanova? Why is sacrificing the town even an option when there's no guarantee that the tornado is the last of it?
  • Keep in mind that what we know about the cyclone and Chloe's destiny of having to die comes from the characters' own interpretation of what's happening. If the tornado and other anomalies are a result of Max's time traveling powers making alternate timelines (which just happens to start with saving Chloe, an event that radically changes the fate of a lot of people,) then Chloe's not destined to die and just sucks at keeping herself safe. She'll be fine from then on as long as she stops doing stupid stunts. If the tornado is there to kill Chloe, then Max made a poor decision and yeah bad stuff is going to keep happening to them. But it's a choice the game has to let you take, because the entire game has thematically been about Max choosing whether to let something be, or to fix it with her time travel.
    • In support of the preceeding troper: Don't forget that Warren is (A) a nerd raised on a diet of sci-fi movies, and (B) a panicking teenager in the middle of a crisis situation. He's not an expert and is clearly grasping at straws for anything which would justify or potentially rectify this ongoing unnatural disaster. Warren is drawing a correlation between Chloe and the storm without any evidence beyond the one or two sentences Max just told him. After all, Chloe isn't being targeted by the universe via random happenstance, a la Final Destination. Every time she is seen dying in the game is the result of her own choices. Chloe associates with shady people, tries to blackmail a clearly unstable and dangerous person, drinks booze and plays with a gun, lies down on train tracks she knows are in regular use, and so on. Alt!Chloe asks Max to help her commit assisted suicide. Even when Jefferson kills Chloe, it's because she assumed the evidence "Nathan" was going to destroy was Rachel's body (rather than literally everything in the Dark Room), which they left in the ground rather than report to the authorities because Chloe doesn't trust them. It is inarguable that witnessing Chloe's death is what triggered the expression of Max's powers. And the assorted unnatural phenomenon seem to be a result of Max tampering with time, i.e. the unscheduled eclipse and second Moon coming from alternate realities bleeding through. But the common denominator here isn't Chloe, it's Max. Max's anxiety initially prevents her from taking action for fear of consequences, the discovery of her powers enables her to redo everything until she gets the results she wants, then the finale is predicated on Max finally making an impossible choice and simply accepting that whatever comes next is beyond her control. Whichever ending the player chooses only matters insofar as their own values and degree of investment; Max learns the same lesson in both endings. If you chose to sacrifice Chloe, there is no sign of the storm in this final timeline because Max has resolved to make a difference without using her powers. If you chose to sacrifice Arcadia Bay, the storm abates and the girls are able to leave in peace, because Max has stopped using her powers. If Chloe was indeed destined to die, you'd think the storm would get worse, wouldn't you? Furthermore, Alt!Chloe's life is already on a timer. Due to her respiratory condition, she is going to die soon, whether or not Max accepts her request. But even then, the wildlife is still dying and the storm is still coming. So all this phenomena is not dependent upon Chloe's death, but Max's power.
• I'm not sure if something got explained in-game and I missed it, but why does Max tearing up her Everyday Heroes entry bring her right back to the Dark Room, before she ever sent the text to David Madsen? The sequence of events looked to me to be: 1. Max is trapped in the Dark Room with Victoria. 2. Max uses her Monday class selfie to travel to the past, where she warns Madsen and then turns in her Everyday Heroes photo. 3. Madsen busts Jefferson early; at the same time, Max wins the contest and goes to San Francisco. 4. Max goes back to when she took the Everyday Heroes photo and rips it up so she can't turn it in during class. 5. Max doesn't win the contest and Madsen... doesn't bust Jefferson early? Why does her not turning in the photo mean she doesn't send Madsen the text? The only explanation given is that Mr. Jefferson burns her diary when he finds the ripped photo, but that doesn't seem like it should send Max to a scenario that's completely the same as the one she avoided by texting a tip to Madsen.
  • Max has to go forward to go back. When she destroyed the contest entry selfie, Jefferson burns the diary, so Max can't use the second selfie in class to go back and warn Madsen because that selfie is in the diary.
  • I think what the OP is asking is why Max didn't call Madsen during the time skip, when she was on "autopilot". My guess is Max simply misjudged what she would do. Autopilot!Max didn't have any of Real!Max's knowledge before she took the Everyday Heroes photo, and she simply proceeded as normal once Real!Max was no longer in control of her. So the same events happened all over again, except that Jefferson burned her diary, meaning Max couldn't pull the same trick twice.
  • The whole issue still doesn't make much sense. She destroys in the past the very same photo she's using in the present to travel to that moment. This creates a paradox, so if anything, Max should have been trapped in some sort of permanent time loop.
    • Same could be said about the photo she burned in the Price fireplace earlier. Time must self-correct for paradoxes in this universe.
  • Given that the past moments Max can photo-jump into have a distinctive "border" around them, it seems that she's almost literally jumping "into" the picture of the moment itself, and destroying the photo once she's "inside" the moment has no effect other than whatever ripples it might have on the timeline created. The photo jump is one way; Max only gets out of it by changing something or waiting long enough for the moment to pass and allowing time to proceed unhindered. She didn't create a paradox when she destroyed her Everyday Heroes photo; she just made a timeline that didn't work out for her.
• Max can use photos to travel to distant past for a short period and the changes she makes can create a timeline. In the new timeline, her previous mind takes control of her new self in a date next to the present time of the previous timeline. However, considering all this, what would happen if she altered the past and it generated a timeline in which she died at some point?
  • I guess she would find herself dead in the present. In which case she's lucky that didn't happen when she tried that stunt in the game.
  • For all we know, it's simply impossible for Max to generate a timeline in which she, herself, dies.
  • I imagine that Max cannot travel forward to a future where she no longer exists as she wouldn't exist. So she'd just be stuck in the past until she figures out and subsequently changes whatever she did that caused herself to die.
• Why does warning Victoria about Jefferson being a murderer get her killed, but not warning her doesn't? Shouldn't that be the other way around?
  • Max can't warn Victoria about Jefferson, since she doesn't know about his involvement at that point. She can warn Victoria about Nathan, which causes Victoria (if she believes Max) to go to the nearest non-student she trusts for help: Mr. Jefferson. If she's not warned, or doesn't believe Max, she never goes to him and he doesn't need to deal with her knowing too much.
• But which version of Blade Runner did they watch?
  • Based on Before the Storm, probably the director's cut.
• What is so Slut-Shamingly worthy about Kate's viral video? It's no secret Rachel regularly slept around and there's a "rumor" she had sex with a teacher twice her age, but everyone has nothing but good things to say about her, Logan sexes up every girl he sees, Victoria sexts other girls' boyfriends, Dana got pregnant and many members in the Vortex Club have hooked up with Rachel, but Kate kissing a few guys is the school scandal?
  • When you set a high standard, it's considered a bigger scandal when someone falls short of that. No one expects Rachel, Victoria, etc. to be paragons of chastity/monogamy, but Kate's a super-religious Nice Girl so it's a much bigger pedestal to fall from. If Victoria were caught in the same situation, people probably would just dismiss it, but it's wildly out of character for Kate.
  • It's also important to remember that while almost all LiS fans love Kate, she isn't popular In-Universe. Blackwell Academy's a highly secular environment. Kate may have a pleasant personality, but between her dour clothing and open piety (like the flyer advertising abstinence), the other students most likely see her as unusual at best and self-righteous or plain creepy at worst. So once word gets out that the "Jesus freak" has done something she's not proud of, it's no surprise Victoria and her posse are all over it.
  • But none of them at the party didn’t or couldn’t notice that Kate was under the influence of something and that one drink of red wine shouldn’t be enough to get someone drunk off their ass? Plus the fact that how in the world did Victoria and Taylor escape from landing in some serious hot water considering that they posted the video online without Kate’s consent?
• Speaking of Kate, how does she recognize Nathan's voice but not Jefferson's voice? At the beginning of Episode 2, she tells Max that she remembers "someone" talking to her in a smooth voice which she didn't recognize as Jefferson's and then she says she heard Nathan's voice. This comes off as strange if you consider her level of familiarity with the two. Knowing Nathan's seething contempt for anyone outside of his Vortex Club group and Kate's lack of popularity with said group, it's highly unlikely that these two are on speaking terms (that time when Nathan offered to take her to the "ER" was likely the first and only time they spoke with one another), so it makes no sense that Kate would somehow be able to recognize his voice over the voice of a teacher with whom she interacts everyday, hearing his voice during lectures and also helping him in class.
  • It would make sense if Nathan was standing closer to Kate at the time. If Jefferson was at more of a distance, his voice wouldn't be distinct enough for Kate to recall or recognize. This would explain why Kate briefly wakes up, then gets put back under; Nathan gave her a lighter dose to begin with (to avoid a repeat of the Rachel situation) and hurriedly injected her again. It should also be noted that Kate would have heard Nathan's voice before she lost consciousness at the party, but wouldn't have heard Mark's voice since at least that afternoon, assuming she had his class on the same day.
• I’m still puzzled about why Max or Chloe didn’t even bother to take the evidence (red binders and disgusting pictures of Kate, Rachel and the other girls) with them after they left the Dark Room???? They don’t think that it would have made life so much easier for them if they took it with them and got ahold of law enforcement and mainly the Oregon State Police or the FBI????? Especially considering most of the Arcadia Bay PD was in the pockets of the Prescotts and getting ahold of an Outside Agency would have been the best bet but no they completely left behind all the evidence and they didn’t even bother to alert either agency when they found Rachel’s Body!!!!!!!!!!! I’m like COME ON!!!!!!! No wonder why Jefferson was able to easily lure them into that trap.

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