Square-Enix Life is Strange

Spoiler

My mind was thinking that there is a 50% chance of her being dead (Since she did disappear 6-7 months ago) or captured and held by Mr. Jefferson in the Dark Room. But the fact that Rachel died and she was buried in the same area where she and Chloe used to hang out disturbs me...

I felt a little bad for blaming Nathan all the time, but he did have a part in kidnapping other women for Mr. Jefferson's "Special photo sessions." Man, Victoria is going to be pissed when Nathan is dead...

Well, Besides having a twisted sense of art I have no idea. what I am interested of, is that how will our choices from Episode 1 to Episode 4 would affect episode 5 and the ending.

And when those two moons appeared, I think that the two alternate realities are merging, which might have caused the tornado. So does that mean that if Chloe died in both realities... She cannot be saved?! D:

 

Spoiler

I know there is a lot more to talk about than this but did anyone else try to keep Frank from being injured or killed and had to go back over and over and over again just to get it right? Is it just me?

 

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I just finished Episode 4

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Wow that was intense, really disturbing **** that I totally did not expect. Really incredible tho

I don't have too much to add here that hasn't been said before and i've been reading up on batshit theories all day

I think the biggest question for me (and probably for everyone) is the connection between the Prescotts and Jefferson. Do they know what Jefferson and Nathan are using the Dark Room for? To what extent do they condone it? How did Jefferson get pulled into it -- what's his motive in all this?

One theory I found interesting speculated that the Prescotts know about the storm (hence the bomb shelters, Pan Estates being built away from the beach, their references to 'destiny'), want to ride it out and then capitalize financially off of it. That seems plausible but doesn't explain Jefferson's connection to Nathan (I do feel the Prescotts MUST know what Nathan and Jefferson are up to). Another theory felt that the Prescotts are trying to inherit the time travel ability, which they believe passes through teenage girls at Blackwell, and they have been kidnapping girls, releasing those they find don't have the power (however they do that?), and killing ones who do... Rachel being a former time travel. They hope that taking a photo at the girl's time of death will transfer power to anyone else in the picture, explaining the shot with Nathan and Rachel dead/dying. They hired Jefferson because they felt a pro photog would have better luck capturing the moment, so to speak. Of course, that hinges on Rachel being a time traveler and doesn't explain why there are so many binders despite Jefferson only being employed at Blackwell a shirt while. I feel more strongly that Rach just woke up during the photoshoot (as seen in the picture of her that Chloe comments on), saw both Nathan and Jefferson, and was either killed to conceal Jefferson's involvement (Kate is the only other one that we know woke up/was mildly lucid at some point, probably because Nathan messed up drugging her (he texted Frank that the GHB was watery), and she clearly didn't see or recognize Jefferson -- and therefore didn't need to be killed. Nathan has immunity from the police but Jefferson doesn't, and for the Prescotts to protect him would raise flags) or they ****ed up when they drugged her again and she overdosed.

I don't know. Really I just want a connection between Jefferson and the Prescotts, and then the Dark Room crew and the supernatural events. Or maybe Nathan and Jefferson are just ****ed up and unrelated to the supernatural ****. Rachel probably is (I agree that she is the doe, I think EP4 made that clear) so they may only be related as far as they killed her. But it does really seem the Prescotts know about the storm and have something planned (all the references to "destiny").

I want to know too if Jefferson had this project going before he came to Arcadia Bay and Nathan got roped into it, or if the Prescotts put him up to it somehow (because they knew he was ****ed in the head somehow? I dunno). I'm partial to the former because it's Jeff's handwriting on the binders, it'd explain Nathan's instability/authority issues, and Jefferson's lecture in EP1 explains to me what he's getting out of the Dark Room photos. He wants to capture people at their most beautiful or innocent point (paraphrased), explaining his choice of vulnerable teenage girls.

Honestly I really have no idea and I'm so excited to see what directions Dontnod goes in. I agree that Chloe seems doomed given all her deaths but I'm hoping there's a way to save her...

Two more things: the first, Max keeps mentioning that we shouldn't rely on her time travel powers and that they have their limits, almost as though they can be used up. Maybe that's when the power passes -- it's a finite supply of rewind power? Or is she just foreshadowing her inability to rewind at the end of EP4 & that she only go so far back? I don't know but I feel it's been left hanging and it worries me for EP5.

Finally what do we make of the EP5 preview? At first I also thought that it was Max pleading in the background, but looking back it sounds more like Kate. Could Max travel back to Kate's abduction? Maybe through the viral video, or the photos in the Dark Room? Someone also pointed out that, if it was Max begging in the preview, Jefferson presumably took her body there right after EP4 (she does meet his profile, after all). But at the end of EP4 he's wearing a blue shirt and in the preview he's in white. He could have just changed his shirt but I think it's an interesting inconsistency.

 

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I've been thinking and I'm actually a little concerned about Warren

Spoiler

When he headbutts Nathan at the dorms, the camera lingers for a while over him holding his head. Okay, not that weird, bashing skulls hurts. But when you see him at the party, he's really out of it despite having only half a beer. Could he possibly have a concussion? Not sure what that would affect but just something I noticed.

As for Nathan and Jefferson

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I really think the Prescotts have some kind of connection to Jefferson and that it's wrapped up in the supernatural ****. For the main antagonist to be disconnected from it would just be bizarre to me, and I'm not sure how Jefferson would have hooked up with Nathan otherwise because iirc Nathan isn't in Jefferson's class? Wasn't he in the classroom at one point, chilling with Victoria, and Jefferson kicked him out?

I mean Nathan is definitely a fan of Jefferson's, Max comments on how Nathan's photography mimics Jefferson's, but I dunno. I can't imagine that the Prescotts have no idea of what's happening in that bunker. I mean, the threatening notes from Sean seemed to be like "I've covered up the weird **** you're up to"

 

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I've just finished episode 5 and I have to say that Life is Strange is one of my surprise favourite games of this year. When I first bought it I was not expecting to enjoy it so much. I would be lying if I said I didn't bawl my eyes out at the end. It's really been worth it the past 7 months.

Also for those interested Insert Coin will be releasing clothing based on the game!

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I'm so disappointed by episode 5's ending. Everything else was such solid build up, and the devs hyped up how intense they were being with your choices mattering
and well
it's just an even worse version of ME3's endng

 

Spoiler: Ending Talk

The ending is certainly not what I expected. I was hoping for something similar to the Kate event, but on a larger scale. The culmination of what you've learned and what you've done in a make-or-break moment. But the ending we get is quite the opposite. Dealing instead with sacrifice and futility. Sometimes you simply can't get everything you want no matter how perfectly you do everything. Sometimes you need to let go and face loss head on. In that respect I love the ending. Esspecially because of its juxtaposition against the decision based gameplay, where we are trained to scour evidence and replay to find an optimal outcome.

My biggest gripe is how that final moment came to be. It was like some inverted deus ex machina. The explanation was barely there and didn't really make sense. They just kind of go "chaos theory" and move on, when half of those weather effects aren't even possible. Merging of dimensions would be a better explanation (which is what they seemed to imply with the two moons of episode 4), but then the fix of jumping realities yet again should only make things worse still.

 

Spoiler: Ending Talk

Most likely what they're going with is that diverging timelines is causing something like a dimensional split. Hence the two moons: basically the entire universe is coexisting with another one slightly off axis. this would explain the weather and stuff. But they don't bother to even try to present a theory, and what's more there's really not special reason why Chloe should cause this. A lot of people forget this, but Max has altered time in a BUNCH of ways before Chloe died. All of the stuff she did at the start of the game after getting her time powers is different, the part in the past where Max burns the photo and cries to Chloe is different, and most significantly, at the start of the game, when Nathan shoots Chloe, Max screams "No!" and reaches out to her. This is pretty significant, it means that Nathan would have known about her being there. But none of that matters, for some reason. Nothing happens to space and time if Kate lives or dies, same with Jefferson. It ALL comes down to Chloe. And then with the second ending where you save Chloe... are we meant to assume that the universe just needs a blood sacrifice to save Chloe? How are we meant to infer that the universe will stop trying to kill Chloe at that point?

The game put WAAAY too much focus on the supernatural elements without even trying to give a satisfactory answer. What's the deal with the doe? Why can only Max see it? What was the deal with the nightmare sequence? What did that have to do with anything?

Personally, I think the nightmare should have delved more into the "Maxes you left behind" angle. Instead of repeating every single line of dialog max and chloe ever shared, they should have shown what happened to the theoretical alternate timelines that Max leaves behind when she uses her time powers. Instead, the concept is brought up, Shadow Max does an awful job at using scare tactics, and thne it's just dropped and never even touched on again. That's Life is strange in a nut shell to me. They introduced all of these threads, and they all went absolutely nowhere. Everyone's telling me what I was "supposed" to get out of this and that I jsut don't get it, but the thing is... I do get the point of the ending. It's just that it'd be a much more effective message in a non-interactive medium. If they wanted to tell a set story, Life is Strange should have been a movie or a TV series. But they decided to make it interactive, to CONSTANTLY push how much your choices matter adn to choose wisely, yet in the end I DON'T have to choose wisely. They literally set it up so it doesn't matter if you try to romance warren, or save that girl constantly, or even save Kate, it's ALL irrelevant, because in the end either Kate lives by default or she and EVERYONE else dies in the tornado. Also why is Chloe just kinda okay with Max essentially killing her mom?

Apparently they ran out of budget with episode 5, and it shows, but MAN, this whole episode has basically ruined an otherwise really solid experience for me

 

Spoiler: Yay Spoiler

Sorry, wasn't trying to cram meaning down your throat. Just saying what I thought they were going for. So many people seem to throw the baby out with the bath water on this one.

As I said before, I agree that the sacrifice Chloe ending should just make things worse. I can see what I think they wanted, she's destined to die and the universe will keep putting her in situations where she should die until she finally does. But when they start implying that dimensions are falling apart the fix is a day late and a dollar short. As for the sacrifice Arcadia ending, I saw that one as being much darker than most people did. Essentially that it won't stop, Max would just be resolved to save Chloe again and again leaving devastation everywhere. I could be convinced of Max swearing off her powers being what stops further calamity, but that then conflicts with the other ending some, and blah.

The supernatural stuff I'm hit or miss with. It all deals directly with Max, and even with time travel extending stuff I don't expect them to figure it out in a week. But as a player not knowing how it works or why Max is special is pretty annoying.

The nightmare I actually quite liked, but I feel it could have benefited from being shorter. Getting that much time makes it feel more important than it is. But it is just in Max's head as she deals with what's happening. The loss of control, fear of Jefferson, fear of letting everyone down, fear of what they think of what she's done, pensiveness about Chloe as she's coming to the realization of what needs to happen. The other Max is weirder admittedly, but even that can be her self hatred, or realizing that she could be hurting people in other realities every time she helps someone in hers. Heck they even go after the player directly using prominently disliked parts of the game like keypads and those monologue chairs.

And I heavily disagree that the ending would have been okay in a non interactive medium. The same plot holes would be there, it's just that the ending wouldn't feel as bad. But it is supposed to feel bad. Through the game you empathize with Max, feeling like by rewinding time you can fix everything. It gets harder later on, but if you just do enough digging, just find the right clues, surely you can still prevail. But in the end you and Max together realize it was all for nothing. They used the tropes of gaming against you to encourage you too feel what the main character feels. As you're asking why you had the power to make decisions if it is just going to end like this, Max is asking why she can bend time if it just has to end up like this.

 

Spoiler: Yay Spoiler

oh I don't think you were, only the first paragraph is specifically directed at you

I'd be inclined to agree, but apparently the devs have straight up said they consider the sacrifice bay ending to be a happy ending, which implies to me that the tornado was the last trial to overcome and now everything's just fine for some reason. Also Max swearing off her powers doesn't remove all the memories she gets of information she shouldn't have about people, which I imagine would inevitably cause her to act in a way that wasn't intended, which would lead to more chaos theory stuff. Also like I said, all of her changes form BEFORE chloe are still intact, why aren't those causing problems?

I didn't expect everything to be explained, but I expected more than this. Especially because they focus SO MUCH on it. I thought the dream sequence would be when we get some answers, or at least allusions to what they could be, but the nightmare is completely meaningless

and speaking of the nightmare, I think they screwed up the moment they decided not to take it seriously. It starts of good, creating a foreboding tone. There's weird stuff like finding that note and it's actually a threat from jefferson, and such. Then it starts to crack about the moment when one of your dialog choices is "My selfies are ****!"
and it just gets sillier from there. The text from the dog, frank talking about his beans, warren talking about going ape, max commenting on the bottles. They basically made it a place to shout out all the memes the series as spawned. By the time Chloe and Victoria are making out I felt like the game was literally winking at me

The plot holes would be there, but they'd be easier to ignore. The game ignores its own rules whenever it needs to tel the story a certain way. Like you know how early on you go to the garage and find stuff, and if you rewind you can get the info without being detected by the cameras? Later when you go to check Nathan's room, I followed the same logic. After I got what I needed, I rewoudn to the point before I even opened the door. Then I go to talk to Chloe and she says "What took you so long?" Never mind that dialog like that shouldn't be in a game about time travel, the whole situation was forced just to give that confrontation with Nathan. Similar deal with taking a picture of Kate being harassed. Why can't I take the picture back with me like literally any other item, then intervene with kate and keep my evidence? That's why I don't think this is suited to an interactive medium, they're not willing to go all the way with it. If Max didn't use her time travel powers to do something in a movie, it'd be weird, but easy to chock up as nothing important. When I'm in direct control, it gets a lot more annoying.
I didn't feel like Max did. Max gave up on getting answers and making theories, and really does nothing to help her figure out chloe caused the tornado. Seriously, they could be completely wrong, and then Max wakes up in a timeline where there's a tornado but also Chloe is dead AND she tore up the picture. Where Max felt sad, I felt annoyed. Annoyed at the choice presented to me, since it was way too extreme to even consider the other option, annoyed that no matter what I did my choices were all gonna be erased, and annoyed that the dream sequence that I sat through for half the episode hadn't amounted to anything