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Oh cool, finally played this game and I'm glad the thread is still around. exquisite tea, Flattened Spoon and Caros have it 100% right and it's kinda depressing to see so many goons hung up on the standard pitfalls. It is a good game. Chloe all the way
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Feb 2, 2016 13:32
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Plom Bar posted:I criticize because I love. Generally speaking, if I'm critiquing something to the point of positioning it within the larger body of queer literature and especially woman-centric queer literature, there's a good chance that it's because I love it enough to take it seriously as a work of art. Honestly, if I didn't like it as much as I do, I wouldn't pay it anywhere near that much thought. I think you make a very fair criticism, based on a genuine weakness in the game that killing Chloe is more developed an ending than saving her. It's not specifically the game's fault that so many queer relationships in fiction end tragically, but at the same time Life is Strange would probably be the first to say that's no excuse. If Max can't hide behind being a wallflower and not having responsibility for events just because she didn't create them directly, then neither can the game. I really wish there was more to Chloe's ending - not more information, just more duration. More time to let it sink in, more time for audience catharsis. And just one callback to the motifs of the game, like the butterfly on the coffin or something. I dunno. MonsieurChoc posted:You can like (or love) something and still criticize it's flaws. I'm surprised you say the game doesn't matter in the end, like Arcadia Bay is a (fake) real place and the game is about what (fake) happens in Arcadia Bay over the course of a week. Like, really?
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Feb 3, 2016 10:30
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The basic conceit of the game is that Max makes events unnecessary through rewinding time. Half the game consists of unnecessary events, in fact, and you can see a list of them at the end of each chapter. Yet this doesn't stop them from having meaning, and many specifically gain meaning from being made unnecessary (from not being chosen). This is why Max says "gee wowsers, should I have done that? maybe I should do the other thing" after every major decision point. It's also specifically the idea behind the alternate reality in Episodes 3/4 and Max's nightmare alter-ego in Episode 5 - events don't stop mattering because they're "non-canon" now, just as fiction doesn't stop mattering because it's "not-real". For example, does Chloe's request to die in Episode 4 not have any meaning to the audience because it's definitively undone moments afterwards? I think if all you got from Life is Strange was "a series of (un)necessary events", then it seems like you misunderstood the game on a fundamental level. Lt. Danger fucked around with this message at 17:58 on Feb 3, 2016 |
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Feb 3, 2016 17:47
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The story is about Max, not Arcadia Bay. It's a repudiation of self-conscious image-obsessed passive adolescence in favour of active engagement with the rest of the world. Consider Max at the start of Episode 1. Max:
Max performs two real actions in the opening, both of which are taking a photo - so even when she's engaging with the world, she's doing so as an observer, through a lens. One of the photos is a picture of herself. Compare to the part in Episode 5 where she replays this scene, intending to solve all major problems before they can even begin. Discounting the text to David which requires meta-timeline knowledge, Max is able to properly comfort Kate, shut down Victoria and hand in a photo for the contest. These are all actions which she could have done back in Episode 1, but didn't - out of a fear of rejection or failure. She is now able to engage with the world around her. This is Max's basic character arc, which persists regardless of time shenanigans. When Chloe and the other students call Max "Super-Max" or a "hero" or whatever, the game is being ironic. Max's rewind isn't a superpower, it's a crutch. Although she uses it to save lives, she also uses it far more often to simply interact with the world around her - that is, for the player to try out different choices and consequences, and to solve time-sensitive puzzles. It's her training wheels for being an adult. Many times Max uses her rewind to avoid unwanted consequences: Juliet and Taylor both criticise Max for asking for favours when she hasn't shown a drat interest in them before, so Max rewinds time and uses her meta-knowledge to manipulate them, thus avoiding the consequence of being antisocial. Max's second, parallel arc is her increasing use of rewind, to the point where it becomes self-destructive. While Max is now able to make choices like pulling the fire alarm or covering Victoria in paint, she is still using her rewind to avoid unfavourable consequences to her actions. Stuff like Juliet and Taylor, as above, or Frank's beans are examples of this; Episode 3/4's alternate reality is more extreme. Max literally plays with the lives of her best friend and her father, deleting and resurrecting realities to evade her and Chloe's grief. Max may be interacting with the world, but not in a healthy way; she's stopped avoiding making choices, but she's still avoiding the consequences. What began with nosebleeds in Episode 2 ends with all reality fragmenting itself around Max, as she hops from timeline to timeline, trying to get the perfect outcome. She fixes Blackwell's problems in five minutes in the classroom, only to end up in San Francisco when the storm strikes; she stops herself from going to San Francisco, only to end up back in the Dark Room with no photo journal and Chloe dead; she gets a photo back from Warren to save Chloe, only for the storm to still be there in the present! Girl cannot catch a break! And then she loses touch with reality itself when she falls into a catatonic nightmare. The more she struggles, the deeper she entangles herself. The more she avoids the consequences of her actions, the worse those consequences become. (It's a neat parallel to Chloe and David's relationship: the more Chloe rebels, the more David clamps down; the more David clamps down, the more Chloe rebels.) Resolution only arrives when Max stops avoiding consequences, as Warren and Chloe both tell her (and yeah, Warren's infodump is clumsy and rushed). Max needs to stop using her rewind powers in trying to get a 'Golden Ending', and either accept that a storm will destroy Arcadia Bay, or accept that Chloe will die in a shooting. She needs to make a choice and accept the consequences. The specifics of whether Timeline Chloe or Timeline Chloe-Minus happen aren't relevant - Arcadia Bay is just a canvas for Max to project and resolve her issues upon. What actually matters in the story is that Max stops being afraid of choices and consequences and starts living her life as an adult. This arc, again, persists regardless of time shenanigans. This all occurs in tandem with Chloe's half of the story, which is essentially the same but without time powers: avoidance (in this case, avoidance by aggression rather than by passivity) transforming into engagement (in this case, forming positive relationships with Max, David, potentially even Frank). This arc doesn't survive time shenanigans, which is part of the tragedy of the Bay ending, but Chloe reminds us that the events of the game still had great meaning for her and they'll still live on with her in whatever reality comes next. Of course, Chloe is not real, doesn't have an immortal soul, and unlike dogs, video game characters don't go to heaven. The obvious answer is that Chloe's arc and Max's arc will live on in us, the audience; we'll remember not to hide from the world, as Max and Chloe once did, but to live with it, as Max and Chloe eventually chose to do. It is a good game, with a good ending. Lt. Danger fucked around with this message at 20:21 on Feb 3, 2016 |
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Feb 3, 2016 20:15
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Personally I think the ending mainly suffers from two things: Chloe's ending being rushed, and not enough done to cement the storm/Chloe/butterfly link in earlier episodes. I can also see why Ep5's gameplay would be really unfun for some people, though I didn't mind it. So I do see where you're coming from.
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Feb 3, 2016 20:45
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The other characters, the murder mystery, solving the disaster - these are superficialities. I mean that in the sense of being literal surface elements, the obvious mechanisms of the plot that we see at first glance. I don't approve of reading for superficialities on principle anyway, but Life is Strange is pretty clear throughout its episodes that you shouldn't be focusing primarily on questions like "where does the tornado come from?" or "what happens to this character?" Kate Marsh is probably the clearest example of how only reading surface elements causes problems. The other characters look at her and only see the superficialities: she's a Christian-girl-gone-wild, a Vortex groupie, a drunk slut, a pariah, now embarrassed into reticence. Victoria victimises her, David interrogates her, her mother disowns her, even Max kinda dismisses her behaviour as just a mood. By the end of Episode 2 we see the truth: she was drugged and abused, a victim of assault, a suicide risk. Looking at superficialities drives Kate to the roof. It's the deeper truths Max conveys to her ("you're not responsible for what happened" "we don't want you to die") that save her. But you knew all that already, right? So almost every character has a similar dynamic of presenting a false face that hides a true self. The hip teacher is a serial killer. The alpha bitch is hideously insecure of the geek. The preppy jock bully is a fragile, schizophrenic wreck. The bolshy punk chick is a wounded neurotic. The criminal drug dealer rescues fight dogs. The missing girl has a different personality for each clique. The quiet, reserved photography geek has an interminable internal monologue. Some characters aren't very good at hiding their true selves - Warren's crush is obvious, and Kate's depression is too, if only for us the audience - but others like Jefferson, Frank, Rachel and others are better at keeping their secrets. It's also why mental health difficulties and queer sexualities feature so prominently, being as they are largely invisible characteristics. Then there's the photo motif. Somebody earlier on pointed out that Jefferson and Max are linked by their photography, which I thought was really interesting. Art in general and photography in particular functions by (re)creating superficialities in the hopes of sparking a deeper emotional or intellectual resonance in the audience. Jefferson's insanity is that he's obsessed with the superficiality of his photos, specifically the concept of "the moment when innocence becomes corruption", and he feeds this obsession by kidnapping, drugging and violating young women. His villainy is that he transforms thinking, feeling individuals into props for his fetish, literal objects of his obsession. Max has a similar flaw, in that her selfie gimmick is all surface and no substance. She takes enough photos of herself for others to notice, but who is Max Caulfield? She's an empty shell, the standoffish geek too afraid to do anything in case it hurts or she looks stupid or someone disagrees with her. What does that make her self-portraits? It's also worth noting that her reserved, timid nature is what makes her so appealing to Jefferson's weird obsession. So I think it's interesting that in Episode 3 Max starts turning her photos into vectors for changing reality. A superficial 2D image of a moment transforms into a gateway to the past, in which Max can alter the past and present through meaningful, significant actions. I think it's also interesting that the story ends with Max tearing up her time-travel photos, her superficial representations of the past, and embracing the reality behind them in the form of the consequences that exist in the present. Based on this I think it's reasonable to say the story is ironically very open and honest about rejecting these superficial questions. This is not a whodunit for Rachel Amber, or an examination of the crude, mechanical logistics of time travel and tornado prevention, or a travelogue of Arcadia Bay and its quirky denizens. The deeper meanings of these events is what matters, and the relevant extended metaphors are clear and obvious. MonsieurChoc posted:You literally everything you've done throughout the game and then change nothing. It's such a boring cliché ending people called it when episode 1 came out. Having the entire game be a dream Max had to try to get over Chloe's death would have been a better ending than this. Hmm, sounds like you picked the Bad Ending my friend. But even if you do choose the wrong ending, Max still learns the lessons of the game: get involved, make decisions, don't hide, don't be afraid of consequences, for once in your goddamn life stop posing and engage with reality or life will leave you behind. Her week with Chloe still has meaning, even if it "canonically" did not happen. This is why she smiles on the bench at the lighthouse at the very end.
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Feb 3, 2016 23:11
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LoseHound posted:You're reducing a story to a lecture. Funny, I was going to accuse you of the same thing! I think the thing about metaphors is that if you examine any of them closely enough, they will always break down into nonsense. Metaphors inherently aren't true - after all, if they were they would just be 'description'. Part of being an active and intelligent audience is recognising these metaphors and reading them for what they are, rather than testing them to destruction in the hopes of capturing their full superficial reality (like Jefferson and his pursuit of innocence). What if the game explained in concrete terms the tornado's origins? exquisite tea earlier in the thread had the right of it - Chloe, the storm and the butterfly are a connected triad, all standing for a disruptive force come to destroy Max's corrupt, static home town, triggered by Max's transition to adulthood. If we now 'explain the tornado' - it's a Satanic ritual by the Prescotts, as has been suggested - doesn't that change the meaning of the metaphor? The storm is an extension of the town's corruption, as is Chloe, the Prescott-hating rebel who despises Arcadia Bay...? The butterfly is the Anti-Christ...? The Prescotts want everyone to grow up and make decisions...? Max's final decision is to let the Prescotts win by destroying the town, or... let the Prescotts win by keeping the town? Or, presumably, to follow some Golden Path ending where the tornado is 'dispelled' and the Prescotts truly defeated - in which case Max never learns to engage with and accept reality, because she can just keep rewinding and hiding from consequences until she gets the 'right' ending. It'd be like being able to rewind with Kate in Episode 2 - have you actually made a connection with Kate if you just trial-and-error it until she steps down? Maybe it wouldn't work out like that, of course. But I think it illustrates how trying to nail these superficialities down "because that's what I'm here for" ends up misreading the work. You don't read a book solely by looking at the specific shapes of the letters and words, but by understanding the definitions of the words and constructing a story from them. The more you stare at the shapes and sizes of the letters, the harder it is to understand what they mean. In the same way, the closer you examine the mechanics of the metaphors contained in those same words, the less sense they will make as a whole. At the end of the day only you can be responsible for how you understand a work. The only person who can make you focus on superficialities over truth is you. That's what I believe, anyway. Quest For Glory II posted:To build on that, the episode previews weren't like "here's Max gaming the social system and making things worse", they're, "Max and Chloe are sneaking around at the gym trying to solve a mystery, but they get caught???" "Mr Jefferson is going to kill Max???" like the driving forces of the majority of the game from a narrative and presentation standpoint are the danger and the mysteries. It's not like Square Enix mis-marketed it, this is their own direction. That first episode is the pitch of a supernatural mystery. For me, that's not up for debate. That they decided to go in a different direction is fine but they want to say that they planned it this way all along and I say, hmm maybe do it differently next time then. They planned Mr Jefferson to be the killer all along? Really?? To be clear, I'm not arguing that the surface elements don't exist, that there isn't a murder mystery or supernatural elements or a train tracks rescue. They're just not important. Max doesn't learn to take action and accept consequences so she can solve the Rachel Amber Mystery, she solves Rachel's murder so she can learn to take action and accept consequences. The game itself tells you all this, if only by simple fact that the murder mystery is solved at the end of Episode 4 when there's still 3 hours to go. You can go with this, or you can double down on a misreading that by your own admission doesn't work. I'd run with the first, myself. And yes, they planned it all along. One of Jefferson's first lines is "Seriously though, I could frame any one of you in a dark corner, and capture you in a moment of desperation. And any one of you could do that to me. Isn't that too easy? Too obvious?" In fact, the "Too obvious" was a script note from the writers that the VA accidentally read aloud, so they kept it in. Working as intended! XboxPants posted:I still am not a fan personally of the ending, but I can see your points, even agree that it could be interpreted as a good story with a good ending. But not a good game. The idea is that you shouldn't try to avoid consequences to your actions and the rewind power is a crutch, but that's not generally reinforced in the gameplay. Instead, you're constantly rewarded for rewinding and avoiding negative consequences. That doesn't match up with the themes you bring up. The ludonarrative dissonance (sorry) is massive. As stated, rescuing Kate involves just knowing things about her and doing nice things for her. There's a direct parallel in Chloe's memory game in the diner: you can only win Chloe's game by watching then rewinding time, and your reward is a nosebleed; you can't rewind with Kate at all, you learn the things you need to know by paying attention in the past, and your reward is saving a life. The arc I describe is a parabola. At first, the powers are helpful, because they let Max overcome her fear of making irreversible decisions. Later, they become a hindrance, because if Max only ever makes reversible decisions and keeps changing them, is she making decisions at all? The pivot point is Episode 3, where Max rewinds time intending to save a life (like she did quite happily in Episodes 1 and 2), only to find she has only traded lives instead: William for Chloe, Chloe for William. The gameplay fully mirrors this in Episode 5, when both game and reality fall apart - we hop from setpiece to setpiece with no exploring and the adventure game becomes a Metal-Gear-Solid maze game. By this point, the rewind is more hindrance than help, and Max's reliance on it is what increasingly makes her situation worse. If it was immediately obvious that using the powers was bad, it would be a short arc and a short game. We could rightly call "ludonarrative dissonance" for the way Max and the player must continue to use the rewind even though we know how terrible it really is. Max's journey about learning how to engage with the world becomes a rather hum-drum "get me out of this time travel story!!" in which the stakes are a) escapes time travel b) does not escape time travel. Arguably this really would be a game about how you should never do anything - if you try to save a girl's life in a bathroom, you'll just end up with awful time powers that you gotta get rid of (by stopping a storm or whatever), so don't bother. No, I think the better path is for the rewind to superficially (there's that word again) appear awesome and helpful, only for the game to reveal the truth that it's ultimately unhelpful, and what Max really needs to do is just engage with reality. How apropos! Phew. Sorry for the long post, but I'm glad of the discussion. I really like this game!
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Feb 4, 2016 13:03
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LoseHound posted:Which is what my ramble about suspension of disbelief was getting at. Sort of. It's not that there are story gaps, it's that the game doesn't leave me willing to not nitpick. I was ready for the story to just be over because I thought what had come before was just silly and unsatisfying. I wasn't left thinking about how maybe I should join a book club, I was left with "I wonder why this story feels empty" and then went squinting my eyes at the plot developments to see what didn't work for me. Enjoying a story's superficial elements isn't a crime, and expecting them to be decently handled isn't all that usual. The game just dropped the superficial elements I found interesting to get...weird and it left me out in the cold. Fair enough, but at that point I think you just gotta call it quits. The game's doing one thing, you want another, ain't nobody's fault. I don't think the game ever outright drops threads, but some threads do have a thematic/symbolic explanation rather than a literal, diegetic one. quote:For example, in Episode 4 Max forgets about one of the most basic uses for her powers in order to give us a dialogue puzzle with Frank. I was willing to overlook this, because a. I thought the section was fun, and b. because I thought the list of names wasn't the main point of the scene, but rather Frank's opinion of the girls. This turns out to be totally irrelevant, so now the thing I was willing to overlook becomes a minor nitpick. I am now less willing to suspend my disbelief and I am a little bit more out of the story. Assuming I'm reading you right, this seems in character for Max at this point in the story. Frank's opinion of the girls is important, even if it has nothing to do with solving the mystery. Part of what makes Max's rewind so manipulative and self-destructive is that it denies other people their agency - Frank, Taylor, Victoria etc. aren't allowed to have bad opinions of Max because she'll just rewind and rewrite history. The game is aware of this as well, I think, because apparently Frank freaks out if you mention his dog's name, since he hadn't actually told you it from his perspective. I think you can probably connect this to what Max says about her choice to save/un-save Chloe's dad and how she can't tell ever Chloe about it... and also to what happens in Episode 5, when she does tell Chloe about it, and later also tells her about how she might have to let Chloe die to save the town. In both cases, Chloe is gratified to know the truth and have her own opinion exist, unrewound. quote:Edit: I'm also enjoying this discussion, and was wondering where you read the bit about the script notes? It sounds interesting. Mark Jefferson's entry on the wiki mentions it under "Trivia". Probably from the director's commentary? GlyphGryph posted:It really is the worst moment in the game, but to be honest that entire section was absolutely miserable. Lt. Danger, I'd really like to see you talk about the "return to town during tornado section and find the picture and also do this other stuff" and try to explain at least something positive from it thematically, because that was totally the point where the game completely lost me and I don't see a way to think well of it. If anything, it seems to actively work to undermine the things you've discussed, which I believe game is truly about, by focusing entirely on the things you've said are irrelevant. It was, in my mind, the absolute worst part of the ending, and the final choice with Chloe by the light house seemed much weaker for directly referencing and reminding me how bad it was. It is kinda weak, that's a fair assessment. In terms of plausibility, I can believe people would be stupid enough to get caught out in the storm. People are dumb in a crisis - how else do stampedes and human crushes happen? It's not inconceivable that a bunch of small-town Pacific Northwesterners would underestimate a tornado. I mean, I'm not an expert, but doesn't the danger zone actually extend way past the visible dust funnel? Besides which, a tornado that threatens to destroy the town and everyone in it isn't very threatening if everyone's snug and secure in their storm shelters. Thematically, I think it's supposed to be a sort of 'victory lap' - Max's last chance to do good with her powers before giving them up. Most of the interventions don't involve time travel per se, just Max being in the right place at the right time. I do agree the pacing is way off and there's a weird tension between a free-exploration puzzle zone with what's supposed to be a mad final dash to our last hope for saving Chloe. I think a more linear corridor, in which Max zips from person to person, saving them then moving straight on like the town's guardian angel, would work better. And no fire sprinkler/exploding RV puzzle either. I think that'd make the diner scene sit better - a final oasis, a breather space before moving into the climax. I quite like the idea of Warren basically explaining the dilemma between Chloe and Arcadia Bay. It lends a nice cosmic irony to the end of Episode 1, when Max was about to tell Warren about her powers only to be distracted by Chloe. Warren could probably have filled Max in on chaos theory, fractal timelines and the butterfly effect right at the start of the story, but didn't - and his failure to do so was itself a consequence of saving Chloe in the bathroom. I think it would sit better if there had been some stronger associations made between Chloe, the storm and chaos theory in previous episodes. The game's curiously coy about this: Chloe off-handedly name-drops chaos theory in Episode 2; Episode 3 is called "Chaos Theory" and explores the concept in the ending; Alyssa and Brooke(?) can reference The Sound of Thunder, Back to the Future and others; there's obvious intertext with Donnie Darko and The Butterfly Effect. Maybe the game should have just acknowledged it and played up the dramatic irony more? "I know chaos theory, you know chaos theory, but Max and Chloe don't, so let's see what happens?" Then again, perhaps not... I'm not keen on rewriting stories post hoc as a whole. Also maybe Max shouldn't lead off with the conclusion straight away, though it does show us at least that Max has enough self-awareness (not self-absorption) to realise how her powers might be affecting the world around her. That said, I didn't really mind that sequence as a whole.
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Feb 4, 2016 22:42
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I agree, and I think it should be obvious anyway if you know the butterfly thought experiment, what with the Chloe-butterfly motif and all. But I think another dose might have helped, especially since the storm takes a backseat to other subplots in Episode 3 and 4. Also I really appreciate your posts itt as well, they were good.
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Feb 4, 2016 23:08
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Robiben posted:I didn't know this. Thats pretty rad! Sadly I think LoseHound is right and it's a joke-turned-factoid. However, the point remains that Jefferson reveals himself in one of his first lines of dialogue. LoseHound posted:Sitting back and doing nothing was Max's usual thing, and nobody thought she gave a poo poo about them. She would have done nothing originally had time powers not been thrust upon her. Now she has to go back and do nothing because she does care about everyone and she accidentally did something. The sacrifice was never a dilemma until the time powers happened. It's amusingly ironic, but not exactly empowering. Max is a better person for doing these things. A person's worth isn't held in what they physically possess or accomplish. The game's pretty dismissive of that kind of thinking. quote:It's probably not what they want me to focus on and yeah, road to hell good intentions etc. etc. but the supernatural element to it all makes interpretation weird. There's a lot of mention of corruption and decay in Arcadia Bay and man vs. nature stuff, and Max's powers are associated with nature and yet...not much comes of it? I guess you can read the endings as "max was given doom powers to wreck the entire town so nature could reclaim it" or "max was given a big rear end test to see if Arcadia Bay was worth sparing the wrath of nature", but that feels a little silly. Was Max even intentionally given powers? It's like the game wants both a reason for the time powers that tie into a larger mythic narrative and no reason for the time powers because they're a metaphor for the quaint unpredictability of life or whatever. It colors your interpretation. I don't think this is right. Max's powers are clearly associated with photography, not 'nature'. Hence the extended metaphor about photos being "little slices of time". I also think you're overstating this "man vs nature" idea. The background details about aggressive estate construction and falling fish stocks are simply (optional) indicators for Arcadia Bay's corruption in general. They're as significant as Principal Wells' alcoholism, Blackwell's bullying problem, David's domestic abuse, the dog-fighting rings, etc. In turn, the town's corruption is part of the theme of "surface lies/inner truth", where Max needs to learn to engage with the world around her in order to truly see what's going on. The game is pretty left-wing and occasionally satirises conservative thinking. Sean Prescott's blather about his family having a destiny and giving the town the enema it deserves isn't evidence of a Satanic plot, it's standard FYGM rich person talk. The Prescotts are going to "make Arcadia Bay great again" by making a ton of cash selling overpriced homes to yuppies, and if you're too poor to keep up with the 'boom', well gently caress you got mine. It fits in right alongside David Madsen as a George Zimmerman figure, quadriplegic Chloe committing suicide in part because of a third-world healthcare system and the school/police all not-so-secretly being on the take. If you think there was or should have been a guiding intelligence behind the storm or corruption or time powers, then again, it seems like you've misunderstood the core premise of the story. The whole point of the butterfly effect thought experiment is that macro-scale phenomena can emerge non-intuitively from micro-scale actions. This is explicitly the cause of the storm. There's no God or Gaia pulling the strings so that it "all makes sense" for us, no "mythic narrative". Life is strange; poo poo happens. Obvious cause-and-effect is rarely true, and the meaning of events is constructed in spite of this, not because of it. Again, your reading of the game is wrong - it doesn't do what you want it to do. This isn't a crime, but you can't blame the game for this either. To be blunt, it's on you. There are no "sposeda's" in art.
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Feb 9, 2016 10:55
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Quest For Glory II posted:Lt Danger most people are debating the events and themes of the game pretty amicably but you're the only one telling people they're literally wrong, there's no need to be antagonistic I don't think I've been rude at any point. Everyone has the right to have their own opinion, but that doesn't mean every opinion is accurate or logically coherent. For example, if you say they didn't plan for Mr Jefferson to be the villain, and it turns out the game lays groundwork for this in Episode 1, then your claim is incorrect. I'm not happy about it, you're not happy about it, but it's still wrong. Similarly, if you argue the storm is the deliberate act of a guiding intelligence, and the game not only doesn't support this but explicitly contradicts it, you can't then turn this failure around on the game. You can't criticise something for imagined inconsistency. For my part, I'm gonna stand up and say I was wrong when I said Max smiles at the end by the lighthouse. She actually smiles at the funeral, afterwards. Luckily this doesn't really affect my argument.
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Feb 9, 2016 12:47
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Szurumbur posted:Didn't the voice actor himself say that he hadn't known about Jefferson being a villain up until he did, though? You might argue that they simply decided to hide it from him, but that would make little sense, as his "nice" lines should be read quite differently than his villain lines, and the actor doesn't quite pull it off. The line is a wonderful red herring in that sense - if they decide to act upon it, they have a basis, however on the nose it is. If they don't, it's a nice twist on the "obvious suspect" formula. He's being a prick and doesn't support Kate, but turns down Victoria's advances. Two-faced or the writers covering their bases for further episodes? Maybe even both, you decide! I lean towards Roger Ebert in this: quote:In the much-discussed final sequence of "Being There,'' Chance casually walks onto the surface of a lake. We can see that he is really walking on the water, because he leans over curiously and sticks his umbrella down into it. In the same vein, I don't think it's useful to ask these kinds of questions about the author's intent, as though there's a chance they might be tricking us - "none of it was true, they were making it up all along!" What matters is what the text says, and what meaning is created from that text. In this instance, Jefferson's reveal is foreshadowed early in the story (the classroom conversation, his displayed artwork in the school), is consistent with his character (he prefers reticent Max over promiscuous Victoria/Kate), and is consistent with the larger themes and motifs of the game (surface/truth, growing up, the photography and colour motifs). Whether "they" "meant" it or not is irrelevant. LoseHound posted:The argument was that "don't try unless you want to ruin everyone" isn't an impossible idea to pull from the game's events. Right, but that's not correct. Trying is what makes Max grow as a person. The Max who just sits there and has something terrible happen next to her is objectively worse off than the Max who tries and grows as (into) a person, even if they both end up experiencing the same events. quote:The first time we see time travel nonsense, it's associated with the storm and the spirit doe and then the butterfly. The powers are photography themed, but the last thing she does before her powers awaken is take a picture of a spirit animal butterfly. It's part of the magic in Arcadia Bay. The doom prophecies and nature omens and the "this is bigger than you" graffiti seem to imply that perhaps the looming disaster was set off long before Max, and I don't think that was all too unreasonable to infer. I think you're leaving out Chloe there, though. Chloe, the storm and the (perfectly natural non-spirit) butterfly are all one. Chloe gives Max her rewind, Chloe summons the storm, Chloe is the butterfly. If you frame it that way, I think, there's no need to infer a larger 'spirit world' prime mover/prophecy/antagonist/etc. quote:Edit: It's not that I think I'm right or Lt. Danger's wrong, it's that I think the game made a lot of goofy design choices. I want to appreciate the story that's there, but I just can't. Hey, it's cool. I can and have been wrong about stuff. I'm just big on taking ownership of our responses to art.
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Feb 9, 2016 16:37
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Nihilism isn't clever.
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Feb 9, 2016 17:11
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I'm objectively interpreting your posts as "pretty awful" right now
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Feb 9, 2016 17:25
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AriadneThread posted:it's always sad when a thread comes down with a case of the lt. danger, imo Rude. GlyphGryph posted:The morally correct end is the one where you meet your actual responsibilities head on, seize control of your destiny, stop letting your decisions be dictated by other people's bullshit "arguments" and events outside your control, and realize that not every problem in the world is your problem, allowing you to focus on the things that actually are. Agreed.
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Feb 9, 2016 18:25
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LoseHound posted:The perfectly natural non-spirit butterfly, who Max says is like a spirit like 15 minutes after a magical deer guides her through a prophetic vision and 20 minutes before someone says "hey did you know spirit animals are real". Huh, I don't remember this. I thought only the doe was explicitly a spirit animal because of the transparency and not appearing in photos. Maybe it's a dialogue with Samuel I missed or something. I feel like "storytelling analysis" is art criticism with presets, in the same way that art critics once critiqued paintings on how realistic they were. If it's a tool that suits you, cool, but I think sometimes those tools can get in the way of the art. Maybe that's just me, though, and the things I want from stories.
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Feb 10, 2016 11:13
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LoseHound posted:If you look at the butterfly, Max straight up says it's like a spirit, and the only things Samuel ever really did were say "rachel is prisms" and "spirit animals are real and i'm a crossdresser who likes a mouthful of nuts". I might be paraphrasing. I think I read that as simile (the butterfly is fragile and beautiful, like a spirit) rather than identification. More like Kate's rabbit/the owl/the squirrels than anything else. Also, I agree Samuel is poorly written. People with learning difficulties don't sound like that, and his mystic knowledge doesn't really come across at all.
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Feb 11, 2016 00:10
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morallyobjected posted:there are some places where it's clear they didn't get the branches quite linked together right and it came off as someone just reading off a checklist, but for the most part the dialogue was pretty spot on, both for teenagers and for Oregon hipsters Yes. I think the only real major flaw in the writing is Samuel's character. Life is Strange is good, especially Episode 5.
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Jul 5, 2016 17:42
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| # ¿ May 14, 2024 00:30 |
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With respect, Plom Bar, your argument would be more convincing if your references to the text were more accurate.Jenner posted:So, I didn't get that message at all and I'm not sure what you're concluding it from. Again, Jefferson seems totally fine killing Chloe, Nathan, Victoria and Max (and Rachel.) There is no reason he wouldn't kill those other girls too. Especially since they're useless to him now. Jefferson only starts killing when it seems like his secret is getting out. He doesn't need to kill anyone (and risk a murder investigation) until Nathan messes up and Max starts putting the pieces together. vvv it's not a photoshop, it's a poorly developed picture. Warren is bad at photography. Lt. Danger fucked around with this message at 15:27 on Oct 29, 2016 |
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Oct 29, 2016 15:20
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