Anyone ever get around to playing this one yet? At first I thought it was gonna be some pretentious indie game but it actually wasnt half bad and pretty damn depressing at times
Sig by @Brokendeck
I loved it. Finished it a few times but I always pick the same ending.
I played the first episode a few weeks ago and I would definitely like to play the rest of it. I'm very interested to see where the story is going. I'm waiting for the next Steam sale though since I don't feel like paying the full price for it.
It absolutely is a pretentious indie game but I love it anyway. May as well regurgitate some of what I've said about it before.
It's a good example of games being far greater than the sum of their parts and illustrates some of the mild benefits of the episodic format after Telltale completely drained the formula of all merit. Individually it has weird acting, shaky writing and questionable mechanics but it comes together into one of the most cohesive games I've played in a while.
It's a beautifully bitter-sweet yet disturbing story, all of the characters are wonderful to the point where l miss them all once I'm finished playing and it's drenched in this fucking magical atmosphere of idyllic nostalgia that just makes you want to crawl through the screen and be part of their world. It's very much about these small, fleeting moments of awe you'll just want to stop and take in. Don't expect an air-tight, boundary crushing sci fi epic - the sci fi is the weakest aspect, and the game's greatest strengths are in portrayals of the mundane.
There's a bit in episode 3 where Max and Chloe are lying together, no talking, just watching the morning light bleed through a window covered by an american flag, at the dust lazily drifting around, with Lua by Bright Eyes playing from a radio in the corner. It's the gayest shit and I absolutely adore it.
That scene is entirely inconsequential and "pointless" and yet for me was the most defining example of what Life is Strange can be, and photography by extension. Beauty in the ordinary.
==
(On the ending - spoilers here)
The entire final episode is rushed and by far the weakest of the five, but the ending(s) itself is perfectly reasonable and thematically consistent. The reasoning I usually see is that it makes everything the player has done pointless, whichI'll argue isn't true. Chloe left before the player even met her and the time power gave us a full week to know her, to resolve their friendship and Max's regret/guilt/grief.
With a bit more care the whole game could be analogous to grief, with Max's time reversal being denial and Chloe's sacrifice being acceptance. If Chloe doesn't die, nothing is learned, but if Max truly loves her she can forsake everything else to keep her alive. On a more pragmatic level we brought the killer to justice and saved the lives of Kate and Victoria at least.
The time powers are inconsistent and illogical throughout the game, arbitrarily bending for the sake of plot convenience. Ultimately the cause of her powers is just irrelevant and the sci fi concepts are the weakest part of the game, it's just a catalyst to tell an emotion-driven story with some slight gameplay twists on the episodic game format. To get bogged down in the science and reason would be a misstep and only make the inconsistencies more glaring.
The stealth level was hella jarring too but I found it extremely short and simple to get through, though I know people have a ridiculous amount of trouble with that and the earlier bottle segment so I'll accept they're probably misguided in design and i'm just the anomaly by not having an issue.
==
Related: this has been my phone background for most of this year now.
