Note: As before, what I write here is not meant to cover every event in this episode, nor is it meant to be a full review of the game, this is just a look at the parts of the episode I think are most thought-provoking. This blog is written in a way that those who haven’t played the game can still follow along, but I’d strongly recommend you experience it for yourself before reading. Thanks.
Life is Strange probably wouldn’t feel like an authentic teenage experience without some sneaking out of your room at night, but when Max steps out into the corridor the emotions feel turned on their head. Max isn’t creeping out of her dorm for a sense of adventure and daring like most eighteen year olds, she’s doing it to investigate the circumstances of a suicide she’s linked to. As she starts this investigation there’s a sting in the inaccuracy and dishonesty with which people are remembering their relationship to Kate, although it is important to keep in mind there may be more people who cared about Kate than Max thinks. The Victorias of the world aside, it’s often the case that people care more than they let on, but that most of us make the mistake of never expressing it as much as we should. There’s an element among the more earnest students of Blackwell of not valuing Kate as a person until it was too late or not making clear how much they cared about Kate until she was gone. It makes you wonder how accurate their stories of missing student Rachel Amber are in comparison to how they actually thought of her and acted around her.
Sadly, the ignorance there is surrounding Kate and her death doesn’t just feel disrespectful, it feels dangerous. While almost everyone understands that what happened to Kate was tragic and many understand there needs to be some kind of consequence, there’s little sign of the administration having a proper grasp on what Kate was going through or thoroughly understating the steps that should have been taken to help Kate. It feels like relatively little has been learned from the experience and so the precautions are not in place to stop another Kate Marsh happening. It’s monstrously unfair, but it’s a motivator to investigate her death yourself, and despite the lack of understanding surrounding the suicide, nobody’s misery is invalidated by them not knowing Kate particularly well. For young adults especially, just being near a death can be an affecting experience, and the faculty at least see validity in that.
Fortunately, raised spirits come in the form of Chloe, even if it she doesn’t quite understand the gravity of everything around her. After showing a lack of sensitivity towards Max she sincerely apologises and displays care for her, but between her suggestion about stealing from the fund for disabled people and her later stand-off with her mother at the breakfast table she seems to be so used to bucking authority figures that she often doesn’t stop to think about who she might be hurting when she does it. If Chloe has only one flaw it’s that she can sometimes make other people victims of her single-mindedness. This is about as critical as I can be of her though. Both I and Max feel attached to Chloe not just because she cares and acts as an enthusiastic sidekick on adventures, but also because apart from Max’s parents nobody else in Arcadia Bay comes close to showing that degree of dedication to Max as a person. It’s a sign of how much good she can do that her presence turns the grim investigation of a crime into a fun escapade into the locked pool where the shimmering blue provides an air of relaxation among the otherwise tense events. All things included, especially the scene in which she dares Max to kiss her and her look of worry when she learns Warren wants to go out with Max, I’m convinced Chloe has a crush on Max.
The following morning the two lie on the sheets in the hazy light of Chloe’s bedroom. There’s the sense that they’re still drifting in the calm but euphoric atmosphere of the pool from the previous night. Despite all the turmoil this feels like one of those moments where the rest of the world melts away and time stands still. The game also once again touches on the notion that Max is having to take on the enormous weight of living up to the legacy of Rachel who was Chloe’s former best friend. When you find Chloe and Rachel’s secret shrine in Episode Two the sense of exclusion is palpable. Chloe isn’t wrong to be as fond of Rachel as she is, nor is it likely that Max is really replacing Rachel, any two distinct people are not as interchangeable as that, but still, there are hints that Max feels a bit like that sometimes, and you can feel that way as a player. Here there's a scene where Max literally has to fill Rachel’s clothes, borrowing them from Chloe when she finds her own reek too much of chlorine. While Rachel cosplay doesn’t sound like the most sensitive option on the table it brings a surprising amount of joy to the household. With the clothing adopted by someone they are familiar with and fond of, the Prices receive a pleasant reminder of the friendship shared between Chloe and her missing companion. It also pokes at the idea that Chloe is getting a best friend again, something she has sorely needed.
It’s all going rather well until David gets into an argument with the Prices and while his wife Joyce seemed somewhat delusional for defending him back in Episode Two, this episode reveals she’s far more down-to-earth than first appearances suggested. The problem seems to be less that her love towards him blinds her to the fact that he’s an aggressive, invasive force in other peoples’ lives and more that he rarely shows his more caring side to anyone but her. If you turn on him, he goes so far as to imply that it’s a kind of female pack mentality that has set Max and the Prices against him. There’s a wonderful moment here where the game briefly shows a wide shot of the three woman figures standing before a lone David, underlining not only the division of the group but also how David in all his sexism is viewing the situation. You can believe this is the same guy who has a “I don’t call 911” sticker in his garage. After this tiff the investigation is resumed and the next point of interest is Frank’s RV.
The puzzle of obtaining Frank’s keys is a weird one, involving grabbing them from the table, putting them in Max’s pocket, and then turning back time. It’s reliant on the loophole that if something is on Max’s person when she rewinds time it will rewind back with her. I was confused about how I’d even solved the puzzle at first because as far as I can remember no character explicitly acknowledges that quirk of the time mechanics. Being given the task of finding something to say that will make Frank present his keys is however a smart design trick that makes you learn more about him. I do now know that he rescued a group of mistreated dogs so he can’t be a complete monster. There’s an unlikely parallel there between Frank and Samuel: they’re both people who may have formed the attachments to animals they have because they’re such loners around human beings.
The episode comes to a head when Max discovers she can use a picture from an old photo album to travel back in time five years and prevent the fatal car crash involving Chloe’s beloved father William, the event that started Chloe’s downward spiral from optimistic child to troubled teenager. When she rewrites reality however, Max learns that not only did Chloe not become that disaffected punk, but it looks like in this new reality Chloe became that car crash victim and is now severely disabled. From the moment Max jumped into the photograph it seemed like the worst idea in the world and exactly why the episode must be threateningly named “Chaos Theory”, but the motivations are clear and understandable. During the time jump Max feels infantilised, as though transferring back into her thirteen year old body and being treated as though she was at that age actually turns her into a kid again.
It feels important to step back and talk about Life is Strange’s symbolism here for a minute. Butterflies are obviously very important to Life is Strange: A butterfly marks the arrival of Max’s time powers and is the way the GUI conveys to you that you’ve made a choice that will have consequences. This is the game’s elegant nod to the butterfly effect which also ties in nicely with the title for this episode. Liberal use of the concept is to be expected in any time travel story or modern Telltale-style adventure game, but Max’s trip to the past and the resulting consequences are where the butterfly effect is most succinctly and directly explored in these first three episodes, and the game makes some even more literal use of the concept. The butterfly effect is of course named for the idea that a far-off butterfly flapping its wings could eventually lead to a hurricane somewhere else in the world weeks later, and as we know from the end of Episode One a catastrophic hurricane is coming for Arcadia Bay.
The wind is a classic symbol of change in media which is appropriate when Max is all about changing things, and an approaching storm is also one of the most used narrative signifiers we have of there being dark times ahead, but there may also be more in it specifically being a twister Max saw. The twister is chaos and destruction in the form of her world being ripped from its foundations and twisted about until it is thoroughly destroyed, and metaphorically that is exactly what is happening as Max continues to use her time powers, especially as we plunge into the end of this episode. We can also see that just as we often think of photographs as metaphorical windows into events gone by or past times in our lives, at the end of the episode Max is able to use her photograph as a very literal one. The game conveys the feelings of looking at an old picture, reminiscing, and wondering how things could have been different baked right into the experience you have with the narrative and narrative mechanics. It’s wonderfully done. The end of this episode is really a huge melting pot of all of Life is Strange’s metaphors.
As the final breakdown pops up I see that there was a gun to find back in Frank’s RV. A gun that I didn’t find. But it hardly seems to matter at this point. Even if I had taken the gun I believe Frank is the kind of person who could find another without too much trouble, and he has other means to hurt people anyway. There’s his dog and his switchblade just to name a couple. I worry that what this whole thing is building to is me having to re-kill William and Frank shooting Max, Chloe, or both of them. The apocalyptic omens seem tonally right on point.
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