There's actually another thing that wasn't discussed that runs along the same vein of accepting consequences. The game gives you the ability to take back what you said and choose other dialogue choices or using your time travel powers for "everyday heroics". Whether it was being nice to the bullied girl, or just picking the response that made me sound the coolest - I did it because I wanted to be on every character's good side. Later on, an alternate Max calls out the player for using time travel as a sort of shortcut to be well-liked. I dunno, I thought it was just kind of neat.
I feel like when people say Max wasn’t explored much, I think they forget that Max literally talks to herself about the choices she made along the way and the impact it had on several timeline versions of her right near the end of the game. It makes you think twice about the all the choices you thought were good. Were they good only because you decided that? Or were they good because from a moral standpoint it was always the right thing to do? And who’s to say that she should ever have meddled with Chloe’s life, causing her immeasurable suffering by saving her father and unintentionally dooming her to a fate like that? Lots of questions and moral compass debate to be had.
"Reach out to the girl being mistreated by a security guard or take a photo for art" Or... take a photo to have evidence of what was going on so you'll have more proof than just your word for the event. That was my thought process on doing this first time playing. Always good to have evidence of the thing so it isn't he said, she said.
I think there is a very appropriate German word (since you're already using those) for what Max does in the game: verschlimmbessern (making something worse by trying to make it better).
littlemissleeches this is such an appropriate word for this, oh my god. I would love to hear a non-German speaker try to pronounce that word, it‘s much harder than Bildungsroman, mein Freund 🤣
You can use it as evidence for David's actions when talking to Mr. Jefferson in episode 2. Edit: And you can show it to Wells, which gets David suspended for his actions.
23:00 Chloe's death may have impacted Kate's video. Nathan probably spilled EVERYTHING, including drugging Kate (among others), proving she was innocent and that the video is her being sexually assaulted. For that, Kate may feel she owes it to Chloe to attend her funeral and pay her respects since her death was the catalyst for this. On top of that, Kate is a very spiritual person, and Chloe was a former Blackwell student and a member of the community, so she may have wanted to attend anyway. Warren obviously went to support Max. She may have asked him, or he may have gone on his own accord so she didn't have to be alone.
i think max just does not want kate to suicide and lose another friend so she probably makes an effort to become good friends with kate, i dont believe it is this part is that deep but it could be.
I understand every complaint anyone says about this game. You can tell me why you hated it and I won't even try to defend it. That said, I loved it. It was my favorite game of 2015 and is well into my top 10 all time. It made me think like no game ever has before. It moved me like a Telltale game never has. I still have my problems with it, but I recognize that nothing is perfect and a work of art has the power to move you regardless of its technical polish. That may be it. I love this more as art than as a video game. I love this more as an experience than as a video game. I love this more as a look at what real responsibly is than as a video game. I love this game.
Same. I played "The Wolf Among Us" and I liked it but Life is Strange is far more memorable, which is why I questioned why he was comparing the two in the beginning. On the surface, they do have similarities but the impact of both these games is very different.
I personally thought Kate's suicide scene was very well executed, probably the most complex and thought-out segment in the game. I didn't really see it as the game quizzing you; to me it seemed like the game was seeing if you actually cared for her. The only way to prevent her suicide is for you to prove that you were paying attention to her and that you actually CARED about her. The additional element of your rewind powers being taken away make this scene that much more effective. It's a well-executed social commentary on how suicidal people need to have people there to show how much they care
Yeah. Honestly the taking away of the rewind powers really makes it so you HAVE to have cared enough to have learned about her. Because unlike every social situation up to this point, you cant just rewind if you get the answer wrong. It's the part of the game that, for the most part, throws out the sci fi (or sci fa if you wanna be annoying) and goes all in on the choices you make and your attachment to the character. Not to mention, on another level it also rewards you for playing the game thoroughly. As something of a minor completionist, it was rewarding to find I had all the right answers when that scene came up.
Okay, I get where you're coming from, but honestly, that's absolutely the opposite of what I got from the game. The information you use to save Kate is found by snooping through her room and reading private communication with her relatives. I genuinely liked her and decided to respect her privacy, but then the game had the gall to accuse me of not caring about her when I unknowingly brought up her mom on the roof. Oh, I'm sorry game, I didn't think it would be respectful to read her fucking emails, I guess that means I want her to kill herself, that's fine.
@@a10485 I feel like most of that is the "video gamey stuff" conflicting with the narrative, because presumably if they were actually friends Max would learn these things throughout their time spent as friends. The player doesn't really get the option to learn those things naturally in the time frame the game takes place in and can't actually experience it as Max without it being a contrived "we became best friends yesterday" scenario. So instead they turned it into basically collectibles and optional interactable content.
"I honestly can't even tell you if this game is good. I can't even tell you if I liked it. But I think... I think I loved it?" I laughed so hard at this oh my god ahaha! Truer words could not have been spoken. Very good video! I love Life is Strange, but I also have that experience of being unable to defend it when it's getting criticized. I also have the experience of being unsure if it's even good, or if, objectively, it warrants being liked at all. But I do love it, that's for sure. I wonder how you feel about Before the Storm now that episode one is out...?
I replayed it now, and I can say that a lot of the criticisms of the time have faded for me. I'm biased, this game means more to me than I can put words to, but I'll say a lot of problems that even I had the first go round weren't really bad anymore. Like, the issues almost everyone has with the slang disappeared, because I forgot what slang sounded like back then, so the corny phrasing it suffers from at times kinda just feel like how we used to talk. A few lines still kinda suck, but it's not nearly as bad as I remember. I think the tone is fantastic, and I didn't really notice many big inconsistencies, and the emotional beats still tear me up. As well, the dream sequence in the end wasn't nearly as bad as people make it out to be, and I actually really liked it. I will say, the facial tracking still SUCKS, I was expecting that.
I mean, you don't need to defend something from criticism to enjoy it or for you to consider it good. You don't need other people to like it for you to love it. Also, it can't be objectively good, for such a thing doesn't exist.
It isn't easy to get to but the "golden ending" has you can earn Frank's trust and he gives you the code without bloodshed. As long as you don't anger Frank twice during that conversation you can reach that ending (not stealing the money is sure to anger him once but the rest can be avoided if you choose the right dialogue). Some choices that you made in earlier episodes (like shooting frank) makes it harder to reach that ending but not impossible.
A flowchart of all the choices in this conversation, all that care went into one conversation with a side character which is amazing, it is a shame that the last episode didn't receive that amount of care though. venturebeat.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Life-Is-Strange-Frank-flowchart.jpg
If you stole the money but let the dog live its easier to get out without anyone being hurt. But basically the game says in this situation you must have done at least one immoral thing in the past to make this easier on you.
I thought Alyssa was one of the nice touches. After saving her from stuff all game, she refuses to let you save her and she dies. The game really hammers home your own helplessness
It was. If you save her all the time, she are going to die this time; if you never save her she is going to die. Is morality. Maybe he don't know about the detail.
I will say this much about the suicide prevention scene. It was heartbreaking for me because of my own struggles with depression and suicidal attempts. I wound up saving her in the first try mostly because I considered what I would want to hear if I was on the ledge.
First I have to say I am sorry to hear you have to go through this sort of stuff. As someone who has struggled with it too, I can say I understand the pain that scene causes, no matter how good or not it was actually written. I should add that it is heartbreaking if you are the kind of people who sees flavor text but never truly put much thought into it. Like, if you read the quote you need to save her, but can't remember the exact passage and then fail and hate yourself for not being observant enough. And I have to disagree with Innuendo Studios here, having her check if you read her flavor text is a good way of asking the player if they even care about the character.
That's how I thought of it, too. Yes, the whole sequence kind of boils down to a quiz about Kate, if you just want to look at it mechanically. But it's a quiz you're much more likely to pass if you've shown that you care about Kate and if you've paid attention to the Kate-related things in the game. It was also very interesting that the devs took your powers away before the sequence, because it gives you this sense of helplessness and urgency that's not present in most of the game. You realize that you can't just guess your way to saving her life and rewind if you get it wrong. You actually had to care, or she dies. It's the first time the game really slaps you across the face for using the rewind power as a crutch.
Nick Piers not a lot of attention was brought up to it though. Hell, you could have gone through most of the game and not have known she had a serious problem.
I loved this game, even the flaws. It really tired to "go there" without apology. It was the little things too; hanging out with Chloe in her room yeeted me right back to when I was in high school hanging out in my friend's rooms just talking shit and laying on the bed being dorks. It was almost supernatural how they captured those sort of life moments.
I'd call this game a flawed masterpiece to be honest. Yes, there are problems, particularly in the first 2 episodes regarding that despite an earnest attempt, the writers don't quite understand teenagers as well as they want to. But given the amount of potential philosophical depth from discussion of this game and its themes, I find it remarkable. It also has stayed with me in ways most games never are able to do. It is not perfect by any stretch, and maybe the sequels will disappoint, but I love this game. I think its wonderful and I think wrecking you and making decide what story you want it to be is part of what makes it great.
Well the most obvious example is how the characters talk, all the hokey pop culture references and made-up slang positively REEKS of "How do you do, fellow kids?" which I guess makes sense since it's a game about hipster teens on the Oregon coast that's been written by a group of middle aged French guys who've never been to America (seriously, they used Google Maps as reference when designing Arcadia Bay).
Teens don't even understand themselves so how could anyone write them, a huge swath of varying everythings?! But teens do make up slang and make forced pop references all the damn time. To pretend otherwise is nonsense as shadowing them will net the same weird results just as honestly looking back on your own teenage years will. Source: I HAVE A TEENAGER IN MY HOUSE! LIFE IS STRANGE!
I'm 17, and i thought they actually did a pretty good job of representing teens. Of course some of the slang is outdated now, and a lot of the terms are cringey, but that's truly how it is a lot of the time.
I hated the ending because the "correct" option literally made the rest of the game not happen, as you pointed out. Although now that you've pointed out how the two genres are at odds, I really do like it better. Pinning the classic "last choice you make in the game" being a choice that is less about what is the correct narrative choice and more about which narrative is the one you like is freaky.
Mr. ShinyObject I don't think the whole game wasn't for nothing with the "bay>bae" ending, Max learned a lot and you find out what happened to Rachael and the other students with the Dark Room stuff, so although I don't think Jefferson was arrested in the ending cutscene, I'm pretty sure it happened.
I have to disagree with you. If you travel back in time, you literally undo everything you've done in an entire game. You learnt all this stuff about Rachel etc. but... I highly doubt that Max would remember all of that. I think so because: "How could she remember something that actually DID NOT HAPPEN?" She did not have any "proper goodbye" with Chloe, she never travelled in time thus did not experience any of those realities etc. simply because none of these happened. I felt so bad when I realized all of that. This time travel thingy is so confusing... I'd be glad if you prove me wrong, 'cause I really wish, Max could remember.
Lucky Luke Lucky Luke Maybe she probably doesn't remember all of it, but in episode three she entered an alternative reality and she remembered a lot from the reality that technically didn't happen. And at the ending if you choose to sacrifice Chloe, Max is slouched and sad in the bathroom because she knows her friend is going to die.
+Lucky Luke For the week that corresponds to the events of the game, Max knows nothing about the events of the game; once she "returns", she remembers the events of the game, but knows nothing about what happened during that week in the new timeline (which invites the question of how she got to the funeral). Or at least that's what happened every other time she used her ability to change history using a photo - she remembered the events from the original timeline, but didn't know what her alter-ego had done in the new timeline after the point of divergence (except where restoring the timeline meant she knew what happened up to her original change). Instead, she has to figure things out from her diary and from how other people react to her. +Evan Lopez After listening to Chloe die, the "changing history" scene with the polaroids being replaced showed David Madsen marching a handcuffed Mark Jefferson out of Blackwell Academy. +Mr. ShinyObject Whichever outcome you choose, the vast majority of your decisions have their consequences removed - sacrifice Chloe, and the week's actions were taken by autopilot-Max who may or may not have killed Lisa, and probably wouldn't have saved Alyssa from various minor accidents. Sacrifice Arcadia Bay, and (according to what the Devs wanted us to believe) the only person you interacted with who survives is Chloe - so Lisa and Alyssa still end up dead, whether you kept them alive until the storm hit or not.
13:48 Woah woah woah woah woah. That's absolutely not true at all. My playthrough was a bit different, Frank still had the gun and clearly Cloe has the gun here for you, but I was able to talk Frank into siding with us and he even willfully gives the gun back to Cloe. No one got hurt and Pompidou was alive.
Maybe keeping Cloe away from the gun is the necessary part but when she doesn't have the gun it's possible to tell Frank to lock the RV so the dog can't come out (One of the other options does nothing, and the other option causes essentially an auto-fail, so there's definitely no reason to NOT do this).
Yeah you even do see at the end of the episode that there is an option where NOBODY gets hurt. How I did that was save the dog and then talking it out with Frank and apologizing for aiming the gun at him. Then it all works out and he helps you.
This was a pretty comprehensive analysis and really resonated with my experience of the game. I think you hit the nail on the head about the awkward, fumbling earnestness with which this game was made. I think the episodic nature of the game and the detailed design put into the episodes (even when the details were sometimes misleading or just like an extra layer of pretty that didn't go anywhere narrative-wise) really captured this earnestness and helped make the game the phenomenon it was, but also made the endings so much more tough to swallow. Since the game wasn't released all at once, there was plenty of time for people to speculate about what might happen and to dream up these (honestly more coherent) narratives that never came to fruition. Then, when there was so much tension towards the end between trying to wrap up storylines, but not put a bow on everything, but finish the coming of age story, but also conclude the murder mystery psychodrama, the expectations were incredibly high and the end they came up with was satisfying to the masochist in me but dissatisfying to the part of me that wanted it to make sense lol. Yet it somehow didn't taint my experience of the game as a whole, because like you said, I still got choked up at the end and I still cared about the characters. I still consider the game one of my favorites, despite seeing so many flaws in it and, like you, agreeing with so much of the criticism of it. Another aspect of the game that I think contributed to both its popularity as well as the confusion and disappointment around the endings was the fact that we so rarely see a canon queer relationship between two women, especially two young women who are coming of age, in any media including games. While the romantic aspect of the relationship was technically optional, I read Chloe as queer from the beginning of the game and the movement toward more explicit queerness/the option for a relationship in later episodes really contributed to my excitement about the story. However, the ending choice really plays into the bury your gays trope. I think that is the one major aspect this analysis leaves out when looking at the ending and its WTF quality. Not only are there these two conflicting themes you're being forced to choose between that both erase huge chunks of the game, there is also an aspect of the ~sacrifice the wild love~ story that is specifically ~sacrifice the QUEER love~ and implies (not on purpose and this is part of that damned earnestness) that even though you love this woman and have worked so hard to keep her safe, you need to let her die and let this queer awakening/part of who you are die so that society can be safe. And that is why, after I originally chose the Bay ending, I went back and was like, you know what fuck this, and chose the Bae ending. Because if I'm gonna live in a fictional universe where you really have to pick between the sacrifice it all and the live with your mistakes themes, I'm gonna pick live with my mistakes. So in a way, I think LIS is revolutionary for letting you literally kill the world for your blue-haired girlfriend, and I love it for that. But it also makes me mad that it forces you to make that choice. Wowser.
superblysituated you took the words right out of my mouth- which is great because now I don't have to spend forever typing them out on my phone! Thanks :P
It also doesn't help that the developers ran out of time and money for Episode 5 - I don't know that Square Enix giving them more resources to finish the game as they wanted to would have fixed things, but I like to think that at least some of the problems with the ending were because they didn't have the opportunity to fix them...
The character of Max is a sweet, shy girl who always means well from beginning to end. Even when we are playing from her POV and making tough choices, there's never only one "right" choice. There's only living with the choices you make, sometimes discovering unexpected consequences much later. Even when the teen dialogue is occasionally tone deaf, the characters' personalities and relationships still ring true. Overall, the ambitious mashup of genres succeeds far more than places where it may seem awkward. This game has developed a huge following and it could be argued that it has ingeniously (or luckily) incorporated its own flaws into its ultimate charm and popularity. I'm a big fan of the Telltale games but even they don't stick with me the way Max and Chloe do.
I've admittedly never played LiS, but based on your description, I interpret the "Sacrifice Chloe" ending not as a commentary on living with your choices, but as a commentary on the best possible timeline. Max spends the whole game searching for the best possible outcome to any given situation, and sometimes she finds one, sometimes she doesn't. The tornado is an indication that all the outcomes Max thinks are best are actually way worse than she could have ever imagined. Going back to the beginning and letting Chloe get shot means that Max is finally accepting that this timeline, where her childhood friend gets murdered in front of her, is actually the best possible timeline. And if you extrapolate that idea, it means that everything that will ever happen to her, no matter how bad, is part of the best possible timeline. It could not possibly have been any better and would certainly been worse if things had been different. That thought is either encouraging or horribly depressing, depending on how you look at it.
This comment is why i'm absolutely thrilled you commented. I shouldnt add to it because it's really not needed. This is why The movie Butterfly Effect is a relative example. no matter what he did in that movie there was a penalty and/or reward, but all in all it was something that did not benefit him other than accepting that this(how it originally was) is the best possible outcome.
I’ve always interpreted it as “max living with her mistakes.” Everything could have been prevented In each timeline had max stuck by Chloe. She could literally rewind time- but her absence kept reoccurring. It was a mistake she could never fix- and either way, resulted in deaths. She kept denying any possible consequence, and kept struggling to fix it- when she was never going to be able to.
I kinda like this interpretations and I think it makes a lot of sense to interpret it that way, on the other hand saying "this is the best of all possible worlds" is a really sad thing to say cause it kinda makes you lose hope looking at how horrible the world is. What point is there in fighting for a better world, if it's a zero sum game. I don't think it is. Also this solves the theodicy problem which is even more alien to my atheist worldview.
Yeah I'm not really a fan of a game where the timeline where the gay girl gets violently murdered in front of her girlfriend is portrayed as the "best possible timeline". That's gross and homophobic as fuck.
@@ravenfrancis1476 I actually been thinking of this ending in a similar way but not quite like straight up as homophobic. for me it feels like if you pick chloe and run away with her is a metaphor for coming out in small towns, you lose everyone you ever known when doing that (its happened to me sadly) it feels like your hometown ceases to exist afterwards too because they just stop acting like *you exist* all-together. As for the ending where you let max die, that would be the timeline max stays in the closet rather than accepting herself and being happy with who she truly loves, she stays with Warren even though she doesn't love him she's okay with it because it means her home town still exists. I feel like you can't argue which timeline is truly "best" as the game makes it clear that there's any number of timelines that exist so i don't really feel the devs intended for the audience to see any timeline as the complete "best" one, infact the devs are very adamant that they will never say a ending is "better" or "canon" over the other, perhaps because both have their pros and cons and both can simultaneously be canon at the same time by existing in different timelines, but no timeline is overall "best" so ultimately it just comes down to personal choice of what you want for Max.
This is a brilliant deconstruction and explanation of the final choice and what that means in the context of what game you think you're playing. I chose Bay the first time around, which I do think offers the more satisfying narrative ending, But the second time around, Bae really feels much more in line with the thematic direction of that final chapter. You spend the whole time fruitlessly trying to change your mistakes, but you just keep making things worse. All the way up to the point where thematically it seems the lesson should be, I can't do this anymore. Whatever happens happens, and I can't keep trying to control it.
I'm a huge Life is Strange apologist tbh. I choose the "bae" ending, (and didn't reload BTW) - but not mostly because of Chloe, but because I found the idea of erasing the entire history sort of existentially horrific. Changing the immediate past is one thing; changing the last 6 months or whatever so none of it ever happened is another.
Week. The last week. Five days even. Normally I'm not a big fan of changing the past as a concept, but the ending doesn't read way to me. To me it's not so much "changing the past" as it is "undo a change I made". By sacrificing Chloe Max is accepting that some decisions are not hers to make.
Lol, it's been a while since I played this. Seems a lot to happen in 5 days! Still, it's still kind of how I feel about it. It's the fact that you lose the relationship and choices that you had in the rest of the game. I almost feel like the game is asking you in a weird way how much you value the idea of "having been through a history" or "having lived something". OK, you could argue that even if you change the past, you have still lived through it, but it just felt so wrong and destructive to me to destroy all the games' choices and experiences that I went through.
I was seriously expecting something really sophisticated. "Bildungsroman" to a German is probably as complicated as "schoolboard" to an English person :D
So, this is a super random interpretation I came up just now... and I actually think it's non-shitty enough to share it here. So, Max gets her powers, but she's expected not to use it EVEN if it means letting the girl she loves die. This is very contradictory, really, but it's far from being the first time we saw it in Life Is Strange. Other characters, like Nathan and Kate are also expected by their families to ignore their feelings and act like they're expected to. I think Victoria could also be dealing with this, since in Episode 4 she mentions that she always feels like she should be making up for something, but has no clue what this is. (I made a little analysis about Kate in another youtube comment becasue i'm lame I'll just copy it here skipp to the ____ likes if you don't want to read it) "Anybody else noticed the magpies when Kate jumped? People keep saying that her spirit animal is the rabbit (being in a cage all scared, black and white like her and all. Plus rabbits 1: are super cute and 2: have a lot of sex so keeping a rabbit in a cage could symbolize her abstinence, or just keeping down the teenage part of her, just like the rabbit got scared when Max took a photo, showing how that after all, Kate is just a scared kid like everyone else, plus the PTSD from the Dark Room and the video. The rabbit is caged in a small space, alone and ailed from the world, in a way that you can only see the most beautiful of her, not the little incorrect things that makes her human), but I think that the magpie could be another possibility. You can see many magpies (black and white, like her) flying away, and in 0:34 you can see the image perfectly. When you're walking through the frozen time, you can see more magpies suspended in the air. Now I'm not sure if those are magpies. The colors are practically the same, as I compared with the other magpies that appeared during the game. I don't know about the symbolism of the magpie, but I can't help but remember that nursery rhyme, "One for Sorrow". It goes like this: One for sorrow, Two for joy, Three for a girl, Four for a boy, Five for silver, Six for gold, Seven for a secret, Never to be told. Eight for a wish, Nine for a kiss, Ten for a bird, You must not miss. This is the original one: One for sorrow, Two for mirth, Three for a funeral And four for birth (or "Four for a Death, depending on the origin) I could count four magpies in the video, but I think I counted seven when I played the scene myself. Now four magpies in the newest rhyme is for a boy, and it doesn't have much to do with Kate so I take that the four magpies are supposed to symbolize a birth or a death-- just like happens here. In this scene, Kate can either die or be saved, start again, a second chance to live and as you can see in the hospital room in Episode 4 she's doing a lot better with her depression. You can't see any bottle of pills and since Max didn't tell her she was going I don't think she hided them. Almost like she was born again. Magpies are known for stealing jewelry and stuff, being materialistic and opportunistic and taking risks, which sounds nothing like Kate, does it? Which is strange, because she DID go to that party, she DID accept a ride from Nathan. And before any fellow feminist comes saying that girls should be allowed to do what they want without being in danger, the truth is that Kate DID take a huge risk. I’ll explain what I mean later. In the bible, if I remember right, there is something about the magpie not going in Noah’s Ark with the other animals, but in the ridgepole of the ship, chattering all the time. It was also referenced that she did not attend to Christ’s funeral, which is a typical representation of a rebel. While this doesn’t sound a lot like Kate, it stills contrasts with the idea of the caged rabbit representing Kate hiding the most teenage part of her. I think I can explain with the philosopher Kierkegaard “Phases of Existentialism”. In short words, Kierkegaard believed in three phases of human existence: Aesthetical Phase (frivolities, hollow, fun. You don’t care if it’s good or bad, you care if it’s fun or not), Ethical Phase (deepness, law, you don’t care if it’s fun or not, you care about whether is good or bad) and Religious phase (You don’t care if it’s fun or good or anything, you care about what God would say about it. Ex: flooding the entire fucking world). The problem is that being too deep in either phase can lead to unhappiness. If you’re too deep in the religious or ethical phase you can never have this frivolous thing you want, you can’t have fun or just go around drinking beer and fuck some shit up for the sake off fun. Too deep in the aesthetical phase and you’re an immoral prick. So, what does this have to do with Kate’s spirit animal? I believe that the caged rabbit is the expectation, the image she’s told to keep and that she’s convinced that the needs to keep. The perfect Christian girl, the perfect daughter, the perfect student, deep into the ethical or religious phase. The Magpie is the part of her that just wants to be free (the rabbit is in a cage, the bird flies free). It’s the part of her that wants to say “Fuck it” and have fun and go to parties and take risks and be the teenager she could never be because she was too busy trying to be perfect. And once the thrill was gone she fell back in the rabbit’s cage, horrified with what she had done. The reason why we only see magpies when she jumped is because it was in her most “Fuck it” moment. She didn’t care about anything, she wanted to be free, which I think gives the fact that she jumped off a roof instead of cutting her veins or hanging herself from a tree a deeper symbolism. It kinda reminds me of that song by Iron and Wine, Upwards Over The Mountain. I highly recommend listening to it. The rabbit and the magpie are both her spirit animal. She’s a teenager, after all. She’s defining herself as a person. A perfect woman of God or a mischievous party girl? Both animals represent her inner conflict during the game and I think it’s beautiful. Another little fact: M. Jeffershit’s spirit animal is an owl. You cans see and owl in the barn, and an owl flying towards Rachel’s grave in the junkyard at night. Guess what owls that big eat? Smaller birds. I’m sure one of those could easily eat a bluejay or a magpie, or a butterfly if they can’t get anything better. A doe or a rabbit, in the other hand, I see it harder. Just something to think about. I feel like Kate deserves more attention by the fandom. Like, it’s all Max, Chloe and Rachel and actually Kate is the whole reason why Max got involved in this. Yeah, they’re looking for Rachel but Max had no reason to find her other than help Chloe (a girl she barely knows, five years of separation do that to relationships, believe me), and she didn’t do anything before Kate tried to jump. And you can see how Max is all the time thinking about her in her inner monologues ad reminding Chloe that they’re not there only for Rachel (just for the Pricefield shippers that believe Pricefield in the only true ship, screw that). Like, Kate is so full of symbolism. Her violin, for example. I could spend hours talking about the violin! A violin is small and easy to hide but can you actually hide it when you play it? It’s naturally the most beautiful instrument that exists, but the smallest distraction, the smallest deviation causes awful sounds that no one wants to hear. It needs a lot of care to sound good, like resin and a good bow and it’s just so hard to tune it, to keep it perfect and the price for it’s beauty is so high for those who can’t appreciate the inhuman effort one is making and it hurts you so much, much more than a guitar or a piano. You have to keep your spine perfectly straight and your neck and shoulders hurt and your hands feel like they’re in fire and literally I once played until my fingers started to bleed and not even then it was good enough but no one can be truly perfect with it because it’s one of the hardest instruments to play and if they can appreciate it, even with the little deviations and bad tuning then it’s worth it. And I think it’s beautiful how it reflects Kate’s inner struggle. Whether it was intentional or not, it’s my favorite symbolism in the game. (i just love Kate so much)" ________________ Ok so after all this random shit, I think the game yes, it's a coming to age story, and everything you said in the video is gold, but I also think that the ending has a metaphorical meaning: It's about the struggle of not being good enough, the dispair of being told to do contradictory things and having too much power, yet beig told not to do anything and having to keep quiet while watching your world fall apart. Max is told to save Chloe, Max is told to let Chloe die, and she's being pulled by her two arms in different directions and she doesn't know what to do anymore. wow this is so much shit in one youtube comment
7:16 I'm just gonna say this because it irks me... I don't think anyone chose the photo option for "art". The thought process everyone had was "evidence".
I honestly didn`t considered the evidence posibility at first but I wasn`t considering that as a rational choice, I tought it was supposed to be purely an emotional one. I didn`t play the first time thinking there were right or wrong choices, so I just considered what I would do in that situation. I really tought it would be a cool picture but I was also certain that if Kate found out about the photo she would get mad, so I took it hoping she wouldn`t see me. She did but I ultimately kept that. I treid to convince myself that I mantained that course of events because it could be used as proof against the guard, but in reality it was because I was too afraid to get directly involved in that situation and I didn`t want Madsen to see my face.
I took the "sacrifice Arcadia Bay" ending and I never questioned my decision. Maybe it is because I just couldn't let Chloe die but I think if the game taught you not to mess with everything, you can't go back to the beginning and let the girl die. You have to stick with all the shit you did and you have to live with the fact that you caused this tornado (which by the way is bullshit too xD I don't truly believe that Max is responsible for that tornado).
I know this comment ist very old by internet standards but thank you for pointing this out. The idea that you could just solve the biggest problem you have caused so far by using your time powers to undo everything by using your time powers to undo everything just seemed off to me. Yeah sure, a whole lot of people die because Max (ab-)used her time powers but isn't that the point of the (insert long german term here); her living with that baggage and learning from the experiences she made to me make for a much more profound takeaway than "be selfless by sacrificing that punk girl that has been in pain for literal years now to save a small town because everything else is not logical""
Life is strange was probably one of the most emotionally draining games i've ever played. I could only play so long before I needed to take a break. The end choice made me debate for at least 10 minutes. It was a good variation on the Trolley problem. I am one of those people who chose to save Chloe and never reloaded and did the other choice, it just didn't feel right to do so and probably made the ending stronger that way.
I think the problem with most people's analysis of the ending is that they view it as "both Chloe and Arcadia Bay are drowning, who do you save?" when its more like "Arcadia Bay is drowning because of an uninformed decision you made, do you take back several life altering choices and literally erase a peice of history to save it" Viewing it through this lense is why I chose to save Chloe, not only did I care about her more than the citizens of Arcadia bay but I considered taking back the decision to save someone's life and altering history to be far more morally dubious than any lopsided loss of life in defiance of utilitarianism. Pricefield for life.
I chose the "bae" ending - and I guess you can psychoanalyse me and how I'm trying to justify sacrificing the town, but... Seriously? If -that- is how "fate" works? That I HAVE to sacrifice my best friend when I literally have been given the power BY the universal constants that I am breaking, or BY this metaphysical representation of fate - that I have been given the power to go back in time just to be powerless? That I've been given a STOP button just to watch the love of my life get shot and die? Then -fuck- that. Seriously. "Fate", or whatever metaphor for god or nature is being presented, is a completely bullshit and borderline sadistic. I am not going to bargain with something that forces me to choose between those two options. I am not letting some unjust "universe" dictate my decisions and force me to be a bystander in my friend's death when that same "universe" gave me the power to save her. I guess I just don't like authority, or being beholden to horrible consequences because of an abstract "destiny". I killed Arcadia Bay, I'll shoulder that, but I killed it because I'm not going to play by the rules of an omnipotence that asks me to watch my friend die after giving me an out.
I totally get where you're coming from - and I do genuinely agree with you on a lot of points, but in terms of the game and how the consequences are framed I personally disagree for a couple of reasons; - You are literally given the power to change things, you're given the power to stop your friend from dying. It's not about "learning that you can't change everything" because you're given that power, and an arbitrary cost is assigned to it later. - Being adult is about learning that your actions have consequences, for sure, but it's also about learning that authority is not always right, and the tornado is the manifestation of that authority. The idea that wanting to save your friend is an inherently selfish action, then forcing you to re-live that moment is the action of an authority that is cruel. I disagree not because I think it wasn't selfish for me to let Arcadia Bay die, but because I disagree with the principle of it. I'm agnostic personally, but it's a similar view to the atheist not bowing to a god who allows evil to exist in the world, or who would murder millions in a flood. Just because a position of authority says that things should be a certain way, it doesn't mean that you're 100% responsible for the actions they take when you don't align with them. - In my headcanon, Max would never use her powers again after Arcadia Bay died, but I don't think she was guilty of that initial choice - I don't think, initially, that wanting to save Chloe was wrong of her. I don't think SAVING Chloe was wrong of her. And yet, the consequences for wanting to do that are: You have to see your friend die again, you have to let it happen, and you have to go through a ton of trauma to pay for what you did. It's an unusual, cruel and unjust punishment for a very human impulse. When the game hung that choice over me at the end of the game, it was saying: "Here is the price for wanting to save your friend." And I paid that price because I would never co-operate with a force that would put that choice on someone. Basically, I said "Fuck You" to fate and destiny because I don't believe in those things, and if they did exist then I would disagree with their cruelty on principle.
I kinda felt that was the point. The "coming to age story with a very german name" usually involves understanding the world is cruel and you have to deal with it and carry your share of its cruelty in order to live. True and sad message as it is, Life is Strange just takes it to cosmic levels. Also I think there is a certain natural beauty in refusing the logically good ending and telling the core concept of the ending choice to fuck itself, not because edginess of being thirsty for lesbian relationships, but because you truly disagree in principle with what the game is saying.
A good point to be made about the disconnect between the 1st and 2nd halves of the game is the Adventure of a story. People go about their normal lives making normal choices, observing normal behaviors and events until something abnormal shakes things up and forces your characters down a path that few or no other people will ever deal with. When the more dire and immediate circumstances or your choices far surpass the gravity of what you had to choose in your old life. Max no longer particularly cares about how she feels about Warren because more dramatic issues take center stage in her focus. Chloe was thrust back into her life, Chloe's stepfather takes his traumas out on others, Kate does or almost kills herself, discovering a dead person, being kidnapped. The things she keeps getting dropped into keep one upping the previous most dramatic thing in her life. It keeps changing the perspective and feels so heavy that "should I go on a date with Warren" or "should I enter a photo into one competition" just do not matter anymore. And after all that goes down, whichever option Max takes at the end, she eventually has to go back to making the mundane choices. The adventure doesn't last forever if you survive it, and there is no guarantee you go on another. As far as we're aware thanks to LiS 2, Max lives a pretty normal life after the events of her story and doesn't have any more whacky time traveling adventures. Stories like hers are a temporary wild ride of extraordinary choices and situations which begin and end with pretty mundane life.
As for gameplay, something that could have made it all a LOT more interesting would be instead of just randomly traveling back in time for some undefined period of time and later introducing the photo time travel, they could have established from the start that you can go back in time to ANY photo you've taken- or even more daring and broad of a story- any photo at all. The first time you time travel, you got back to the moment you took the selfie in class. You return to moments after you photo'd the butterfly. If they had made taking a photo your save point you could return to instead of simply having your choice lead to some kind of 'game over' like many Tell Tale moments did if you chose wrong or not fast enough. But imagine then discovering she could go into OTHER people's photos to observe Kate's family to help her on the roof instead of reading it. Observing Victoria or Nathan's lives. Tie her powers more to photography than just random Donnie Darko time paradox stuff. We just could have seen so much more play out and develop other characters more.
"Yes you f*cked up, and all of this is your fault. But people have to live with their f*ck ups. You have to let go!" I don't understand why you had to personally single me out and attack me so viciously.
When I played the game I felt it was (in part) a game about grief and learning to cope with loss and death. You have to use your powers multiple times in order to save Chloe, but every time everything gets more and more convoluted, like, you change lots of past events, but the ones that seem to really mess things up are the ones that have to do with her. For me the whole game is an opportunity for Max to say goodbye to and set right her relationship with her childhood best friend, who she left (she moved, but she also stopped contacting her) after she lost her father. The first time in years Max encounters Chloe, they don't even know each other anymore really and Chloe dies. Max gains her power and has the chance to spend time with her, make peace with her and say goodbye. She also learns enough to stop the murderer of the girl Chloe loved, so she can also honour her memory turning the sick bastard in. Of course, you can learn little and still save Chloe in the end because she's your friend/lover, making a sacrifice of thousands of lives in exchange of just one.
That's how I read it when I played it. The vortex is kind of an arbitrary threat, but ultimately a necessary one to delivering that particular theme - that maybe being able to go back and change things wouldn't have resulted in a better situation - but the thing we all have to deal with in real life is being faced with the death of a loved one and regrets over the decisions we made (or refused to make, or waited too long to make). So instead of just being a power fantasy, it becomes a meditation on regret, grief and acceptance.
I don't think she got these powers ''just to spend time with her'' considering they were suffering in throughout whole week and they can't even be together exactly. Universe,or whatever power obviously gave Max chance to save Chloe right there, at the end also that's what Max wanted all of her heart as she made it clear at the end. But she had to pay heavy price to being together. So this game was all about that.
+Keru Wolf If you sacrifice Chloe, then the 5 days of the game play out without any of Max's knowledge gained from time travel - it's only when she resumes at the lighthouse before the funeral that she would remember the 5 days we played through (and have no memory of the 5 days she skipped over). Or at least that's how her powers worked when she changed time by photo previously. What the game tells us is that if Max had never got her powers (ignoring the opening scene where Max sees the storm before going to the bathroom to witness Chloe's death) then Chloe would have died, Nathan and Mr Jefferson would have been arrested, the disappearance of Rachel Amber would have been resolved, Kate wouldn't have committed suicide, and everything (except Chloe's death) would have been sunshine and lollipops. With Max's powers, she can save Chloe, but then has to work incredibly hard to get things to work out even nearly as well, and ultimately either the entire town apart from Max and Chloe die (or so the devs present it) or Max, after watching Chloe die many times knowing she can save her has to knowingly choose to let her die knowing she could have prevented it. But it's okay because she got to reconnect with her friend in-between watching her die repeatedly? Why not just have Nathan shoot Max as well as Chloe? It'd be much, much less painful for her, still have as happy an ending for almost everyone else, and let them be together... "Hey, have this ability to try to prevent this tragedy, but, if you do, it will make everything else worse" is a terrible prank to play on someone.
Whether or not the sacrifice Chloe ending makes sense thematically depends on whether you count going back in time to never get time travel powers in the first place as not having learned the lesson since you're technically copping out one last time or as having learned the lesson because you're giving up your power forever.
"'Bildungsroman' is a long, complicated German word" Me, a German: *laughs in Eierschalensollbruchstellenverursacher* Your pronounciation of Bildungsroman is very good by the way
This game strikes me as really successful theatre. There are many shows that have never won Tony’s or made it to Broadway, yet still find themselves being produced over and over again, across the country, by schools and community theaters alike, because of their impact in front of an audience. The Diviners comes to mind - a drama about the trials and tribulations of small-town, Christian America. It’s never won a Tony, and it’s never been on Broadway. And yet, it’s being produced ALL OVER. The story didn’t need to be huge, polished, or perfect to really resonate with audiences. I think Life is Strange is like that. It didn’t need to be perfect, beyond reproach, or completely mainstreamed to tell a story that resonated with audiences around the world.
I LOVE THIS GAME. It’s mess and an accident but it’s still a masterpiece. This game isn’t a narrative it is an experience. In Narrative point of view this shouldn’t work but for some strange reason it does. I just found myself so connected to the world. I loved most of the characters. It’s just something about their awkward/dorky and cringey nature that is so appealing. Also the setting is just beautiful the colors and the soundtrack it created this weird feeling like you were there. It just combines all these moments that in a traditional narrative would make no sense but this game just gives you a comfortable enough environment to make you cherish these moments and make you feel like you’re part of it. There are no wrong ways to play this game there are literally an infinite amount of ways to play this game. Like this game just builds a world in such a unusual way. In conclusion there is no one way to really describe life is strange it’s just this unknown entity that you cannot just dissect. This game is something special.
i would absolutely choose a woman who tears apart the fabric of reality over just a dude....thats kinda hot........wild-love-turned-instigator of the apocalypse? Dream Girl
most women i talk to rolled their eyes with warren because we all have a dude like him in our lives who takes friendship as Interest In Him because He Has A Crush
Possibly the best description of Life is Strange I’ve ever heard went along the lines of “A game where having total control and revisionist power over which actions you take gives you no control whatsoever over the outcomes those actions direct you to.”
The game pulls all your human strings in just the right way. I don’t think any other game has manipulated my emotions to such an extent ever. And i don’t think one ever will. I adore it with all my heart, and I will always overlook its flaws P.S: I’ll never regret picking to sacrifice the bay for bae every single time I play through it again
I never thought "oh im making everything worse when i change something, so i shouldn't and live with it." in this moment. I always thought of it more like a destiny-thing. The whole world and everything in it seems to want to kill Chloe, but Max is there. Max has the power to stand up against the cruel world. She can do what even destiny is unable to do and save Chloe for good. And thats what you do. You save her from a gunshot, from a train, from more gunshots, and so on, and at the end, you sacrifice everything else, like an exchangee for her life. You played hours defending and saving her, and all i could think at the end was "why did i spend hours on hours saving a poor girl from the cruel world, that wants to kill her, even though she didn't do anything to deserve such a fate, while a literal psychopath can go on living and killing more innocent kids just like her and Rachel?! Did i really do all this, just to erase it? Do i realy want to end the game with the knowledge that i shouldn't have made an effort in the first place? No! I sacrificed my time (as the gamer), my feelings and even some of my humanity (euthanasia-part) to save the girl from an uncaring Universe that only wants to harm her for no reason at all. I will not let all this effort go to waste!" So yeah... i saved someone the world wanted to kill so badly it was trying to guilttrap me in the end to finaly let her go... but not on my watch! Eff you, Destiny! Eff you, Universe. If i can make a difference i will! And to be honest, i never really felt bad for this descision. A lot of good people died, a lot of bad ones as well, but some of them chose to instead of evacuating. Some of them are still alive (Kate was in a hospital out of town if i remember correctly) and Chloe, who was robbed of her love, her life and her agency over her self was finally save.
@@KissaloneComplex Thats one point you can look at it and i agree with that. Sacrifice Chloe after all you went trough wasnt giving sense. Sacrifice ANY life besides your own isnt answer, you have no right to do it. Nobody does. Point is, Max didnt "sacrifice" Arcadia Bay. She never was in position to do it, because she wasnt responsible for anything. Its mindplay that should YOU make feel guilty for destroying Arcadia bay, even if writters never bother to answer primary question, who and why gave barelly adult girl power that can cause such mayhem. Max is only dust caught in wind as everything else.
Despite its flaws, it holds a special place in my heart. The playable Twin Peaks feel, coming of age elements & representation of modern, alternative queer culture focused on women really lured me in. Even tho they did not completely nail real teenage behavior, they created interesting characters with flaws who have actual interest and hobbies that are believable. This game encourages taking weird, egotistical or moody choices. In the end you can save Chloe and destroy the entire town without judgement. With just the right amount of petty drama, real danger, conspiracy & alternative tumblr vibes + rebelish teen angst this game really spoke to me at the time like no other choice-based game back then.
You have no idea how excited I got to hear Man Man playing in the intro to the video. I don't know anybody else who knows that band and it's one of my favorites.
What I absolutely love about this, a scenario where you're taught to be thorough and explore every inch available, is that the game CALLS YOU OUT FOR BEING NOSEY.
You don't really need to kill the dog to get the good outcome. What you need is patience and empathy towards Frank. About Alyssa, it's not designed as a 'choice' but rather a little joke. It's likely you miss those moments and don't help her. When you see that you didn't at the end of the episode you go 'you fuckers!'. I actually laughed second time it happened to me. Makes oneself wonder how much you missed in the whole chapter and also what's wrong with your morality and brains if it didn't occur to you to rewind when it happened in your face. It also makes you pay more attention in future episodes as you expect you might miss some Easter eggs. It also reminds the player that replayability is worth it even with the whole rewind thing. That's what's designed for, imo.
This was my favorite game of 2015 (fight me) and I feel about the same way, especially in terms of "I mean I can't say people are TOTALLY WRONG when they bitch about the ending..." (except when the complaint boils down to "it's not the ending I wanted!" which like, honestly, get over it) And I'd argue Jefferson works as an antagonist even to the bildungsroman aspect, because growing up and maturing as a woman in this society involves a lot of dealing with creepy, creepy guys, albeit not usually at the "literal human embodiment of the objectification of women" level Jefferson's at LOL
Your style of videos have also been unique to me. He has a central idea but branches off with points to give a full idea on the idea. It's very interesting to listen too and has never gotten old.
I'm sure this comment will get lost in the shuffle, but I really love your videos. Just your style and voice and topics you choose to discuss are fascinating, so kudos man. Keep up the great work.
Life is Strange does so much right, it makes up for it's weak ending. Game play wise I love the camera, the fixed camera in Telltales games wandering around annoys me. Story wise, it really is about the journey. And I saved Chloe, cause screw logic.
I have been trying for years to articulate why I love this game even though I hate this game and this video finally gave me the words. Thank you for making this.
The "let Chloe die" ending is presented as the "correct" ending with its longer, more involved cut scenes...BUT SORRY BITCH, I'M CHOOSING THE MEGUKA MEDUKA ENDING (AKA the "kill everyone to save your waifu" ending)
Watching analytical stuff of this game is always super fascinating to me, because the first time I played it I pretty much entirely rejected the themes its trying to get me to consider and just slammed "bae". It wasn't even a particularly conscious decision, I just naturally ended up at "ok I can fuck with metaphysics in a godlike manner and freely jump around timelines, morality and ethics stopped being useful the first time I wiped the mind of the entirety of reality". And like maybe that was just me justifying the choices I wanted to make and deflecting any sort of guilt, but the notion that you personally jumping into the timeline where Chloe dies somehow "stops" the timeline where the bay gets wiped out just seems really small minded. And to some extent I think it was also just out of a desire to spite the themes of the coming of age story. Like we have this whole story about gaining power and doing the right thing with it and then the end point is "hey actually the correct choice is to take back absolutely everything you did and accept how things are Supposed To Be". Like when you combine that with the fact that it also involves a lesbian romance being erased via violent death the message basically becomes "young people trying to use their gifts to change the world(and also queer themes) is a mistake that will only lead to disaster" and Fuck That.
Your videos really do interest me. I can never say I agree with you 100% on any of your videos. But I am definitely with you when you say "I don't know if I should like this game". I don't know either. There are so many aspects of the game that I can't decide whether I like them or not. The main example being the rewind power. I don't know if I prefer not having it like in a telltale game or if I do like having it. One thing Is for sure, it kept me engaged the whole time, I never got bored with it. So I guess it won't go down as a bad game in my books, but I just can't decide how good it is.
Personally I had to make a category inside my head called "interesting games that I wouldn't give game of the year" for games like Life is Strange. Good to talk about and discuss nature of game design and storytelling and such, not great for me to say I loved it.
I like the rewind power for gameplay purposes simply because of the number of times in games like this that I think an option means something other than what the devs think it means. For example, when David is confronting Kate and you have the choice between jumping in and taking a photo, the game interprets it as choosing whether to intervene or remain a passive spectator, while I saw it as a choice between being impulsive and having no way of swaying David, and taking a moment to get some leverage to persuade David to change his ways.
I remember when I was talking about this game with my boyfriend and I told him that no matter how many times I go back to that scene, I was never able to choose the town over Chloe, mainly because of how attached I got to Chloe's character. My boyfriend said "if I were in the place of Max, I would have chose the town, even if that 'Chloe' was you (me) because these are individual people with lives, friends, lovers, and their own problems. By choosing you over the town, I wouldnt be able to live with myself knowing i killed an entire town just to save you. Choosing 1 person over a town would be so selfish." However, if I were Max and he were Chloe, I would still choose him over the town because I have severe trust issues and abandonment issues and for the first time in so long, I met someone who hasn't treated me like shit and actually cares about me, regardless of any problems I may have. If I had to choose between him and the town, I wouldn't be able to live with myself if I chose the town over him. I would have lost the one important person in my life, the one person I cared for while everyone else gets to keep what they have and not appreciate what they have when I would have had to given up something that made me appreciate everything. If that's what would label me as selfish, then by all means, I am selfish. This is what this game made me realize about how people work based on their views and values. For me, I can see that based on how I view things and how I value things, I would be more inclined to choose Chloe over a town. However, based on how my boyfriend views things and how he values everything and even based on his aspirations, he would be more inclined to let fate be to save a town because (from what he has told me) he doesn't want people to suffer, he wants everybody to live as happily as everybody could and if he had to die in order to save an entire town, he would do it within a second and force me to do it whether I wanted to or not if I had to make that choice.
oh man when i finished the game i had this whole theory about the feelgood and dark sides of the story representing the drive to satisfy an audience vs the drive to tell your own story, respectively. like Chloe was a really popular character and so much of the fandom wanted her and Max to get together, so sacrificing the town for her is saying "i'm happy to throw away the rest of the story for the reading that i like", but Dontnod are trying not to judge you for that anyway great stuff as always!
TinyTachyon Problem is that, as outlined in the video, it doesn't really work. Forget the actual time travel inconsistencies never addresses, you're supposed to be torn between two choices where there is no right answer. In one ending it carries that through honestly but in the other, where you let Chloe die, it basically erases not the story but te very themes itself, declares the one interpretation as absolutely correct and calls you an idiot for ever having any doubts about rolling the dice of fate one more time. Honestly if that was there intent then it shouldn't have even been a choice. Some way or another a player should have been subjected to the survival of Arcadia Bay as the true, final ending.
23:02 Of course it makes sense: consider that a girl gets shot and killed on campus in the middle of the school day by the school bully (a bully Warren has probably crossed paths with and Kate has definitely been wronged by, and whose wealthy family many people in Arcadia Bay have reason to resent), and it turns out the girl also used to be a student at this small arts school, as well as Max's childhood best friend...and possibly her girlfriend. You don't think Warren (who has a crush on Max) and Kate (Max's closest friend and a Christian) would show up to give Max emotional support? ESPECIALLY if Max also used her time-travel knowledge of things to expose the perpetrator of what happened to Kate? A small arts community would already be fairly close-knit, and even moreso after a disturbing scandal that resulted in student deaths. I wouldn't be surprised to see a lot more Blackwell students show up out of solidarity.
The way Max's powers have been shown to work in the game, she didn't have her time travel knowledge in the 5 days between letting Chloe die and catching back up at the lighthouse.
I personally love Life is Strange, but your points are actually very true. The game isnt perfect for sure, but to me that just makes it that much more interesting and thought provoking
I think you and the developers understood the "let Chloe die" option in the final choice differently. You saw it as "I don't learn from my mistakes, and instead I go back one last time", while the developers saw it as "I learnt from my mistakes, therefore I choose to never use my time travel powers from the beginning". The game definitely suffers from plot problems. How exactly the final tornado is created is unclear, and in several cases I did not fully realize the deeper thematic choice the game was trying to get me to make. For example, in the choice between taking the photo or intervening, I thought I had to be smart about this and gather physical evidence, because before it had been the lack of evidence which let Nathan get away with pulling a gun on Chloe. Or when Chloe dares you to kiss her, I understood it as choosing to be more confident (something I want to improve in real life), not as a choice between Chloe and Warren. I still think the way Warren finds out and reacts is contrived and not foreseeable by the player. Overall, I think LiS was good, but not great. This is a developing genre, and while LiS might be relevant now, I don't think it will be remembered long in the future. I found the first half too drawn out and with too little commentary on the difficult choices you make to be interesting. As you say, the game tries to make you understand the characters, environment and tradeoffs inherent in your choices, but too often it just boils down to reading every scrap of paper. The second half I found too cliched to be interesting. Somebody asking you to kill them, the metaphor for rape and the "somebody dying is inevitable across all timelines" stories have all already been done better in other shows like Steins Gate. That is not to say that I was not bawling my eyes out when Chloe asked me to kill her, either in the alternate time or at the end of the game, but these felt like cheap shots. Plus, I had decided to let Chloe die the first time with the reasoning that "everybody has a right to end their life". When she asked me to kill her again at the end of the game, I ended up deflecting a lot of the responsibility for the choice by basically saying to myself: "I am not making this choice, Chloe has already decided to sacrifice herself for the sake of the town, I am merely facilitating her suicide for a second time". I notice, by the way, that you barely mention the dream sequence where Chloe runs away from people with flashlights and comes across representations of past choices. I take it then that, like me, you did not find much meaning in this sequence? While playing, it felt to me like the developers were trying to make a statement about their themes here but that I simply did not get what they meant.
I think the nightmare sequence is a symptom of Episode 5 being rushed out the door while they could still afford people's salaries rather than being a polished piece of the game. It also feels like the developers wanted the final choice to be a balanced one, but couldn't convince themselves that sacrificing the town was the right thing to do. And the "I put things right by undoing my original use of time powers" interpretation only works if you retcon away the start of the game, where Max sees the storm before going to the bathroom as a result of seeing the storm, so witnesses Chloe's death.
Im glad you didnt mention it in the video but Life Is Strange is like Butterfly Effect except it actually works. Although I guess Butterfly Effect was just a "DUDE THIS IS SO EDGY" version of Donnie Darko..so yeah.
tbh, i honestly don't know why i like this game either, maybe its because i love some of the characters so much (Chloe, Max, Victoria, Nathan) that im blind? my gaming history wouldn't really lead me to think that i would love this game (fps, rpg games), i dunno maybe i spend too much time on tumblr :PPP
An interesting thing this game does, which is what caught my attention the most, is how it defies some ideas we think are natural and fundamental for games, so I think anyone with some experience in gaming can appreciate that. Whether they like it or think it is a pretentious attempt to be cool without giving actual polish or innovation to a formula depends a lot on the person.
20:39 Aight so you just opened my eyes to how the endings can be summarized. Sacrifice for the greater of society giving up something you love is selfless and you accept that society is what your world is about. Meanwhile if you pursue YOUR passion (as a person), it’s “selfish” because it doesn’t benefit society. You as the player/person reject society as an acceptable world, rather accept your passion as the world you love. Sacrificing Chloe is accepting society despite your passions and ambitions. Saving Chloe is acceptance of your passion despite what others or society thinks, and how it affects society. Insert “We live in a society” joke here. Jokes aside, you did a great job analyzing the endings and their underlying meanings or interpretations. Thank you, and you earned a Sub.
You were very well spoken and presented this in a different light for. Truth be told I was luke-warm on the game at best. Didn't care about the story until I dug up Rachel's body. But then the ending was such no-brainer for me and deleted almost an entire story that I felt was a waste experiencing in the first place... Much like you this game left me very undecided lol
Maybe, but I find myself needing to refer to a "gesamkuntswerk" more often than a "bildungsroman", it's a more useful concept and "coming-of-age story" is a good enough substitute if you want to want to avoid long German words while "gesamkuntswerk" doen't really have any English equivalent.
I like you it felt like you were ripping into the game at first but then basically said you sort of liked the idea of the game. Although i wish you would of discussed the plot holes, because a lot of fans are unsure if the plot holes are holes or actually hints at another story happening behind the scenes. But to what you talked about in the beginning of the video it still sort of is a coming of age story in a sense, it asks the player at the very end what type of person they are, Do they do things for greater good or do things for someone close to them. Asking them basically; "Do you value conforming in society to progress society and working towards the greater good" Or the game is asking you how much you are willing to sacrifice for the ones you love. The game loops back around and asks you what you value, society or your friend ship, asking Max and the player to live among the dead or die among the living. (also i typed the comment before i watched the last few minutes of the video, great minds think alike!) But to touch on what i said above slightly, i know fan theories are a dumb thing to touch on but there are a lot of plot holes in the game that also double up on hints and no one is really sure what any of it means, such as changing the past for william to not die but the "storm" still only shows up the week of octuber 2013 despite you saving him 6 years earlier. It makes you wonder somethings like, why wouldnt the storm stop when jefferson kills her, you see that "fate" is trying to kill your friend over and over again yet even when fate does kill your friend it still isnt happy and the storm still comes anyways. So it begs the question why a player would even think that going back to change history one last time would save the town at all if we see a reality not 1 but 2 timelines in which chloe is dead or dying and yet the storm is still coming(the timelines being Bed ridden chloe, and Chloe being shot in the head). But at the same time Letting chloe die in the bathroom really gives you a very complete and wrapped up ending and a very emotional one, yet the letting chloe die is the wrong ending, and its not subjectively wrong its OBJECTIVELY wrong. (maybe not objectively wrong but you get my point) Its wrong because of so many of these little hints (or plot holes) in the game. Even if you do believe the plotholes are just that, plotholes the game still throws the last decision at you but again like you said literally says "Why would you think changing history would be a good idea if the storm was caused by...changing history"?
This is the best analysis of Life Is Strange I've seen. Happy to be a subscriber here in these Tubes of You. Watching the video actually let me solidify since ideas for what I personally would want in a game... that I'm not sure if I want to just play or actually develop.
I had the exact same problem with the ending. I chose not to save Arcadia Bay because "Max, your time travel fucked everything up! You have to fix it by travelling through time again!" seemed completely ridiculous to me. Especially knowing in hindsight that for some reason it does fix everything.
"the love triangle doesn't make sense when chloe might be tearing apart the fabric of the universe and warren is just a dude" have you ever been a teenager? a lot of things feel like they are tearing apart the fabric of the universe. this is a very weird, dark, dramatic extension of the metaphorical aspect of this story. we start with a metaphor for youthful indecision, and end up with what it can really feel like being young and fucking up and learning that YOUR ACTIONS HAVE CONSEQUENCES: like the world is ending.
This so resonated will me. Theres not much content I love more than anything about this game. I love the game but I have no clue if I think its good. I love hearing people hate on it and tear it too shreds, I love hearing ppl love it and analyse it seriously. Its like it transcrends quality- it is what is it and its great to see someone else has fallen under its undefinable charm. Subbed.
It's kinda strange, no pun intended, that the solution that has the least casualties, uses what the game tells you you shouldn't abuse. But, by abusing it one last time, fixes everything. Kinda hypocritical, actually.
Also, it seems like the game is screaming for you to make the decision to kill Chloe. In the scene of her being bedridden, she asks you to kill her. But, there's not much else on the line, so you could easily say "I don't want to kill her, now." But then, the ending comes around and says "NOW IVE GOT THE WHOLE TOWN HOSTAGE, ALL YOUR NEW FRIENDS WILL BE DEAD IF YOU DON'T KILL ME NOW." To which the decision would be do what the game tells me, or let all the people I've tried to help previously fucking die because of my mistake; which is unfair for them to suffer the consequences of my actions.
Ironically, for me, I chose euthanasia in the alternate timeline, but sacrificed Arcadia Bay in the ending (okay, I actually played out both endings, but my personal canon saves Chloe)
I was simply unconvinced that the tornado coming had anything to do with Max's powers, so the obvious choice was bae. I can get the metaphor of power = responsibility, but to put that over "don't use your powers because a fucking tornado will come"? come on...
Pretty sure it's based on the idea of the Butterfly Effect - a real life theory that basically says if you kill a butterfly, the ripple effect caused could end up creating an earthquake. A.K.A. almost exactly what happens in the game. Plus there's a shit ton of butterfly imagery. Heck, in the ending where you save Chloe Max LITERALLY rips a photo of a butterfly in half. She is killing the butterfly, it couldn't be more literal. And then minutes later a natural disaster destroys the town. Stop applying real world laws to a fictional universe. That's not how it works. The game has TOLD you it's Max's fault the tornado happened. That is canon. If you can't suspend your disbelief, either the game fucked up or it's not the right game for you.
LordofFullmetal No, MAX told you. There is still room for speculation, even though I agree with you on the butterfly effect. Just because a character says something doesn't mean that it can't be incorrect as part of the story.
The game also tells us that the tornado was coming before Max saw Chloe die the first time - if there really is an original intended timeline, then that timeline includes the storm.
There's actually another thing that wasn't discussed that runs along the same vein of accepting consequences. The game gives you the ability to take back what you said and choose other dialogue choices or using your time travel powers for "everyday heroics". Whether it was being nice to the bullied girl, or just picking the response that made me sound the coolest - I did it because I wanted to be on every character's good side.
Later on, an alternate Max calls out the player for using time travel as a sort of shortcut to be well-liked.
I dunno, I thought it was just kind of neat.
I feel like when people say Max wasn’t explored much, I think they forget that Max literally talks to herself about the choices she made along the way and the impact it had on several timeline versions of her right near the end of the game. It makes you think twice about the all the choices you thought were good. Were they good only because you decided that? Or were they good because from a moral standpoint it was always the right thing to do? And who’s to say that she should ever have meddled with Chloe’s life, causing her immeasurable suffering by saving her father and unintentionally dooming her to a fate like that? Lots of questions and moral compass debate to be had.
"Reach out to the girl being mistreated by a security guard or take a photo for art"
Or... take a photo to have evidence of what was going on so you'll have more proof than just your word for the event. That was my thought process on doing this first time playing. Always good to have evidence of the thing so it isn't he said, she said.
Exactly
Which should work, because "you keep inventory items"!!!! except you don't because magic plot powers deactivate.
yeah, that was how i took those options to mean when i first played, and was utterly confused by the reaction...
@@lizzyb.8009 I took the outcome as... well weak writing is an overstatement but an oversight on the writing for sure.
@@lizzyb.8009 I mean, think of how you’d feel if you were being harassed and one of your friends stood there, snapping a photo of your suffering.
I think there is a very appropriate German word (since you're already using those) for what Max does in the game: verschlimmbessern (making something worse by trying to make it better).
littlemissleeches this is such an appropriate word for this, oh my god. I would love to hear a non-German speaker try to pronounce that word, it‘s much harder than Bildungsroman, mein Freund 🤣
And this is why I took French
I am German and i have never heard of it
Fucking germans and their long composite word fetish. Yall need to fucking entspannen sie sich.
wait ze germans have a specific word for "making something worse by trying to make it better"?
(Oh crap, but now I remember Zugzwang from chess.)
The game has flaws. But by god it pulled my heartstrings in all the right ways.
Rolando Garcia it was an emotional rollercoaster
You can't deny all the people saying how this game made no sense at all, and yet it is one of the best experiences you could have. It is what it is.
This. It was a narrative mess, but it made a mess of my heart.
@@kc2624 "it is what it is" u hit the nail on that one, spot on.
Every game has its flaws. Even a game that is said to be a masterpiece will have some flaws. This is a great game.
i legit thought the photo was more important to protecting the girl from the police officer because it was evidence
conti nue I thought that too and I was so confused when it turned out to be something different.
Superpowered protagonists cooperating with the authorities? What kind of story do you think this is?
Not only did I think that, but I didn't see why I couldn't take the pick and then intervene.
conti nue same here it never occurred to me that that wasn't just for evidence
You can use it as evidence for David's actions when talking to Mr. Jefferson in episode 2. Edit: And you can show it to Wells, which gets David suspended for his actions.
23:00
Chloe's death may have impacted Kate's video. Nathan probably spilled EVERYTHING, including drugging Kate (among others), proving she was innocent and that the video is her being sexually assaulted. For that, Kate may feel she owes it to Chloe to attend her funeral and pay her respects since her death was the catalyst for this.
On top of that, Kate is a very spiritual person, and Chloe was a former Blackwell student and a member of the community, so she may have wanted to attend anyway.
Warren obviously went to support Max. She may have asked him, or he may have gone on his own accord so she didn't have to be alone.
THANK YOU. I’ve been trying to verbalize this ever since my first viewing.
i think max just does not want kate to suicide and lose another friend so she probably makes an effort to become good friends with kate, i dont believe it is this part is that deep but it could be.
Not to mention they were former classmates of Chloe when she did attend Blackwell, evident by the class picture we see from BtS
I understand every complaint anyone says about this game. You can tell me why you hated it and I won't even try to defend it. That said, I loved it. It was my favorite game of 2015 and is well into my top 10 all time. It made me think like no game ever has before. It moved me like a Telltale game never has. I still have my problems with it, but I recognize that nothing is perfect and a work of art has the power to move you regardless of its technical polish. That may be it. I love this more as art than as a video game. I love this more as an experience than as a video game. I love this more as a look at what real responsibly is than as a video game. I love this game.
I 100% agree. It has its flaws as a video game and yet is an amazing unparalleled experience.
Same. I played "The Wolf Among Us" and I liked it but Life is Strange is far more memorable, which is why I questioned why he was comparing the two in the beginning. On the surface, they do have similarities but the impact of both these games is very different.
I personally thought Kate's suicide scene was very well executed, probably the most complex and thought-out segment in the game. I didn't really see it as the game quizzing you; to me it seemed like the game was seeing if you actually cared for her. The only way to prevent her suicide is for you to prove that you were paying attention to her and that you actually CARED about her. The additional element of your rewind powers being taken away make this scene that much more effective. It's a well-executed social commentary on how suicidal people need to have people there to show how much they care
Yeah. Honestly the taking away of the rewind powers really makes it so you HAVE to have cared enough to have learned about her. Because unlike every social situation up to this point, you cant just rewind if you get the answer wrong. It's the part of the game that, for the most part, throws out the sci fi (or sci fa if you wanna be annoying) and goes all in on the choices you make and your attachment to the character. Not to mention, on another level it also rewards you for playing the game thoroughly. As something of a minor completionist, it was rewarding to find I had all the right answers when that scene came up.
Okay, I get where you're coming from, but honestly, that's absolutely the opposite of what I got from the game. The information you use to save Kate is found by snooping through her room and reading private communication with her relatives. I genuinely liked her and decided to respect her privacy, but then the game had the gall to accuse me of not caring about her when I unknowingly brought up her mom on the roof. Oh, I'm sorry game, I didn't think it would be respectful to read her fucking emails, I guess that means I want her to kill herself, that's fine.
I agree with all of this
I think it worked as a suicide, but the version where you save her was not very well written.
@@a10485 I feel like most of that is the "video gamey stuff" conflicting with the narrative, because presumably if they were actually friends Max would learn these things throughout their time spent as friends.
The player doesn't really get the option to learn those things naturally in the time frame the game takes place in and can't actually experience it as Max without it being a contrived "we became best friends yesterday" scenario.
So instead they turned it into basically collectibles and optional interactable content.
"I honestly can't even tell you if this game is good. I can't even tell you if I liked it. But I think... I think I loved it?" I laughed so hard at this oh my god ahaha! Truer words could not have been spoken. Very good video! I love Life is Strange, but I also have that experience of being unable to defend it when it's getting criticized. I also have the experience of being unsure if it's even good, or if, objectively, it warrants being liked at all. But I do love it, that's for sure. I wonder how you feel about Before the Storm now that episode one is out...?
I replayed it now, and I can say that a lot of the criticisms of the time have faded for me. I'm biased, this game means more to me than I can put words to, but I'll say a lot of problems that even I had the first go round weren't really bad anymore. Like, the issues almost everyone has with the slang disappeared, because I forgot what slang sounded like back then, so the corny phrasing it suffers from at times kinda just feel like how we used to talk. A few lines still kinda suck, but it's not nearly as bad as I remember. I think the tone is fantastic, and I didn't really notice many big inconsistencies, and the emotional beats still tear me up. As well, the dream sequence in the end wasn't nearly as bad as people make it out to be, and I actually really liked it. I will say, the facial tracking still SUCKS, I was expecting that.
I can’t describe exactly how I feel about it, but I know it’ll stick with me for a long time. I feel like that counts for something.
I mean, you don't need to defend something from criticism to enjoy it or for you to consider it good. You don't need other people to like it for you to love it.
Also, it can't be objectively good, for such a thing doesn't exist.
Very well said!
I got through the convo with Frank without his dog ever dying/
I think the ideal path requires you to injure Frank, though?
No, you can get through without hurting anyone I'm pretty sure.
It isn't easy to get to but the "golden ending" has you can earn Frank's trust and he gives you the code without bloodshed.
As long as you don't anger Frank twice during that conversation you can reach that ending (not stealing the money is sure to anger him once but the rest can be avoided if you choose the right dialogue).
Some choices that you made in earlier episodes (like shooting frank) makes it harder to reach that ending but not impossible.
A flowchart of all the choices in this conversation, all that care went into one conversation with a side character which is amazing, it is a shame that the last episode didn't receive that amount of care though.
venturebeat.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Life-Is-Strange-Frank-flowchart.jpg
If you stole the money but let the dog live its easier to get out without anyone being hurt. But basically the game says in this situation you must have done at least one immoral thing in the past to make this easier on you.
I thought Alyssa was one of the nice touches. After saving her from stuff all game, she refuses to let you save her and she dies. The game really hammers home your own helplessness
It was. If you save her all the time, she are going to die this time; if you never save her she is going to die. Is morality. Maybe he don't know about the detail.
Actually, you van turn around and pick up a wooden plank and save her nevertheless!
Narrator: Its an extremely long word
Also narrator: proceeds to spit out a relatively short german word
I honestly can't tell you if this video is good. I can't even tell you if I liked it. But, I think... I think I loved it?
K. Shark JFC I read this comment right when he said that.
I'm not sure if I loved it, but I know I liked it, 'cause the button is blue now.
'Twas the joke, m'friend. 'Twas the joke.
hey wow that is exactly how I feel about the game AND this video.
like... when people talk shit about this video I don't even disagree XD
@@gerbenvanessen wowser
I will say this much about the suicide prevention scene. It was heartbreaking for me because of my own struggles with depression and suicidal attempts. I wound up saving her in the first try mostly because I considered what I would want to hear if I was on the ledge.
First I have to say I am sorry to hear you have to go through this sort of stuff. As someone who has struggled with it too, I can say I understand the pain that scene causes, no matter how good or not it was actually written.
I should add that it is heartbreaking if you are the kind of people who sees flavor text but never truly put much thought into it. Like, if you read the quote you need to save her, but can't remember the exact passage and then fail and hate yourself for not being observant enough. And I have to disagree with Innuendo Studios here, having her check if you read her flavor text is a good way of asking the player if they even care about the character.
That's how I thought of it, too. Yes, the whole sequence kind of boils down to a quiz about Kate, if you just want to look at it mechanically. But it's a quiz you're much more likely to pass if you've shown that you care about Kate and if you've paid attention to the Kate-related things in the game. It was also very interesting that the devs took your powers away before the sequence, because it gives you this sense of helplessness and urgency that's not present in most of the game. You realize that you can't just guess your way to saving her life and rewind if you get it wrong. You actually had to care, or she dies. It's the first time the game really slaps you across the face for using the rewind power as a crutch.
Nick Piers not a lot of attention was brought up to it though. Hell, you could have gone through most of the game and not have known she had a serious problem.
aftmostfools I'd disagree on that. Her mental state gradually declined as things got worse and worse for her. The signs were there.
Wish this option was available in the ledge scene: Wish you would step back from that edge my friend.
I loved this game, even the flaws. It really tired to "go there" without apology. It was the little things too; hanging out with Chloe in her room yeeted me right back to when I was in high school hanging out in my friend's rooms just talking shit and laying on the bed being dorks. It was almost supernatural how they captured those sort of life moments.
I'd call this game a flawed masterpiece to be honest. Yes, there are problems, particularly in the first 2 episodes regarding that despite an earnest attempt, the writers don't quite understand teenagers as well as they want to. But given the amount of potential philosophical depth from discussion of this game and its themes, I find it remarkable. It also has stayed with me in ways most games never are able to do. It is not perfect by any stretch, and maybe the sequels will disappoint, but I love this game. I think its wonderful and I think wrecking you and making decide what story you want it to be is part of what makes it great.
How do you think the devs screwed up the whole teenage angle?
Well the most obvious example is how the characters talk, all the hokey pop culture references and made-up slang positively REEKS of "How do you do, fellow kids?" which I guess makes sense since it's a game about hipster teens on the Oregon coast that's been written by a group of middle aged French guys who've never been to America (seriously, they used Google Maps as reference when designing Arcadia Bay).
ToruKun1Nah, they travelled to the west coast to capture the "vibe" actually.
Teens don't even understand themselves so how could anyone write them, a huge swath of varying everythings?!
But teens do make up slang and make forced pop references all the damn time. To pretend otherwise is nonsense as shadowing them will net the same weird results just as honestly looking back on your own teenage years will. Source: I HAVE A TEENAGER IN MY HOUSE! LIFE IS STRANGE!
I'm 17, and i thought they actually did a pretty good job of representing teens. Of course some of the slang is outdated now, and a lot of the terms are cringey, but that's truly how it is a lot of the time.
"No one killed the dog, who would kill the dog?" Jacksepticeye killed the dog...
RIP
in his defense, he didnt wanna break the game again
and yeah ik i replied 3 years later, sorry
@@diamondinfernape8047 how did the game break?
@@nam9085 he game completely froze when he reminded too much and he had to do a ton of stuff again
I hated the ending because the "correct" option literally made the rest of the game not happen, as you pointed out. Although now that you've pointed out how the two genres are at odds, I really do like it better. Pinning the classic "last choice you make in the game" being a choice that is less about what is the correct narrative choice and more about which narrative is the one you like is freaky.
A journey made doesn't cease to matter just because you returned home at the end. Max has been changed by her experience.
Mr. ShinyObject I don't think the whole game wasn't for nothing with the "bay>bae" ending, Max learned a lot and you find out what happened to Rachael and the other students with the Dark Room stuff, so although I don't think Jefferson was arrested in the ending cutscene, I'm pretty sure it happened.
I have to disagree with you. If you travel back in time, you literally undo everything you've done in an entire game. You learnt all this stuff about Rachel etc. but... I highly doubt that Max would remember all of that. I think so because: "How could she remember something that actually DID NOT HAPPEN?" She did not have any "proper goodbye" with Chloe, she never travelled in time thus did not experience any of those realities etc. simply because none of these happened. I felt so bad when I realized all of that. This time travel thingy is so confusing... I'd be glad if you prove me wrong, 'cause I really wish, Max could remember.
Lucky Luke Lucky Luke Maybe she probably doesn't remember all of it, but in episode three she entered an alternative reality and she remembered a lot from the reality that technically didn't happen. And at the ending if you choose to sacrifice Chloe, Max is slouched and sad in the bathroom because she knows her friend is going to die.
+Lucky Luke
For the week that corresponds to the events of the game, Max knows nothing about the events of the game; once she "returns", she remembers the events of the game, but knows nothing about what happened during that week in the new timeline (which invites the question of how she got to the funeral). Or at least that's what happened every other time she used her ability to change history using a photo - she remembered the events from the original timeline, but didn't know what her alter-ego had done in the new timeline after the point of divergence (except where restoring the timeline meant she knew what happened up to her original change). Instead, she has to figure things out from her diary and from how other people react to her.
+Evan Lopez
After listening to Chloe die, the "changing history" scene with the polaroids being replaced showed David Madsen marching a handcuffed Mark Jefferson out of Blackwell Academy.
+Mr. ShinyObject
Whichever outcome you choose, the vast majority of your decisions have their consequences removed - sacrifice Chloe, and the week's actions were taken by autopilot-Max who may or may not have killed Lisa, and probably wouldn't have saved Alyssa from various minor accidents. Sacrifice Arcadia Bay, and (according to what the Devs wanted us to believe) the only person you interacted with who survives is Chloe - so Lisa and Alyssa still end up dead, whether you kept them alive until the storm hit or not.
13:48 Woah woah woah woah woah. That's absolutely not true at all. My playthrough was a bit different, Frank still had the gun and clearly Cloe has the gun here for you, but I was able to talk Frank into siding with us and he even willfully gives the gun back to Cloe. No one got hurt and Pompidou was alive.
Maybe keeping Cloe away from the gun is the necessary part but when she doesn't have the gun it's possible to tell Frank to lock the RV so the dog can't come out (One of the other options does nothing, and the other option causes essentially an auto-fail, so there's definitely no reason to NOT do this).
Yeah you even do see at the end of the episode that there is an option where NOBODY gets hurt. How I did that was save the dog and then talking it out with Frank and apologizing for aiming the gun at him. Then it all works out and he helps you.
This was a pretty comprehensive analysis and really resonated with my experience of the game. I think you hit the nail on the head about the awkward, fumbling earnestness with which this game was made. I think the episodic nature of the game and the detailed design put into the episodes (even when the details were sometimes misleading or just like an extra layer of pretty that didn't go anywhere narrative-wise) really captured this earnestness and helped make the game the phenomenon it was, but also made the endings so much more tough to swallow. Since the game wasn't released all at once, there was plenty of time for people to speculate about what might happen and to dream up these (honestly more coherent) narratives that never came to fruition. Then, when there was so much tension towards the end between trying to wrap up storylines, but not put a bow on everything, but finish the coming of age story, but also conclude the murder mystery psychodrama, the expectations were incredibly high and the end they came up with was satisfying to the masochist in me but dissatisfying to the part of me that wanted it to make sense lol. Yet it somehow didn't taint my experience of the game as a whole, because like you said, I still got choked up at the end and I still cared about the characters. I still consider the game one of my favorites, despite seeing so many flaws in it and, like you, agreeing with so much of the criticism of it.
Another aspect of the game that I think contributed to both its popularity as well as the confusion and disappointment around the endings was the fact that we so rarely see a canon queer relationship between two women, especially two young women who are coming of age, in any media including games. While the romantic aspect of the relationship was technically optional, I read Chloe as queer from the beginning of the game and the movement toward more explicit queerness/the option for a relationship in later episodes really contributed to my excitement about the story. However, the ending choice really plays into the bury your gays trope. I think that is the one major aspect this analysis leaves out when looking at the ending and its WTF quality. Not only are there these two conflicting themes you're being forced to choose between that both erase huge chunks of the game, there is also an aspect of the ~sacrifice the wild love~ story that is specifically ~sacrifice the QUEER love~ and implies (not on purpose and this is part of that damned earnestness) that even though you love this woman and have worked so hard to keep her safe, you need to let her die and let this queer awakening/part of who you are die so that society can be safe. And that is why, after I originally chose the Bay ending, I went back and was like, you know what fuck this, and chose the Bae ending. Because if I'm gonna live in a fictional universe where you really have to pick between the sacrifice it all and the live with your mistakes themes, I'm gonna pick live with my mistakes. So in a way, I think LIS is revolutionary for letting you literally kill the world for your blue-haired girlfriend, and I love it for that. But it also makes me mad that it forces you to make that choice. Wowser.
superblysituated you took the words right out of my mouth- which is great because now I don't have to spend forever typing them out on my phone! Thanks :P
It also doesn't help that the developers ran out of time and money for Episode 5 - I don't know that Square Enix giving them more resources to finish the game as they wanted to would have fixed things, but I like to think that at least some of the problems with the ending were because they didn't have the opportunity to fix them...
I binged them all and don’t remember ever feeling like it didn’t make sense
This was a spectacular analysis. Kudos to you, buddy.
The character of Max is a sweet, shy girl who always means well from beginning to end. Even when we are playing from her POV and making tough choices, there's never only one "right" choice. There's only living with the choices you make, sometimes discovering unexpected consequences much later. Even when the teen dialogue is occasionally tone deaf, the characters' personalities and relationships still ring true. Overall, the ambitious mashup of genres succeeds far more than places where it may seem awkward. This game has developed a huge following and it could be argued that it has ingeniously (or luckily) incorporated its own flaws into its ultimate charm and popularity. I'm a big fan of the Telltale games but even they don't stick with me the way Max and Chloe do.
I've admittedly never played LiS, but based on your description, I interpret the "Sacrifice Chloe" ending not as a commentary on living with your choices, but as a commentary on the best possible timeline. Max spends the whole game searching for the best possible outcome to any given situation, and sometimes she finds one, sometimes she doesn't. The tornado is an indication that all the outcomes Max thinks are best are actually way worse than she could have ever imagined. Going back to the beginning and letting Chloe get shot means that Max is finally accepting that this timeline, where her childhood friend gets murdered in front of her, is actually the best possible timeline. And if you extrapolate that idea, it means that everything that will ever happen to her, no matter how bad, is part of the best possible timeline. It could not possibly have been any better and would certainly been worse if things had been different.
That thought is either encouraging or horribly depressing, depending on how you look at it.
This comment is why i'm absolutely thrilled you commented. I shouldnt add to it because it's really not needed. This is why The movie Butterfly Effect is a relative example. no matter what he did in that movie there was a penalty and/or reward, but all in all it was something that did not benefit him other than accepting that this(how it originally was) is the best possible outcome.
I’ve always interpreted it as “max living with her mistakes.”
Everything could have been prevented In each timeline had max stuck by Chloe.
She could literally rewind time- but her absence kept reoccurring. It was a mistake she could never fix- and either way, resulted in deaths. She kept denying any possible consequence, and kept struggling to fix it- when she was never going to be able to.
I kinda like this interpretations and I think it makes a lot of sense to interpret it that way, on the other hand saying "this is the best of all possible worlds" is a really sad thing to say cause it kinda makes you lose hope looking at how horrible the world is. What point is there in fighting for a better world, if it's a zero sum game. I don't think it is.
Also this solves the theodicy problem which is even more alien to my atheist worldview.
Yeah I'm not really a fan of a game where the timeline where the gay girl gets violently murdered in front of her girlfriend is portrayed as the "best possible timeline". That's gross and homophobic as fuck.
@@ravenfrancis1476 I actually been thinking of this ending in a similar way but not quite like straight up as homophobic. for me it feels like if you pick chloe and run away with her is a metaphor for coming out in small towns, you lose everyone you ever known when doing that (its happened to me sadly) it feels like your hometown ceases to exist afterwards too because they just stop acting like *you exist* all-together. As for the ending where you let max die, that would be the timeline max stays in the closet rather than accepting herself and being happy with who she truly loves, she stays with Warren even though she doesn't love him she's okay with it because it means her home town still exists.
I feel like you can't argue which timeline is truly "best" as the game makes it clear that there's any number of timelines that exist so i don't really feel the devs intended for the audience to see any timeline as the complete "best" one, infact the devs are very adamant that they will never say a ending is "better" or "canon" over the other, perhaps because both have their pros and cons and both can simultaneously be canon at the same time by existing in different timelines, but no timeline is overall "best" so ultimately it just comes down to personal choice of what you want for Max.
This is a brilliant deconstruction and explanation of the final choice and what that means in the context of what game you think you're playing.
I chose Bay the first time around, which I do think offers the more satisfying narrative ending, But the second time around, Bae really feels much more in line with the thematic direction of that final chapter. You spend the whole time fruitlessly trying to change your mistakes, but you just keep making things worse. All the way up to the point where thematically it seems the lesson should be, I can't do this anymore. Whatever happens happens, and I can't keep trying to control it.
I'm a huge Life is Strange apologist tbh. I choose the "bae" ending, (and didn't reload BTW) - but not mostly because of Chloe, but because I found the idea of erasing the entire history sort of existentially horrific. Changing the immediate past is one thing; changing the last 6 months or whatever so none of it ever happened is another.
Week. The last week. Five days even. Normally I'm not a big fan of changing the past as a concept, but the ending doesn't read way to me. To me it's not so much "changing the past" as it is "undo a change I made". By sacrificing Chloe Max is accepting that some decisions are not hers to make.
I do find it interesting that despite us seeming to have similar ideas on changing the past we disagree on this point. Interesting read.
Lol, it's been a while since I played this. Seems a lot to happen in 5 days! Still, it's still kind of how I feel about it. It's the fact that you lose the relationship and choices that you had in the rest of the game. I almost feel like the game is asking you in a weird way how much you value the idea of "having been through a history" or "having lived something". OK, you could argue that even if you change the past, you have still lived through it, but it just felt so wrong and destructive to me to destroy all the games' choices and experiences that I went through.
You didn't lose it. You still have those memories.
yeah that just doesn't seem like something anyone could just walk away from.
I'm in the same boat as you, I know this game has a lot of flaws but I love it!
flaws
Derp, didn't see that spelling error!
*captain spirit already here, life is strange 2 announced for september* hey wassup
well Bildungsroman is not a long German word we have words with over 20 letters
I was seriously expecting something really sophisticated. "Bildungsroman" to a German is probably as complicated as "schoolboard" to an English person :D
Me too. I would say Donaudampfschiffahrtsgesellschaftskapitän is a long word bot not Bildungsroman :D
Which are technically shorter words put together so your brains parse them as such.
Donaudampfschiffahrtsgesellschaftskapitänsgewerkschaftsvereinigung
German allows to build endless long words
So, this is a super random interpretation I came up just now... and I actually think it's non-shitty enough to share it here.
So, Max gets her powers, but she's expected not to use it EVEN if it means letting the girl she loves die. This is very contradictory, really, but it's far from being the first time we saw it in Life Is Strange. Other characters, like Nathan and Kate are also expected by their families to ignore their feelings and act like they're expected to. I think Victoria could also be dealing with this, since in Episode 4 she mentions that she always feels like she should be making up for something, but has no clue what this is. (I made a little analysis about Kate in another youtube comment becasue i'm lame I'll just copy it here skipp to the ____ likes if you don't want to read it)
"Anybody else noticed the magpies when Kate jumped? People keep saying that her spirit animal is the rabbit (being in a cage all scared, black and white like her and all. Plus rabbits 1: are super cute and 2: have a lot of sex so keeping a rabbit in a cage could symbolize her abstinence, or just keeping down the teenage part of her, just like the rabbit got scared when Max took a photo, showing how that after all, Kate is just a scared kid like everyone else, plus the PTSD from the Dark Room and the video. The rabbit is caged in a small space, alone and ailed from the world, in a way that you can only see the most beautiful of her, not the little incorrect things that makes her human), but I think that the magpie could be another possibility. You can see many magpies (black and white, like her) flying away, and in 0:34 you can see the image perfectly. When you're walking through the frozen time, you can see more magpies suspended in the air. Now I'm not sure if those are magpies. The colors are practically the same, as I compared with the other magpies that appeared during the game. I don't know about the symbolism of the magpie, but I can't help but remember that nursery rhyme, "One for Sorrow". It goes like this:
One for sorrow,
Two for joy,
Three for a girl,
Four for a boy,
Five for silver,
Six for gold,
Seven for a secret,
Never to be told.
Eight for a wish,
Nine for a kiss,
Ten for a bird,
You must not miss.
This is the original one:
One for sorrow,
Two for mirth,
Three for a funeral
And four for birth
(or "Four for a Death, depending on the origin)
I could count four magpies in the video, but I think I counted seven when I played the scene myself. Now four magpies in the newest rhyme is for a boy, and it doesn't have much to do with Kate so I take that the four magpies are supposed to symbolize a birth or a death-- just like happens here. In this scene, Kate can either die or be saved, start again, a second chance to live and as you can see in the hospital room in Episode 4 she's doing a lot better with her depression. You can't see any bottle of pills and since Max didn't tell her she was going I don't think she hided them. Almost like she was born again.
Magpies are known for stealing jewelry and stuff, being materialistic and opportunistic and taking risks, which sounds nothing like Kate, does it? Which is strange, because she DID go to that party, she DID accept a ride from Nathan. And before any fellow feminist comes saying that girls should be allowed to do what they want without being in danger, the truth is that Kate DID take a huge risk. I’ll explain what I mean later.
In the bible, if I remember right, there is something about the magpie not going in Noah’s Ark with the other animals, but in the ridgepole of the ship, chattering all the time. It was also referenced that she did not attend to Christ’s funeral, which is a typical representation of a rebel. While this doesn’t sound a lot like Kate, it stills contrasts with the idea of the caged rabbit representing Kate hiding the most teenage part of her.
I think I can explain with the philosopher Kierkegaard “Phases of Existentialism”. In short words, Kierkegaard believed in three phases of human existence: Aesthetical Phase (frivolities, hollow, fun. You don’t care if it’s good or bad, you care if it’s fun or not), Ethical Phase (deepness, law, you don’t care if it’s fun or not, you care about whether is good or bad) and Religious phase (You don’t care if it’s fun or good or anything, you care about what God would say about it. Ex: flooding the entire fucking world). The problem is that being too deep in either phase can lead to unhappiness. If you’re too deep in the religious or ethical phase you can never have this frivolous thing you want, you can’t have fun or just go around drinking beer and fuck some shit up for the sake off fun. Too deep in the aesthetical phase and you’re an immoral prick.
So, what does this have to do with Kate’s spirit animal? I believe that the caged rabbit is the expectation, the image she’s told to keep and that she’s convinced that the needs to keep. The perfect Christian girl, the perfect daughter, the perfect student, deep into the ethical or religious phase. The Magpie is the part of her that just wants to be free (the rabbit is in a cage, the bird flies free). It’s the part of her that wants to say “Fuck it” and have fun and go to parties and take risks and be the teenager she could never be because she was too busy trying to be perfect. And once the thrill was gone she fell back in the rabbit’s cage, horrified with what she had done. The reason why we only see magpies when she jumped is because it was in her most “Fuck it” moment. She didn’t care about anything, she wanted to be free, which I think gives the fact that she jumped off a roof instead of cutting her veins or hanging herself from a tree a deeper symbolism. It kinda reminds me of that song by Iron and Wine, Upwards Over The Mountain. I highly recommend listening to it. The rabbit and the magpie are both her spirit animal. She’s a teenager, after all. She’s defining herself as a person. A perfect woman of God or a mischievous party girl? Both animals represent her inner conflict during the game and I think it’s beautiful.
Another little fact: M. Jeffershit’s spirit animal is an owl. You cans see and owl in the barn, and an owl flying towards Rachel’s grave in the junkyard at night. Guess what owls that big eat? Smaller birds. I’m sure one of those could easily eat a bluejay or a magpie, or a butterfly if they can’t get anything better. A doe or a rabbit, in the other hand, I see it harder. Just something to think about.
I feel like Kate deserves more attention by the fandom. Like, it’s all Max, Chloe and Rachel and actually Kate is the whole reason why Max got involved in this. Yeah, they’re looking for Rachel but Max had no reason to find her other than help Chloe (a girl she barely knows, five years of separation do that to relationships, believe me), and she didn’t do anything before Kate tried to jump. And you can see how Max is all the time thinking about her in her inner monologues ad reminding Chloe that they’re not there only for Rachel (just for the Pricefield shippers that believe Pricefield in the only true ship, screw that). Like, Kate is so full of symbolism. Her violin, for example. I could spend hours talking about the violin! A violin is small and easy to hide but can you actually hide it when you play it? It’s naturally the most beautiful instrument that exists, but the smallest distraction, the smallest deviation causes awful sounds that no one wants to hear. It needs a lot of care to sound good, like resin and a good bow and it’s just so hard to tune it, to keep it perfect and the price for it’s beauty is so high for those who can’t appreciate the inhuman effort one is making and it hurts you so much, much more than a guitar or a piano. You have to keep your spine perfectly straight and your neck and shoulders hurt and your hands feel like they’re in fire and literally I once played until my fingers started to bleed and not even then it was good enough but no one can be truly perfect with it because it’s one of the hardest instruments to play and if they can appreciate it, even with the little deviations and bad tuning then it’s worth it. And I think it’s beautiful how it reflects Kate’s inner struggle. Whether it was intentional or not, it’s my favorite symbolism in the game.
(i just love Kate so much)"
________________
Ok so after all this random shit, I think the game yes, it's a coming to age story, and everything you said in the video is gold, but I also think that the ending has a metaphorical meaning: It's about the struggle of not being good enough, the dispair of being told to do contradictory things and having too much power, yet beig told not to do anything and having to keep quiet while watching your world fall apart. Max is told to save Chloe, Max is told to let Chloe die, and she's being pulled by her two arms in different directions and she doesn't know what to do anymore.
wow this is so much shit in one youtube comment
that is a Yale University thesis paper right haha
7:16 I'm just gonna say this because it irks me... I don't think anyone chose the photo option for "art". The thought process everyone had was "evidence".
Except possibly the developers - they clearly don't think "take 2 seconds to take a photo and then intervene" is a viable option...
I think that was the only choice where what the developers intended and what players understood didn't match. A mistake in the design I guess.
I honestly didn`t considered the evidence posibility at first but I wasn`t considering that as a rational choice, I tought it was supposed to be purely an emotional one. I didn`t play the first time thinking there were right or wrong choices, so I just considered what I would do in that situation.
I really tought it would be a cool picture but I was also certain that if Kate found out about the photo she would get mad, so I took it hoping she wouldn`t see me. She did but I ultimately kept that. I treid to convince myself that I mantained that course of events because it could be used as proof against the guard, but in reality it was because I was too afraid to get directly involved in that situation and I didn`t want Madsen to see my face.
I took the "sacrifice Arcadia Bay" ending and I never questioned my decision. Maybe it is because I just couldn't let Chloe die but I think if the game taught you not to mess with everything, you can't go back to the beginning and let the girl die. You have to stick with all the shit you did and you have to live with the fact that you caused this tornado (which by the way is bullshit too xD I don't truly believe that Max is responsible for that tornado).
I know this comment ist very old by internet standards but thank you for pointing this out. The idea that you could just solve the biggest problem you have caused so far by using your time powers to undo everything by using your time powers to undo everything just seemed off to me. Yeah sure, a whole lot of people die because Max (ab-)used her time powers but isn't that the point of the (insert long german term here); her living with that baggage and learning from the experiences she made to me make for a much more profound takeaway than "be selfless by sacrificing that punk girl that has been in pain for literal years now to save a small town because everything else is not logical""
Life is strange was probably one of the most emotionally draining games i've ever played. I could only play so long before I needed to take a break. The end choice made me debate for at least 10 minutes. It was a good variation on the Trolley problem. I am one of those people who chose to save Chloe and never reloaded and did the other choice, it just didn't feel right to do so and probably made the ending stronger that way.
Great pronunciation of that average length German word!
I think the "bay" ending also satisfies the 'power is dangerous' theme but in a "deal with fate" rather than "deal with your mistakes" sort of way.
I think the problem with most people's analysis of the ending is that they view it as "both Chloe and Arcadia Bay are drowning, who do you save?" when its more like "Arcadia Bay is drowning because of an uninformed decision you made, do you take back several life altering choices and literally erase a peice of history to save it" Viewing it through this lense is why I chose to save Chloe, not only did I care about her more than the citizens of Arcadia bay but I considered taking back the decision to save someone's life and altering history to be far more morally dubious than any lopsided loss of life in defiance of utilitarianism. Pricefield for life.
I chose the "bae" ending - and I guess you can psychoanalyse me and how I'm trying to justify sacrificing the town, but...
Seriously? If -that- is how "fate" works? That I HAVE to sacrifice my best friend when I literally have been given the power BY the universal constants that I am breaking, or BY this metaphysical representation of fate - that I have been given the power to go back in time just to be powerless? That I've been given a STOP button just to watch the love of my life get shot and die?
Then -fuck- that. Seriously. "Fate", or whatever metaphor for god or nature is being presented, is a completely bullshit and borderline sadistic.
I am not going to bargain with something that forces me to choose between those two options. I am not letting some unjust "universe" dictate my decisions and force me to be a bystander in my friend's death when that same "universe" gave me the power to save her.
I guess I just don't like authority, or being beholden to horrible consequences because of an abstract "destiny". I killed Arcadia Bay, I'll shoulder that, but I killed it because I'm not going to play by the rules of an omnipotence that asks me to watch my friend die after giving me an out.
I didn't see it as "fate" moreso as making a huge, adult decision. I won't repeat myself, but look at my own comment for a bigger analysis on that.
I totally get where you're coming from - and I do genuinely agree with you on a lot of points, but in terms of the game and how the consequences are framed I personally disagree for a couple of reasons;
- You are literally given the power to change things, you're given the power to stop your friend from dying. It's not about "learning that you can't change everything" because you're given that power, and an arbitrary cost is assigned to it later.
- Being adult is about learning that your actions have consequences, for sure, but it's also about learning that authority is not always right, and the tornado is the manifestation of that authority. The idea that wanting to save your friend is an inherently selfish action, then forcing you to re-live that moment is the action of an authority that is cruel. I disagree not because I think it wasn't selfish for me to let Arcadia Bay die, but because I disagree with the principle of it.
I'm agnostic personally, but it's a similar view to the atheist not bowing to a god who allows evil to exist in the world, or who would murder millions in a flood. Just because a position of authority says that things should be a certain way, it doesn't mean that you're 100% responsible for the actions they take when you don't align with them.
- In my headcanon, Max would never use her powers again after Arcadia Bay died, but I don't think she was guilty of that initial choice - I don't think, initially, that wanting to save Chloe was wrong of her. I don't think SAVING Chloe was wrong of her. And yet, the consequences for wanting to do that are:
You have to see your friend die again, you have to let it happen, and you have to go through a ton of trauma to pay for what you did.
It's an unusual, cruel and unjust punishment for a very human impulse. When the game hung that choice over me at the end of the game, it was saying: "Here is the price for wanting to save your friend." And I paid that price because I would never co-operate with a force that would put that choice on someone.
Basically, I said "Fuck You" to fate and destiny because I don't believe in those things, and if they did exist then I would disagree with their cruelty on principle.
I felt the exact same way and also chose bae over bay.
I kinda felt that was the point. The "coming to age story with a very german name" usually involves understanding the world is cruel and you have to deal with it and carry your share of its cruelty in order to live. True and sad message as it is, Life is Strange just takes it to cosmic levels.
Also I think there is a certain natural beauty in refusing the logically good ending and telling the core concept of the ending choice to fuck itself, not because edginess of being thirsty for lesbian relationships, but because you truly disagree in principle with what the game is saying.
i saved chloe because i just wanted her to be happy for once in her life
A good point to be made about the disconnect between the 1st and 2nd halves of the game is the Adventure of a story. People go about their normal lives making normal choices, observing normal behaviors and events until something abnormal shakes things up and forces your characters down a path that few or no other people will ever deal with. When the more dire and immediate circumstances or your choices far surpass the gravity of what you had to choose in your old life.
Max no longer particularly cares about how she feels about Warren because more dramatic issues take center stage in her focus. Chloe was thrust back into her life, Chloe's stepfather takes his traumas out on others, Kate does or almost kills herself, discovering a dead person, being kidnapped. The things she keeps getting dropped into keep one upping the previous most dramatic thing in her life. It keeps changing the perspective and feels so heavy that "should I go on a date with Warren" or "should I enter a photo into one competition" just do not matter anymore.
And after all that goes down, whichever option Max takes at the end, she eventually has to go back to making the mundane choices. The adventure doesn't last forever if you survive it, and there is no guarantee you go on another. As far as we're aware thanks to LiS 2, Max lives a pretty normal life after the events of her story and doesn't have any more whacky time traveling adventures. Stories like hers are a temporary wild ride of extraordinary choices and situations which begin and end with pretty mundane life.
As for gameplay, something that could have made it all a LOT more interesting would be instead of just randomly traveling back in time for some undefined period of time and later introducing the photo time travel, they could have established from the start that you can go back in time to ANY photo you've taken- or even more daring and broad of a story- any photo at all.
The first time you time travel, you got back to the moment you took the selfie in class. You return to moments after you photo'd the butterfly. If they had made taking a photo your save point you could return to instead of simply having your choice lead to some kind of 'game over' like many Tell Tale moments did if you chose wrong or not fast enough. But imagine then discovering she could go into OTHER people's photos to observe Kate's family to help her on the roof instead of reading it. Observing Victoria or Nathan's lives. Tie her powers more to photography than just random Donnie Darko time paradox stuff. We just could have seen so much more play out and develop other characters more.
"Yes you f*cked up, and all of this is your fault. But people have to live with their f*ck ups. You have to let go!" I don't understand why you had to personally single me out and attack me so viciously.
When I played the game I felt it was (in part) a game about grief and learning to cope with loss and death. You have to use your powers multiple times in order to save Chloe, but every time everything gets more and more convoluted, like, you change lots of past events, but the ones that seem to really mess things up are the ones that have to do with her. For me the whole game is an opportunity for Max to say goodbye to and set right her relationship with her childhood best friend, who she left (she moved, but she also stopped contacting her) after she lost her father. The first time in years Max encounters Chloe, they don't even know each other anymore really and Chloe dies.
Max gains her power and has the chance to spend time with her, make peace with her and say goodbye. She also learns enough to stop the murderer of the girl Chloe loved, so she can also honour her memory turning the sick bastard in.
Of course, you can learn little and still save Chloe in the end because she's your friend/lover, making a sacrifice of thousands of lives in exchange of just one.
That's how I read it when I played it. The vortex is kind of an arbitrary threat, but ultimately a necessary one to delivering that particular theme - that maybe being able to go back and change things wouldn't have resulted in a better situation - but the thing we all have to deal with in real life is being faced with the death of a loved one and regrets over the decisions we made (or refused to make, or waited too long to make). So instead of just being a power fantasy, it becomes a meditation on regret, grief and acceptance.
I don't think she got these powers ''just to spend time with her'' considering they were suffering in throughout whole week and they can't even be together exactly.
Universe,or whatever power obviously gave Max chance to save Chloe right there, at the end also that's what Max wanted all of her heart as she made it clear at the end. But she had to pay heavy price to being together. So this game was all about that.
+Keru Wolf
If you sacrifice Chloe, then the 5 days of the game play out without any of Max's knowledge gained from time travel - it's only when she resumes at the lighthouse before the funeral that she would remember the 5 days we played through (and have no memory of the 5 days she skipped over). Or at least that's how her powers worked when she changed time by photo previously.
What the game tells us is that if Max had never got her powers (ignoring the opening scene where Max sees the storm before going to the bathroom to witness Chloe's death) then Chloe would have died, Nathan and Mr Jefferson would have been arrested, the disappearance of Rachel Amber would have been resolved, Kate wouldn't have committed suicide, and everything (except Chloe's death) would have been sunshine and lollipops. With Max's powers, she can save Chloe, but then has to work incredibly hard to get things to work out even nearly as well, and ultimately either the entire town apart from Max and Chloe die (or so the devs present it) or Max, after watching Chloe die many times knowing she can save her has to knowingly choose to let her die knowing she could have prevented it. But it's okay because she got to reconnect with her friend in-between watching her die repeatedly?
Why not just have Nathan shoot Max as well as Chloe? It'd be much, much less painful for her, still have as happy an ending for almost everyone else, and let them be together...
"Hey, have this ability to try to prevent this tragedy, but, if you do, it will make everything else worse" is a terrible prank to play on someone.
Whether or not the sacrifice Chloe ending makes sense thematically depends on whether you count going back in time to never get time travel powers in the first place as not having learned the lesson since you're technically copping out one last time or as having learned the lesson because you're giving up your power forever.
"'Bildungsroman' is a long, complicated German word"
Me, a German: *laughs in Eierschalensollbruchstellenverursacher*
Your pronounciation of Bildungsroman is very good by the way
Life is Strange is almost 2 years old now and I still see things like this. Amazing.
This game strikes me as really successful theatre. There are many shows that have never won Tony’s or made it to Broadway, yet still find themselves being produced over and over again, across the country, by schools and community theaters alike, because of their impact in front of an audience. The Diviners comes to mind - a drama about the trials and tribulations of small-town, Christian America. It’s never won a Tony, and it’s never been on Broadway. And yet, it’s being produced ALL OVER. The story didn’t need to be huge, polished, or perfect to really resonate with audiences. I think Life is Strange is like that. It didn’t need to be perfect, beyond reproach, or completely mainstreamed to tell a story that resonated with audiences around the world.
I LOVE THIS GAME. It’s mess and an accident but it’s still a masterpiece. This game isn’t a narrative it is an experience. In Narrative point of view this shouldn’t work but for some strange reason it does. I just found myself so connected to the world. I loved most of the characters. It’s just something about their awkward/dorky and cringey nature that is so appealing. Also the setting is just beautiful the colors and the soundtrack it created this weird feeling like you were there. It just combines all these moments that in a traditional narrative would make no sense but this game just gives you a comfortable enough environment to make you cherish these moments and make you feel like you’re part of it. There are no wrong ways to play this game there are literally an infinite amount of ways to play this game. Like this game just builds a world in such a unusual way. In conclusion there is no one way to really describe life is strange it’s just this unknown entity that you cannot just dissect. This game is something special.
i would absolutely choose a woman who tears apart the fabric of reality over just a dude....thats kinda hot........wild-love-turned-instigator of the apocalypse? Dream Girl
Congrats on discoviering a new sexuality (A-pocalypse-sexual?)
Yep.
most women i talk to rolled their eyes with warren because we all have a dude like him in our lives who takes friendship as Interest In Him because He Has A Crush
Possibly the best description of Life is Strange I’ve ever heard went along the lines of “A game where having total control and revisionist power over which actions you take gives you no control whatsoever over the outcomes those actions direct you to.”
The game pulls all your human strings in just the right way. I don’t think any other game has manipulated my emotions to such an extent ever. And i don’t think one ever will. I adore it with all my heart, and I will always overlook its flaws
P.S: I’ll never regret picking to sacrifice the bay for bae every single time I play through it again
Glad you're back.
Glad you're black.
Glad you're Bach
Glad you're bleh
Glad you're Brock.
My final decision was to sacrifice Arcadia Bay. I never reloaded and watched the other ending, I didn't even watch it on CZcams.
I never thought "oh im making everything worse when i change something, so i shouldn't and live with it." in this moment. I always thought of it more like a destiny-thing. The whole world and everything in it seems to want to kill Chloe, but Max is there. Max has the power to stand up against the cruel world. She can do what even destiny is unable to do and save Chloe for good. And thats what you do. You save her from a gunshot, from a train, from more gunshots, and so on, and at the end, you sacrifice everything else, like an exchangee for her life.
You played hours defending and saving her, and all i could think at the end was "why did i spend hours on hours saving a poor girl from the cruel world, that wants to kill her, even though she didn't do anything to deserve such a fate, while a literal psychopath can go on living and killing more innocent kids just like her and Rachel?! Did i really do all this, just to erase it? Do i realy want to end the game with the knowledge that i shouldn't have made an effort in the first place?
No! I sacrificed my time (as the gamer), my feelings and even some of my humanity (euthanasia-part) to save the girl from an uncaring Universe that only wants to harm her for no reason at all. I will not let all this effort go to waste!"
So yeah... i saved someone the world wanted to kill so badly it was trying to guilttrap me in the end to finaly let her go... but not on my watch! Eff you, Destiny! Eff you, Universe. If i can make a difference i will!
And to be honest, i never really felt bad for this descision. A lot of good people died, a lot of bad ones as well, but some of them chose to instead of evacuating. Some of them are still alive (Kate was in a hospital out of town if i remember correctly) and Chloe, who was robbed of her love, her life and her agency over her self was finally save.
@@KissaloneComplex Thats one point you can look at it and i agree with that. Sacrifice Chloe after all you went trough wasnt giving sense. Sacrifice ANY life besides your own isnt answer, you have no right to do it. Nobody does.
Point is, Max didnt "sacrifice" Arcadia Bay. She never was in position to do it, because she wasnt responsible for anything. Its mindplay that should YOU make feel guilty for destroying Arcadia bay, even if writters never bother to answer primary question, who and why gave barelly adult girl power that can cause such mayhem. Max is only dust caught in wind as everything else.
Despite its flaws, it holds a special place in my heart. The playable Twin Peaks feel, coming of age elements & representation of modern, alternative queer culture focused on women really lured me in. Even tho they did not completely nail real teenage behavior, they created interesting characters with flaws who have actual interest and hobbies that are believable. This game encourages taking weird, egotistical or moody choices. In the end you can save Chloe and destroy the entire town without judgement. With just the right amount of petty drama, real danger, conspiracy & alternative tumblr vibes + rebelish teen angst this game really spoke to me at the time like no other choice-based game back then.
You have no idea how excited I got to hear Man Man playing in the intro to the video. I don't know anybody else who knows that band and it's one of my favorites.
What I absolutely love about this, a scenario where you're taught to be thorough and explore every inch available, is that the game CALLS YOU OUT FOR BEING NOSEY.
You don't really need to kill the dog to get the good outcome. What you need is patience and empathy towards Frank. About Alyssa, it's not designed as a 'choice' but rather a little joke. It's likely you miss those moments and don't help her. When you see that you didn't at the end of the episode you go 'you fuckers!'. I actually laughed second time it happened to me. Makes oneself wonder how much you missed in the whole chapter and also what's wrong with your morality and brains if it didn't occur to you to rewind when it happened in your face. It also makes you pay more attention in future episodes as you expect you might miss some Easter eggs. It also reminds the player that replayability is worth it even with the whole rewind thing. That's what's designed for, imo.
This was my favorite game of 2015 (fight me) and I feel about the same way, especially in terms of "I mean I can't say people are TOTALLY WRONG when they bitch about the ending..." (except when the complaint boils down to "it's not the ending I wanted!" which like, honestly, get over it)
And I'd argue Jefferson works as an antagonist even to the bildungsroman aspect, because growing up and maturing as a woman in this society involves a lot of dealing with creepy, creepy guys, albeit not usually at the "literal human embodiment of the objectification of women" level Jefferson's at LOL
I couldn't put my finger on exactly what changed LiS in the fifth episode, you've explained it so well. Thanks for this.
Your style of videos have also been unique to me. He has a central idea but branches off with points to give a full idea on the idea. It's very interesting to listen too and has never gotten old.
16:11 Such a missed opportunity to use Max' "With great power comes great bullshit" line :D
I'm sure this comment will get lost in the shuffle, but I really love your videos. Just your style and voice and topics you choose to discuss are fascinating, so kudos man. Keep up the great work.
Life is Strange does so much right, it makes up for it's weak ending. Game play wise I love the camera, the fixed camera in Telltales games wandering around annoys me. Story wise, it really is about the journey. And I saved Chloe, cause screw logic.
I have been trying for years to articulate why I love this game even though I hate this game and this video finally gave me the words. Thank you for making this.
The "let Chloe die" ending is presented as the "correct" ending with its longer, more involved cut scenes...BUT SORRY BITCH, I'M CHOOSING THE MEGUKA MEDUKA ENDING (AKA the "kill everyone to save your waifu" ending)
Watching analytical stuff of this game is always super fascinating to me, because the first time I played it I pretty much entirely rejected the themes its trying to get me to consider and just slammed "bae". It wasn't even a particularly conscious decision, I just naturally ended up at "ok I can fuck with metaphysics in a godlike manner and freely jump around timelines, morality and ethics stopped being useful the first time I wiped the mind of the entirety of reality". And like maybe that was just me justifying the choices I wanted to make and deflecting any sort of guilt, but the notion that you personally jumping into the timeline where Chloe dies somehow "stops" the timeline where the bay gets wiped out just seems really small minded.
And to some extent I think it was also just out of a desire to spite the themes of the coming of age story. Like we have this whole story about gaining power and doing the right thing with it and then the end point is "hey actually the correct choice is to take back absolutely everything you did and accept how things are Supposed To Be". Like when you combine that with the fact that it also involves a lesbian romance being erased via violent death the message basically becomes "young people trying to use their gifts to change the world(and also queer themes) is a mistake that will only lead to disaster" and Fuck That.
Wait like the whole thing? Because if so that's some real convergent interpretation.
It took a long time for me to come back to this one, but I’m glad I did! This break down was awesome.
this is legitimately one of my favorite video essays on this platform & i haven't even played life is strange
is really become a comfort video for me
Your videos really do interest me. I can never say I agree with you 100% on any of your videos. But I am definitely with you when you say "I don't know if I should like this game". I don't know either. There are so many aspects of the game that I can't decide whether I like them or not. The main example being the rewind power. I don't know if I prefer not having it like in a telltale game or if I do like having it. One thing Is for sure, it kept me engaged the whole time, I never got bored with it. So I guess it won't go down as a bad game in my books, but I just can't decide how good it is.
Personally I had to make a category inside my head called "interesting games that I wouldn't give game of the year" for games like Life is Strange. Good to talk about and discuss nature of game design and storytelling and such, not great for me to say I loved it.
I like the rewind power for gameplay purposes simply because of the number of times in games like this that I think an option means something other than what the devs think it means. For example, when David is confronting Kate and you have the choice between jumping in and taking a photo, the game interprets it as choosing whether to intervene or remain a passive spectator, while I saw it as a choice between being impulsive and having no way of swaying David, and taking a moment to get some leverage to persuade David to change his ways.
20:06 Get it because her name is Chloe PRICE!?
I'll see myself out
LeafBones the price is always right!
Ok I’m leaving
I remember when I was talking about this game with my boyfriend and I told him that no matter how many times I go back to that scene, I was never able to choose the town over Chloe, mainly because of how attached I got to Chloe's character. My boyfriend said "if I were in the place of Max, I would have chose the town, even if that 'Chloe' was you (me) because these are individual people with lives, friends, lovers, and their own problems. By choosing you over the town, I wouldnt be able to live with myself knowing i killed an entire town just to save you. Choosing 1 person over a town would be so selfish."
However, if I were Max and he were Chloe, I would still choose him over the town because I have severe trust issues and abandonment issues and for the first time in so long, I met someone who hasn't treated me like shit and actually cares about me, regardless of any problems I may have. If I had to choose between him and the town, I wouldn't be able to live with myself if I chose the town over him. I would have lost the one important person in my life, the one person I cared for while everyone else gets to keep what they have and not appreciate what they have when I would have had to given up something that made me appreciate everything. If that's what would label me as selfish, then by all means, I am selfish.
This is what this game made me realize about how people work based on their views and values. For me, I can see that based on how I view things and how I value things, I would be more inclined to choose Chloe over a town. However, based on how my boyfriend views things and how he values everything and even based on his aspirations, he would be more inclined to let fate be to save a town because (from what he has told me) he doesn't want people to suffer, he wants everybody to live as happily as everybody could and if he had to die in order to save an entire town, he would do it within a second and force me to do it whether I wanted to or not if I had to make that choice.
I totally agree with your boyfriend. I simply cannot be that selfish that I would let the entire town be destroyed.
+
oh man when i finished the game i had this whole theory about the feelgood and dark sides of the story representing the drive to satisfy an audience vs the drive to tell your own story, respectively. like Chloe was a really popular character and so much of the fandom wanted her and Max to get together, so sacrificing the town for her is saying "i'm happy to throw away the rest of the story for the reading that i like", but Dontnod are trying not to judge you for that
anyway great stuff as always!
TinyTachyon Problem is that, as outlined in the video, it doesn't really work. Forget the actual time travel inconsistencies never addresses, you're supposed to be torn between two choices where there is no right answer. In one ending it carries that through honestly but in the other, where you let Chloe die, it basically erases not the story but te very themes itself, declares the one interpretation as absolutely correct and calls you an idiot for ever having any doubts about rolling the dice of fate one more time.
Honestly if that was there intent then it shouldn't have even been a choice. Some way or another a player should have been subjected to the survival of Arcadia Bay as the true, final ending.
I think I love Life is Strange too. No, I'm quite certain I Iove it.
23:02 Of course it makes sense: consider that a girl gets shot and killed on campus in the middle of the school day by the school bully (a bully Warren has probably crossed paths with and Kate has definitely been wronged by, and whose wealthy family many people in Arcadia Bay have reason to resent), and it turns out the girl also used to be a student at this small arts school, as well as Max's childhood best friend...and possibly her girlfriend. You don't think Warren (who has a crush on Max) and Kate (Max's closest friend and a Christian) would show up to give Max emotional support? ESPECIALLY if Max also used her time-travel knowledge of things to expose the perpetrator of what happened to Kate? A small arts community would already be fairly close-knit, and even moreso after a disturbing scandal that resulted in student deaths. I wouldn't be surprised to see a lot more Blackwell students show up out of solidarity.
The way Max's powers have been shown to work in the game, she didn't have her time travel knowledge in the 5 days between letting Chloe die and catching back up at the lighthouse.
Really great video, brings to light a lot of things I didn't initially think of when I played the game. Well done!
20:40 " Life is Strange, Everyone, Wowser"
See what you did there.
I personally love Life is Strange, but your points are actually very true. The game isnt perfect for sure, but to me that just makes it that much more interesting and thought provoking
I think you and the developers understood the "let Chloe die" option in the final choice differently. You saw it as "I don't learn from my mistakes, and instead I go back one last time", while the developers saw it as "I learnt from my mistakes, therefore I choose to never use my time travel powers from the beginning".
The game definitely suffers from plot problems. How exactly the final tornado is created is unclear, and in several cases I did not fully realize the deeper thematic choice the game was trying to get me to make. For example, in the choice between taking the photo or intervening, I thought I had to be smart about this and gather physical evidence, because before it had been the lack of evidence which let Nathan get away with pulling a gun on Chloe. Or when Chloe dares you to kiss her, I understood it as choosing to be more confident (something I want to improve in real life), not as a choice between Chloe and Warren. I still think the way Warren finds out and reacts is contrived and not foreseeable by the player.
Overall, I think LiS was good, but not great. This is a developing genre, and while LiS might be relevant now, I don't think it will be remembered long in the future. I found the first half too drawn out and with too little commentary on the difficult choices you make to be interesting. As you say, the game tries to make you understand the characters, environment and tradeoffs inherent in your choices, but too often it just boils down to reading every scrap of paper.
The second half I found too cliched to be interesting. Somebody asking you to kill them, the metaphor for rape and the "somebody dying is inevitable across all timelines" stories have all already been done better in other shows like Steins Gate. That is not to say that I was not bawling my eyes out when Chloe asked me to kill her, either in the alternate time or at the end of the game, but these felt like cheap shots.
Plus, I had decided to let Chloe die the first time with the reasoning that "everybody has a right to end their life". When she asked me to kill her again at the end of the game, I ended up deflecting a lot of the responsibility for the choice by basically saying to myself: "I am not making this choice, Chloe has already decided to sacrifice herself for the sake of the town, I am merely facilitating her suicide for a second time".
I notice, by the way, that you barely mention the dream sequence where Chloe runs away from people with flashlights and comes across representations of past choices. I take it then that, like me, you did not find much meaning in this sequence? While playing, it felt to me like the developers were trying to make a statement about their themes here but that I simply did not get what they meant.
I think the nightmare sequence is a symptom of Episode 5 being rushed out the door while they could still afford people's salaries rather than being a polished piece of the game.
It also feels like the developers wanted the final choice to be a balanced one, but couldn't convince themselves that sacrificing the town was the right thing to do.
And the "I put things right by undoing my original use of time powers" interpretation only works if you retcon away the start of the game, where Max sees the storm before going to the bathroom as a result of seeing the storm, so witnesses Chloe's death.
Man I am so in love with all your videos and analyses. Someday I want to write essays half this good.
One of the few analysis videos that I've seen that truly understands the themes in Life is Strange. Nice work!
Im glad you didnt mention it in the video but Life Is Strange is like Butterfly Effect except it actually works. Although I guess Butterfly Effect was just a "DUDE THIS IS SO EDGY" version of Donnie Darko..so yeah.
tbh, i honestly don't know why i like this game either, maybe its because i love some of the characters so much (Chloe, Max, Victoria, Nathan) that im blind? my gaming history wouldn't really lead me to think that i would love this game (fps, rpg games), i dunno maybe i spend too much time on tumblr :PPP
An interesting thing this game does, which is what caught my attention the most, is how it defies some ideas we think are natural and fundamental for games, so I think anyone with some experience in gaming can appreciate that. Whether they like it or think it is a pretentious attempt to be cool without giving actual polish or innovation to a formula depends a lot on the person.
Never played this game myself but I do love watching youtubers navigate their way through it.
I’ve been casually watching some of your videos and this is the first I liked, definitely will watch again, and subscribed. Great stuff :)
20:39 Aight so you just opened my eyes to how the endings can be summarized. Sacrifice for the greater of society giving up something you love is selfless and you accept that society is what your world is about. Meanwhile if you pursue YOUR passion (as a person), it’s “selfish” because it doesn’t benefit society. You as the player/person reject society as an acceptable world, rather accept your passion as the world you love. Sacrificing Chloe is accepting society despite your passions and ambitions. Saving Chloe is acceptance of your passion despite what others or society thinks, and how it affects society.
Insert “We live in a society” joke here.
Jokes aside, you did a great job analyzing the endings and their underlying meanings or interpretations. Thank you, and you earned a Sub.
You were very well spoken and presented this in a different light for. Truth be told I was luke-warm on the game at best. Didn't care about the story until I dug up Rachel's body. But then the ending was such no-brainer for me and deleted almost an entire story that I felt was a waste experiencing in the first place... Much like you this game left me very undecided lol
Welp, this was the best video critique for Life Is Strange I've watched so far. I literally had goosebumps. Good job.
Amazing video as always, Ian! Keep up the great work. Thanks for everything you do.
Bildungsroman means literally translated "educational novel". It is not that pretentios. Maybe a bit. Gesamtkustwerk is much worse.
Maybe, but I find myself needing to refer to a "gesamkuntswerk" more often than a "bildungsroman", it's a more useful concept and "coming-of-age story" is a good enough substitute if you want to want to avoid long German words while "gesamkuntswerk" doen't really have any English equivalent.
I'm amused that both of you have misspelled “Gesamtkunstwerk” in different ways.
I had to read my spelling three times before I noticed the missing "n".
I like you it felt like you were ripping into the game at first but then basically said you sort of liked the idea of the game.
Although i wish you would of discussed the plot holes, because a lot of fans are unsure if the plot holes are holes or actually hints at another story happening behind the scenes.
But to what you talked about in the beginning of the video it still sort of is a coming of age story in a sense, it asks the player at the very end what type of person they are, Do they do things for greater good or do things for someone close to them.
Asking them basically; "Do you value conforming in society to progress society and working towards the greater good" Or the game is asking you how much you are willing to sacrifice for the ones you love. The game loops back around and asks you what you value, society or your friend ship, asking Max and the player to live among the dead or die among the living. (also i typed the comment before i watched the last few minutes of the video, great minds think alike!)
But to touch on what i said above slightly, i know fan theories are a dumb thing to touch on but there are a lot of plot holes in the game that also double up on hints and no one is really sure what any of it means, such as changing the past for william to not die but the "storm" still only shows up the week of octuber 2013 despite you saving him 6 years earlier. It makes you wonder somethings like, why wouldnt the storm stop when jefferson kills her, you see that "fate" is trying to kill your friend over and over again yet even when fate does kill your friend it still isnt happy and the storm still comes anyways.
So it begs the question why a player would even think that going back to change history one last time would save the town at all if we see a reality not 1 but 2 timelines in which chloe is dead or dying and yet the storm is still coming(the timelines being Bed ridden chloe, and Chloe being shot in the head).
But at the same time Letting chloe die in the bathroom really gives you a very complete and wrapped up ending and a very emotional one, yet the letting chloe die is the wrong ending, and its not subjectively wrong its OBJECTIVELY wrong. (maybe not objectively wrong but you get my point) Its wrong because of so many of these little hints (or plot holes) in the game.
Even if you do believe the plotholes are just that, plotholes the game still throws the last decision at you but again like you said literally says "Why would you think changing history would be a good idea if the storm was caused by...changing history"?
This is the best analysis i've ever seen. Exquisitely done mate.
This is the best analysis of Life Is Strange I've seen. Happy to be a subscriber here in these Tubes of You.
Watching the video actually let me solidify since ideas for what I personally would want in a game... that I'm not sure if I want to just play or actually develop.
I had the exact same problem with the ending. I chose not to save Arcadia Bay because "Max, your time travel fucked everything up! You have to fix it by travelling through time again!" seemed completely ridiculous to me. Especially knowing in hindsight that for some reason it does fix everything.
Learn to live with your mistakes > Sacrifice for the greater good
wowser, this video is awesome
glad you're back
I really love your work and hope that you keep doing it for a long time
What am I supposed to do with this note now?
"the love triangle doesn't make sense when chloe might be tearing apart the fabric of the universe and warren is just a dude" have you ever been a teenager? a lot of things feel like they are tearing apart the fabric of the universe. this is a very weird, dark, dramatic extension of the metaphorical aspect of this story. we start with a metaphor for youthful indecision, and end up with what it can really feel like being young and fucking up and learning that YOUR ACTIONS HAVE CONSEQUENCES: like the world is ending.
This so resonated will me. Theres not much content I love more than anything about this game. I love the game but I have no clue if I think its good. I love hearing people hate on it and tear it too shreds, I love hearing ppl love it and analyse it seriously. Its like it transcrends quality- it is what is it and its great to see someone else has fallen under its undefinable charm. Subbed.
Honestly I was expecting Scissor Sisters "I Can't Decide" to start playing in the end of this piece of awesome you've nailed.
Good shit, friendo.
It's kinda strange, no pun intended, that the solution that has the least casualties, uses what the game tells you you shouldn't abuse. But, by abusing it one last time, fixes everything. Kinda hypocritical, actually.
Also, it seems like the game is screaming for you to make the decision to kill Chloe. In the scene of her being bedridden, she asks you to kill her. But, there's not much else on the line, so you could easily say "I don't want to kill her, now." But then, the ending comes around and says "NOW IVE GOT THE WHOLE TOWN HOSTAGE, ALL YOUR NEW FRIENDS WILL BE DEAD IF YOU DON'T KILL ME NOW." To which the decision would be do what the game tells me, or let all the people I've tried to help previously fucking die because of my mistake; which is unfair for them to suffer the consequences of my actions.
Ironically, for me, I chose euthanasia in the alternate timeline, but sacrificed Arcadia Bay in the ending (okay, I actually played out both endings, but my personal canon saves Chloe)
Using the power itself isn't abuse. Its why. That is what makes it interesting.
I was simply unconvinced that the tornado coming had anything to do with Max's powers, so the obvious choice was bae. I can get the metaphor of power = responsibility, but to put that over "don't use your powers because a fucking tornado will come"? come on...
Pretty sure it's based on the idea of the Butterfly Effect - a real life theory that basically says if you kill a butterfly, the ripple effect caused could end up creating an earthquake. A.K.A. almost exactly what happens in the game. Plus there's a shit ton of butterfly imagery. Heck, in the ending where you save Chloe Max LITERALLY rips a photo of a butterfly in half. She is killing the butterfly, it couldn't be more literal. And then minutes later a natural disaster destroys the town.
Stop applying real world laws to a fictional universe. That's not how it works. The game has TOLD you it's Max's fault the tornado happened. That is canon. If you can't suspend your disbelief, either the game fucked up or it's not the right game for you.
LordofFullmetal No, MAX told you. There is still room for speculation, even though I agree with you on the butterfly effect. Just because a character says something doesn't mean that it can't be incorrect as part of the story.
The game also tells us that the tornado was coming before Max saw Chloe die the first time - if there really is an original intended timeline, then that timeline includes the storm.
Great video essay. Made me look at this game from different approaches. Looking forward to seeing more stuff from you!
Good video innuendo i love these meaning of life through an indie game type of videos!