Life is Strange | Spoiler Thread

Stella also mentions in Chapter 1 that Jefferson slept with Rachel Amber; that's a reason that I suspected him early.

Also the way he reacts when you talk about Rachel and Kate: "What do Kate and Rachel have to do with each other?" Very shifty. I noticed it at the time.

However, Nathan was a really strong red herring so I was still surprised by the twist.
 
tomtom94 said:
One of Jefferson's first lines of dialogue is "I could frame any one of you in a dark corner and capture you in a moment of desperation". There's also him harassing Kate and hanging out late at night with Victoria.
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chandoog said:
As mentioned above, the first thing he says is about how he can very easily capture one of the students in a dark alley etc.

I knew from the get go that guy was shifty.
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He immediately follows that line with "Too obvious?"
 
Is it a European thing to call a pickup truck an SUV? I looked it up, and apparently they are legally classified as SUVs in the US, but aside from this game I've never heard a pickup called an SUV.

Also, not sure why people were disappointed with the ending. I feel like having one of them be scarified to stop the disaster, or holding hands and watching the world end were the only two endings that made sense. I really don't think that the second ending needed more of an epilogue than Chloe finally leaving Arcadia Bay with Max.
 
JoeyJungle said:
Also, not sure why people were disappointed with the ending. I feel like having one of them be scarified to stop the disaster, or holding hands and watching the world end were the only two endings that made sense. I really don't think that the second ending needed more of an epilogue than Chloe finally leaving Arcadia Bay with Max.
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My biggest beef with the second ending is that it doesn't change to reflect your relationship with Chloe. After all the romantic buildup you can invest over the course of the game, that last kiss is utterly heartbreaking in the first ending.

The fact that there's no equivalent if you choose Chloe above all is a major flaw in my eyes.

Also, I was bothered by the snow at the end. It's poetic and all, but at the same time knowing that Chloe and Max might be chased by supernatural disasters forever is really depressing. After everything they've sacrificed to be together, the narrative should at least give them (and us) that peace of mind.
 
Wow. Just wow.

It was a bumpy ride with mixed quality both in writing and voice acting, gameplay consisting mostly of time-waster fetch quests and the same time travel puzzle repeated ad nauseam, but the story, especially the ending (the correct one, RIP Chloe) worked so well for me that I can't help but love the game. I've never cried at a game before and this sure opened the floodgates. I'm still a mess 5 hours later.

And that soundtrack. I know I'll be listening to a lot of Syd Matters in the next few weeks.
 
Sande said:
especially the ending (the correct one, RIP Chloe)
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CSb3h0Z.gif
 
Sande said:
Wow. Just wow.

It was a bumpy ride with mixed quality both in writing and voice acting, gameplay consisting mostly of time-waster fetch quests and the same time travel puzzle repeated ad nauseam, but the story, especially the ending (the correct one, RIP Chloe) worked so well for me that I can't help but love the game. I've never cried at a game before and this sure opened the floodgates. I'm still a mess 5 hours later.
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Yeah it took me days to recover. I'd see the ending and hear the music when I closed my eyes at night.

Part of the problem was how unsatisfying the other ending is. I went looking and found that the devs really did intend for it to be taken at face value; Chloe and Max together forever, driving off on a new open ended adventure, romance occurring off screen. I thought that stuff at the end was snow and that their happiness wasn't guaranteed, and that vagueness was killing me.

Now that I know the truth, fuck Arcadia Bay lol. I'd rather be history's greatest monster than let Chloe die.
 
to me destroy arcadia bay ending is the best ending.
kill chloe ending makes all the game useless, and the time travel was only for suffering in this ending
 
Eylos said:
to me destroy arcadia bay ending is the best ending.
kill chloe ending makes all the game useless, and the time travel was only for suffering in this ending
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it was the only acceptable outcome for me. Too bad it was rushed and had no real closure whatsoever
 
Finished the game last night. Episode 3/4 had me in tears, absolutely loved the journey.

Sacrificed Chloe at the end - that's gotta be the "canon" ending, right? It's what it all led up to. I cheered at the kiss - it was awesome. I "hugged" Warren because I knew Max and Chloe had a thing.

Great, great game. Max might go down as one of my all time favorite characters.
 
The endings for me felt disapointing.

First choice
Chloe tell you how much her mother deserve to live then when you choose to sacrifice the people over her, she doesn't snap... or search for her mother or try to save her mother ?

Second choice
Max felt so guilty in that nightmare that I was surprised that she didn't had that choice to go back in time and die instead of Chloe.

Like said in the main topic : NOTDOG did the same choice as TellTale games "nulify your choices".
 
Chloe really grew on me in the end, but I spent a lot of the game being annoyed at her because I kept getting major flashbacks to Kenny from Walking Dead (do everything I want even if it makes you uncomfortable or I'll hold it against you forever). :p

It was all kind of leading up to Chloe not being meant to live though. Even if I had chosen to escape Arcadia Bay with her, I feel like that wouldn't have been the end of it.
 
chloe is incredibly flawed but it's pretty realistic for a teenager to act that way who felt betrayed by her parents and her childhood friend, Rachel was everything and what makes her the way she is now and it makes sense.

kenny wasn't a teenager still growing up, he puts other people in danger not just himself, so it's a bit different

I like season 1 kenny though in the walking dead, you could talk some sense into him and he actually cares about Lee
 
Man, this was so good.

Such unique, distinctive melancholic atmosphere. Amazing soundtrack. Likeable, flawed characters. Incredible cliffhangers.

Episode 4 was the best. But the ending was also very good. Depressing and heartwrenching, as it should be. Talking about going back to beginning of course.

Not many games have evoked such strong emotions in me. I can think only of Witcher 3, Planescape Torment, MGS2 and Walking Dead 1.

I will miss Max and Chloe.
 
So it's been a few weeks since I finished the game.

Yeah, I definitely still really, really fucking like both endings. The Sacrifice Arcadia Bay one especially more so the more I think about it. The Sacrifice Chloe ending I think we all can agree on is great (in execution at least -- even if you out there disliked the concept, I did like it a whole lot).

I've elaborated on why I liked them earlier in the thread (and standby those comments), and can do so again if someone really, really struggles to understand why I do so very much love this games ending.

God damn, Game of the Year, man. No question.
 
I can't believe they've announced a sequel when the ending is essentially "your choices didn't matter".

Do the rules suddenly change? Do the stakes change from 'save your friend and your town gets destroyed' to 'save your friend and your car's tire pressure goes down'?

It really cheapens the game IMO.
 
TriAceJP said:
I can't believe they've announced a sequel when the ending is essentially "your choices didn't matter".

Do the rules suddenly change? Do the stakes change from 'save your friend and your town gets destroyed' to 'save your friend and your car's tire pressure goes down'?

It really cheapens the game IMO.
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Uhh.. wut? The sequel will be a completely different story with a new location, new characters and possibly new powers. It won't continue Life is Strange 1's story.

Chaos17 said:
The endings for me felt disapointing.

First choice
Chloe tell you how much her mother deserve to live then when you choose to sacrifice the people over her, she doesn't snap... or search for her mother or try to save her mother ?

Second choice
Max felt so guilty in that nightmare that I was surprised that she didn't had that choice to go back in time and die instead of Chloe.

Like said in the main topic : NOTDOG did the same choice as TellTale games "nulify your choices".
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You don't think they tried to find her mother? It's not like they just walked down from the lighthouse and drove away. Just because the game doesn't show them trying to find & save her mother doesn't mean they didn't do it. If anything, you can basically assume that they did try that but because they are driving away, that implies they didn't find anyone who could be saved. Just like in the sacrifice Chloe ending where we pretty much skip to the funeral, we can just assume there's a time skip in the sacrifice the town ending as well, where we just see Max & Chloe leaving after they are done searching for survivors in the town (and since they are leaving alone, we can maybe assume everyone's dead).

And Max dying would still save Chloe, who is at the root of the disaster. Chloe needs to die to prevent the disaster.
 
Famassu said:
Uhh.. wut? The sequel will be a completely different story with a new location, new characters and possibly new powers. It won't continue Life is Strange 1's story.
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New characters and location wouldn't matter, they would need to change the power.
 
TriAceJP said:
New characters and location wouldn't matter, they would need to change the power.
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Why would they need to change the power?
We know already that not every change to the timeline causes a storm.

Personally I'd like to see a sequel where someone else besides the main character can also reverse time, and they're the only ones who know when the other is doing it.
 
Cerium said:
Why would they need to change the power?
We know already that not every change to the timeline causes a storm.

Personally I'd like to see a sequel where someone else besides the main character can also reverse time, and they're the only ones who know when the other is doing it.
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That's the plot of Tru Calling.

And well, that may be true, but this game made it seem so black or white. You either destroy the flow of time or you don't. There were no grey areas to it.
 
TriAceJP said:
That's the plot of Tru Calling.
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And Season 1 was the plot of The Butterfly Effect, it's all about execution!

TriAceJP said:
And well, that may be true, but this game made it seem so black or white. You either destroy the flow of time or you don't. There were no grey areas to it.
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The destruction hinged on a single trigger event, everything outside of that was shown to be flexible. I don't think there are any really hard rules here that would have to apply to the sequel.
 
I've just finished it and while I loved the quality of character interaction for the most part of the game, I am quite unhappy with the main story. In particular how the game is wrapped up seems like either the writers didn't have time or didn't think the game through properly. The whole storm stuff is so weakly explained and it's amazing Chloe and Max are fine with trying to sacrifice Chloe for the storm not to happen because they just think, without any proof whatsoever, that Max' time travelling is causing the storm.

The conversation with Max' "lover" close to the end is particularly cringeworthy. So Mr. Science hears that Max can travel in time and then he magically concludes "Oh yes, this is why there is a storm going on here!" The whole Prescott family is completely underexplained and the conclusion paints them as a particularly bad form of a red herring. Also Jefferson being a bad guy was too obvious for it being a worthy big reveal.

I did like the dream sequence though, so episode 5 was not a complete letdown. But for the overall plot, it really was a weak crime story mixed with a very weak interpretation of the Steins;Gate story, but a well-done drama and a much improved form of interaction when compared with Telltale games. Dontnod should make more story games, because their framework is great, but they should write a more thoroughly planned story next time.
 
So I was kind of disappointed that the big "dark secret" was that Jefferson apparently kidnaps girls to...take pictures of them...and then lets them go? I guess the plan was that they were so drugged up that they can't really remember what happened to them and nobody will believe a story they can barely put together themselves, but it's still... A weak plan.

But how much of the "nightmare sequence" was Max hallucinating in her own head, and how much of it was the universe twisting apart as time stopped making sense, with different versions of characters pulled from different times and timelines?

As I was playing, I assumed it was the latter, and all the people we were seeing were "real" versions of themselves, albeit twisted by time collapsing in on itself around Max, so Jefferson got completely redefined and made much, much more terrifying by one throwaway line one of his "clones" can say during the nightmare stealth section.

There's a "Jefferson" who "hangs out" near a "Frank," and if you stand near him long enough he'll say something along the lines of:

"Rachel didn't just just give great headshots...she gave great head. At least, after I dug her body up for one final session..."
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Holy hell, writers.

I mean, I guess I knew he was terrifying since he put one right between Chloe's eyes without any hesitation at all, but for a long time the whole "Dark Room" plot seemed almost comedically "blunted." Like they didn't have the guts to do a real "serial killer" plotline so they did "this" instead, and then all of a sudden just how sick Jefferson is comes out of left field.

I guess it's actually kind of cool how much of a false sense of security the devs managed to lull me into while I was literally standing in a psychopath's secret torture dungeon with binders full of photos of his victims.
 
Considering he almost kills Max, and what he does before that is grotesque, I think 'blunted' is a little off.

Personally I didn't see Jefferson as the obvious baddie at all. By the logic of 'oh he nice guy' there could have been a few suspects, let alone the red herrings.
 
Posted from spoil tagged post in the regular thread.

So a huge choice, Chloe or Arcadia Bay. I just stared at the screen It came down to two things. First, I imagined my best friend in real life and that would be my wife. I then imagined the choice was her and it was so easy to pick my best friend/wife. I would watch the world burn as long as my wife was safe by my side. Second, the whole game was saving Chloe, if I saved the Bay, I feel it would negate the whole game that I just played. The whole game was about choices and consequences, my very first choice in this game was saving her, my consequence should be living with that choice.

Not even gonna watch the other scene.
 
KoruptData said:
Posted from spoil tagged post in the regular thread.

So a huge choice, Chloe or Arcadia Bay. I just stared at the screen It came down to two things. First, I imagined my best friend in real life and that would be my wife. I then imagined the choice was her and it was so easy to pick my best friend/wife. I would watch the world burn as long as my wife was safe by my side. Second, the whole game was saving Chloe, if I saved the Bay, I feel it would negate the whole game that I just played. The whole game was about choices and consequences, my very first choice in this game was saving her, my consequence should be living with that choice.

Not even gonna watch the other scene.
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I fel the point of the game was giving you those last few days with a loved one that you always wish you would have had.
 
Kinsei said:
I fel the point of the game was giving you those last few days with a loved one that you always wish you would have had.
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That would be implying that it was Chloe's Destiny/fate to die? They even threw out that thought at the end. I thought about it. But you could reverse it with the visions Max had. What if it was the Bay's destiny/fate to be destroyed?
 
KoruptData said:
That would be implying that it was Chloe's Destiny/fate to die? They even threw out that thought at the end. I thought about it. But you could reverse it with the visions Max had. What if it was the Bay's destiny/fate to be destroyed?
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I mean . . . if it was the bay's fate to die, the storm would have hit either way. Max's actions (and ours by extension) put the storm into motion.
 
Nappuccino said:
I mean . . . if it was the bay's fate to die, the storm would have hit either way. Max's actions (and ours by extension) put the storm into motion.
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In reality, we are going down a path of discussion that's been argued since humans started questioning their existence. It's free will vs fate, it's greater good of all vs greater good of loved ones. I'm sure the dev team was split on what a canon ending would be. It comes down to our belief system. When it comes to an individual's beliefs, even my own, I always think of this meme I saw on Facebook.

BxYJpR2.jpg
 
I don't see it as fate. The problem with what Max did was not so much saving Chloe, but simply changing things radically. She could have saved Chloe just fine the first time before any time traveling.
 
KoruptData said:
In reality, we are going down a path of discussion that's been argued since humans started questioning their existence. It's free will vs fate, it's greater good of all vs greater good of loved ones. I'm sure the dev team was split on what a canon ending would be. It comes down to our belief system. When it comes to an individual's beliefs, even my own, I always think of this meme I saw on Facebook.

BxYJpR2.jpg
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If the dev team was split on which was "canon" then why is one so much more in depth than the other?
 
Kinsei said:
If the dev team was split on which was "canon" then why is one so much more in depth than the other?
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Budget, they've said as much.

Better to have one well crafted ending and one weak ending than two mediocre endings. Then everyone's unhappy.
 
I just finished it this morning. I thought it was pretty fantastic and def in my top 3 for the year. I'm glad I chose the "correct" 2nd ending ;). I went this way because to me it made more sense from the time travel power perspective. Gaining a super power that you didn't ask for seems pointless if end the end you just return and wipe everything that it gave you. I'm not 100% sure i'd read the kiss in the 1st ending as romantic, as I always took their relationship to be a very close friendship (even though I did chose the kiss option in the earlier episode). I found the 2nd ending to fit in with my own interpretations best, so it ended up being pretty satisfying. I wasn't 100% sure Jefferson was the main bad guy until the reveal, but it was pretty rad since i did "blame" him for Kate jumping in episode 2. I figured there was something more shady about him. All in for a sequel with new characters!
 
There's a part at the end where Chloe says "Don't you forget about me". Anyone else think this was an intentional reference to the Billy Idol song? I figured it was just because she said it plus the tornado coming (rain keeps falling rain keeps falling...).

Anyway what an awesome game. I think it's silly people are saying the "correct" or "true" ending is saving Arcadia Bay. Have you never been in love?
 
I'd take 'don't you forget about me' as a specific expression sans cultural references.

The game is full of references, but not there, I think. There it's referring to the idea that Billy Idol was also referring to.

Good old Billy.
 
KoruptData said:
In reality, we are going down a path of discussion that's been argued since humans started questioning their existence. It's free will vs fate, it's greater good of all vs greater good of loved ones. I'm sure the dev team was split on what a canon ending would be. It comes down to our belief system. When it comes to an individual's beliefs, even my own, I always think of this meme I saw on Facebook.

BxYJpR2.jpg
Click to expand...

The actual ending of the story confirms what I'm saying. If Chloe dies, the bay survives. Free will wouldn't create an entire storm or the mystical death of birds and whales. Certainly not within the time span of a week.

While I agree with you in general principle, I don't think the actual game supports that.
 
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