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So, this game was a huge surprise to me. I don't think I've done a 180 in opinion on a game so hard since Deadly Premonition. I spent the first two chapters making fun of the hokey and teen-pandering dialogue, but wow, I loved how dark and hosed up it got as it went along. It's kinda clumsy, but it goes balls out and throws everything and the kitchen sink in there by the end. Episode 5 had more false endings than Return of the King and MGS4 combined. But Goddamn, it was a ride. Can't recall the last time I got so emotional over the game. So it seems like a lot of people hate the ending. I don't really hate it, but I'm not really sure how the "Sacrifice Chloe" ending is supposed to work. There's no real discernible causality between Chloe dying and the storm coming, and if it's really caused by time travel abuse, more time travel isn't going to save that. However, I get the emotional element they were going for, with time travel serving as a function for Max to say goodbye and come to terms with change. I can't honestly say one ending is better than the other - it's legitimately a difficult choice. I will say that I got hit pretty hard by the final incarnation of the bathroom scene, where all you see is Max's reaction.  It's kind of a beautiful mess, but I think it moved me more than any other game in the past year. I'm currently thinking about all the Blade Runner parallels, but I'm sure somebody on the internet has already written a loving thesis on it.
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Nov 24, 2015 10:31
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| # ¿ May 14, 2024 04:16 |
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Could it be that it's not so much that Chloe NOT dying in the bathroom causes the storm so much as her dying prevents it? That's the only way to explain why the storm's still coming in the alternate timeline. In this case, preventing the storm would be interfering with the natural course of the world. Maybe Chloe's not somebody fated to die, but instead a sacrifice to the angry Time God that's planning to Sodom and Gomorrah Arcadia Bay to begin with.
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Nov 25, 2015 07:29
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GlyphGryph posted:I felt the same. In the time since that post, I've been drafting an informal essay that engages the game in dialogue with Blade Runner, Hyperion, and, more than anything else, the Parable of Abraham from the Bible. It's really, really unpolished right now, but some of the central points I'm making are: Chloe living did not CAUSE the tornado, and there's ample evidence to support this - instead, her dying in that specific way and time prevented it. The tornado was a natural phenomenon (in that it's appearance was not caused by time travel). It is essentially the wrath of God coming down on Arcadia Bay. Sacrificing Chloe is also The Bad Ending in this interpretation - it redeems the covenant, but nothing is learned by anyone in the town, except for Max, who just absorbs an incredibly fatalistic worldview where she would feel completely devoid of agency. You can argue that Max would be paranoid and overprotective of Chloe after the Sacrifice Arcadia Bay ending, but she's literally endured so much trauma in the other one with such deep and unsettling implications, trauma she can't even convey to anyone since it happened in another timeline, that she's bound for a mental hospital or an early grave. I know this is unsatisfying, but I'm afraid I don't have my thoughts organized enough at the moment to go any further. I might come back to this later. Beefstew fucked around with this message at 04:26 on Dec 19, 2015 |
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Dec 19, 2015 04:01
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GlyphGryph posted:The ending being a literal human sacrifice to appease either the gods or the force of nature is the first logical explanation I've heard of it. Yeah, my theory kinda revolves around the concept of innocent sacrifice both in the game and in other works of literature. And I don't think it's that much of a stretch, considering Jefferson's game.
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Dec 19, 2015 04:27
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I don't like the idea of Chloe and Max involved romantically because it honestly doesn't seem to reflect how it's actually written. I mean, it's totally possible, but I actually think an overt romance makes it more banal and distracts from the really powerful, time-crossing companionship that they've had since they were kids. The fact they've almost always been together, save for Max's absence for a few years, really hammers home the kind of unique relationship they have. I feel like the romance was added in to get more people invested, since one glance at internet shippers will tell you that some people can't rationalize character's having deep, meaningful relationships unless they're sexual and/or romantic. The romantic stuff with Chloe just seems very out of place for me (and yes, occasionally feels like pandering wish-fulfillment to lonely players), and tends to distract me from the truly tragic elements of the story. Not that Warren is any better. Traditional romance is just too simplistic for the complexity of the relationships in this game.
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Jan 7, 2016 23:21
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Hipster Occultist posted:Honestly I would have preferred a Dune-Style golden path type ending. Everything is all hosed up because Time broke and Max has to stitch various elements of time back together into a coherent and hale timeline. Ready for the sand pit, Shaka-hulud. omg would Warren be Duncan Idaho, endlessly reincarnating in the vain hope that he'll eventually score? Beefstew fucked around with this message at 22:29 on Jan 22, 2016 |
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Jan 20, 2016 23:26
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This game did not give me what my imagination told me I was promised.
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Jan 28, 2016 06:52
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Hard to believe that Mass Effect 3's ending happened four years ago. That thread is still active. Wonder where this one will be in 2019? Except ME3's ending was genuinely horrid, discounting Citadel, which owned.
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Jan 28, 2016 07:25
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Episode 5 owns.
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Feb 3, 2016 10:39
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What makes people think that the Bae ending is the "bad" ending, aside from its relative brevity? Bullshit utilitarian ideology?
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Feb 4, 2016 05:32
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I'm pretty sure that Bay ending Max isn't going to make it. Going through all of that psychological trauma, watching her friends die over and over again, being directly or indirectly responsible for said deaths, and experiencing utter helplessness at the mercy of an unforgiving universe that strips away her agency is going to take it's toll. Couple that with the loss of the best friend she ever had, who essentially died alone, outcast, and marginalized in this continuity, and you have a supreme sense of loneliness. Couple that with her no longer having anyone to talk to/bear witness to these traumas that she's endured without being marked as totally insane, and the fact that nobody will ever understand her neurotic behaviors and feelings. She seems more doomed to become a wallflower than ever before. I'm really not trying to have an intentionally dark and edgy interpretation here. But I genuinely can't see a progression from the Bay ending that doesn't end in a mental breakdown/suicide from Max. This is the idea that hit me when I got to the end of the game, and it hit me hard. I can't recall the last time I was so moved by a game. I've been doing a lot of research on trauma theory lately, so that's why this seems totally different to me than your typical protagonist PTSD: Max has no way to work through this in a healthy manner. In the Bae ending, she and Chloe come out as mutually beneficial (but also mutually dependent) counselors for each other's grief, cemented by an identity that has basically bound the two together through shared trauma. You could argue that this could lead to intense paranoia about the slightest possibility of Chloe's death, but that's another discussion. This, coupled with the fact that the tornado isn't so much caused by Chloe's survival as it is stopped by Chloe's very specific death (which ties into the recurrent Biblical dichotomy between Abrahamic challenges against God's will vs Messianic martyrdom) makes me convinced that the Bay ending is the "bad" ending. It's "bad" as in it's a worse result; Arcadia Bay is naturally doomed to be purged in a Sodom and Gomorrah-style apocalypse, though the game may contextualize it through natural forces such as global warming. This is made clear by the presence of environmental anomalies/plagues even when Chloe was wheelchair-bound. It still seems like an inevitability, only delayed by circumstance. Even if it isn't, the town and its people learn no lesson from the experience; that's the tragedy. They'll never understand Chloe's sacrifice, and Chloe herself didn't understand it: her continued victimization - physical, verbal, sexual, and social ostracism - led even her to internalize her purported worthlessness, as she practically begs Max to kill her at the end (to which her past incarnation did not consent). Jefferson's game is a microcosm of the town's social atmosphere - he sacrifices innocence and convinces his victims of their own impurity. So are we meant to think of these unwilling sacrifices for the "greater good" in the context of Jefferson's sadism? I think the "Bae" ending, more than being wish-fulfillment for shippers, is a novel condemnation of the ruthless utilitarian ideology that runs through modern society. It puts victim's agency back in their hands. But in the Bay ending, this toxic ideology is vindicated, and Max suffers for it. And that's lovely. I think the Bay ending is the Bad Ending, but it isn't a bad ending. To me, Life is Strange is a tragic inversion of a coming-of-age story, one that leaves its protagonists worse-off than before. Its naturalist influences combine with its sci-fi influences (lots of explicit and subtextual references to Blade Runner) to create a truly unique and ambitious game. And I honestly think that either ending choice can be valid, depending on just how lovely you want the outcome to be - morbid or bittersweet. I'd love to write more about how this relates to other works of fiction (I'm specifically thinking of Dan Simmons's Hyperion), but I fear that I must sound like a crazy person having written this. It's just my interpretation, really, and I think it raises some interesting points even if it doesn't fit together perfectly. And note that I came to these conclusions through a very liberal interpretation of the Abraham myths - ones that place the man himself in a surprising position of power, able to restrain or barter with God - that is, when he isn't outright calling God on his bullshit. So this all is probably coming from an even deeper, looser series of (mis)interpretations. But perhaps that's part of the fun.
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Mar 17, 2016 10:30
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Paladinus posted:Warren is always there for her. She'll be fine. Like I said, bad ending. Warren is a dweebazoid, but he isn't actually a creep/rear end in a top hat, so I think demonizing him as a "nice guy" is a bit unfair. Even if Max never shows interest in him, he doesn't respond with hostility and still wants to be a good friend, despite the awkwardness of his persistent feelings for her.
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Mar 17, 2016 10:59
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Plom Bar posted:Thing about Nice Guys is that they generally happen at a slow boil. Of course, I'm hardly unbiased about this. It's really good, though I have yet to read all the way through the sequels. Nevertheless, the first Hyperion is probably one of my favorite sci-fi books, after Dune. And thank you very much for the compliment! I really need to organize that argument better and synthesize it with some of the intertextual stuff before I share it with LiS turbonerds to tear apart.
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Mar 17, 2016 12:23
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exquisite tea posted:This, except every single thing about Life is Strange owns. The ending is good, too. I stand by my earlier interpretation and still believe that it's a lot more challenging than people give it credit for.
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Jul 5, 2016 10:13
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morallyobjected posted:I think one of the standout writing moments in this for me was Episode 3(?)'s fake out: And that's actually a way more accurate title for the story.
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Nov 6, 2016 07:59
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| # ¿ May 14, 2024 04:16 |
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Life is Bizarre. Max gains the ability to totally stop time using ZA WARUDO. Please, for the love of God, someone draw LiS characters doing Jojo poses with appropriate Stands (Doe for Max, Rabbit for Kate, Spirit Camera for Jefferson, etc).
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Dec 23, 2016 21:47
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