Life Is Strange Episode 3 *Spoilers! They're everywhere!* (Gaming)

by Ragashingo , Official DBO Cryptarch, Wednesday, May 20, 2015, 15:32 (3475 days ago)

Yesterday was a big Destiny day, but it was also the release day for the third episode of Life is Strange.

*Warning! Practically every sentence beyond this point is a spoiler.*

To recap, Life is Strange is a story revolving around Max Caulfield, a high school senior who one day has a vision of her bay town being wiped out by a massive super tornado and subsequently discovers she has the ability to rewind brief stretches of time. She first uses these powers to save her childhood friend, Chloe, from being shot. Gameplay wise, Max's time powers let you do a variety of things such as being able to talk to someone to learn details that you can then rewind and use to make further headway with them, to almost being in two places at once since the world rewinds around you without affecting your position, to obtaining objects from people before they offer them to you, to sneaking past people by rewinding them until they're looking the other way. It's all pretty clever and well done.

The game is fairly low key with you walking around exploring small areas like your small high school or a junkyard or a diner. You talk to people and Max will comment on various people and objects when you inspect them. It is most similar to the Tale Tale type games like The Walking Dead. The key premise of the game, overall, is that your choices will matter from episode to episode, and so far they really do. In the first and second episodes, Max reconnected with her childhood friend Chloe, started to investigate the disappearance of Chole's friend Amber, and attempted to use her powers to prevent a friend, Kate March, who had been drugged and humilliated at a school party from committing suicide. Whether you were successful or not on this last point depends on the choices you had made so far!

Episode 3 opens with Max and Chole breaking into Max's school to look through the principal's records for any clues as to what happened to Amber. They then hang out together and go on more clue hunting the next day as they poke around the RV of Frank, a drug dealer that Amber might have known. At this point all the major plot thread remain unresolved. Amber's whereabouts remain unknown, who exactly drugged Kate Marsh is not really touched on, and Max and Chole relationship takes a hit as Chloe continues to become more and more self destructive... Chloe used to be a sweet kid until her father died in a car accident, now she is a sorta punk rocker girl doing drugs and getting into trouble and getting expelled from school... that type of thing. Max is finding it increasingly hard to be friends with Chloe as Chloe increasingly blames everyone else, Max included, for her own troubles, a lot of which she brought on herself.

Then things get, well, Strange.

That evening, Max, who is dejected from all the things happening around her, reminisces while looking at a old photo of herself and Chloe, when suddenly her time travel powers start acting up and she is somehow drawn five years into the past to the morning that photo was taken... by Chloe's still living father! It is in fact the day Chloe's father died in his car accident and Max, in the form of her 13 year old self, has the chance to stop it, which, after being a little freaked out by it all, she gladly and whole heartedly takes. With her task accomplished, Max is returned to the present... or nearly so... and rushes to Chloe's house to find out if she really did change things. She did! Chloe's kind, goofy father opens the door! He's actually alive! That means most everything will be better!

Except the end of each episode has had a strange happenstance or twist, and this one is the biggest yet.

Chloe's dad calls for Chloe to come see Max (who had been living out of town until that point both in the normal timeline and apparently in this new one), Max is excited and scared to see what changes she made to her best friend... and blam... Chloe does come to the door not as a troubled goth punk rocker or a sweet lovable energetic teen, but trapped in a wheelchair with a breathing tube after having suffered some kind of tragic accident! *Roll Credits*

So, some random thoughts on this episode and the series so far:

1. The creators have continued to find interesting uses for Max's powers, even 3/5ths of the way in. My favorite new use was Max's ability to surprise Chloe by unlocking rooms from the inside. She does this a few times to the point that Chloe stops being surprised. At one point they build a small bomb in the chemistry lab and use it to blow up a lock on the door, which works except it sets off an alarm! The solution is to blow the lock, set off the alarm, walk into the room, and then reverse time to before the bomb is even build and simply unlock the door! Brilliant!

2. Kate Marsh, the girl who did or did not commit suicide based on your choices and actions, was almost entirely written out of this episode. Sorta. It makes sense, since this is a small studio and only so much work can go into each episode. This episode was already larger (1.5GB vs 1) and more complex than either episodes 1 and 2. That said, Max heavily references Kate's status and even wakes up to a nightmare about what happened to Kate earlier in the day. So, while the character of Kate March does not appear, it is not as if the story forgets about her. Max does much of her investigating and sneaking around expressly for Kate's benefit.

3. The big twist at the end propels the game in an entirely new direction. In episodes 1 and 2 Max could, at most, rewind minutes of time. Now, she just undid some five years of history! It will be very interesting to see what happened to disable Chloe and to see how, or even if, Max is able to fix it. And if she would even want to! Would you rather your friend be disabled but seemingly happy and have her loving father alive, or would you have your friend be self destructing, have a dead father, but be mobile?

4. While the animation and graphics are still a bit subpar, the concepts of friendship and loss still come through pretty well. Is it perfect storytelling in every beat and every conversation? No. But it pretty darn good. And "pretty darn good" actually puts it up there with the best storytelling and conversations that matter I've seen in a game. The giant twist at the end and the possibility of exploring one or more alternate timelines is pretty cool!

5. If this game has taught me anything it's that I know nothing of plants. In Episodes 1 & 2 Max is given the chance to take care of the small plant in her room... I tried to do my best for it but managed to accidentally drown it by the start of episode 3. Perhaps that was the best twist of all! :p (I now have to replay all three episodes to save my poor plant!)