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Community Playthrough #47 - Life is Strange

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I’ve now finished chapter 3 & what a shocker the ending was!!! - I just didn’t see it coming!

There’s quite a lot of little details that I missed but I enjoyed this chapter a lot except for the stealth part in the swimming pool which took me a few attempts.

I really liked the ‘game mechanic’ where rewinding time didn’t change Max’s location so found the method of getting into the principal’s office quite nifty! Also I’d forgotten that after rewinding time you retain any inventory items so got Frank’s keys by ‘accident’!

Even though Max has her ability I still found it quite tense searching Frank’s RV thinking Max & Chloe were going to get caught

On a story level it was interesting to find out more about Frank’s character & [spoiler] his relationship with Amber, along with Chloe’s reaction on finding out about it. Also it is more apparent in this chapter how screwed up Chloe really is & more than just a rebellious teenager.  The reason why was quite heartbreaking. I also felt very sorry for her mother especially on being told about David

These are the choices I made: 
Left the money
Kissed Chloe (Just for the hell of it!)
Sided with Chloe (after changing my mind about siding with David to keep the peace)
Kept Frank’s dog from harm
Chloe has David’s gun

Lisa is dead
Helped warren with his exam
Not on the vortex club party list
Didn’t erase the cop’s message
Didn’t help Alyssa
Didn’t warn the homeless woman (I didn’t even see her!)
Didn’t take photos in the past
Didn’t leave a mark on the fireplace

     
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OK, i’m going to try and keep it shorter this time!

Episode 3

Back at the title screen and this time night has fallen. We see the moon on the water and the turning beam from the lighthouse.

This time we start at night with some peaceful and quiet shots of Blackwell. Max is asleep at her laptop and is apparently dreaming about Kate. The phone goes and we are taken from memories of Kate to ‘here and now’ Chloe, ever energetic and ‘in the moment’ when it comes to what she considers ‘cool’.

A quick investigation of the room reveals more thoughts. A look at the laptop shows those who persecuted Kate quick to publicly show their concern on social media, with even some compliments handed to young Maxine. Lisa the plant is still alive, Kate’s bunny is fed. Time to go!

In spoilers below because in episode 2 I saved Kate, and although the differences aren’t necessarily earth shattering, there are differences and you might prefer not to know. No real spoilers below though.

Grief and Hypocrisy

As Max sneaks out she sees Taylor in the Bathroom ‘…Taylor actually seems concerned about Kate’. Max is still a teenager and is still learning about people and about how a tough or unkind front can hide fear etc. Kate may not be dead in my game, but the attempted suicide is showing some of these girls how unkind they were.

On the slates outside the rooms there are more messages of support and love in a pretty quick turnaround from the rejection and cruel laughter before. Even in Victoria’s room we get a little window into Victoria’s thoughts – a barely acknowledged guilt but there nonetheless.

...but just in case we were starting to feel sorry for Victoria, we see her trying to manipulate Mr Jefferson in her naive and selfish way outside school.

Night time Wanderings

I don’t know if any of the rest of you have been taking photos but there’s a couple of pretty cool ones available at Blackwell tonight!

Then we need to get inside the principal’s office – almost like a real puzzle! There is a lovely twist with the time manipulation here and even though it is so obvious in retrospect, the first time I played it took me ages to work out that once the door was blown open I could simply walk inside and rewind to get rid of all the sirens etc!

The whole searching the office is fairly tense and pretty revealing. Then they decide to go swimming?! This seems like a strange thing to do. After the tension of getting into the principals office, it feels like that part is over, but apparently not! Good for the story, but not sure how likely this is. Wouldn’t that be too much even for Chloe, let alone Max?

Just like you chrissie, I wasn’t thrilled about the stealth part, but the time rewind thing (and the fact it is pretty easy) meant I was basically fine with it.

 

 

     

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The Morning after

This is my absolute favourite ‘doing nothing’ part of the game!

Somehow, Max and Chloe just lying on that bed really takes me back to being a teenager. Not the sharing a bed thing, just that feeling of waking up without having to worry about a job, or children or even a partner. There’s a sort of warm contentment there that I’m sure I didn’t really appreciate at the time, but just the feeling of doing nothing with no need to do anything or anyone else expecting me to do something feels like bliss!

Chloe, for perhaps the first time in the game, seems content. The excitement and success of trespassing at Blackwell seems to have met some kind of need in her. She was able to do what she wanted to do and wasn’t prevented by anyone else. She couldn’t control her father’s death, or her new step-father, or the teachers and people around her at Blackwell, but here is something she bent to her will and was successful at and somehow it seems to validate her. Instead of constant spikiness and lashing out, she seems happy. At least until Max mentions going back to school anyway.[/amateur psychiatric hour]

Down in the kitchen, Joyce voices something that has slightly irritated me about the game. Max spends time reminiscing about ‘the old days’ when she and Chloe were little, which - given that she is basically still a child - is about 10 minutes ago! Or so it seems to an uncool bloke more than twice her age anyway!

Looking for David’s password perhaps tells us a lot about him. SO much subject matter, army, parents, security ID, but the answer is Joyce. Perhaps that is really what he cares about most?

Frank’s RV

The whole Rachel & Frank thing. I sort of don’t really care whether they were together or not, but boy does Chloe. In fact, in the game the Kate thing is more important to me than the Rachel Amber thing. I think.

It’s another sort of puzzle to get the keys and then to find the diary. It says something positive for Frank that Rachel liked him (as does the dog thing). Chloe then gets to the root of her own problems in the car – it’s about her dad. Her own response to her grief is anger and self-destructiveness. That’s not a judgement, it’s just how she has dealt with it. If only William hadn’t died. You can’t blame Chloe, or Joyce, or anyone really, I mean you just can’t turn back the clock…

     

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The end of the chapter

After all of that, we’re back in her room and Max’s powers seem to explode. Suddenly we’re not just going back 5 minutes to change something quick, we’ve gone back 5 years to the most momentous day in Chloe’s life. It feels dream like. It feels weird. There is even a puzzle! And then we’re ‘back in the room’ in the present day. Only we’re not in Max’s room and we barely even seem to be Max…

If there’s one thing we all know about time travel, it’s that messing with the past/future has consequences. Like Marty McFly returning from the future to an alternate 1985 that looks familiar but that he doesn’t recognise, a sense of panic arises in Max as she looks around at what are apparently her friends and wonders what on earth she has done…

In another role reversal, bus driver David lets us on to the bus. The music really helps build the sense of tension and unreality. The sun shines but somehow the feel is slightly nightmarish and full of dread. It’s like I can feel that dead weight in my stomach, something big is coming and not in a good way. We can only see the vague shape of it…

Whales are beached on the shore, we’re running to Chloe’s house, but Max is now almost too scared to walk down the path to the front door. Steeling herself, Max walks forward and knocks. And we see William…

And Chloe.

I don’t have a lot more to say about that other than it’s beautifully and heart-breakingly done. We’ve reached a break in play, but this game now has my absolute full attention. Just when it looked like this episode was winding down we are knocked for 6 from an unexpected direction.

...

Later on, when we’ve begun to recover, come the questions. Have Dontnod cheated us here? Do all those choices we made mean anything at all? Does Max even have her powers in this reality? Is there any way back to the game we were playing before?

How can I get so worked up over a game?!

Thank the Lord we don’t all have to re-live that wait for episode 4 to be released!

     

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OK, so I didn’t manage to keep it any shorter. Please do put me on your ignore lists if it’s too annoying.

Choices

Left the money
Didn’t kiss Chloe - no relationships at the moment for my Max. The evening before brought madness, the morning after some restoration of calm.
Sided with Chloe - Maybe David does care about Joyce and Chloe, maybe his intentions are good, but his methods are way out of line. It needs to be stopped and exposed for everyone’s good. Or so thinks my Max!
Kept Frank’s dog from harm
Frank has David’s gun - I actually totally forgot you could take it back from the RV until I saw the choice at the end. I don’t think I’ve ever played it like this before so cool!

     

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Intense Degree - 28 June 2018 07:10 AM


I don’t know if any of the rest of you have been taking photos but there’s a couple of pretty cool ones available at Blackwell tonight!

I’ve been very sloppy & although I’ve taken a few here & there throughout the game my photo album is pathetic!

I’ve enjoyed reading your wonderful descriptions Intense Degree so there’s no ignoring them!
I’m looking forward to your take on chapter 4 which I’ve now finished. (Mikekelly gave the go-ahead in post#45, page 3 if you missed it).

Apart from the strange surreal atmosphere which was interesting I found the first part of this chapter very depressing & possibly because of that a little tedious. I found it very touching but so slow going.  It was the first time in the game I hated having to make a choice that of whether to meet Chloe’s request or not - it’s a dilemma I never ever want to encounter in real life)

Despite my thoughts up to this point this turned out to be my favourite chapter so far as there seemed to be a little more interesting actual game-play (to me) + the story hotted-up.

I very much enjoyed the ‘sleuthing’ – breaking into David’s locker, searching Nathan’s room; & the dialogue puzzle with Frank to get his code book which took me a few attempts to get without anyone getting hurt - I ended up almost liking him!
I loved the evidence board & spent ages on that.
I was on the ‘edge of my seat’ when a new location was identified along with the investigation of it to find a hatch. The puzzle to lift that took some thought but a further disturbing & sad discovery kept me hooked..
I didn’t so much enjoy the ’party’ - probably because wandering around too much gives me a touch of motion sickness. After the shockers in the chapter so far it concluded with a much bigger one & some twists which did not disappoint!!!   

Here are the choices I made (some inadvertently!  Laughing ):

Refused Chloe’s request
Stopped Warren from beating up Nathan
No one got hurt (on confronting Frank)
Victoria believed my warning

Let the blue jay die (I did??? – I wouldn’t have done)
Didn’t disturb the birds nest
Got David’s files another way.
Kate didn’t help (I didn’t save her in the last chapter) 
Didn’t motivate Daniel to attend the vortex party.
Didn’t leave a message on Warren’s slate
Figured out Nathan’s PIN code
Didn’t help Alyssa
Laughing

     
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chrissie - 30 June 2018 01:42 PM

I’ve been very sloppy & although I’ve taken a few here & there throughout the game my photo album is pathetic!

I was the same first time through. Just another great reason to replay this game!

chrissie - 30 June 2018 01:42 PM

Despite my thoughts up to this point this turned out to be my favourite chapter so far as there seemed to be a little more interesting actual game-play (to me) + the story hotted-up.

I agree with you, chapter 4 is probably my favourite.

chrissie - 30 June 2018 01:42 PM

Here are the choices I made (some inadvertently!  Laughing )

Another cool thing about the game - you get these little prompts at the end of every chapter and you’re like ‘Huh? I didn’t even know I could do that?!’

 

     

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Chapter 4 is a favorite of mine too. I really don’t mind the length of the posts at all, they make VERY interesting reading.

In fact, if I was thinking about buying the game, your end of chapter comments would prove to be very valuable to me.

Heart

     

I enjoy playing adventure games on my Alienware M17 r4 and my Nintendo Switch OLED.

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Ah sorry, I’ve been busy lately and haven’t been as involved in this as I thought I would be.

I’ll go through this thread and comment on the stuff I find interesting, and try to be more involved going forward.

A run through of the choices I originally made my first time through.  Now I know what happens no matter what is picked, so it’s not really making a moral choice so much as choosing which scenes to see.

Chapter 1:

Reported Nathan
Comforted Victoria (more on this below)
Intervened between David and Kate
Stayed in the closet (Some would say this is a very fitting thing for Max to do *cough* Tongue )

I think I was worried Chloe would get in more trouble if I came out of the closet, and I know for a fact I didn’t rewind to see what’d happen if I did.  Probably wasn’t use to the mechanic enough at that point.

One thing I find interesting about the game is sometimes I find Max somewhat unlikable, even though the game tries to portray her as a very good person most of the time.  And that’s not really a bad thing.  It just gives you more to think about.

But one clear example of this is Max spilling the paint on Victoria (which you are not allowed to avoid doing) and then potentially approaching her as if you had nothing to do with that and pretending to be all sympathetic that this awful thing happened to her.  It’s incredibly two-faced.

I’d respect her more as a person if she didn’t pretend to have not done it afterwards.  But then I don’t think there’s a reason to purposely be mean to her after it happened either.  So it puts you in weird spot when making that choice, as if you’re the type of person that’d be nice to her afterward you probably wouldn’t be the type of person to spill paint on her in the first place.

     
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Intense Degree - 18 June 2018 08:42 AM

Below are HUGE SPOILERS FOR CHAPTER 2 - but not for beyond that so you are fine if you’ve finished the chapter.
[spoiler]So… what about the top of the tower. The first time I played LiS I didn’t manage to save Kate. Without spoiling anything from later in the game that is still the version of the story that is mine. I have re-played the game more than once since then and saved Kate too, but somehow I feel that (for the story), tragically, heart-wrenchingly, Kate should die here.[/spoiler]

I fully agree.

I managed to save Kate my first time, in part because of my history with adventure games, and the way I play story-based games in general.  I had read every single thing there was to read in Kate’s room, so that info helped me a lot with those dialogue puzzles on the rooftop.

But I’ve watched a few Let’s Plays of the game on Youtube, and do feel that the game flows a bit better and just works better as a whole if Kate dies.  The beginning of episode 3 in particular feels a lot more impactful if Max and everyone else are trying to cope with their emotions over Kate’s suicide.

My original episode 2 choices:
- Told Kate to go to the police.  Largely because I felt like what she needed more than anything at that time was to hear that someone believed her about being drugged, and that she was not at fault.
- Answered Kate’s call, of course
- Did not even remotely consider shooting Frank.  For the people that did, I’d be interested in hearing more about why they did.  Chloe’s request to shoot him seemed insane to me.
- Saved Kate

     
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chrissie - 27 June 2018 12:08 PM

I really liked the ‘game mechanic’ where rewinding time didn’t change Max’s location so found the method of getting into the principal’s office quite nifty!

Yeah, that was by far the toughest puzzle in the game to me.  Think I ended up solving it by accident as well, but it was incredibly cool once you realize what’s going on.

My episode 3 choices:
- Honestly I’m not 100% sure if I left the money or not my first time through.  I think I may have taken it just because I was so concerned about what’d happen if I didn’t have the money later.
- Kissed Chloe.  I like her, so why not?  Also I’ve totally been friend-zoning Warren for the entire game so there was no conflict there.
- Sided with David.  This is one of the few choices I ever changed my mind on.  I originally sided with Chloe and then didn’t like how it went down and ended up preferring how the David choice went down.
- Kept Frank’s dog from harm, of course
- Frank has Chloe’s gun.  I purposely left it in the van after finding it, because I was afraid of Chloe doing something stupid with the gun and getting herself or someone else killed.  By this point I didn’t really find Frank that threatening, so I was less worried about him having the gun than I was with Chloe.  Particularly after all that stupid gun play in the junkyard.

It’s interesting how much I’m siding against Chloe in this chapter, given that she is my favorite character in the game.  Regarding the David argument, yeah, him video taping his family is weird, and yeah, he should never have hit Chloe in episode 1 (if you stay hidden in the closet).  But I felt like he didn’t have bad intentions—just was coping with his PTSD poorly—and I wasn’t suspecting him in Rachael’s disappearance at all at this point, so it didn’t make sense to go after him anywhere near as hard as Max does when you choose to side with Chloe.  If Joyce wants to throw David out, that’s her business, but I didn’t want to be the reason she came to that decision.

Intense Degree - 28 June 2018 07:38 AM

OK, so I didn’t manage to keep it any shorter. Please do put me on your ignore lists if it’s too annoying.

Ha!  No, not at all.  It’s really interesting reading your thoughts on all of this.

And yeah, I was totally gutted by the ending.  A very well made scene.

     
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Okay, finally, chapter 4.  I was going to stop at 3 but then I noticed that Chrissie has played the 4th and shared her thoughts, so I may as well do the same.  This is also my favorite chapter in the game.

The beginning section is an absolute masterpiece, IMO.  I have so many thoughts on this, but this section to me is a big part of what makes the series so great.

[spoiler]One thing I have to say though.  I absolutely loathe alternate-history Max.  You have to do a lot of close reading of side material and reading between the lines to get the whole picture as you never really meet this character.  But basically she straight up abandons her best friend after she’s in an accident that cripples her, and totally cuts her out of her life, without ever looking back.

[spoiler]Even after moving back to Arcadia Bay she prefers to spend her time partying with her Vortex Club buddies than even once visiting her friend that needs her so badly.  And she’s been back for a very long time by the time the other world Max jumps into her body.  Yet she can’t even return Chloe’s texts.  It’s just revolting behavior, quite honestly.

Okay, moving on.

[spoiler]So despite me believing that assisted suicide is something that should be legal, and having no lack of empathy for Chloe’s situation, I still decided against helping Chloe end her life.  Mostly for two reasons.

[spoiler]One, I think Chloe is partly saying this because she thinks as soon as Max leaves today she’s never going to see her again.  And she doesn’t want to live like that anymore.  So she feels like her choices are to end her life or continue on as it has been before this day, when there should be a third option of Max continuing to be Max’s friend and continuing to have great days like this one for as long as they’ll last.

[spoiler]Two, Chloe’s family.  Despite how tough this situation is on all of them, through talking with them (especially her father), it’s just so clear that there’s no part of them that’d prefer the alternative with Chloe being gone but their source of debt also being gone.  William obviously just loves his daughter with all his heart, and every minute he gets to spend with his daughter makes it all worth it to him.

[spoiler]A big part of the reason Chloe is requesting this is because she feels she’s a such a burden to her family.  But if the choice was theirs they’d never make this decision.  So while I feel the choice should be hers to make, I feel like she’s making it based on some faulty information, and should be given more time to reconsider.

[spoiler]Also the thought of her family walking in and finding her dead after Max’s visit is just heartbreaking.  So yeah, despite being very sympathetic to Chloe I just couldn’t bring myself to fulfill her request.

[spoiler]It’s interesting though.  A lot of my above statements kind of rely upon the fact that our Max will continue to stay around, so Chloe will continue to have a friend and Chloe will have further opportunities to convince Max to help her end her life.  But once you know that Max will be jumping out of this time line very shortly afterward, and the above mentioned unlikable version of Max will be jumping in, you realize that maybe Chloe will be left all alone again, and maybe this will be the only opportunity Chloe has to avoid a lot of future suffering.  So that really complicates the decision and makes me more likely to help her.  But as is I couldn’t make the decision to go along with it, because I felt the binary choices being presented to me (Chloe’s last chance to end her constant suffering vs. an end to her suffering at the cost of her family’s despair) were not sufficient.

On to more lighthearted stuff, I also absolutely loved the section with working over the evidence board.  By far the best puzzles in the series, and a lot of fun.

Is Chrissie our only first time player that’s playing along in this thread?  If so that’s a shame.  It would be fun to see more first time reactions to the ending.  It’s been too long since the first time I’ve played it to have anything very meaningful to say about that.  But it is foreshadowed very well.

My other choices in this chapter:
- Stopped Warren from beating up Nathan
- No one got hurt (on confronting Frank)
- Victoria believed my warning

     
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OK, i’m finished episode 4. Great to read your comments chrissie and Detective Mosley!



Title screen again. Now we’re bathing in a yellow glow. It’s probably sunset, or possibly sunrise? What does that tell us? I don’t know, let’s get on with it. We get our ‘previously on Life is Strange’ type flashback. That first scene with Nathan and Chloe in the toilets seems a long time ago now. Maybe another reality or dimension ago? I also love the way that at the beginning when we first saw that we had no idea who they were. Now they are friends and enemies.

Alternative Reality Chloe

We start with long slow shots of the beach with the sun on its way down. It should feel relaxing with the acoustic guitar backing, but we have the beached whales and a sense of nervousness. What has just happened? What will this Chloe think about our prolonged period of no contact?

Interestingly, some things have not changed. We have mention of the snow and weird stuff going on from ‘science geek’ Chloe and we can see the huge sad beached whales. Does this mean that the tornado is still coming too? We end the beach scene with a pan up to the lighthouse.

Whatever, it’s pretty clear that we haven’t solved all our problems by this choice.

Which Chloe is in more pain/has more to deal with? Alternative Reality Chloe seems slightly more zen about it on the beach. She has clearly suffered terribly but has the stability of her mother and father around her. What a difference to ‘our’ Chloe, who has suffered differently (less? more? – I don’t know, just differently) but has lost the stability she had. Chloe’s life has diverged following Max’s ‘Sliding Doors’ moment. AR Chloe is, in so many ways, a different person. “Hella? I hate that word, no offense”.

Back at Chloe’s House

Meek and mild where ‘our’ Chloe is all brash and attacking, perhaps AR Chloe almost seems content for a while…

Then we see the texts from Victoria sucking up to Max and a variety of other messages too. What has she become? As you said DM, AR Max doesn’t seem like a nice person at all.

The view from the landing window hasn’t changed. As earth shattering as events are for Max/Chloe the rest of the world seems to remain the same. Huge for them, but in the scheme of things…?

We soon realise that AR Chloe is a long way from content, in fact she wants us to help her out of the situation… The choice was black and white for me and doubtless others felt just as strongly the other way.

One of the interesting things about this segment is how much responsibility and control Max takes for herself. The change she has made impacts Chloe, William and Joyce more than anyone. There is a bad outcome either way (in different ways and not necessarily equally bad). But she does not give any of them the choice to keep what they have or put it back how they were, she does that by herself.

I don’t know if we can say why (other than for gameplay reasons of course!). She was trying to make Chloe’s life better but has – in some ways – made it worse. She chooses to put it back I think because William dying was not her fault and although she has now found she can prevent it, that causes serious physical harm to Chloe. To leave things as they have become, she has to choose to physically hurt her friend to try and stop her hurting in another way. Max can’t live with so (apparently) directly causing pain and therefore things must go back.

To be fair, if you sit in Chloe’s old bedroom for a while you get Max’s thoughts, including something along the lines of ‘I could give Chloe the choice of William or her accident – but that would be cruel’. Maybe so, but is it cruel not to as well? Meh

     

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Back to the present

We’re back in Chloe’s upstairs room again and seeing ‘our’ Chloe and somehow this shows that everything is back to how it was. David is gone, or at least going in my game and we’re picking up some clues.

Then it’s time for a visit to Kate in the hospital… at least it is for my Max!

So it’s back to Blackwell and life is going on. Time for some snooping in Nathan’s room. It looks pretty dark/scary but I wonder if dontnod have gone a bit OTT here? Has Victoria seen it? Would she be so keen to be friends if so? Obviously Chloe was in there – would she be cool with being taken into it? Perhaps she was drugged first? Either way, point made dontnod, point made.

Next we’re back with Frank, parked in a nice spot on the beach, under the watchful eye of the lighthouse. In fact it is the same place that Max and AR Chloe were at the start of the chapter, which seems like a long time ago now, and in fact never actually happened. Oh well, that’s time travel for you!

So we get a dialogue puzzle with Frank, but for me this one stands out from most traditional AG dialogue puzzles for two reasons. Firstly, often in a dialogue puzzle, selecting the right options get you what you want and selecting the wrong ones just produces nothing, or nothing meaningful and you are free to try again. Here, if we get it wrong we get a hostile response rather than just being ignored. Secondly, and more importantly, the time mechanic goes some way to justify the game repeating lines of dialogue AND you get to skip through bits of the conversation you’ve already heard (only those you’ve already heard in fact) rather than having to repeatedly click through the same lines again and again as you try something else. Big positives in my book.

Deduction Board

This is pretty much as close to a “real puzzle” as Life is Strange gets and I would say it’s a pretty nice one. Ok, so it isn’t exactly GK3’s ‘Le Serpent Rouge’ in terms of difficulty, but it does slightly remind me of it! Several interconnected steps leading up to tracking something down. It really feels like an Adventure Game now on any definition. There has been a fair bit of observing, sympathising and agonising at the beginning of this episode, but here we are, brains switched on and solving some puzzles!

The Barn

So we get a new location and for the first time (I think) we’re not there because it’s part of Max’s life or to visit friends etc. but we have actually come here solely to investigate, to try and uncover some secrets and it feels exciting! In most AG’s of course that is pretty much the only reason we go anywhere, but somehow in this game, where we are living with Max in her world it feels really cool to step outside that and do the thing that we always do in other games anyway Meh

One of the nicest puzzles in the game awaits inside the barn, simple enough in some respects, but the time travel element really comes to the fore. Took me quite some time on first playthrough but it is logical and uses a process taught earlier so it shouldn’t have done really!

Anyway… then we head down to…

[spoiler]The Bunker[/spoiler]

This is well done. The small amount of evidence we see of what has gone on there is horrible, it’s disgusting, but the clean and sterilised bunker with the evidence of planning and set up in the carefully filed folders and professional equipment take it beyond nauseating to seem positively psychotic. Although there are no jump scares, no blood and gore, no cheap horror tricks, I feel hugely unsettled, disgusted and the sense of fear in Max and Chloe, both over what appears to have happened there, and what may have happened afterwards is almost palpable.

Then, shaking a little and filled with anticipatory horror, we race to the junkyard. We dig. The spectral doe which has been leading us or appearing to us at points throughout the game flickers out. For ever?

     

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The Party

As we arrive with a furious Chloe we see two moons in the sky. There is indeed some seriously unnatural stuff going on here. Drunk Warren is firmly in the friendzone, Chloe is impatient, but Warren’s a nice guy just trying to live his life. Good luck explaining that selfie to Brooke at the Drive in though, Warren!

A quick chat with Stella in the hall – Nathan doesn’t seem to be around - and then we are through the curtain and into the party.

We very rarely see parties in games, I mean parties going on while we are there, because they are so hard to reproduce. The feel, the look, the dancing animations… but this is done so well.

I love the choice of music here. I mean the whole game is full with really well chosen music, but in terms of providing a feel for this party in this situation the track used (‘Got well soon’ by Breton if you’re interested) is amazingly effective for me. The huge reverb-y bass sound makes it feel as if a huge cavernous space (the swimming pool) is full up with sound. The track itself absolutely reinforces Max being so far out of her comfort zone at this party. Inaccessible, fashionable, filled with an almost snooty ennui, at least compared to the kooky/folky/singer-song-writery music that Max’s headphones and general soundtrack seem full of.

It’s really striking, to feel all that as soon as we go through that curtain and are met by a barrage of sound. You get the feeling that only a week or so before, this would have been enough pressure for Max to bow to and simply turn around and walk out again. Stupid as it sounds to me now, I remember being a teenager and how important these sort of things felt. I was certainly never one of the cool kids, and I knew it.

However, after all that’s gone on in the game Max has matured and is able to quickly put the party and the vortex club into perspective. Not necessarily to hate it or to be jealous of it, but simply to realise that it really doesn’t matter. A VIP area in a swimming pool at a teen party? Ridiculous! But how like humans to segregate and classify.

Although they are leaving the party, Max can’t tear herself away from the announcement of the winner of the everyday heroes contest. After all, with a bit more confidence it could have been…

After the party

A text from Nathan, a rapid departure and one of the dual moons blinks out of existence…

At the scrapyard, the ‘evidence’ is apparently still there, but suddenly Max is incapacitated and once again unable to use her rewind at the most important time…

And standing over her… as the drug takes effect, shutting her down… standing over her…

First playthrough Intense Degree absolutely did not see that coming!

     

3.5 time winner of the “Really Annoying Caption Contest Saboteur” Award!

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