Victory Game Center

After forcing you to change the past, Episode 3 ends by shocking you with the unforeseen consequences. Would have been nice to have had a choice about it though. And since the present's been changed, what does that mean for everything I've done in the game so far? Will the next episode begin by reversing what's just happened? Is this timeline aware of all my previous choices?

All this time travel goofiness raises a lot of questions, and has lead to some of the characters saying and doing really weird things. I don't like it. But I'll probably keep playing just to see how it ends. I've already invested more in it than I have The Walking Dead, so might as well stick with it.

As for the reach-up-high-and-screw-up puzzles, Episode 3 didn't forget to include one. Although this time around, Max says, You know what? I shouldn't waste my time-traveling power on this kind of stuff. She then reaches for a chair and just grabs the item like normal. I couldn't have agreed with her more.

Just as I thought, the fourth episode begins with you hanging out in the alternate timeline for a bit, before forcing you to jump back and reverse what you did in the last episode. But before you go, alternate Chloe has one final request for you. She'd like you to give her a lethal overdose of morphine.

Is it a shocking request? Maybe a little. But whatever genuine emotion I was supposed to feel at the moment was undone by the photo album lying open on the bed. It's hard not to foresee Max making her eventual escape through the album, regardless of whatever you decide do about the Chloe situation. Since whatever you decide will be undone once the alternate timeline is wiped out, it doesn't afford much opportunity for serious thought.

Once again, time travel has spoiled the game. If only they had the confidence to leave it out. There's more than enough meat to the missing Rachel, Vortex Club, and Dark Room plots to fill the whole game. No need to throw in the supernatural and the end of the world. Leave that for the next game. There are so many different things to interact with in the environment that surely nobody would call the game out for not having something like a rewind mechanic in it. Surely not.

The episode ends with the question, Can I rewind this? There's a real anxiety behind the question, because the game has already revoked our reversal powers at one point before, and the story seems to be hinting at our inability to fix everything with this power. The conclusion to the episode, however, is so catastrophic that there's a real fear here that maybe everything won't be okay in the end. Maybe it's already been set in stone. The world is ending, and there's nothing you can do.

Chloe mentions beating somebody up and then reversing back time to before it happened, but when she actually shoots a dog and his owner dead, there's no mention at all from her of reversing time, despite how troubled she appears to be about it. But you can't have natural reactions like remorse and anguish if she's invulnerable thanks to Max's power, and so she conveniently forgets about it. Even with Max trying to comfort her, saying things like, "Oh it was in self-defense. You saved me, etc.", it never seems to cross anyone's mind to reverse the shooting. Keep in mind that Max will very often throughout the episodes think to herself, "Hmmm.... was that right? Maybe I should reverse it."

Just finished the last episode today. It begins with Max strapped to a chair in the dark room, and after a while, she can talk with Mr. Jefferson. Max thinks to herself that she could use the pictures in her diary to escape, but oh no, it's off on the table by Mr. Jefferson. So what do I do? I yelled out at Jefferson and mention the diary, at which point he picks it up. And that's when I thought, Oh no. I'd just made a huge mistake. I immediately imagined him throwing it into a furnace or burning it up somehow, sealing off my exit forever. But thankfully, nothing like that happened (this time), and he instead threw the diary at my feet, open to the page with my selfie on it. That was close!

This episode had a lot of the surreal funhouse level design that I think is just too much fun for developers not to include in their games whenever possible. Some of it was pretty neat. Hilariously enough, it's implied during this vision that you'll have to go look for a bunch of bottles again, and Max says something like, I must be in hell.

Later on in the episode, you find yourself strapped up in the dark room again, and witness a disturbing scene where Max nearly gets a lethal injection to the neck. As Jefferson approaches you with the needle, you can rewind. It's one of the most clever and effective uses of the rewind in the entire game, but then it all comes undone in the next scene when David comes to your rescue. It can be almost comical, similar to Heavy Rain's failed QTE segments, as you have to keep rewinding over and over to help David finally subdue Jefferson.

The game ends with a familiar choice. Will you jump back in time and let Nathan kill Chloe, stop meddling with timelines, and prevent the tornado, or will you hold onto Chloe and let the tornado destroy Arcadia Bay? It echoes the Chloe suicide scene from the previous episode, but with higher stakes. Maybe a little too high, since I never thought that highly of Chloe to begin with, and given that the fate of an entire town is being weighed against her own, it's not an interesting decision, for why should she alone remain "invincible"? The game can't answer that, and hopes instead that since it tried depicting a realistic, i.e. flawed, woman that you'll have somehow made some kind of connection with her, throw all caution to the wind, and destroy everything to save her yet again. The developers must have done a pretty good job, since last I checked, the percentage of players that sacrificed the town was at 47%.

Having just checked the Sacrifice Arcadia Bay ending on YouTube, there doesn't appear to be any survivors. The whole town's been devastated by the tornado. Utterly destroyed. Max seems satisfied at her decision to unleash the angel of death upon the people, and rides off together with Chloe into the sunrise, smiling. It's as if the town had conspired together to unjustly make multiple attempts on innocent Chloe's life, and this is how Max exacts her vengeance. What a bizarre ending. I still can't believe so many players chose to sacrifice the town. What is it that they believe in so strongly that to wipe out an entire town is of no consequence? Is that what they think love is supposed to be?

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TheLostBigBoss wrote: Life is Strange 2: Max Goes to the Science Lab

"Max can you hand me over that extremely volatile acid that will eat through anything in seconds"

"...S..Sure thing"