Thanks For Crying.

[rionaleonhart]

I finished Life Is Strange last night!

The 'finding bottles to shoot' sequence was a bit frustrating, but I was very entertained (whilst also being horrified) afterwards, when I screwed up my aiming instructions so badly that I accidentally made Chloe shoot herself. Sorry, Chloe! Sorry for the trauma, Max.



I was so upset by the scene with Kate on the roof in Chapter Two. I actually cried a bit during it. I screwed up on my first attempt and she jumped and I, er, reloaded the last checkpoint. I know, I know, it was a big dramatic moment because Max's power faltered and she couldn't rewind and THERE WERE NO DO-OVERS, but I really really wanted to save Kate, come on.


reipan came into the room halfway through Episode Two, watched a bit of the interaction between Max and Chloe and immediately declared, 'I'm going to be so pissed off if those two don't make out.'

She continued to watch me play, occasionally exclaiming, 'BE MORE INVESTED IN THIS PAIRING.'

'I'm almost certain Chloe has a crush on Max,' I said. 'I'm just waiting to get a better idea of how Max feels about Chloe.'

I reserved judgement until the pool scene in Episode Three, after which I put down the controller and said, 'Okay, yeah, it'll be a travesty if they don't make out.'


You know what I love? Videogame characters having playable hallucinatory breakdowns. It's something that shows up quite a bit, actually; off the top of my head, I've seen it in Final Fantasy VII, Uncharted 3, Assassin's Creed: Black Flag, Assassin's Creed: Unity, and now Life Is Strange. The nightmare sequence delighted me.

Well, all right, there was a terrible stealth segment, but most of the nightmare sequence delighted me. I'd forgotten that Square Enix had a connection to this game and therefore it was doomed to get really weird towards the end.

When the nightmare sequence gave you all the out-of-character options for things to say to Mr Jefferson, I stared for a moment, briefly contemplated 'My selfies are shit' as the thing Max would probably hate saying least, and then decided that I might as well go as big and ridiculous as possible. I chose the 'I love you, Mr Jefferson' option. And it was SO CREEPY.

My first venture into the fandom was, I'm ashamed to admit, a hunt for creepy Jefferson fanart, so perhaps my declaration of love wasn't far off. He's absolutely vile, of course, but he's an oddly compelling character. Maybe a bit too eeeeevil, but I suppose it's difficult to portray a teacher who drugs, ties up and photographs his students without making him pretty eeeeevil.


In the end, I saved Arcadia Bay. It's frustrating that none of my earlier actions ultimately had much impact (besides, you know, inflicting lasting hellish psychological damage on Max), and it would have been nice if there had been some way to cheat the final choice by going back in time to evacuate the town, but I still wept a little at the ending. Also, Chloe and Max made out, which is very important.

I'm surprised that over 70% of players kissed Warren! I didn't even get the option to kiss him, which I suppose is because I'd spent the entire game carefully keeping him at arm's length. Sorry, Warren. I just didn't think Max was into you.



So that was Life Is Strange! It's been an interesting experience. It has its flaws as a piece of interactive fiction, and there are moments when it almost feels a bit too dark and bleak, and there's the uncomfortable sense that the characters might say 'lollerskates' at any moment, but overall I've enjoyed it a lot.

I think Max herself was my favourite character. Her internal observations were good fun, and her relationship with Chloe was fascinating, and I liked her conflict over whether she's nice out of the goodness of her heart or just because she wants people to like her. It was pleasant to inhabit her for a while. Even if she did once say 'wowser' three times within the space of ten minutes.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Mr Jefferson was onto your suspicion and found a genius plan to turn it all around: by implicating himself! (Apparently one of the car registrations in the "link all the clues together" bit is Jefferson's, too. You don't use it to solve the puzzle, but if you know what you're looking for it's showing he's actually suspicious. I can't corroborate that as I haven't gone back and looked.)

Yes, I was only trying to be a good plant owner. :(

The answer phone message if I recall is blaming Chloe for something. I don't remember what for, but probably something we'd done earlier in the episode or smoking pot or something. I erased it so David didn't know.

The warning to the homeless woman was that there was going to be a tornado.

I took the photo at one point I think, but was having a nightmare with those keys and I rewound past it looking for where to put them.

BUT FRANK. I actually really liked Frank. xD I felt pretty badass going there with no gun (after having missed about 4 chances to get a gun over the last few episodes) and getting out safe. I wonder if it's actually easier with no gun, since I imagine Chloe is pretty trigger happy.

Yeah, sadly no Kate for me. Fortunately, Nathan's room was easy to find based on its Very Obvious Whiteboard Message. It's nice that they didn't just forget about Kate though and gave her an extra bit for living.

I liked the bit with the PIN for Nathan's phone since it had a lot of red herrings. I picked up on it fairly quickly, but I did rewind a few times - I didn't get it in the first 3 attempts. (Haha, those numbers haunting Max... much like the bottles!).

I think so! I tried to save him, Max was like "no can do" so I thought "hmm, not saveable" and moved on. SORRY, FISHERMAN, IT JUST DIDN'T OCCUR TO ME.

I'd been a bit uncomfortable with the scene where David gets kicked out, but I was trying to gain some Chloe karma after she hated me for like everything else. Then after he pretty much helped save my life and I went "btw, Chloe's dead, sorry about that" and he shot Jefferson in rage I kind of figured he deserved a good word. No Chloe, David grieving, Joyce would be grieving, felt it would be better for neither of them to be alone and Max wouldn't want it to be a reminder of her role in splitting them up which had really resulted in nobody being any happier. Maybe I should have left it - David isn't a saint by any means, and Joyce can make her own choices, but felt it would be unfair if I didn't say "yeah he can be a bit of a dick, but he did mean well here, don't want to leave it with you thinking he's some creepy stalker for no reason".

[rionaleonhart]

The warning to the homeless woman was that there was going to be a tornado.

YOU KNOW, MAX, IF YOU'D WARNED MORE THAN JUST ONE PERSON THAT THERE WAS GOING TO BE A TORNADO, YOU COULD HAVE SAVED YOURSELF A LOT OF HEARTBREAK.

Not having the gun didn't help me with Frank; Chloe wrestled it off him and wounded him! (I also kept missing chances to reobtain the gun.) Although perhaps you can't kill him if Chloe doesn't have the gun to begin with.

I did consider putting in a good word for David, and I was a bit sad when Joyce decided against him, largely because of your reasoning; after everything that had happened, it would be best for neither of them to be alone.

[(Anonymous)]

THEY'D THINK SHE'S CRAZY, OKAY. BUT IT'S OKAY IF THE HOMELESS WOMAN THINKS SHE'S CRAZY. NOBODY WILL BELIEVE HER.

Chloe, I love that you aren't a helpless damsel in distress, but now is the time for diplomacy, not wrestling! (I loved that whenever you redid the Frank scene and my Max was like, "Chloe, please, stop making smartass comments. I know how it's going to go, and it's not going to go well!") We're not very good at acquiring guns, are we? Although interestingly enough one of the ways you can reobtain a gun is letting Warren beat up Nathan, then taking Nathan's gun, if I recall. That one's kind of an interesting one, since it could implicate Nathan in something that he had nothing to do with for once.

I'M SORRY I WRECKED YOUR FAMILY, JOYCE. I WAS ONLY TRYING TO BE A GOOD FRIEND. BUT CHLOE PROBABLY NEEDS SAVING FROM HERSELF.