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I hope they drop the supernatural thing altogether. These games don't need it and I hope they know that it's not necessary. BtS is a prime example of that. It's fair enough to have in the first LiS since it's a new IP and it needs a gimmick or a unique hook but now it's established and lauded (more or less) for the strengths of its characters and writing which should be more than enough and it doesn't need another tacked-on mechanic to justify itself. Though granted, the rewind mechanic was fairly novel as far as that goes. But it does make me think of Assassin's Creed and how the present-day stuff really smacks of lack of faith in a historical setting being enough of a draw so holy poo poo we gotta throw in ancient aliens and a modern day conspiracy plot too. Sometimes less is more. Have some faith in yourselves, game developers.
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May 3, 2018 14:31
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let me be gay
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May 3, 2018 14:37
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That is so wrong it physically pains me to read. Giving an indecisive teenager with a penchant for photography the ability to rewind time was absolutely 100% freaking brilliant and what made season one what it was. The only reason why BtS was able to skirt by without incorporating the mystical element was because of the setting and characters Dontnod already teed up. All the future mainline Life is Strange games are going to feature some kind of thematically appropriate supernatural element and they'll be better games for it.
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May 3, 2018 14:39
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Plus, without a gimmick you'd basically be left with a Telltale game with a bit more actual gameplay involved, it makes things more interesting in my opinion. To be fair, there were still some supernatural elements in BtS but they were severely downplayed, such as the raven and Chloe's dreams as well as the fact Rachel may or may not have been an airbender (the bird-like scream in Episode 1, the scene where the world becomes muted as the candle flames grow larger in Episode 2 and finally how the fire suddenly extinguishes itself not long after Rachel gets stabbed in Episode 3). I'm guessing there will still be a bit of that in Season 2 but it remains to be seen how in depth they're going to go with it. Larryb fucked around with this message at 14:50 on May 3, 2018 |
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May 3, 2018 14:45
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exquisite tea posted:That is so wrong it physically pains me to read. Giving an indecisive teenager with a penchant for photography the ability to rewind time was absolutely 100% freaking brilliant and what made season one what it was. The only reason why BtS was able to skirt by without incorporating the mystical element was because of the setting and characters Dontnod already teed up. All the future mainline Life is Strange games are going to feature some kind of thematically appropriate supernatural element and they'll be better games for it. I appreciate your opinion, and like I said, I do think that the rewind mechanic worked well for what it was but I don't see it as the main draw or the main strength of the game. These games live and die by the writing and the characters and have tons of potential on that front. I think they should double down on that instead of feeling like they now need to stick to that specific formula and every LiS game has to have a main character with a superpower when it could easily be just a slice of life type thing that focuses on events in the lives of a group of characters without absolutely requiring a gimmick. That said, if they do come up with a thematically appropriate gimmick, that's fair enough, I'm just saying that I don't feel that it's necessary at all.
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May 3, 2018 14:49
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The Rewind power works for Max because she's shy and has trouble taking decisive action, so giving her the ability to literally take back her mistakes makes sense. The new protagonist would probably need a power more suited to their own personality. I do hope they bring back something like photos/graffiti though as that was kind of a fun way to pad out the gameplay. Maybe combine the two and have the main character be an artistic type that has the option of drawing sketches of certain things they see. Larryb fucked around with this message at 14:59 on May 3, 2018 |
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May 3, 2018 14:55
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The whole presence of the supernatural to express characterization was so fundamental and unique to Life is Strange's writing that I just don't think it's recognizable as a series without it. Even in Before the Storm you had various mystical elements that were played up to mirror the symbolism of season one, albeit in a more limited way since Deck Nine couldn't exactly give everyone in Arcadia Bay superpowers. If I were to define Life is Strange by just a few bullet points, the supernatural aspect would be right up there with emotionally impactful, coming-of-age, and hella gay.
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May 3, 2018 14:59
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Yeah, it worked in season 1 and they wrote it in and around it really effectively, but being that the series could potentially be defined by the protagonist having a superpower it would really quickly serve to pigeonhole the writers into feeling like they have to come up with one every season. LiS on its own feels like a really nice breath of fresh air when it comes to writing in video games, mature, realistic stories of people living their lives and the relationships they cultivate along the way, despite the shifting quality in the writing itself. In the realm of games that alone is pretty unique and LiS is a perfect vehicle for it. The mystical elements and symbolism I'm okay with, of course. Things like dream sequences and stuff is all fine and I know BtS had some of that. That's why Ep2 of BtS is my favorite episode of LiS so far, because it was grounded, it was about the characters, nice and simple and really damned gripping all because of the strength of the writing. E: Character-appropriate collectables are cool, too. I wouldn't mind if they did something more with that, actually. It would've been cool to have Max's photos and Chloe's graffiti somehow play a role in the story. Stare-Out fucked around with this message at 15:11 on May 3, 2018 |
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May 3, 2018 15:08
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True, BtS Episode 2 and LiS Episode 3 are probably my favorite ones in the entire series, mostly because they're mainly dedicated to further building the relationship between the two main characters without much otherworldly stuff getting in the way. As you said, on the whole the series lives and dies on the strength of the writing and characters (which is why the success of Season 2 is most likely going to make or break this series as a potential new franchise) while the gimmick is just there to keep things interesting. To be fair, just because you have a gimmick doesn't mean it necessarily has to revolve around some kind of super power, the Backtalk sequences in Before the Storm for example (which are kind of like the LiS equivalent of boss fights in a sense). Larryb fucked around with this message at 15:30 on May 3, 2018 |
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May 3, 2018 15:21
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True, not all gimmicks are necessarily a bad thing, the Backtalk stuff was okay so there's definitely room for having some kind of a gameplay mechanic that isn't a superpower which would be great.
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May 3, 2018 15:26
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Stare-Out posted:E: Character-appropriate collectables are cool, too. I wouldn't mind if they did something more with that, actually. It would've been cool to have Max's photos and Chloe's graffiti somehow play a role in the story. I don't remember if any of the optional photos you can take in the first game have any impact later (aside from the one with William and Chloe which will be displayed in her room in the alternate timeline) but there are a few bits of graffiti you can make in BtS that get referenced again later on. Off the top of my head there's: - If you graffiti Frank's RV in the first episode the note sitting on the table inside of it in the following episode will change. - If you graffiti the stage lights in Episode 2 it will show up again when you play with said lights later on (and maybe even during the play itself, I forget) - If you write on Eliot's slate in Episode 2 he will mention it during the scene at the hospital in Episode 3 (Chloe just brushes it off as a joke though). But yeah, it would be nice if the collectables had a bit more of an impact on the story in the next one. Also, I liked that in BtS your choices actually seemed to matter a bit more (even changing the ending depending on certain things you did) and I'd like to see more of that in Season 2.
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May 3, 2018 15:30
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Oh that's right. I'd forgotten about it since I played S1 last and the photo collectibles don't really do anything in that, aside from the one you mentioned. It must be such a pain to write games like these though, having to account for so many variables. I'm all for them taking their sweet time with each season or episode because of that, the more time they have, the more varied the experiences will be and not the kind where the game touts that YOUR CHOICES WILL MATTER and it only chances a few scenes and the ending cutscene. It requires insanely intricate writing to accomplish a good game like that.
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May 3, 2018 15:35
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That lovely town deserved to get blown over by Rachel's ghost.
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May 3, 2018 15:41
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I wonder if you could argue the rewind mechanic as more than just interesting mechanically and character appropriate, but as adapting Lynch's analysis and deconstruction of how audience's react to TV and netflix to choice and consequence games.
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May 3, 2018 15:43
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Stare-Out posted:Oh that's right. I'd forgotten about it since I played S1 last and the photo collectibles don't really do anything in that, aside from the one you mentioned. True, but because of that it kind of makes things interesting as, if you're willing to experiment, no playthrough will ever be quite the same as the last. Hell, I'm still encountering some parts of the first game I've never seen before (such as optional conversations with Chloe in her room before finding Rachel's photo/leaving for the lighthouse/putting on Rachel's clothes as well as one in the junkyard if you talk to her before going to find the bottles).
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May 3, 2018 15:43
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WhiskeyWhiskers posted:I wonder if you could argue the rewind mechanic as more than just interesting mechanically and character appropriate, but as adapting Lynch's analysis and deconstruction of how audience's react to TV and netflix to choice and consequence games. That sounds like an interesting topic for a video essay, one that... wait, you mean somebody already wrote and produced a 20-minute analysis on this same exact thing? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19xgdLF5agU
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May 3, 2018 15:45
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exquisite tea posted:That sounds like an interesting topic for a video essay, one that... wait, you mean somebody already wrote and produced a 20-minute analysis on this same exact thing? Neato. Thanks.
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May 3, 2018 15:52
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Larryb posted:True, but because of that it kind of makes things interesting as, if you're willing to experiment, no playthrough will ever be quite the same as the last. Hell, I'm still encountering some parts of the first game I've never seen before (such as optional conversations with Chloe in her room before finding Rachel's photo/leaving for the lighthouse/putting on Rachel's clothes as well as one in the junkyard if you talk to her before going to find the bottles). I have a "negative" playthrough going in BtS where I pick more or less the opposite choices from my normal playthrough but it's hard to stick with it. I tried it with S1 and couldn't do it, I can't even play a Deus Ex game guns blazing because eventually I'll go right back to stealth/stun so I'm not holding much hope for a "bad" LiS playthrough.
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May 3, 2018 15:53
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Stare-Out posted:I have a "negative" playthrough going in BtS where I pick more or less the opposite choices from my normal playthrough but it's hard to stick with it. I tried it with S1 and couldn't do it, I can't even play a Deus Ex game guns blazing because eventually I'll go right back to stealth/stun so I'm not holding much hope for a "bad" LiS playthrough. I did that myself recently for both games and yeah, it was rough (I still couldn't bring myself to do stuff like keep Drew's money or reject David's photo for some reason though). Hell, my Max in that playthrough of LiS was not only an utter bitch to everyone she could but by the end was practically a serial killer (I intentionally let Kate, Pompidou, Frank and Jefferson die, didn't help anyone during the storm, and then sacrificed the town at the end), which my Nightmare self rightly called me out on at the end. I don't think I have the heart to ever try that again though. Weirdly, there seem to be a lot more opportunities for Max to be a bitch in the original than there are for Chloe in BtS. Larryb fucked around with this message at 16:16 on May 3, 2018 |
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May 3, 2018 16:04
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You're a braver man than I.
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May 3, 2018 16:29
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Stare-Out posted:You're a braver man than I. Oh it hurt like hell and I'm never doing it again (though I did also later do one for Farewell), but I just did it more out of curiosity's sake than anything else. Not sure why, but for some reason Evil Max feels more natural to me than Evil Chloe does. It does lead to some interesting new story bits though such as how Kate's death haunts Max for practically the rest of the game, killing Frank pretty much breaks Chloe to the point where she's seriously considering just turning herself in (to which Max basically responds by telling her to suck it up and get back to the search for Rachel, albeit in a slightly nicer way) and at the end Nightmare Max is even more pissed and flat out calls you a murderer (to which I believe Max can either respond to with "Not my fault" or "I'm a survivor"). Larryb fucked around with this message at 23:42 on May 3, 2018 |
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May 3, 2018 16:36
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Yeah I tried watching the Geek Remix bad runs, and I couldn't even sit through it, can't imagine playing it.
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May 3, 2018 16:41
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The 100% megabitch takedown of Victoria in Episode 4 is pure gold however and everyone should see it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8UXJKT-et8
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May 3, 2018 16:44
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That's the good run. 
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May 3, 2018 16:47
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exquisite tea posted:The 100% megabitch takedown of Victoria in Episode 4 is pure gold however and everyone should see it. 
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May 3, 2018 16:52
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WhiskeyWhiskers posted:That's the good run. Ironically, in this case being a bitch to Victoria and/or not warning her about Nathan actually winds up saving her life in the end. This coversation is also practically the only time in the series where Victoria is kind of in the right for once as Max does come off as a massive bitch there). Related, there actually is a way to end the scene before the play in BtS without Victoria getting drugged, you have to let Rachel get kicked out of the play and then win a Backtalk with Victoria later in the dressing room (calling her out and then asking about the pills might work as well but I've never tried). If you do Victoria will admit that she never expected to get the part in the first place and as such did no preparation whatsoever (she doesn't even like theater), after which she later publicly quits the play and storms off, causing Rachel to step in and things to proceed as normal. Switching the cups produces a much funnier scene in my opinion though. Larryb fucked around with this message at 23:44 on May 3, 2018 |
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May 3, 2018 16:54
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https://www.express.co.uk/entertainment/gaming/954855/Life-Is-Strange-comic-ending-bae-before-bay-Arcadia-Bay-Max-Chloe Seems the first issue of Life is Strange: Dust will be released on December 4th. The description doesn't really make it seem like things are going to end well for Max and Chloe but either way, I'm looking forward to reading this. Also, the current timetable for LiS 2's release is now "before 2020", though it's possible we might still get at least the first episode out before the end of the year. So does this mean the live action webseries they were talking about a while back is pretty much dead in the water at this point? I haven't really heard anything about it lately aside from the initial announcement. Though to be fair, doing a live action version of a choice based game was probably going to be problematic either way (not to mention they'd have to somehow not make it look like Twin Peaks with the numbers filed off). While it's a bit amateurish and cuts out a bunch of stuff this fan film is probably the best attempt I've seen so far. Larryb fucked around with this message at 16:34 on May 8, 2018 |
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May 3, 2018 19:11
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The description for the comic seems to have disappeared, replaced by the generic one from when it was first announced and the release date has been pushed back to next year. I'm guessing it just got leaked earlier than it should have (or it was fake but that doesn't seem likely to me). Also Square Enix will be holding an E3 conference on June 11 so we might finally get some information regarding the next game there. Another thought regarding the endings: both of them involve a choice between protecting an illusion (a family literally held together by lies, a town that's already slowly dying) for the sake of the "greater good" or shattering it for the sake of your own personal feelings and a sense of (possibly temporary) happiness. But there are also problems on both ends, in the former case you are putting an unreasonable burden on Chloe that she most likely carries for the rest of her life, essentially letting James get away with everything and continue to lie to and emotionally abuse his daughter and you've essentially just become yet another person in Rachel's life she can never fully trust. In the case of LiS, just stopping the storm, getting Jefferson arrested and possibly damaging the Prescott's influence alone probably isn't enough to solve all the towns problems (Chloe's death also kind of destroys Joyce, she can barely walk during the funeral scene). The latter also has it's share of issues though. While outing James and reuniting Rachel with her birth mother are good in the short term it's still not enough to save her in the end (if anything, you've only made her desire to escape even stronger). Similarly, destroying the Bay might allow Max and Chloe the chance for a fresh start but it also means they're essentially together now out of a sense of guilt and obligation. Chloe may on some level be grateful to Max for saving her but she also has to deal with the fact that her life came at the cost of her mom, her friends and dozens of others (many of whom were innocent in all this). Max might have had less to lose from all this (she still has friends and family waiting for her back in Seattle) but she also now has to live with the fact that she basically indirectly murdered her hometown for the sake of her best friend. Overall while I still think Truth is ultimately the better choice as far as BtS goes I could honestly go either way for the original. Bay works better as a definitive ending while Bae makes better sequel bait (and I look forward to seeing how the upcoming comic explores that). Larryb fucked around with this message at 17:00 on May 8, 2018 |
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May 8, 2018 16:35
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Just finished shotgunning all of BtS over the weekend. I'd been putting it off for a while because of the sort of bad taste that the original left in my mouth, for a variety of reasons. In that video linked up the page, where he says that he's not sure if he likes Life is Strange, but he kind of loves it? Yeah, that's spot on. I've ranted enough about my issues with the original game in the old thread, mostly down to the clunky ending and the forced feeling of the final choice, but for context I saved Chloe and never even went back to play the other ending, to this day (I've seen most of it through clips though) which should give you an idea of where I stand on it. BtS, though, had its own clunky ending problems. I hope faceplanting at the finish line isn't going to be an ongoing theme for the series. Overall ep 3 just felt like they tried to squeeze way too much into it for no good reason, and also kind of killed the pacing they had going. Eliot was absent enough, even if you talked to him previously (I generally try to exhaust every dialog and poke everything pokable in adventure games), to make his scene feel pointlessly bolted on. It also really didn't help that if you failed his backtalk challenge that the checkpoint was back at the moment he entered the room. For some dumb reason I just really wanted to win that challenge and so I ended up tabbed out waiting for that initial dialog to play through over and over again. But even without that, he could easily have been excised from the whole game with no loss. Also put me in the category of people who thought the Sera conversation was some kind of dream sequence, because the tone was just so off after going in expecting a big confrontation scene with the bad guy. Killing Damon off-screen was just a weird decision, and felt like we were just an NPC in Life is Beans: Frank's Adventures for a minute. For the final choice I slam-picked telling Rachel everything. No way am I going to be complicit in James's web of lies. The game wants to frame it as if there is this perfect, wholesome life that you can give Rachel simply by sheltering her from reality (exactly James's plan), when really there's no such thing. The truth is what it is, and the only path to a good life is barreling on through and dealing with the fallout. While I'm well aware that Rachel's fate is going to end up tragic, in that moment that doesn't have any bearing on Chloe's choice. Even if Rachel were lying there terminal on that hospital bed with hours to live for some reason, I still feel like the better option would be to give her the whole picture. She drat well deserves it. The post credits stinger was crass and dumb. Knowing ahead of time that they were telling the story of a doomed character, they could have at least gone with more of a 'enjoy the time you have, happiness is fleeting' theme, rather than this bleak in-your-face 'hey guess what she dies anyway' stuff. Overall it was pretty good, though, and didn't leave me an emotional wreck like LiS did, so there's that I guess. Of course then I had to play the farewell episode. Oops. I actually went into farewell with no idea what to expect except 'young Chloe and Max have a fun day together'. Idiot that I was, I thought the 'farewell' of the title was more of a meta thing about saying farewell to the characters with one last look at their lives when they were still happy. Hah! I had apparently forgotten that I was playing 'Life is poo poo'. I kept trying to figure out where this day fell on the timeline. Chloe seemed happy, so clearly William was alive. But Max kept internal-monologuing about how she was leaving in just a few days. Since I wasn't really clear on where on the timeline 'dad dead' and 'Max peaces out' fell, I just played along assuming maybe it was some kind of narrative snafu. Even after I saw that picture hanging up, I still didn't get it. I mean, in a way I think I did, but it's like I wasn't letting myself notice the flashing neon sign. Which meant when Joyce came crawling through the door with a police officer in the background, I was actually, literally shocked. I didn't think the game could do it to me again, but kudos to them I guess. They snuck right past my cynical armor and stabbed right at the tender bits. The funeral scene and Max being driven off and then that final tape were just good old LiS knife-twisting, and by that point I knew I was going to be hosed right up for a few days. drat. So anyway, looking forward to that Dust comic sequel, where I'm sure Max will have to grind Chloe into a fine paste by hand in order to prevent the earth's core from exploding or something.
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May 8, 2018 17:33
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It also doesn't help matters much that the main plot as it were doesn't really kick in until almost the end of the first episode (also I'm not sure why they waited until nearly the end of the game to even let Sera speak). Honestly I think BtS could have used at least one more episode between 2 and 3 to expand on things a bit more and make the finale feel a little less rushed. Like maybe the additional episode could have been about Chloe and Rachel hunting down information about Sera and end it with the reveal about James and Damon, the two girls leaving for the mill together (hell, since Rachel wouldn't be out of commission in this scenario maybe even have James be the one who catches Chloe in the office instead of Eliot). Then for the last episode you could have expanded the final confrontation a bit and have it deal more with the fallout from all this (though you'd have to change what the final decision would be in this case). But yeah, as I've mentioned there is only one ending to BtS in my opinion. It can't be stressed enough that if you choose to hide the truth you are LETTING JAMES WIN (not to mention the fact that that and the stuff she did in the office now technically makes Chloe an accomplice in all this). Plus, he kind of brought all this on himself so what happens after Chloe tells Rachel is not her fault by any means (also it's kind of lovely that Rachel's personal feelings don't seem to factor into this at all, both of her birth parents just decide to do what they think is right for her). It's no wonder that Rachel seemed to inherit her mother's desire for escape, her entire life was basically one big prison (which makes it kind of impressive that she turned out as well-adjusted as she did to be honest). The endings do provide some new context to the scene from the original where Chloe finds out about Rachel and Frank though. You can read it as either genuine anger that the person she'd been nothing but upfront with throughout their relationship would suddenly stab her in the back or as a bit of projection because she'd been carrying a secret around of her own for years that she could never tell Rachel (plus, it's pretty clear that Chloe hates herself more than anyone else, all this does is add on to that). Larryb fucked around with this message at 23:00 on May 8, 2018 |
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May 8, 2018 19:13
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BobTheJanitor posted:Just finished shotgunning all of BtS over the weekend. I'd been putting it off for a while because of the sort of bad taste that the original left in my mouth, for a variety of reasons. In that video linked up the page, where he says that he's not sure if he likes Life is Strange, but he kind of loves it? Yeah, that's spot on. I've ranted enough about my issues with the original game in the old thread, mostly down to the clunky ending and the forced feeling of the final choice, but for context I saved Chloe and never even went back to play the other ending, to this day (I've seen most of it through clips though) which should give you an idea of where I stand on it. I think the Sacrifice Arcadia Bay ending necessarily couldn't be good. I think the developers had to make it as brief and uninformative as it was because players would be even less happy with seeing what actually happened. Watching Max and Chloe go around the town and find Warren and Frank and Joyce and Kate and everyone else they knew dead would not have been satisfying for people who chose this ending, especially as Chloe would keep insisting that all of this wasn't right and that Max needed to go back and undo it. I think if you're going to let thousands of people die to save one person, the only way you can handle that is by not looking at the consequences of what you've done, especially given that Max could still go back and fix it at any time.
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May 9, 2018 07:50
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Technically there's a chance Kate could have survived since she was in the hospital at the time (David may have made it out alright too provided he was still in the bunker, though unfortunately that would apply to Jefferson as well) but yeah, expanding on that ending probably would have been too depressing. The important thing to note is that Max is not actually a hero, she's a survivor trying to do the right thing but finding it increasingly hard to do so. To be fair, she's a victim in all this too (even if a lot of her scars wound up being self-inflicted) and it's not her fault that the universe suddenly decided to grant her time powers only to punish her for actually using them but the fact remains that aside from saving Kate (which she can still possibly fail at and/or get suspended afterwards) she tends to cause more problems then she solves by making reckless decisions and if it weren't for some outside factors (David saving her from the Dark Room, Warren taking that photo before the party, Chloe at the end) she ultimately would have probably gotten herself and everyone else killed. By the end, Max has been reduced to a broken shell of a human being now so obsessed with Chloe that she's willing to essentially commit genocide in order to save her ("You are my number one priority, you are all that matters to me now!"). Chloe sacrificing herself at the end isn't just about saving the town, it's about saving Max from herself. It's been said, but in some ways Max is basically Jefferson with a conscience. They're both talented photographers who are guilty of using their gifts to manipulate others, they're both kind of self-absorbed in different ways and they're both obsessed with the concept of innocence (Jefferson wanting to capture the moment before it dies in his photographs and Max wanting to prevent it from ever being lost to begin with through her powers). Similarly, James is kind of a dark mirror of Rachel as well. They both hide behind several masks in public and are skilled liars, they're both kind of selfish and have done things that wind up hurting those they love. The difference is that James is an elitist that kind of looks down on those he sees as less "pure" than he is (Chloe, Sera) and has actually managed to convince himself that the horrible poo poo he's done was right while Rachel has a good heart in spite of her flaws and even admits in a roundabout way that she's scared that she's been acting so much that she doesn't even know who she is anymore. Not sure if Chloe has a direct mirror that I can see, the closest examples I can see are either Damon (he's basically everything she pretends to be ramped up to 11 with none of Chloe's good qualities to temper it) or Nathan (somewhat similar backgrounds, the world at large seems to poo poo on them constantly). Larryb fucked around with this message at 14:37 on May 9, 2018 |
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May 9, 2018 13:49
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Orange Sunshine posted:I think the Sacrifice Arcadia Bay ending necessarily couldn't be good. I think the developers had to make it as brief and uninformative as it was because players would be even less happy with seeing what actually happened. My main issue was that the game didn't frame the choice well enough for me to feel convinced, at least going by in-universe information. Sure from a meta sense we know that picking 'ending A' is going to stop the destruction, but from what Max really had to work with, namely Warren's vague theories and her own unreliable nightmare guilt, there was really no reason to think that there was a causal relationship between 'save Chloe' and 'town dead'. It could just as easily be argued that all of it, tornado, birds, whales, moons, weather, and time travel were all in the same bucket labeled 'weird poo poo' and that Max not using her powers would have as much impact on the tornado as catching a falling bird or rolling a whale back into the sea. And even if you accept that time travel leads directly to tornado, you're left with the unavoidable fact that in order to fix it you're being told to use time travel again. I kind of found that suggestion so idiotic that I couldn't ever go back and touch that ending. It ends up being less about time fuckery and more about predestination and some sort of universal vendetta against Chloe in particular. (also, call it an art mistake, but I know tornado country, and that was 'dozens dead' tornado destruction at most, not 'town wiped off the map') From a more meta story perspective, though, I also found the downer endings kind of... weak? Like, telling a story where people deal with fantastic and dangerous circumstances and still come through the other side bloodied, but alive and as better people is interesting, and takes more clever writing finesse to make it work. Not that I wanted a saccharine happily-ever-after ending, but there's a lot of space between that and 'everything is poo poo forever'. Telling a story where bad poo poo happens to good people and their lives are miserable and then they die? That's not hard or interesting, that's just normal, mundane life. If you want to read the story of meaningless suffering, pull up the front page of the New York Times or the Washington Post. I think that's the thing that really disappointed me overall about the ending. I was waiting all game to see how they were going to write a way out for our poor tormented heroes, and it turns out they didn't. Welp.
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May 9, 2018 15:46
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BobTheJanitor posted:My main issue was that the game didn't frame the choice well enough for me to feel convinced, at least going by in-universe information. Sure from a meta sense we know that picking 'ending A' is going to stop the destruction, but from what Max really had to work with, namely Warren's vague theories and her own unreliable nightmare guilt, there was really no reason to think that there was a causal relationship between 'save Chloe' and 'town dead'. It could just as easily be argued that all of it, tornado, birds, whales, moons, weather, and time travel were all in the same bucket labeled 'weird poo poo' and that Max not using her powers would have as much impact on the tornado as catching a falling bird or rolling a whale back into the sea. And even if you accept that time travel leads directly to tornado, you're left with the unavoidable fact that in order to fix it you're being told to use time travel again. I kind of found that suggestion so idiotic that I couldn't ever go back and touch that ending. It ends up being less about time fuckery and more about predestination and some sort of universal vendetta against Chloe in particular. (also, call it an art mistake, but I know tornado country, and that was 'dozens dead' tornado destruction at most, not 'town wiped off the map') The causal relationship was not between "save Chloe" and "town dead", it was "use of time travel" and "town dead". Going back to let Chloe die means that the entire time line plays out as it was originally meant to. I'm not sure how much more in-universe information there needed to be to convince the player of this. You had the whales dying, birds dying, visions of the storm, the actual storm, Max's nose bleeds. Perhaps more importantly, you had impossible things happening, like twin moons in the sky or an unexpected eclipse. An unexpected eclipse could only happen if the moon were somehow in the wrong place around the Earth. There was no way that Max's use of time travel was not connected to the other impossible things going on. It sounds like you wanted some sort of proof that Max's use of time travel was causing the storm, but how could you possibly have had proof of this? Did you want a scene with a distinguished scientist standing in front of a blackboard full of equations and telling you that yes, indeed, use of time travel causes mystical disturbances? This was not a sci-fi game, there was never going to be any explanation of how Max got her time travel powers, so there couldn't possibly be proof of the idea that Max's time manipulations themselves caused the storm. So without actual proof, the game just gave you lots of hints, and then straight out told you this is what was going on. My guess is that you didn't like this idea and so refused to accept it. quote:From a more meta story perspective, though, I also found the downer endings kind of... weak? Like, telling a story where people deal with fantastic and dangerous circumstances and still come through the other side bloodied, but alive and as better people is interesting, and takes more clever writing finesse to make it work. Not that I wanted a saccharine happily-ever-after ending, but there's a lot of space between that and 'everything is poo poo forever'. Telling a story where bad poo poo happens to good people and their lives are miserable and then they die? That's not hard or interesting, that's just normal, mundane life. If you want to read the story of meaningless suffering, pull up the front page of the New York Times or the Washington Post. I think that's the thing that really disappointed me overall about the ending. I was waiting all game to see how they were going to write a way out for our poor tormented heroes, and it turns out they didn't. Welp. I didn't find the "Sacrifice Chloe" ending to be a downer ending at all. If you pick this ending, the game is about (among other things) acceptance of one's limitations, and acceptance of death. When someone dies in real life, we often don't want to accept it. We can endlessly fantasize about how things could have gone differently, about what we could have done differently, if only we made a phone call at the right time or if only he didn't get in the car that day. We can try to live in fantasies of that person still being alive, we can offer prayers or bargains to God to please let them be back in our lives. But in the end, they're still dead, and the only peace we're ever going to get comes from acceptance of this. Chloe was shot to death by Nathan in the bathroom, and none of Max's time travel powers could save her because there are no time travel powers, and when someone dies they just stay dead forever. The game pretends to give you super powers, to let you play God and mold the universe to your liking, only to show you why this would be a bad thing, and in the end leaves you in the same place that every person is in when someone they love dies. The emotional tone of the Sacrifice Chloe ending is one of peace and serenity. Max has finally given up her impossible fight and is at peace, though of course she'll miss Chloe, of course she will be sad. And all of this was not for nothing - Max is a changed person as a result of the events of the game. She has grown up. She started a shy girl, uncertain of herself, and by the end, she's a strong young woman. Life is Strange is an unusual game, it's an unusual story, with themes that we're not used to seeing in western storytelling. We think we're playing one kind of game, and eventually realize it's quite another. We're think we're the superhero valiantly battling the forces of evil, and eventually learn that there are no superheros and we have to just be a person. Orange Sunshine fucked around with this message at 17:54 on May 9, 2018 |
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May 9, 2018 17:46
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Except that's literally the opposite of what occurs? Accepting your limitations by going back in time and erasing all trace of your mistakes in the past week from the time stream isn't accepting your limitations. It's a Hail Mary pass that happens to work for whatever reason.
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May 9, 2018 17:58
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WhiskeyWhiskers posted:Except that's literally the opposite of what occurs? Accepting your limitations by going back in time and erasing all trace of your mistakes in the past week from the time stream isn't accepting your limitations. It's a Hail Mary pass that happens to work for whatever reason. This is a nitpicky point. It's a time travel story, so the only way to accept that time travel doesn't work, by the end of the game, is to use time travel one more time, so that afterwards you never did use time travel. It's kind of like a story where some "bad guy" criminal has a change of heart and decides to join the forces of good at the end. So he has to carry out some action to show that he's on the side of good now, and does something to take out his former partners in crime. Except if you think about it too much you realize that he's using the money or connections of his criminal empire to carry out this final action and really that money should have been turned over to the police or to the people he stole it from or something, but it's just a story and you weren't meant to think about it so closely. By the end of Life is Strange, either Max accepts that time travel is loving everything up and undoes it all (through one more use of time travel), or lets thousands of people die so that Chloe can go on to live another day. "I've accepted that time travel is loving everything up, so I'm conveniently going to pick this exact moment to never use it again so I can coincidentally keep Chloe alive, and also I'm going to let everyone die so I can learn to live with the consequences of my mistakes" is not any sort of reasonable or responsible decision. The only way to have a pure ending where Max realizes time travel is loving things up and decides to never do it again even once would be if somehow this happened while Max was already in the past. The story could have been written this way, of course, but this just wasn't necessary and would have produced a much less dramatic ending. The creators of this game wanted it to end on the cliff with the storm coming and Max and Chloe together, not with Max happening to be in the bathroom where Nathan's about to shoot Chloe, trying to send Chloe some kind of message and then realizing that maybe she should just sit behind the stall and do nothing. There's your pure ending, but it wouldn't have been as dramatic or emotional.
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May 9, 2018 18:26
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But that's not the only way to accept time travel doesn't work, because the other way is dealing with the consequences of your actions? Literally the other option. And it is the responsible answer, because that's how life works. Sometimes you gently caress up and kill thousands of people accidentally. Max has no idea if travelling back and letting Chloe die won't just destroy the planet or time itself. Every other time she's hosed with time to fix something it's hosed something else up. WhiskeyWhiskers fucked around with this message at 18:45 on May 9, 2018 |
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May 9, 2018 18:40
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I've always figured that Max only loses her powers in the Save Arcadia Bay ending, because that effectively closes off whatever temporal loop allowed her to manipulate time altogether. There's nothing that indicates she loses her powers in the Save Chloe ending and, although some people see this as the happy waifu option, I think disaster continues to follow them wherever they go.
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May 9, 2018 18:47
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Orange Sunshine posted:There was no way that Max's use of time travel was not connected to the other impossible things going on. Totally agreed, but correlation isn't causation. While I definitely felt like the story provided reason to believe they were connected, I never got the feeling that time travel was proven to be the cause of everything. Yes, clearly based on outside information that's what the developers wanted us to think. But based on what they put into the game, they failed to make that implicit. And when you're plopping down the choice of 'kill your friend' vs. 'kill everyone else' you drat well better do your homework first and make sure that the choice doesn't come across as nonsensical. Orange Sunshine posted:My guess is that you didn't like this idea and so refused to accept it. That's a fair criticism! I don't think anyone would like to be placed in that position. You're exactly right that in real life people deal with grief by trying to escape from it in any way possible. So they really should have made sure there wasn't any kind of mental 'out' for the player, and I don't feel like they adequately accomplished that. Compare it to assisting in alt-Chloe's suicide in the William-lives timeline. I took the choice to go along with that, somewhat based on my own feelings about personal autonomy, but also because they very clearly give you all the facts you need to realize that this is a no-win situation for her. All of the mental 'what-if' scenarios are blocked. You can help her die painlessly now or leave her to die badly later. That's a hard, terrible choice. But it was presented completely honestly. Orange Sunshine posted:It sounds like you wanted some sort of proof that Max's use of time travel was causing the storm, but how could you possibly have had proof of this? I mean, that's kind of up to the writers. That's why part of my criticism is just that the ending was badly handled from a creative perspective. Chop out the time they wasted on nightmare stealth sections and use that to give me some iron-clad undeniable reason to believe that using my powers in order to undo using my powers would somehow fix everything. Don't just have Warren go 'idk maybe time travel makes tornado? wanna go ape?' and pretend like that's a strong enough foundation to build killing your friend on. Prove that there exists such a thing as 'one true timeline', because by the time you're sitting on a cliff watching the town get flattened, it seems like the real timeline is the one you're living, and yet you're still being asked to go back and change it to something that is no longer real. That makes it hard to claim that time travel is the cause, vs just some sort of vindictive destiny. And if the real reason is just that, some sort of 'final destination' lazy writing bullshit, then yeah I'm going to continue being disappointed. What if Max had no time powers, but just happened to be a bit more assertive and popped out and yelled 'what the gently caress!' as soon as Chloe and Nathan entered the bathroom. Nathan runs off and Chloe lives. Does the town still get sentenced to weather-related doom because Chloe lived? What's the one true timeline now? Orange Sunshine posted:The game pretends to give you super powers, to let you play God and mold the universe to your liking, only to show you why this would be a bad thing See, and that's where I just don't agree. It doesn't show you why it's a bad thing. It actually shows you doing a lot of good with it. Depending on how you play, of course, but even if you play as selfishly as possible you're still improving Max's life, which is arguably still a net good. And the plot is going to funnel you down doing certain good actions anyway. The only bad thing is the tornado ex machina which, as mentioned, just ain't doing it for me. Orange Sunshine posted:Life is Strange is an unusual game, it's an unusual story, with themes that we're not used to seeing in western storytelling. We think we're playing one kind of game, and eventually realize it's quite another. We're think we're the superhero valiantly battling the forces of evil, and eventually learn that there are no superheros and we have to just be a person. I've got to refer back to that video posted up the page again, because he really lays down the argument pretty succinctly. I thought I was playing what he refers to as the 'Lynchian Pyscho-drama' where everything was weird and maybe there were just no rules. And then suddenly the game drops 'no there are definitely rules and they hate you' in your lap, without sufficient justification. The coming-of-age story was window dressing to the wild fantasy story I was playing. Whereas it sounds like you took the coming-of-age story as the primary narrative, and so of course it would end in a hard sacrifice that propels our hero into the world of adulthood. Maybe the two sides on this argument can just never quite understand each other. But it's still fun to argue about. 
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May 9, 2018 18:55
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| # ? Jun 8, 2024 22:20 |
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As mentioned, it was also kind of a gamble on Max's part. From her perspective she had no way of knowing that going back through the photo wouldn't just gently caress everything up like the last few times she tried to change a major event through that method. It's either try to solve a problem (presumably) caused by time travel with more time travel or accept what you've done and live with the consequences. Either way, Max isn't getting out of this unscathed. Also, if you subscribe to the theory that the other realities keep going after our Max leaves them (which is evidenced by the fact that Max came back from the William Lives timeline in a completely different location than when she entered it as well as Max and Chloe having an entire conversation during her absence) then both endings technically happened in that case since after Max went through the photo there would still have been a Max and Chloe left behind at the lighthouse. In other words, as far as the "main timeline" goes the town was screwed either way. All Max really did in that case was create a new reality and then just chose to stay there. All the same, I still feel the Bay ending works as a definitive end to the series as it brings Chloe's arc to a close, (most) of the guilty parties are brought to justice and Max is given something that Chloe and Rachel never really got: a second chance to achieve her dreams. However, if you were planning a direct sequel to the original then the Bae ending probably has a lot more story potential. Larryb fucked around with this message at 19:03 on May 9, 2018 |
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May 9, 2018 19:00
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