The game LIFE IS STRANGE really stood out for me this year. Not that I play a lot of games, but I'd be comfortable enough to claim it was my favorite of 2015. I can say without a doubt that it's a game that has been one of the most emotionally impactful games I've ever played. Other games have had great 'moments', but this Dontnod joint hit so many spots through all five episodes. You Tube is awash of play throughs of the game to create a figurative river of tears.

What made LIFE IS STRANGE stand out from so many other story adventure games from other publishers, such as Telltale, was the ability that allowed you to contemplate or try out various outcomes on the fly, thanks to the premise of time control. In other games of its kind, they throw dialog options and life choices every few seconds. There is an appeal to the idea of having to make snap decisions on a ticking clock. However, haven't we all made what we thought was a reasonable dialog choice but the outcome of the conversation takes a wildly different tone than you had intended? You're basically stuck with that choice -- unless you reload a check point and the game neglected to auto save.

With LIFE IS STRANGE, you have the freedom to play around with results for most of the game. If something turned out in an awkward way that you hadn't intended, you just have Max rewind time to try out the other option. Something about that made me feel more invested in the outcome.

Those Endings

Now, if there's anything that irritates me in any game is when the developers force failure onto the player. That brings me to the finale of LIFE IS STRANGE. Once more a game based around your choices pulls the veil off the premise of your choices having meaning. Regardless of how you play, you're going to get one of two endings, and it's basically letting the player choose which way they fail. Either you fail to save Chloe or the city. This after the game forcing you to repeatedly save Chloe just to progress. It's a frustrating end to a remarkable story.

It made me wish there was some third, self-sacrifice option to end the game. For example, Max goes back in time to be the one shot by Nathan's bullet. As she dies in Chloe's arm, she passes on a message about Rachel and Jefferson, and gives Chloe some touching farewell that only the audience would understand. Nathan would be arrested, he'd confess -- as he does in the story after being arrested anyway -- and Chloe gets to live along with the city. Yeah, a downer, but you succeed.

I however reject idea that this game has a "good" or "bad" end. That's a leftover we have in our brains from other video games. They're subjective, and each is terrible in its own way. You pick between giving up your childhood friend that you've invested so much time with, or give up a town that everyone is miserable with and filled with corruption.

Fan Interpretations

The conclusion frustrated me, but in the months prior I've read some interesting theories constructed by the fans to put the end into focus. One person suggested that the reason Max got her powers wasn't to save Chloe. It was to give Max time to be with Chloe before she had to die. A sort of wish fulfillment many people have when they lose a friend they had been estranged from or neglected. While interesting, it's not one I subscribe to, because it implies the game only has one 'proper' end. The developers have said that the ends were designed so neither are a bad choice. It's what you want as the player can can fill in the blanks as you see fit.

The theory that I found the most interesting is the more philosophical and profound. How many of us have lost a loved one, friends or family; and thought, "I would give anything, do anything, to have them back." What if the ultimate lesson of LIFE IS STRANGE is to really challenge the player with that moral dilemma? Would you really "do anything" to have that person back? Would you say, sacrifice a town to get the most important person in your life back, be it a lover, parent, or your child?

Second Season?

I enjoyed the game and the story so much. There's a part of me that would love a second season, and the other side is wondering how you'd even do that. Dontnod has talked about another game but has said it would have a different cast. The interview I read pointed to examples of TRUE DETECTIVE, but that is a rather clumsy analogy. The second season of that show was a mess of interesting characters that lacked a plot to justify them. Most importantly, it was Max and Chloe that I became attached to most of all.

A large portion of the fun of this game comes from time manipulation. Those are the mechanics that I want to play with more. After the reveal that using the powers is what causes a massive catastrophic storm, how would you justify their further use? It would be like making a direct sequel to SIXTH SENSE. You only get that twist ending once.

Saving Chloe is obviously the only ending to choose. After all I went through to save her, damn right I'd let that shit hole town get destroyed. Max's parents are still safe in Seattle so she's not losing anyone anyway. Why would Chloe be okay with dying and leaving her mother behind with a dead husband, a dead daughter and a douchebag rent-a-cop? Just put her out of her misery.

I don't think self sacrifice counts as success, nor do I think Life Is Strange's two endings are failures. I just see it as how do you want to pay your time travel debt. As for me, I paid with the blood of Arcadia Bay; no one is taking my shining star away.

Now, Life Is Strange is one of my favorite games of all time. I don't want a second season though. I'd rather DONTNOD make something completely new, instead of chasing the shadow of Life Is Strange.

There's a part of me that really wants a hidden "happy ending" in that game, but I don't think it's a necessity, nor do I think the ending I got was "bad" or my actions were a "failure". Life doesn't always get a happy ending, and we all have to deal with that in our own way without the help of time powers to fix it. I chose to sacrifice Chloe, which was endlessly depressing, but I think it sends a pretty powerful message about accepting reality and loss and eventually moving on with your life. It's a tragic ending, but it's not a meaningless one. You still stop that asshole Jefferson and Nathan and you still save Kate Marsh from suicide, and you still discover what happened to Rachel and all those other girls.

Besides, even despite all that, Max still has those memories of her time with Chloe and all that stuff that happened and it allowed her to grow and mature significantly because of them. Even Chloe, who would technically not have had those experiences in the reality where she dies, still lives on in Max's memory, who was able to witness her grow as a person to the point that she was willing to sacrifice herself to save the town and people she thought she hated. Without that Chloe is just some punk kid who gets shot in a school bathroom. Max would have only known who she used to be and not who she is now. And if you go the other route she does legitimately grow as a human being, as do many other characters like Victoria.

I do agree that there is a bit of a philosophical bent to how the game is structured. Not only in the morality of what you would do in those situations if you had the power to change them, but also how changing that might actually be simply be manipulating things that you should not be able to control. There's some nice meta dialogue near the end about how Max abused her powers to manipulate others into simply telling them what they wanted to hear to get what she wanted, instead of actually engaging with people in a real way.

It's one of those endings that has stuck with me for awhile and left me with conflicting feelings, but it's mostly because I grew attached those characters and wanted them to all end up happy. But it didn't work out that way, and that's okay. It has also left me questioning what I might do in that kind of situation in a very real way that I don't think any other game has done. I didn't hesitate too much about the ending I chose, as it felt like the right choice in the moment, but if it was actually me and I had to sacrifice my best friend/love I'm not sure I could do it.

As for a sequel, I don't think there's any way that would work. There's no way bringing any of these characters back for more time shennanigans would make any sense, and I feel like it would only lessen the impact of this story, which is so perfectly self contained. They could do something involving completely different characters that have no relation to anything that happens in this game, but I think that would just feel like retreading water. I'd rather see them do something new.

As much as some part of me would love a happy ending, I think that would actually make the choice pointless, since - why would you choose anything but the good ending?

And if they tied it to a certain way of playing the game, that pointlessness would extent to all choices, since there would be "right" and "wrong" choices and only one right way to play the game.

Which would lead to kind of a Dishonored situation: that game gives you so many ways to play it, and so many generally fun ways to kill people. But the game by way of its story also defines a single "right" way of playing it (stealthy and nonlethal) negating all that freedom/making you feel bad for using all the options the game gives you. Which to this day makes Dishonored just one big disappointment for me.

What I dislike about both endings is that both don't feel like they went far enough.

The saving Chloe ending (which I chose initially and which is the one I like more) is too short, especially in comparison to the other ending. Why aren't they looking for survivors or something? Nothing indicates that everyone actually died. Sure the town is destroyed, but some buildings look very much intact and even in the destroyed ones people could very much still be alive. So maybe check in on Joice and Warren? No. Well, okay.

The saving the the town ending (which I think is probably the default ending, even if the devs say otherwise) is a lot more fleshed out, but still far from perfect. Why didn't they do a farewell scene between Chloe and Max there and instead Chloe is just dead immediately? Why would people that don't actually know Chloe (or like her) go to her funeral? (Warren, Victoria etc.) Max doesn't even rip up the damn butterfly photo, but supposedly she didn't get her power because she didn't try to save Chloe this time? That makes no sense honestly.

Another thing: Max saving Chloe creates a fucking tornado, but Max saving Kate doesn't do shit? Is it just that we are to assume Kate doesn't get saved by Max giving David a hint about Jefferson, but that Nathan actually sells him out? Bit weird and unclear there.

I was satisfied with both endings of this game, personally. The reason being is that I'm the kind of person that, in real life, always discovers that the journey is always more fulfilling than the destination. I thought Life is Strange did a really good job at portraying that. In fact, this year was a good year for this idea in video games for me; almost every 2015 game I played had endings that were kinda meh, but did such a good job presenting a satisfying journey that I was ok with the endings being good/mediocre/bad. Until Dawn made me feel this way, as well as MGS V (to a lesser extent- because by the time I got to the part where I had to jump through poorly designed hoops just to get the story to progress, I was tired of the journey) and right now it's Fallout 4. I kinda don't care if the ending is disappointing because I'm enjoying wandering through Boston and meeting interesting people along the way. Her Story made a huge impact on me because that game is very much about the journey, and makes the bold decision to take the destination away from the player entirely. I'd like to see that idea explored more in video games in the future, but because it would be so difficult to pull that off correctly and because gamers tend to sometimes be very results-driven, I don't know that it will happen. All that to say: I liked how Life is Strange treated its own journey. Except for the exposition dump in episode 5, which I still wish would have been handled differently.

I enjoyed both endings. I think the majority of time, budget, and care did go into the "Sacrifice Chloe" ending, and I think I've heard some people say the creators were running up against budget constraints near the end, but the ambiguous tone of the "Sacrifice Arcadia Bay" ending was appropriate. Going around town looking for dead bodies or showing Max and Chloe having a romantic moment after all that destruction would have been really inappropriate. What happens next should be left up to the player. The strength of the game was the grey areas most real-world adult decisions take place in, so I would have been disappointed should they have said "this is the good ending." Just because the first ending is longer doesn't mean it's the "good ending." It's just the ending that could be more defined. Ending B I think was just as "correct" as much as some would argue it meant Max sacrificed a whole town in the process. I think we all have a friend or family member who "gave up everything" for someone they loved. Members of the LGBT community in particular have had to deal with this far more often than they should have to. More than Max electing to "kill" everyone in ending B, to me it's a "damn the torpedoes" choice. And I say this after picking the "Sacrifice Chloe" option.

I'm actually thrilled there wasn't a self-sacrifice ending. There are plenty of games that offer you such an option, and to me it's kind of a cop-out. I would expect 90% of people would choose to sacrifice Max if they could to save her lover/best friend and the town as well.

As long as the sequel in no way alludes to the events of LiS season 1, I am fine with it. Dontnod has said if they do a season 2, it will be in the style of True Detective (please don't be as awful as True Detective season 2 was...).

When I first got to the ending I chose to sacrifice Chloe because in the moment I thought it was "right" thing to do. I later replayed the last scene and chose the sacrifice Arcadia Bay option and after seeing it I decided to stick with that as my final choice because I disliked the idea that it was Chloes fate to die, the universe wanted her dead or something like that. It just seemed like some Final Destination type played out BS.

Also that was one slow ass tornado you'd think maybe all 100 people who live in Arcadia Bay would just get out of dodge. Maybe that's just me trying to rationalize saving Chloe though.

Damn right. I actively thought in my head about halfway through ep 4 "If I have to kill everybody in this town to save Chloe I will fucking do it". So by the time I got to the end of ep 5 I did it without hesitation.

You can't save Kate's life without rewinding either. You have to watch her jump the first time, Max rewinds it, and THEN she can't use the power.There is definitely a plot hole there.

@alucitary: Once you go back in time all the way you have ability to comfort Kate much earlier and presumably prevent from ever reaching the point of suicide in the first place. I guess it depends on how you view "fate" and whether Max doing anything different at all would still be abusing her time powers, but I think it's fair to consider a difference between how she had to save Chloe and how she could preemptively save Kate.

Especially considering Nathan and Jefferson get caught soon after, and it would come to light that Kate was in fact drugged. Even if Max did nothing herself that would likely still create a chain of events that would prevent that situation.

I thought the ending was perfect and was exactly the way the game needed to end. In concept if not in the way they ultimately set it out.

I agree, though, I have no idea how you'd do a sequel. This isn't a story that really seems like it would hold up under "making it about different people" like American Horror Story (which is a better pull than True Detective as it's done this concept for years now and apparently it's been successful- I haven't seen it yet). The Walking Dead Season Two should have done that. The Walking Dead is perfect for doing something like this, but a coming of age time travel story that's very grounded and character focused in the way this game is would be a lot more difficult to pull off a second time with different people. There are also narrative issues I have with that which would completely ruin it.

So, I can see a lot of ways they can mess this up. I'm, honestly, not really looking forward to a season 2 of this game. Mainly because I think they got lucky this time around. A lot of what makes the game good is the acting- which is phenomenal. Some of the best this year. The story, and the writing, though, is really bad, full of plot holes, poor understanding of how America works (who sends their kids to high school in another state all on their own? That doesn't exist in America unless there's some weird rich person schools I don't know about which this game implies this is not), and nonsensical characters. There is so many misunderstandings about American culture in this game that I suspect it's all based on their understanding of America after watching John Hughes movies. While you can get lucky and make writing about another culture you don't actually know anything about charming (and it succeeds much like Deadly Premonition in that) I don't think it's a style of writing to shoot for. Nor is it high praise. It's mainly luck because they happen to have gotten two of the best voice actresses for their leads which have a lot to carry, and somehow pull it off with flying colors. This game would not be mention worthy if not for the amazing work done by these two actors. The reason I care at all is because of them.

Anyway, it's tough to say. I don't know. I probably would not play season 2 of this unless I hear people talking it up a bunch like they did with this one. I was pretty skeptical of this one, and I'd be doubly so with another one now that I like this one so much.

I think it's the sign of successful endings when you have two camps that see that their ending is the "ONLY" ending.

I have little patience for people who claim that their favored ending is the "right" ending, though.

I have no idea why people would think, if the universe really IS trying to kill Chloe, that just because the game ended she is safe.

For me the problem with the end is one of contextualization. With all the reality altering, I felt like the game went too far into alternate reality territory without actually addressing it by the end. The fact that Max spends the beginning of episode 4 in the world of a Max that isn't her, makes me feel like Max isn't really changing reality as much as she is going between different ones. The way it felt to me was that Max couldn't really change the world she could just change what world she was in.

In this way of looking at the ending choice, Max would just be choosing whether she wanted to live in a world with Chloe or Arcadia Bay; she's not deciding their fate as much as she is choosing which reality she wants to live in. The burden of Arcadia Bay being wiped out or Chloe dying shouldn't rest on her.

But the language the game uses of "sacrifice" and the way the characters talk about it doesn't frame the choice this way, so instead your choice feels kinda gross either way.

Yeah, you are definitely right. The game definitely opens up questions that it doesn't answer. But the question that one has to ask is: How important is it that the questions get answered?

I feel like sometimes nerds get too hung up on science fiction. This game isn't science fiction. It goes to pretty great lengths to grab the user by the arms, shake them and tell them it's not science fiction. (Warren at one point even says, almost straight at the camera, "maybe we will never know" in terms of why things are happening.)

How the universe bending happens is entirely irrelevant to Max's story, especially if she makes the choice to disregard everything the universe is doing and just make selfish decisions.

@iam3dhomer: You could definitely view it that way, but my interpretation was that it was a single reality that is simply being altered by various chains of events. The beginning of ep. 4 is simply the result of her altering the past in such a dramatic way, resulting in a far greater chain of events that even affected herself in that reality.

There is a lot of fuzziness around how memories work with those time powers though. She only seems to retain all her memories when you have control of her. Any period in-between time jumps simply goes on as if she never had them. I could see that as an argument that Max is actually inhabiting the body of alternate Max's, but I also feel like they pushing the idea that you were actually altering history through the butterfly affect. Max certainly believed that and it fits the motif more.

I don't know. Time Travel's confusing yo.

@bananasfoster: I agree with this sentiment though. Time travel is just a plot device in this game. How it works or even why she has those powers is pretty irrelevant. The game is simply pondering the question of what someone might do if they suddenly got such powers.

@bananasfoster: @zeik:I don't think the rules of this stuff aren't nearly as important as how the characters react to it. And I don't really care about the rules in and of themselves. I only bring them up because I was working backwards from an ending choice I found frustrating specifically because I felt it undermined the emotional core of the story. Those rules ended up being all I could see because the story stopped being relatable and emotionally resonant in the way it had been through episode 4. All the plot machinations of episode 5 are built around the time travel, not the character relationships. (Particularly with Chloe who we get no genuine moments with, just the heightened emotional stuff brought on by the ridiculous situation.)

What I really wish is that episode 5 had ended more along the lines of episode 2, where the outcome is more determined by the actions we've taken leading up to the moment and how we handle things, rather than a binary choice.

At that final choice the game broke for me and I wasn't invested in the same way, so my thoughts went to design and how this could have been done in a way that would have worked for me better. I know that understanding I put out there isn't the developer's intention, I was more looking back at what had happened and connecting the dots for why I became disengaged.

Also that final conversation with Warren is infuriating because he makes the leap that Max caused the tornado with such authority. He takes correlation and assumes causation in such a heavy handed way that I feel the developer's hands pushing down on me. It's forceful exposition telling me, the player, not to question this, which is clumsy and frustrating.

It's because... you know... he's good at science. >_>

This game definitely has problems, I agree.

I thought the final act was terrible. But, as my brother once explained to me, that's just because I liked the previous chapters so much. That's not the problem of a failed game, it's just a problem of me wish I could write the ending instead of letting them do it. A good story gets the listener SO involved that they want to participate.

Personally, the end of the game that *I* wrote in my head as I was playing the game goes in a totally different direction. I thought We were going to get to see what the Vortex Club was, and that it was going to be a secret society that was involved with all the Illuminati markings all around town. I assumed it would tie in with Nathan's family and explain how they got rich, how the got own Arcadia Bay and what it had to do with missing girls.

The fact that the ending covers NONE of that, and doesn't even dress some of those hanging plot threads, makes me thing less of the game itself. But, I can't knock them for not making the game I would have wanted. I can only judge the game they DID make.

@iam3dhomer: I suppose I don't entirely disagree, but I do kinda disagree that the focus on the time powers in the last episode undermined the emotional core. It was precisely that you got so comfortable using your time powers to fix things that when they suddenly pull the rug from under you and you realize that not only can you not fix everything, but absuing your time powers is exactly why everything is going to shit that the ending worked, for me. Like for example, at the end of ep. 4 when Chloe gets shot that was super shocking, but you kinda knew you were going to go back and fix it. (Even it was uncertain how after being drugged.) It didn't really produce the same kind of emotional turmoil.

I should probably point out that I did play the whole season within a few days of eachother though, so the rest of the season was very fresh in my mind by the time I got to ep. 5. The fact that the climax of the story is more about the impending catastrophe than actual character moments (not involving Max herself) didn't bother me because I felt like they had done that well enough up to that point that I had all the emotional investment I needed to care about the characters and want to save them.

@bananasfoster: It's always dangerous to let fan theories cloud your perception. It's very easy to set yourself up for disappointment that way.

I told myself at the end of chapter 3, that if it came down to it I would let the town burn for Chloe. Had no reason to argue myself out of it, and I liked all of the characters. It just came down to not wanting to be one more person leaving her behind.

I never focus on time travel, in stories that have time travel. It is never satisfying, and is either over explained or left vague. Best to just accept what the story reveals, and try not to let it set you down the path of a brain aneurism.

I think the entirety of chapter 5 is one blunder after another, with the writers more interested in throwing random time-related scenarios than giving satisfying conclusions to its cast of characters (dramatically back-pedaling David by having regret and list off bullet point by bullet point every messed up thing he did in previous episodes, concluding Nathan's character arc with a really goofy and rushed voice mail to Max etc.). The endings themselves I'm fine with, it's more the process of getting to them that's the problem. They just kind of decided "Whoops! Times up! Time to just skip to the big choice!" once they ran out of scenarios for Max's bullshit photo time travelling power they pulled out of their ass just so they can end episode 3 with a cliffhanger and then completely undo any impact that scene has with the beginning of 4. The series has its moments with character interactions and interesting scenarios it creates with Max time rewinding abilities, but in the end its more hit and miss, with the ending to 5 being the least of its promise. Not to mention that any attempt to explain the negative effects of Max's abilities just boils down to a ham-fisted dump of exposition by Warren in ep 5, because apparently he's an expert at this stuff because "he's into physics".

Sure, it's apparent that that's how the game is supposed to end, but does that make it a good ending? I don't think so honestly. Aside from the fact that too much "foreshadowing" is just lazy story telling, it's just such a very standard "natural order of things", "things come full circle" sort of ending that it's just disappointing. Why not go a route no-one expects?

Which is also the reason I'm not satisfied with the other ending, because the devs obviously thought of the Chloe dies ending as the right one too, and thus didn't flesh the other one out enough. The only other ending that would have been even worse would have been one were Max kills herself.

Okay, them turning up at the funeral out of respect for Joyce seems logical enough.

Max used her powers to save Kate (remember the scene were time was frozen?), but that's not even the situation I'm talking about (since she ends up saving multiple people, including herself at numerous times anyway). I'm talking about original timeline Kate, the one were Max let's Chloe die. Does this automatically lead to Jefferson getting arrested (because of Nathan selling him out) or did Max give David/the police a hint? If so, she did it using information she got in the other timelines, thus having altered the natural order of things again, which should lead to another disaster. It's an oversight, that one single line of dialogue would have cleared up.

@dudeglove: Yes, that was the first real sign that something was going wrong (she had some nose bleeds and a black out previously though), so I do see your point.

You know, her somehow ending up "fighting" the tornado or some kind of ghost/god in the form of Rachel's spirit deer would have sucked, as would have a Prescott cult, but they just could have done so many different things.

Have Max get trapped in the nightmare forever for example. (It's still cheap, but at least it's not the most predictable route to go.)

Or have the damn tornado and everything else not be related to Max's power at all! Most of the town still dies, but Max manages to save some people (fewer depending on choices the player made in earlier episodes) and thinks that was the real reason she has got her power. In this one Chloe could still end up dying somehow even and it still wouldn't have felt so unsatisfying.

Or have it just be the damn apocalypse for real and everyone dies for real. (Again, not great but not so on the nose either.)

I liked Max squaring off against "alternate" Max, since a lot of the things the alternate had to say rang true. (Max only doing things as a short cut to make friends and/or look cool.) I didn't like the whole town judging you, because it was just another push to make the "right" choice and go with the damn "canon" ending. It was a well done scene and would have had a lot of potential, but they just overdid it there for me.

It all boiled down to one arbitrary choice at the end, making everything else meaningless. In a game like Mass Effect you, at least, get actual gameplay to go with it. These games live and die by the narrative. They need to start having branching paths in the story that actually mean something.

Personally, I don't feel that the end defines the journey. The fact that Max's tale wraps up with a binary decision doesn't invalidate the path she walked to get there. As Chloe herself says, they'll always have that time they spent together, regardless of what happens.

Also, my theory as to why Max couldn't sacrifice herself instead of Chloe is that the tornado wasn't so much a result of her using her powers as it was her manipulating the past. By intervening with Chloe's death, she would still be changing a preset past even without rewinding. Again, just my personal theory, but it satisfied me.

@macka1080: The end doesn't define the journey, but a lot of my good will towards the game relied on certain story elements that the game paid forward into the finale. A lot of intrigue was set up, and the lack of satisfying payoff does hurt those earlier episodes in retrospect just because I now look at so much of their content as red herrings that go nowhere.

It's still a game I like, but I'm still disappointed because it could have been much better. Because of the high bar the game set (particularly the end of episode 2) I expected more of it, but in the finale the game never even came close to trying something that ambitious again. Also, it's a story game where I don't like how the story ends, that's not a minor issue, and I'm additionally frustrated because poor endings are so common among video game stories. I just want creators and video game companies to realize that endings matter, and I'm sick of seeing games run out of steam and effort (Presumably because money and time ran out) at the finish line.

@iam3dhomer: Out of curiosity, what kind of stuff did you feel let down on in the ending? For the most part, I felt satisfied with how things were wrapped up.

I agree that poor endings, and simply poor stories are common in video games, but they're not exclusive to the medium. Endings are an issue all fiction struggles with, which is why the Hollywood Happy Ending is still such a trope: it's the best bet to leave the audience satisfied. The more ambitious a story, the more difficult it is to craft a conclusive ending. Lost, Twin Peaks, X-Files, Buffy the Vampire Slayer; it's not so much a case of limited time and money, but the tremendous task of tying up a vast narrative with a neat bow. For Life is Strange, where player choice adds even more variance to the mix, the challenge becomes that much harder.

I liked both endings and I thought both had arguments in favor and against each other. I ultimately picked saving Chloe because that was Max's mission from the get-go and because doing otherwise would have undone every single step of progress that every other character had accomplished during the course of the week. Victoria would have never realized that she is a good photographer who doesn't need to put everyone down all the time to feel well with herself. The fat guy would have never seen he's a good artist. Etc.

My only problem with the fifth episode is how mechanically disconnected it feels from the previous four. It throws away much of the character interaction and environment exploration that made the other episodes so great. That stealth section is particularly examplary of my problem. I felt about it the same way I felt about the Penumbra series: two magnificent exploration-driven story games that were followed by a puzzle-heavy, no-exploration sequel just to wrap up the plot. I understand that DONTNOD kinda run out of time and money, but it was still a letdown, specially after the amazing episodes 3 and 4.

@macka1080: So I'm never a fan of stories that circle back around to ending by undoing what happened during the story. Even though Max remembers what happened, closing it off by undoing everything that went and wrong over the course of your playthrough leaves me frustrated. It's too neat, it closes off so many story possibilities and potential consequences and problems in the easiest and most convenient way.

The other ending didn't completely gel with my understanding of Max's character, but because so much of the game was specifically about Max doing anything to save save Chloe it felt dissonant to the story to choose anything else. With that ending, by leveling the town, I'm throwing away all the world building and intrigue around the town (particularly with how much buildup goes into the Prescott family). All of that time and investment is also being thrown away. Again, my issue is it's too neat.

The game spends a lot of time establishing things about its world that had me intrigued, but it never does anything with most of them, and also doesn't let them just lie there, but feels compelled to throw them away one way or another. It all feels like they solved the problem of having too much story by smashing it to bits rather than drawing it together for a compelling ending. A lot of my goodwill towards those earlier episodes relied on their ability to draws these threads together by the end, so an ending that fails to do that also means I have less affection for the earlier parts.

And I don't actually think what I wanted was that complicated: I wanted a sequence structured like the end of episode 2. Instead of a binary choice, a puzzle-like sequence that specifically relies on the choices made previously throughout the series and the information you did or did not gather. Whether or not you could tell this ending with that structure, I'm not sure, maybe you could, but that matters less to me. The design that went into episode 2, where your powers are cut off from you and you need to make choices in the moment based specifically off what you'd experienced up to that point, that's what made me fall in love with the game and I'm disappointed that they never attempted that again in the finale, despite recycling every other mechanic used throughout the game (The return of bottle collecting, and stealth specifically irk me there).

I didn't need a happy ending, I just needed a little something so that it felt like my play experience mattered, because that's the debt the game was telling me it would pay up on.

As it stands it's either the story of a girl who sacrifices her best friend to save a town, or sacrifices a town to save her best friend. Neither of those is a story I'm particularly into, and if you try to look at it as a way of dealing with grief (Just getting more time with someone) I don't think the game presents that idea well enough, getting too bogged down in the time travel mechanics and psychedelic nonsense of the final episode. Either way the ending devalues the end of episode 2, aka the part of the game that meant the most to me.

@iam3dhomer: Fair enough. I can totally see where you're coming from, but for me the ending didn't feel neat or conclusive, so the threads woven through the story don't seem like they were thrown away. I really like your idea for the puzzle-based ending, though; that could have been really powerful if it managed to draw on the myriad smaller stories you experience along the way.

I guess maybe I'm just more accepting of stories that don't end so conclusively, allowing me to muse on how unfinished tales might have played out. As for what Max's tale ultimately represented, I've got a few different theories rattling around in my head that I'm probably going to write up soon. There are a lot of themes that I feel justify the way the game ends, especially in relation to undoing Max's attempts to keep Chloe alive.

@macka1080: Yeah, it's one of those things where I get that it works for some people, and honestly I'm glad for you. I wish it had worked for me, but it in the moment it just didn't, so I was left to think about why.

@iam3dhomer: Totally. That's exactly how I feel about MGS V, which had nowhere near the effect on me that it did for a lot of people. I'm just bummed I can't share their excitement!

I'm fine with stories "undoing" events if it is part of a character's tale and growth. I'm not fine if it just to undo events as part of a running story so you can for instance kill a character in a show and then undo it just to get a reaction out of the audience. The former can be good storytelling, such as the episode of Batman TAS where Batgirl dies, resulting in a war between Batman and Jim Gordon that ultimately kills both of them before it turns out to be a nightmare Barbara's having over not admitting her identity to her father. The latter is pointless emotion baiting. And most of the time, it tends to be the latter.

The entirety of Life is Strange is about Max's attempts to use time travel to play God, even if she's doing it for the right reasons, and why it's ultimately something that can never succeed. So thematically it's fine and proper to write it the way they did. If someone's preference was for a different story where say that doesn't happen and choices add up to one of a dozen different endings, that is cool. I don't think that's just a matter of changing the ending though as there is so much baked into the story throughout that arrives at that ending.

I get it though if it didn't work for someone as the device involves a kind of unnatural idea of "undoing events." Also, it more often than not is done very poorly. I'm that way with mind control plotlines (the recent excellent Jessica Jones being the rare exception).