Well, here we are again with Max Caulfield and her time-travel powers in the increasingly ominous Oregon fishing town of Arcadia Bay.
As before, I'm going to postpone the story events talk for a special spoiler block section below, in case anyone is still worried about spoilers, and try to talk around the game a bit more. What didn't occur to me until this episode, and this really feels like a blind spot on par with "Phoenix Down", "Ash Ketchum" and "Miles Prower", that the butterflies indicating a future change based on something I did or didn't do are those heavily involved with the most well-known explanation of chaos theory: that of the butterfly flapping its wings and creating... a tornado. It's about at this point that I realized what the game was going for, and the end of this particular episode corroborated that and then some. (And the name of the episode was a real "oh, doy" moment too.)
"Ass biology."
What's bugging about the game are the, well, bugs. Not just butterflies either, but the computer kind. I talked about this with TheBUTT as well... mostly because Life is Strange is another adventure game where I'm limited in what I can discuss outside of a spoiler block, I'll admit, but they've been a thorn in my side a few times now. At least twice the game crapped out as I was travelling backwards through time, sticking me in a permanent timeless limbo unable to rewind the passage of time or resume it. Similarly, there was a key hotspot that simply refused to stay on the screen, and the game's hotspot manipulation involves staring at the thing you want to interact with and moving the mouse cursor to one or more context-sensitive commands - like, say, dragging the mouse upwards to "Look" at an object. This is also a recurring problem, but this is the first time that it happened with a plot-important hotspot and, like the above time glitches, forced me to return to the last checkpoint. When you go restart on prior checkpoints, it's essentially like rewinding time, except the game won't let you skip dialogue and cutscenes. So that's fun.
The game does chilling well. The hanging out kind, less so the scary kind. There's more quiet scenes in Life is Strange than in most other games, who are always demanding you do things. Doing stuff sucks!
Still, though, the game's writing is on-point even when it's trying and failing to emulate that ever-mysterious teen talk. It might be that the developers hedged their bets by making them all liberal arts college hipsters, but they sure don't talk about or reference anything past the 00s too often for a group of human beings born in the mid-90s. It's almost as if a bunch of 80s kids supplanted these kids' nostalgia for their own. Yet, this doesn't really diminish how well characters are developing or how the plot continues to get degrees weirder with every new episode.
Episode 3: Chaos Theory
Gentle reminder: I'm about to get plot-spoiler crazy with Episode 3 of Life is Strange. If you clicked this spoiler block by accident not expecting there to be spoilers here then... I dunno, man. Maybe see what that's about with a head doctor or something.
When we last saw Max, she had gotten through to her close friend Kate Marsh, who had been bullied to the point of teenage suicide. I managed to say all the right things to her, which is perhaps more the science fiction than travelling backwards through time given my social maladroitness, and Max went back to her room to ponder the elusive conspiracy which seems to be affecting the town. Oh, and that monster of a tornado she keeps having deadly premonitions about (Huh? Huh? Weird supernatural shit in a small Washington town? Often hilarious one-liners? Nope?).
Episode 3 is all about investigating for more answers: in Victoria's room, in the school halls, in the Principal's office, in Frank's scary RV and... in the past? Yeah, I suppose I'll have to address the woolly mammoth in the room: Max can apparently teleport back to more than just a few minutes. While searching for more clues on Rachel's disappearance and bonding with Chloe, Max manages to do her a solid by jumping back five years into her tweener body to save Chloe's beloved father William from making the fateful car trip to the grocery store that would end his life. When Max returns, causality throws the proverbial bitchin' metal slammer at the figurative stack of pogs that is every event that occurred since that moment, bringing with it huge changes: Max is now in with the Vortex Club and possible besties with Victoria; Warren's hooked up with Stella, which isn't even the nerdy girl we all expected him to hook up with; David's the Blackwell Academy busdriver rather than the security guard; and William's still alive, looking after the now-paraplegic Chloe, who presumably crashed her first car and took the destiny hit for her dear ol' dad Bill. Some kind of car-ma going on with the Price family, I suppose.
I suspect the game will somehow quickly revert to the "normal" timeline soon after the next episode starts, or else all our investigative work (not to mention bonding scenes) will have been for naught. It's a scary idea though, changing the past to create an equally crappy (albeit in different ways) future. The game's also clearly not done exploring Max's powers, giving her a new angle on it every new episode. Anyway, let's get to the decision review:
Interesting to see the near-even split on the money-taking. I didn't want to do anything that might incriminate us and our investigations in places we shouldn't be, which also explains why I left the gun behind, but maybe a gun and a fat stack of cash would come in useful later if Max's time powers can't be relied on. I decided Max wasn't a thief and Chloe wasn't either, even if we'd technically only be taking the gun back, but then I'm sure as heck that I didn't want Chloe accidentally shooting someone. I mean, she's already been shot twice so far - once by herself - before I rewound all that. Also I made some Chloe-centric choices because I'm on Team Chloe all the way: those two are adorable together, as demonstrated by the midnight school sneaking around and pool scenes. I have no idea if there's supposed to be a romantic plotline going on there, because many dudes are quick to conflate a close friendship between women with them being in lesbians with each other, but there's a certain level of Heavenly Creatures intensity with Max and Chloe's relationship, exacerbated whenever Chloe's "cooler" missing best friend Rachel Amber comes into focus. I think it stopped being about which one of them is Chloe's real "BFF" some time ago. (I mean, there was the kiss and everything...) It does give us more narrative incentive to find out what happened to Rachel too, since we can't leave that triangle dangling. I also didn't let Frank's dog get hurt because it's a goshdarn dog and Rorie would kick me off the mod team. Also it's a rescue pup and Frank gave it a silly poodle name, so how could I? The more I learn about the scary neck tattooed washout, the more I suspect that he's not all bad. Then again, I thought that about Victoria too, and she was macking on Mr. Jefferson something fierce. Hard reads, these people. I suppose that's what makes them well-written characters. Or me a sucky judge.
Our first casualty of the playthrough. I'd pour one out for Lisa, but that's sorta what killed her in the first place.
As for the minor decisions... I'm so sorry, Lisa. I should've taken the "don't dehydrate it but also don't drown it" text from Mom more seriously. I did get told last time by a commenter that I'd screwed up, but who'd have thought that a plant that big didn't need water every day? Conversely, I did help someone get less wet: Alyssa, who was splashed by a car while on the sidewalk until I intervened. I'm beginning to wonder if saving her every episode isn't going to come back to haunt me: a couple of near-misses is something, but five in a row? She's going to think I'm a witch. I have no idea what the Warren exam thing was about, and I'm starting to suspect the same was true for others with a lot of these smaller decisions like warning the homeless woman near the diner of your vision or the fireplace graffiti in Chloe's home in the past: most players simply missed those details, rather than making the conscious choice whether or not to do something. Who wouldn't write graffiti to see if it was still there in the future? And that wise homeless woman is awesome, like the Twin Peaks Log Lady without the cryptic talk. These easily ignored decisions strike me as the developers adding more reasons to want to play the game over: What were all these hidden opportunities I missed? And will they affect the ending at all? I also erased the cop's message implicating Chloe in the school raid because, as mentioned before, we're all in on Team Chloe this playthrough. I took the photo in the past because it was a collectible, and nothing gets between me and collectibles. Also, is it just me or are the first listed outcomes always the "best" ones? At least for the minor stuff? That's not for me to confirm just yet, since I've yet to discover their consequences, but I have to wonder if the game isn't showing its hand too soon.
Anyway, that's it for Episode 3 talk. Next chapter will put us firmly in creepy alternate timeline world, and it seems that Vortex Club "End of the World" party I wrangled myself into is finally happening. Let's hope I don't get a needle full of GHB in the neck.
I'm excited to see how the story concludes, though I may once again be skipping a day to keep things varied before tackling the last two episodes.
