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Yeah that's one thing that weirded me out the whole Prescott evil conspiracy turned out to be nothing
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Oct 20, 2015 10:23
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VagueRant posted:[*]Why didn't the storm stop when Jefferson killed Chloe?! For this one: Chloe's fate and the storm are not the inextricably linked events. It's Max's powers and the storm that are linked together, which are both set into motion the minute she reverses time in the bathroom. But if she never puts out her hand to save Chloe, she never discovers her power, and the storm event never happens.
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Oct 20, 2015 10:28
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Aaand just to be the worst again, not just posting another list, but quoting myself from 2 months ago:VagueRant posted:Predictions for episode 5 - two months from now (goddamn it): Mokinokaro posted:Yeah that's one thing that weirded me out the whole Prescott evil conspiracy turned out to be nothing EDIT: exquisite tea posted:For this one: Chloe's fate and the storm are not the inextricably linked events. It's Max's powers and the storm that are linked together, which are both set into motion the minute she reverses time in the bathroom. But if she never puts out her hand to save Chloe, she never discovers her power, and the storm event never happens.
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Oct 20, 2015 10:30
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Wait, I don't remember anything about Alyssa saving Max
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Oct 20, 2015 10:34
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VagueRant posted:EDIT: You could probably figure out a million alternate possible resolutions for every binary choice in this game, but A) it was well-established that Max had so royally hosed up the timestream by then that relinquishing her power by doing nothing was the only way she could be sure the storm wouldn't happen, and B) video games.
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Oct 20, 2015 10:35
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Just finished, and hands-down, LiS is one of my favorite games of the past decade or so. Up there, funnily enough with Mass Effect. They both suffer some of the same issues with the endings, but I don't think that negates the overall experience. Making choice-based games is hard, because games take a lot of development time, and making 20 million different endings ala Chrono Trigger is nearly impossible in today's gaming financials. I chose the gently caress Arcadia Bay ending. I'm glad it was an option, but I do agree with other posters that it felt a little... underdeveloped compared to the alternative. I would have liked to see what happened to the others/who survived and died/etc. I definitely felt like Dontnod wanted you to clearly pick one ending over the other. I'm fine with only having two options, but they both need to be really fleshed out to work I'll probably play through again soon. I didn't do so great in the last couple of chapters on my photo collection and would like to complete the scrapbook.
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Oct 20, 2015 11:03
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Ekusukariba posted:Well that was a fairly good episode with a disappointing ending, no real closure and it kinda killed it for me, also for the Kill Chloe ending do any of your choices even end up matter? Like if Kate is dead does she not cameo at the funeral? Honestly I was never really that big into Chloe as a character which would obviously had made the ending have more meaning to me but she didn't get likable until too late, also a huge writing thing I hate about the series in general is it does the "well I did this because I was meant to give you the impression i'm X but now I'm apologizing so you'll like my character now, but anyways going by the endings I guess in the end nothing actually did matter since the ending is a static choice and none of the choices are shown effecting them so now its up to Tales from the Borderlands to save finale week..... gently caress it's Telltale.... http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/tales-from-the-borderlands-episode-5---the-vault-of-the-traveler Borderlands finale currently has a 92 rating.
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Oct 20, 2015 11:04
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exquisite tea posted:You could probably figure out a million alternate possible resolutions for every binary choice in this game, but A) it was well-established that Max had so royally hosed up the timestream by then that relinquishing her power by doing nothing was the only way she could be sure the storm wouldn't happen, and B) video games. Joda posted:Wait, I don't remember anything about Alyssa saving Max
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Oct 20, 2015 11:06
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Sorry to say that was pretty disappointing and predictable. I hate that the explanation for the storm is that Max's powers are loving everything up. For starters there's never really any evidence for it, at some point Max just accepts that's what must be going on and it seems like she's right. There's no mystery about where her powers came from, nothing she's meant to solve, even more frustrating is she had the vision of the storm before she even got the powers and at first it seemed like the whole reason she had them was to figure out what was causing the storm so the whole thing's just one big pointless self-fulfilling prophecy. It recasts the whole game as being about that one choice at the end, so that Jefferson's shenanigans and the sinister Prescotts are basically coincidental. It's reductive, not to mention extremely cliche since half of time travel stories end on a similar "you can't change time!" message. The choices you've made throughout managed to feel really irrelevant, especially since in one half of the ending you completely undo them and the other half you let everyone they affected be destroyed. I think it was a mistake to abandon the more grounded, character-driven stuff that made the first four episodes so fun and compelling, achievements like saving Kate or befriending Frank by paying attention to the environment and making decisions were more interesting than throwing together some Kate imagery into a nightmare maze. The "reality fraying" stuff felt incoherent, like they wanted to get a little meta and maybe 4th wall-y with stuff like the journal but they didn't have a strong thematic direction for it. Stuff like the endless dorm halls didn't have much of a message besides being vaguely trippy and the room with everyone frozen and Mean Max throwing weak burns was eye-rolling. They made insinuations about how those other timlines she jumped to might exist but they're pretty empty and indistinguishable from other nightmare junk like the dog sending text messages. Max getting teased by Chloe in her underwear was double eye-rolling and felt like someone was just working down a list of ideas with no overall theme. If nothing else the epilogue after the final choice needed to be more than a musical sequence. As-is it almost felt pointless choosing one way or the other, it's just a choice of two different musically-accompanied sequences with no dialogue unaffected by any other choice. If they'd let you wander the destroyed Arcadia or talk to people at the funeral it might've at least helped ground the game back with the characters and choices you made at the end. Just one more thing that bugged me, when Max used Warren's photo the story deliberately drew attention to the fact that she was briefly replacing some other Max, and then when she snapped back to the "present" on the beach in front of the storm Chloe calls her the "real Max". So who was the Max inbetween? How did she feel about knowing she was going to get overwritten? What were she and Chloe doing on that beach? It feels sloppy, like they were rushing and just glossed it over. Ultimately, I feel the time travel component was the weakest part whenever it was used as a main plot point rather than a narrative tool to tell a more grounded story. The last episode is taken over entirely by the time travel stuff and doesn't really have much new or original to say that hasn't already been done in time travel fiction. A real let-down. tl;dr Don't make a choice game about how choice is meaningless. Okay, rant over, sleep now. Dolash fucked around with this message at 11:25 on Oct 20, 2015 |
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Oct 20, 2015 11:15
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Seems like there's quite a few little things I didn't know about in this ep that can change. Like Victoria can be in the Dark Room with you and murdered offscreen by Jefferson - I assume that's if she listend to your warning. And somehow Max can end up wearing Chloe's bullet necklace?
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Oct 20, 2015 11:41
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This game would have been way better without any time travel.
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Oct 20, 2015 11:42
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I'm meh on then ending I chose to save Chloe because I saw the game was trying to Donnie Darko me and got annoyed,plus I went through all this poo poo so why not ride it out? Loved the nightmare sequence when all the timelines get mashed together and Joyce's "We have camera's in there you rear end" text makes me feel sorta bad for the Max I ditched in alt Chole's reality but angry Max yelling at being ditched in a poo poo timeline did nothing for me sorry a bunch of you are dead didn't know eh I'm stubborn I guess The creepy Warren locker and the long sequence strapped to the chair is the biggest gently caress you shippers thing I have ever seen in a game so points for that A lot of people thought the endings would be more fleshed out myself included and as far as I can tell that's where some of the negative backlash going to come from not what the ending was but how they did it. I'll be honest both endings seemed super rushed. Also a few last thoughts I'm wondering if I missed something - Angry Max at the diner says something about Rachel not getting something and it screwing her over. What was that exactly? - Hated how Jefferson hints at Nathan having something special was just him being metaphorical -The whole Prescott plotline with the storm bunker was extra pointless -Lump me in with the none of the choices matters crowd everyone is either dead so it doesn't matter or you rewrite the week. Still an ok story though. Tired of the dead lgbt lover trope though that is if you save Arcadia Bay. -Oh man they are so many dead/life ruined Max's even if you don't save Chloe kind of dark. Also where do the one's that don't have a body go? There's one in Main Max's body when she's photo hopping. Wiped from existence I guess? SirKibbles fucked around with this message at 11:56 on Oct 20, 2015 |
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Oct 20, 2015 11:52
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SirKibbles posted:-Oh man they are so many dead/life ruined Max's even if you don't save Chloe kind of dark. Also where do the one's that don't have a body go? There's one in Main Max's body when she's photo hopping. Wiped from existence I guess? The Max you play in Life is Strange is probably not the Main Max, if there even is such a thing anymore. Remember the game starts with you waking up from a vision of the storm and no memory of how you ended up there, similar to the disorientation Max feels whenever she jumps back into a polaroid into an alt-existence. So who knows how many parallel universes there are with alt-Maxes getting stuck in some severely hosed timelines. We just happen to be following one of the realities that avoids total collapse. My own theory is that in the first timeline Max jumped back to the very beginning in order to avoid choosing between Chloe and Arcadia Bay, and has repeated this process for who knows how long.
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Oct 20, 2015 11:58
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One thing of note; pretty sure Max still has her powers after all is said and done, it's not her powers being the cause but Chloe just being alive was a colossal spiral of deviations in the timeline leading to the typhoon.
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Oct 20, 2015 12:02
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exquisite tea posted:The Max you play in Life is Strange is probably not the Main Max, if there even is such a thing anymore. Remember the game starts with you waking up from a vision of the storm and no memory of how you ended up there, similar to the disorientation Max feels whenever she jumps back into a polaroid into an alt-existence. So who knows how many parallel universes there are with alt-Maxes getting stuck in some severely hosed timelines. We just happen to be following one of the realities that avoids total collapse. My own theory is that in the first timeline Max jumped back to the very beginning in order to avoid choosing between Chloe and Arcadia Bay, and has repeated this process for who knows how long. Main Max probably realized she needed a selfie from that class lecture. Edit: Oh yeah, I was gonna ask, who else had Victoria in the dark room? She's there for the very first segment. I kinda wanted her to try and help with the escape, but I guess that would take more resources than they had. Max fucked around with this message at 12:12 on Oct 20, 2015 |
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Oct 20, 2015 12:07
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Max posted:Main Max probably realized she needed a selfie from that class lecture. I did, she's there and then Jefferson realizes in between photoshoots that Max is his perfect muse and he doesn't need Victoria and presumably offs Vic between photo jumps
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Oct 20, 2015 12:24
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Codependent Poster posted:"Wowzers."
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Oct 20, 2015 13:00
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Question for those who wanted an explanation for Max's power: what did you expect? I thought it was obvious that this was going to be a mysterious power, perhaps one she's always had but never had that strong emotional event that caused her to use it like Chloe dying in front of her eyes. If the game said "well here is a scientific explanation" it would have been bullshit, if the game said "God gave her these powers" people would have rolled their eyes. How she got the powers didn't matter. As far as the payoff on the Prescott thing, it seemed clear in previous episodes and spelled out a bit more here. Nathan was a fuckup, his father instead of doing more about treating his son and being there for him, just paid off the cops and otherwise was an rear end in a top hat to his kid. Nathan latches out to a surrogate father instead, Jefferson. He gets cash from his dad to support his new hobby - dad is happy to do this since he sees this as a way to keep Nathan occupied and out of trouble - which is spent on the darkroom and also acquiring drugs. In a sense, Jefferson's exit strategy (pin all the blame for the kidnapping/murders on Nathan who has apparently skipped town, with some involvement from his father) meshes very well with all the evidence we found, even the misleading notes in the bunker that most of us assumed were written by Sean Prescott but were written by Jefferson, as well as the photo of Nathan and Rachel conveniently in the dark room for anyone to find. Had Jefferson's plan worked, the town would have believed the story and had we not been kidnapped by Jefferson, we probably would have bought it too. It's misdirection using a combination of the town's inclination towards the Prescott's as jerks and Jefferson being busy making sure Nathan looks like the one responsible not just for Rachel, but for all the murders. Also the last map location is the Zeitgeist gallery in SF. VagueRant posted:Seems like there's quite a few little things I didn't know about in this ep that can change. Like Victoria can be in the Dark Room with you and murdered offscreen by Jefferson - I assume that's if she listend to your warning. And somehow Max can end up wearing Chloe's bullet necklace? The way this plays out is Victoria says you warned her about Nathan, so she goes to Jefferson for help. Jefferson then knocks her out. We only get to see Victoria twice - once she's completely out, the second time she's starting to wake up and we get to talk with her a bit to find out what happened. Then she's murdered off screen - I assume Jefferson has probably taken whatever photographs he wants, but making her a murder victim also helps with his end-game of pinning everything on Nathan. He probably thinks Victoria has been talking with people about Nathan being dangerous, so when she disappears (or turns up dead), people are going to assume the now-missing Nathan was responsible too.
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Oct 20, 2015 13:23
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Ending is for sacrifice Chloe - straight Donnie Darko. Rewind to the start. Nothing is of any consequence. The correct move is no move.
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Oct 20, 2015 13:24
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Empress Theonora posted:Oh, people are still replying to me! I found the right path to take-- I was turning the wrong way literally every single time I guess. Or my game was just bugged out and reloading fixed it, maybe? I had an earlier issue where I was stuck on a black screen after interacting with a photo.
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Oct 20, 2015 13:27
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I really enjoyed the episode. (not sure how much of this is a spoiler but I'll play it safe regardless) I'm glad they didn't explain everything - after all, the title of the game is Life is Strange. The final choice isn't as forced as I think some people have said. I chose to save Arcadia Bay because my Max spent the past week doing her best to save as many people as possible, sacrificing Chloe for the greater good (and after all, Chloe basically told her to do it) fitted in with the episodes theme of "Don't gently caress with time". However, I can see it from the other way, Max deciding that fate's gonna fate so let's get the hell out of here while we can. I have a feeling it's going to be a while before people play out every possible scenario so we can see all the possibilities. I missed hella pictures, time to go back and figure out where.
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Oct 20, 2015 14:01
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Arach posted:Ending is for sacrifice Chloe - straight Donnie Darko. Rewind to the start. Nothing is of any consequence. The correct move is no move. They sort of foreshadow this when they make you watch yourself do nothing while William looks for his keys during the nightmare section.
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Oct 20, 2015 14:06
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Since this thread looks like Wartime Correspodence I'm guessing the last episode is out. Tell me Goons. Was it worth it?
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Oct 20, 2015 14:08
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Fans posted:Since this thread looks like Wartime Correspodence I'm guessing the last episode is out. Tell me Goons. Was it worth it? I liked it. There will be a lot of backlash though.
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Oct 20, 2015 14:12
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Fans posted:Since this thread looks like Wartime Correspodence I'm guessing the last episode is out. Tell me Goons. Was it worth it? It's cheap, lazy, and grimdark, in a game that was anything but before hand. At least guys like David Cage have the courtesy to have their games go to poo poo a lot sooner instead of stringing you along. Accordion Man fucked around with this message at 14:18 on Oct 20, 2015 |
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Oct 20, 2015 14:15
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Fans posted:Since this thread looks like Wartime Correspodence I'm guessing the last episode is out. Tell me Goons. Was it worth it? This is probably my favorite game of the year. In retrospect though I think players who pick it up now will have a better impression of the story overall than people who built up 5+ months of endgame shipper insanity in their heads, just because the finale is pretty by-the-book despite all the twists and turns in previous episodes.
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Oct 20, 2015 14:16
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Fans posted:Since this thread looks like Wartime Correspodence I'm guessing the last episode is out. Tell me Goons. Was it worth it? Yes, the ending has some great sequences and fits thematically with the series. Would pre-order a season 2.
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Oct 20, 2015 14:17
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Eh, the ending is what it is. Everything leading up to the ending is really loving good though. Side note about some mid-episode 5 stuff: Who told David the truth about Chloe? I did, and it was actually a really brutal sequence and the only time I've taken a decision back because I couldn't handle his "I always lose" line after he shoots Jefferson.
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Oct 20, 2015 14:21
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Max posted:Side note about some mid-episode 5 stuff: I did that just to see how it would play out, and yeesh. Never rewound a decision that quick.
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Oct 20, 2015 14:22
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One thing that confused me about the ending now that I've slept on it: Max dreams about the tornado before she ever travels through time. If the tornado is the consequence of time travel and saving Chloe, why does she seem to know, subconsciously, that it's going to happen the way it does? Does that imply that the Max we start off as in Episode 1 is not prime original timeline Max as we sort of assume but actually a Max that had already screwed everything up and had traveled back to that moment?
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Oct 20, 2015 14:23
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Max posted:Eh, the ending is what it is. Everything leading up to the ending is really loving good though. I did, and I didn't rewind to check the opposite outcome. Totally happy with the decision (especially because I knew the timeline is getting rewound anyway). Dexie posted:Spoilers, I guess, if you haven't played through the entire game yet, but what area is the locked off one at the bottom? It's the hospital scene with Kate. I haven't got the top right one though, what's that?
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Oct 20, 2015 14:24
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Rosalind posted:One thing that confused me about the ending now that I've slept on it: Max dreams about the tornado before she ever travels through time. If the tornado is the consequence of time travel and saving Chloe, why does she seem to know, subconsciously, that it's going to happen the way it does? Does that imply that the Max we start off as in Episode 1 is not prime original timeline Max as we sort of assume but actually a Max that had already screwed everything up and had traveled back to that moment? That's how I interpreted it, yes. The way Max just sort of snaps back into consciousness mirrors the way she wakes up after teleporting through a polaroid. This is also sort of confirmed by the conversation Max has with herself in the nightmare diner. Who knows how many other alt-timeline Maxes are wandering around in severely hosed up realities like her?
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Oct 20, 2015 14:28
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EvilHawk posted:It's the hospital scene with Kate. I haven't got the top right one though, what's that? All photos here (also spoilers for episode 5): http://imgur.com/X5Y3THZ
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Oct 20, 2015 14:28
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exquisite tea posted:For this one: Chloe's fate and the storm are not the inextricably linked events. It's Max's powers and the storm that are linked together, which are both set into motion the minute she reverses time in the bathroom. But if she never puts out her hand to save Chloe, she never discovers her power, and the storm event never happens. i got the impression that the whole reason the storm is there and did not go away when chloe died was a because all of the weird weather poo poo that happened was a direct result of chloe being saved. like, the storm was all part of the weird weather things, and it was the coup de gras of the entire situation, so even if chloe dies prematurely the storm has already been set into place
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Oct 20, 2015 14:30
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pog boyfriend posted:i got the impression that the whole reason the storm is there and did not go away when chloe died was a because all of the weird weather poo poo that happened was a direct result of chloe being saved. like, the storm was all part of the weird weather things, and it was the coup de gras of the entire situation, so even if chloe dies prematurely the storm has already been set into place That's certainly plausible given all the butterfly imagery surrounding Chloe, but the weird weather stuff also exists in the alternate timeline where she is never saved by Max at Blackwell, so it cannot be the only explanation.
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Oct 20, 2015 14:33
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EvilHawk posted:I did, and I didn't rewind to check the opposite outcome. Totally happy with the decision (especially because I knew the timeline is getting rewound anyway). I came very close to just leaving that decision as it was as well, and would have if it wasn't for David slumping down and looking like he was just going to shoot himself. I knew the timeline was going to be fixed at that point but wanted to leave him on a positive note anyway.
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Oct 20, 2015 14:34
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pog boyfriend posted:i got the impression that the whole reason the storm is there and did not go away when chloe died was a because all of the weird weather poo poo that happened was a direct result of chloe being saved. like, the storm was all part of the weird weather things, and it was the coup de gras of the entire situation, so even if chloe dies prematurely the storm has already been set into place Yeah, the takeaway isn't not using her powers at all, just that Chloe being alive past Monday morning throws a colossal spanner in the worldline because there's a whole extra person running around. Changing time so a girl doesn't get beaned by a football isn't going to affect much in the grand scheme of things.
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Oct 20, 2015 14:35
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exquisite tea posted:That's certainly plausible given all the butterfly imagery surrounding Chloe, but the weird weather stuff also exists in the alternate timeline where she is never saved by Max at Blackwell, so it cannot be the only explanation. I think that's because it's a reality where you have already used your powers to alter what happens to Chloe's father in the past, and is a reality that shouldn't exist to begin with.
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Oct 20, 2015 14:37
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I like how DONTNOD set up a noticeable amount of evidence that the storm was completely unrelated to Chloe's death (Max's vision in the very beginning of the game before she got her powers, the Prescotts knowing about it, etc.) and then they just threw that all way. Like its so obvious that the nightmare sequences was leading up something like the malevolent entity controlling the storm trying to demoralize Max and break her so she couldn't stop it and Rachel would help her overcome it. But lol nope. Not to mention that it just neglects its supporting cast, which really helped make that game. Nathan never got the help he needed, Victoria lost all of her development and Kate as well, etc.)
Accordion Man fucked around with this message at 14:49 on Oct 20, 2015 |
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Oct 20, 2015 14:42
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monster on a stick posted:All photos here (also spoilers for episode 5): http://imgur.com/X5Y3THZ It looks like it comes after the pool scene in ep 3 but I don't remember going there?
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Oct 20, 2015 14:49
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