No matter what ending you pick, the fact that the game completely trivializes all of your last 4 episodes' worth of decisions makes me lose the respect i had for this game.
Why allow it to branch if it's just going to end the same two static ways, which, at the end, erase your branches to begin with?
There are very very very few games that do not funnel you to a few set conclusions that are only marginally affected by your choices. And often when games try to do more it's poorly done, like the Fallout style where it's a slideshow of your choices that have no real emotional impact. Of the two I'd take the way Life is Strange handled it any day.
Besides, I think it's incredibly reductive to consider the ending the sole meaningful factor in experiencing something. It's like saying the only thing that matters in a person's life is the way they die, and not how they lived their actual life. The events and choices you make in the game are not trivial, because they engage you with the game and characters in a way that only happens if you are allowed to make those choices and see the consequences. Seeing Max fight and grow as a person through all the difficult choices she has to make wouldn't be half as emotionally engaging if the player was not able to participate.
@hatking: Pretty positive that does not happen if things play out the way it does. There will be evidence that something nefarious did legitimately happen to her and she will talk to the police about it. (I think the game even mentions that in her texts.) Nathan and Victoria won't end up posting that video and make fun of her either, which is really what drove her over the edge.
Or maybe they do, I don't remember the timeline on that, but I doubt Victoria would be so vicious about it after the truth comes out. And her family would also have adequate information not to condemn her for being a sinful harlotte.
@druv: Yeah, but at least she's still alive. I bet if there was an ending where you could choose to make Chloe forget Max, but everyone lived, then everyone would pick it.
In a way, it's kind of the opposite, if you look at it from Max's perspective. She remembers everything, and is a better, more complete person because of it, but she had to sacrifice so much for that.
The entire game culminates in a Donnie Darko / anti-It's a Wonderful Life situation, where the writers railroad you into a scenario in which the world and everyone living in that town is better off if Chloe is dead. It's mean spirited and unpleasant and basically makes the entire game meaningless. "Here, Max, go back in time to before you ever went back in time and just sit on your hands. All those actions you took during all the games? They don't matter because they just lead to Bad Things. That is what has to happen, because reasons."
A common theory, and one that I also prescribe to, is that Max gets her powers to spend just a little more time with Chloe before she dies. If the events of the game never happened Chloe would have died in that bathroom before Max had ever been able to rekindle her relationship with her and she would have regretted it forever. Chloe would have also died as basically just some punk kid in a bathroom and no one would have understood who she really was, not even Max or her parents. As Chloe mentions in the ending, no matter what happens in any alternate timeline, those experiences they had together are real and will forever live on with Max. Despite all the shit they went through, Max is undoubtedly a better person by the end of that game. Even if she is the only one who knows any of that happens it doesn't make it all meaningless.
The game is basically pondering the question of how far you would go to get a loved one back and spend just a little more time with them. Max is given that extra time and when you reach the ending you have the ultimate choice of whether you would sacrifice a whole town to keep that person with you, or accept the painful reality of losing someone you care about and moving on.
@hatking: Even if you might consider it a "false" choice, I do think the ending would be less impactful if that choice wasn't there. You need that sense of conflict to get a meaningful sense of what Max would be going through and empathize with the difficulty of that choice. I picked the same ending the GBeast guys did, and I do kinda feel like it's the only ending that really makes sense, but there was a significant part of me that really really wanted to pick the other ending, even feeling like it was the wrong choice. The ending statistics also prove it's not so cut and dry for everyone, and more than a few people arguing that the other ending was the only right one. I think that's a sign they did something right.
@cmpltnoob: It wasn't obvious when that kiss happened, but I felt like by the time you reach the ending it was a bit more obvious it would go in that direction, especially if you blow off Warran's advances.
It probably could have used another moment somewhere to reafirm that you were actually interested in a romance, but meh, they make a cute couple, and well done gay romances are just as rare. Or hell, well done any romances/relationships. I can't think of any other video game couple that managed to portray believable love and affection as much as Chloe and Max, romantic couple or otherwise.
I feel like Austin greatly undersold Max's maturity by the time you reach the conclusion. She went through more life changing shit in that one week than most adults go through in their entire lives. I don't know if I would actually make the "right" choice if I was put in that situation, but I think Max would.
They are so weirdly dismissive of Warren. They even somehow read that text as sarcastic instead of actually sincere and remarkably understanding like I'm pretty certain it was meant to be.
Man, the way GBEast feels about Life is Strange -- my game of the year -- I kinda hope, after they finish the whole series, Alex uses his magic rewind powers to go back to the podcast discussions so LiS gets its due. :3
I...should really finally give The Witcher 3 a try, now that we're getting into winter and I have time for longer games. Alex sold me on it here in a way that the legions of people yelling about that game haven't.
I'm actually astonished that it has ranked so highly on both Vinny and Alex's lists despite not having finished it yet. At best I expected some honorable mentions simply for that reason.
It would have been great if they had finished it already just to see how they truly felt about the full product and how it actually ranked for them, but making it into the top 5 only a little over 3 episodes in is about as much "due" as you could reasonably expect. I consider that some pretty high praise.
Why do people not like these games? This looks fantastic
These games almost require you have at least some form of interest in Japan and Japanese culture, which a lot of people just don't. Hell, even as someone who does have an interest in Japan (mainly because of the language) these games have never appealed to me.
I don't really think that is all that true. Admittedly, prior to seriously playing one of these games (4) I had a somewhat similar impression, but the stuff that makes the game enjoyable really isn't all that Japanese specific. The story is highly entertaining regardless of the setting, and the combat is action-packed and fun and over the top. The game's can be weird and silly in the way that Japanese games are weird and silly, but still not in any way that requires you to know jack about Japan to appreciate.
Probably the most blatantly Japanese element of that game was the hostess clubs, which clearly is a big thing for Japan, but it didn't add or detract anything for me. It's just kinda there.
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