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seravid posted:Sorry if this has been addressed in spoilers, but did any of the Native American themes from the first game made it to this one? Not yet as far as I can tell aside from the whole deal with the raven (which seems to be serving as Chloe's equivalent to Max's doe, though it seems to be getting a bit more focus). I'm going to assume this Damon Merrick character they keep mentioning at the beginning is going to come into play later (unless he was the skinny guy with the tattoos Chloe bumped into) as well (I'm still not entirely clear where this game's plot is going but what little we did get is intriguing so far). Larryb fucked around with this message at 20:26 on Sep 10, 2017 |
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Sep 10, 2017 19:58
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Larryb posted:It's been a while since I actually read or saw The Tempest but I'd imagine there are a few parallels to the general story of Life is Strange in there as well. There are a whole lot of directions it could go, or it could mean nothing at all besides the namesake. But in the original Shakespeare, Prospero is the nobleman turned sorceror dude who conjures up a magical storm as part of an elaborate plot to bring all his rivals in one place marry off his daughter Miranda. In this episode we learn that Nathan is cast as Caliban, who is enslaved by Prospero and once tried to rape Miranda, who eventually hatches a plot to take his revenge upon Prospero. Near the end when Chloe sees herself on the poster, she seems to be in garb becoming of the witch Sycorax, an unseen character in the play who is the mother of Caliban and mistreated all the sprites on the island before Prospero started using them instead. I have no idea where I'm going with this but they've at least got to know what they're doing with the whole conjuring a storm connection.
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Sep 10, 2017 20:22
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Seems fitting enough, though if they're running with that metaphor that would mean that Rachel was somehow responsible for causing the storm (possibly through her death), but we'll just have to see where things go from here. I think I read somewhere they were trying to get a new episode out every 8-10 weeks which if true means we'll probably be seeing the next chapter around late next month or early November at the earliest.
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Sep 10, 2017 20:49
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I'm wondering if the storm is specifically because of Rachel's death somehow.
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Sep 10, 2017 20:57
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If Rachel did cause the storm that kind of puts a new spin on the endings to the previous game. After her death, Chloe somewhat inadvertently becomes Rachel's proxy (she inherits a lot of her mannerisms and as mentioned earlier, she kind of is the storm personified), a tool for her revenge against Jefferson, the Prescotts and Arcadia Bay as a whole. If you chose to sacrifice Chloe at the end you are essentially pacifying Rachel's spirit by removing the last source of her anger, freeing Chloe from her burden in the process (meaning that in a way, Nathan is responsible for both starting and breaking the cycle). If you choose to sacrifice the Bay, you are effectively letting Rachel win, turning Max into just another tool in the process. A murderer who chose her personal feelings over the greater good (look at her face during the ending, Max is basically a shell of a human being at that point). Though on the other hand, I suppose you could argue that sacrificing the Bay is also demolishing a system that had long been corrupted beyond repair (which is alluded to several times over the course of the original game). So therefore Chloe giving Max the final choice isn't just about saving the town, it's about saving Max as well, giving them both a chance at redemption (in other words, the only way to truly save Chloe is to let her die). I might be reading too much into this but it does kind of make the first game's ending(s) look a bit better in context. Larryb fucked around with this message at 21:39 on Sep 10, 2017 |
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Sep 10, 2017 21:19
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Life is
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Sep 10, 2017 21:25
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Sunsetaware posted:Life is Here's someone who gets it. Larryb posted:If Rachel did cause the storm that kind of puts a new spin on the endings to the previous game. After her death, Chloe somewhat inadvertently becomes Rachel's proxy (she inherits a lot of her mannerisms and as mentioned earlier, she kind of is the storm personified), a tool for her revenge against Jefferson, the Prescotts and Arcadia Bay as a whole. I think if we're only reading the first game in its own context then it wants you to conclude that the storm is more or less Chloe personified, but the tornado actually being Rachel's Revenge does add a new dimension. I'm not sure how they'll get to that point unless you spend a significant amount of time in the next couple episodes either playing as Rachel or suggesting that Chloe just forgets all this information prior to Life is Strange. Or better yet, an alt-universe Max drops out of the sky at the end of Episode 2 and all three ladies team up to correct the timestream for the mega waifu ending.
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Sep 10, 2017 21:38
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Also, teenagers are dramatic and dumb and every crush is MY ONE TRUE LOVE!
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Sep 10, 2017 21:41
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exquisite tea posted:Here's someone who gets it. That theory would also lend more credence to the "Rachel is the doe" concept, with Rachel essentially making sure Max stays on the path she wanted her to take. Yeah, there are a lot of key events leading up to the first game that Chloe was both not present for nor had any knowledge of until Life is Strange proper so I'm curious how they're going to handle that (swapping control over to Rachel for a few parts is probably their best bet in my opinion). Though that would also involve a time jump or two as at the moment we're currently three years before the start of the original game. Larryb fucked around with this message at 23:54 on Sep 10, 2017 |
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Sep 10, 2017 21:47
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Larryb posted:I'm going to assume this Damon Merrick character they keep mentioning at the beginning is going to come into play later (unless he was the skinny guy with the tattoos Chloe bumped into) as well (I'm still not entirely clear where this game's plot is going but what little we did get is intriguing so far).
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Sep 10, 2017 22:11
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Eshettar posted:You know how Life Is Strange feels to me up until Episode 5? Like the first season of a TV show that got cancelled prematurely. It feels like they were writing without much thought to how much time they had for the overall arch. By Ep 4, I was wondering how they were going to resolve everything because, for some reason, I thought there were six episodes and it was seeming they were really running short on time. Then they only had one more episode. There's recorded (and cut -- although it shows up in one of the trailers) dialogue of Nathan saying he's foreseen the storm coming and it's going to kill everyone. It seems pretty obvious they had planning issues, or just decided to focus more on Max and Chloe than the nature plot. Who knows. But it's very, very apparent on a second playthrough that there's a heap of plot threads that are just left to dangle in the wind.
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Sep 11, 2017 01:35
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There was apparently cut dialogue for both William and Rachel during the nightmare sequence as well, along with another ending where Chloe gets shot but lives. Either there were some last minute rewrites or they just weren't financially able/didn't have enough time to give the game the ending they wanted (and it feels like there's a slight disconnect between episode 5 and the rest of the game as a result). Some of the stuff was clearly planned from the beginning though, like Jefferson for example (fun fact: apparently the "Too obvious?" line in the classroom was actually a writer's note in the script that the actor read by mistake), though he apparently hadn't been told he was the villain until he showed up to record for Episode 4. Actually, I hope the same thing doesn't happen with Before the Storm to be honest (especially since we've only got two episodes left and there wasn't a lot in the way of story content in the first one). Larryb fucked around with this message at 02:22 on Sep 11, 2017 |
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Sep 11, 2017 02:14
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The Elder Prescott always just seemed like a giant red Herring to me, and it never really felt weird that it wasn't resolved because there was nothing to really resolve. He's just a rich rear end in a top hat who's son is incredibly mentally ill and he doesn't believe it.
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Sep 11, 2017 02:46
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Paul Zuvella posted:The Elder Prescott always just seemed like a giant red Herring to me, and it never really felt weird that it wasn't resolved because there was nothing to really resolve. He's just a rich rear end in a top hat who's son is incredibly mentally ill and he doesn't believe it. Not really? He also funds the Vortex Club and was furious with his son for letting it risk being removed from the school. You also spend a lot of time going through their old barn which basically screams 'this family is up to something!!'. There's this whole thing of them buying up Native American land and planning to build cheap houses everywhere and having a state of the art shelter that'd be great to survive a storm (literally called Stormbreaker, IIRC) -- the storm which Nathan knows about. I want to say there's stuff in the dark room shelter itself that doesn't quite add up with events as told/shown, but it's been forever since I played LiS. Milkfred E. Moore fucked around with this message at 03:25 on Sep 11, 2017 |
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Sep 11, 2017 03:20
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In the same boat as a few here are - huge fan of original LiS, heard about BtS and was not interested because of different dev, lack of interest in Chloe prequel, etc. Bought it while a little tipsy a while ago and so glad I did. I enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would and am really intrigued to see where they are going next. Dialogue was a lot more natural, animation was way better, and this episode totally sucked me back into Arcadia Bay in a big way. I don't mind if Rachel has some sort of power if it connects with how Max gets her powers - that'd be an interesting connection. It also made a great excuse to replay LiS and drat, it still has magic. It certainly has its faults but it's so goddamn earnest and engrossing. The first 3 episodes in particular are wonderful - that morning scene in Chloe's room with Lua playing is probably my favourite gaming moment of all time. I loved being back in that room in BtS. I try not to get think too deeply about the time-travel mechanic in LiS because it's fun and really doesn't work if you think about it too much, but have the developers ever expounded upon "autopilot" Max when she travels back to the photographs? That part was always the most difficult plot aspect for me to accept/understand. Sometimes Max is fine (like when she created the evidence board with Chloe) and other times she seems to just be blacked out (like when Chloe takes her to the lighthouse).
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Sep 11, 2017 04:25
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Paul Zuvella posted:The Elder Prescott always just seemed like a giant red Herring to me, and it never really felt weird that it wasn't resolved because there was nothing to really resolve. He's just a rich rear end in a top hat who's son is incredibly mentally ill and he doesn't believe it. Yeah. Money and development constraints were of course always issues for Dontnod but it's clear from interviews and commentary that the direction for Life is Strange was always locked in place and that was their vision from the very beginning.
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Sep 11, 2017 06:10
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el oso posted:I try not to get think too deeply about the time-travel mechanic in LiS because it's fun and really doesn't work if you think about it too much, but have the developers ever expounded upon "autopilot" Max when she travels back to the photographs? That part was always the most difficult plot aspect for me to accept/understand. Sometimes Max is fine (like when she created the evidence board with Chloe) and other times she seems to just be blacked out (like when Chloe takes her to the lighthouse). 1. My theory is that whenever Max photo jumps, it's actually her consciousness moving between all the alternate timelines. The Max that gets left behind has the same history and memories of the old Max, but often no recollection of how she got there until old Max can jump back into that specific timeline. By the point in the game when Chloe and Max reach the lighthouse, she's been photo jumping around so much that all the timelines are starting to become fractured. I interpreted Max's nightmare as the actual effect of all these displaced timelines, and the evil Max in the diner as one of the unfortunate alt-timeline suckers who now inhabits a fragmented and collapsing reality. It follows then logically that the Max we play at the very beginning of the game is probably another one of these alt-timeline Maxes, as she awakens from her vision of the storm super disoriented. But how would she see the storm coming if she didn't yet have her powers, unless of course she already did because her consciousness was stuck in a time loop? 2. Video games.
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Sep 11, 2017 08:19
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The terrible secret of the Prescott family is that they're rich, and they're assholes.
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Sep 11, 2017 08:25
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Gosh, I adore BTS, but holy poo poo I miss Max. I just want a epilogue one-shot that's just Max sunk deep into a depressive fugue being haunted by blue butterflies.
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Sep 11, 2017 09:44
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Arach posted:Gosh, I adore BTS, but holy poo poo I miss Max. I just want a epilogue one-shot that's just Max sunk deep into a depressive fugue being haunted by blue butterflies. Well, there's the bonus episode where you play as Max coming up...
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Sep 11, 2017 09:49
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Lt. Danger posted:The terrible secret of the Prescott family is that they're rich, and they're assholes. 
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Sep 11, 2017 09:55
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Milky Moor posted:Not really? He also funds the Vortex Club and was furious with his son for letting it risk being removed from the school. You also spend a lot of time going through their old barn which basically screams 'this family is up to something!!'. There's this whole thing of them buying up Native American land and planning to build cheap houses everywhere and having a state of the art shelter that'd be great to survive a storm (literally called Stormbreaker, IIRC) -- the storm which Nathan knows about. I want to say there's stuff in the dark room shelter itself that doesn't quite add up with events as told/shown, but it's been forever since I played LiS. Storm Shelters are like, not a horribly rare thing. The fact that Nathan turned it into a weird photo lab with Jefferson is something the dad does not even need to know about. Also the Vortex Club is literally a school sanctioned club for seniors to plan events in the school. The Party was an official Blackwell Event. Maybe the dad is mad because he is a Blackwell Alum who likes tradition and was a member of the club himself. He also is rich and funds like literally everything at the school, he built a dorm for fucks sake. The point of Red Herrings is that they seem legit until the end of the story, getting upset that something seemed really fishy in a mystery story and then didn't pan out is really, really stupid.
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Sep 11, 2017 10:08
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Just bought the game last night. The D&D game part was awesome.
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Sep 11, 2017 10:09
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Paul Zuvella posted:Storm Shelters are like, not a horribly rare thing. The fact that Nathan turned it into a weird photo lab with Jefferson is something the dad does not even need to know about. Incorrect.
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Sep 11, 2017 10:22
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In a way, the Vortex Club does summon the storm: by being rich, and assholes. This angers Chloe, whose rage incarnates as the storm.
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Sep 11, 2017 11:08
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As this game has a sort of anti-authority, youthful lefty attitude, I assume Prescott the elder is just supposed to be a stereotype of the Republican donor class. There's an old-timey letter in the barn threatening someone over debts from an even older ancestor of the family. Even the choice of the name is probably supposed to be a sly reference to the Bush family, as the (grand)father of the ex-Presidents was named Prescott Bush, who is best known today for his investment banking career tying him to Nazi Germany.
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Sep 11, 2017 11:14
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chloe & max are antifa af, tbh
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Sep 11, 2017 22:14
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Craptacular! posted:As this game has a sort of anti-authority, youthful lefty attitude, I assume Prescott the elder is just supposed to be a stereotype of the Republican donor class. There's an old-timey letter in the barn threatening someone over debts from an even older ancestor of the family. You think this game made in France named one its characters based on an obscure Bush family reference?
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Sep 11, 2017 23:03
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socialsecurity posted:You think this game made in France named one its characters based on an obscure Bush family reference? The game's script was written by an American living in California.
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Sep 12, 2017 00:21
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TEENAGE WITCH posted:chloe & max are antifa af, tbh Chloe yes, Max is the sort who posted tons of Occupy articles on Facebook but never actually went to one.
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Sep 12, 2017 01:14
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Chloe is quite obviously an accelerationist.
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Sep 12, 2017 01:30
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I started up the first episode of LiS again and drat, the moment Max puts on those headphones and To All of You starts playing is just magical. The title scrim might as well have said "you will be obsessed with this game for years to come" at that point.
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Sep 12, 2017 08:31
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exquisite tea posted:I started up the first episode of LiS again and drat, the moment Max puts on those headphones and To All of You starts playing is just magical. The title scrim might as well have said "you will be obsessed with this game for years to come" at that point.  I decided to play through season 1 to take up time until episode 2 of Before The Storm arrives. That opening corridor walk is amazing.
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Sep 12, 2017 08:59
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exquisite tea posted:I started up the first episode of LiS again and drat, the moment Max puts on those headphones and To All of You starts playing is just magical. The title scrim might as well have said "you will be obsessed with this game for years to come" at that point. The end of episode 3 with the Chloe wheelchair reveal is up there as one of the best moments in any game I've played.
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Sep 12, 2017 09:29
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I am honestly curious as to how Before the Storm will recontextualize the series now. As a prequel I think it's definitely written with the expectation that you'll have played LiS first, but I do wonder how the experience would be for someone who hasn't already completed the original. One thing you do kind of lose is the aura of mystery surrounding Rachel Amber. In Season 1 you're looking at the whole situation from Max's perspective, so Rachel is this impossibly ethereal figure loved and admired by seemingly everybody in Arcadia Bay. She is, in a sense, everything Max aspires to be and is not. Any attempt to depict her character is necessarily going to run up against the problem of having to make her relateable and therefore, more human. But if you were to marathon the entire thing chronologically I bet it would influence more people toward the Save Chloe ending, unless the remaining two episodes incorporate some new dimension to the storm. Given the prequel's namesake however, I think it's quite likely this will happen to some extent. Playing the game from Chloe's perspective naturally brings a more sympathetic treatment to her character in expressing the pain she feels in Max's absence. You could certainly read how unfairly Max treated Chloe in the original Life is Strange, but it required a little more legwork. Here it's made much more overt. As an aside, one thing I absolutely love about Life is Strange is that Dontnod were confident enough to let Chloe come off as really abrasive and confrontational throughout almost the entirety of the first two episodes. The rocky start to her character arc is precisely what allows the player to fall ten times harder for Chloe by the end of the game. When people finish the first episode and post "who is this Chloe man what a jerk" I am like  Anyway I think about this game starring gay twee teens way too much. Life is Strange is so freaking good!
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Sep 12, 2017 10:17
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I'm still sticking with the Rachel's Revenge theory regarding the storm unless the remaining episodes say otherwise (with Chloe and Max basically serving as her pawns). It does make me hate the Sacrifice Chloe ending a bit less at any rate (as then it becomes less about letting a friend die and more about saving the souls of two (maybe even three) broken people). I mean think about it, by the time episode 5 rolls around the Max Caulfield we knew from the start of the game is basically already gone. The more she tries to fix things, the more things seem to fall apart around her and at that point she's become so obsessed with protecting Chloe that it's literally taken over her entire life. Chloe knows this, so offering up her life is her way of trying to give Max some peace by taking away the burden that's been forced upon her. As for the prequel, it is sort of interesting to see things from Chloe's perspective (especially with the revelation that she did make some effort to try to keep in contact with Max but eventually gave up due to a consistent lack of a response). It doesn't completely vilify her though as there is an entry in her diary that says that if Max ever returned Chloe would probably take her back in a heartbeat (which she pretty much does). I forget, but does the first game ever really explain why Max fell out of contact with Chloe for so many years? Larryb fucked around with this message at 11:34 on Sep 12, 2017 |
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Sep 12, 2017 11:28
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exquisite tea posted:I am honestly curious as to how Before the Storm will recontextualize the series now. As a prequel I think it's definitely written with the expectation that you'll have played LiS first, but I do wonder how the experience would be for someone who hasn't already completed the original. One thing you do kind of lose is the aura of mystery surrounding Rachel Amber. In Season 1 you're looking at the whole situation from Max's perspective, so Rachel is this impossibly ethereal figure loved and admired by seemingly everybody in Arcadia Bay. She is, in a sense, everything Max aspires to be and is not. Any attempt to depict her character is necessarily going to run up against the problem of having to make her relateable and therefore, more human. But if you were to marathon the entire thing chronologically I bet it would influence more people toward the Save Chloe ending, unless the remaining two episodes incorporate some new dimension to the storm. Given the prequel's namesake however, I think it's quite likely this will happen to some extent. Playing the game from Chloe's perspective naturally brings a more sympathetic treatment to her character in expressing the pain she feels in Max's absence. You could certainly read how unfairly Max treated Chloe in the original Life is Strange, but it required a little more legwork. Here it's made much more overt. That stuff about Rachel is part of why I don't really want to get into BTS just yet. I don't really want to/care to know anything more about Rachel Amber. Like you say, she's more a symbol than a person. And the other part is sort of what Larryb says. I don't really want BTS to re-contextualize LiS. I really like LiS just as it is. As much as I'm like 'duuuhhh what about the presccottts???' I don't think the story and world is at all served better by more magic or whatever.
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Sep 12, 2017 11:43
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Milky Moor posted:That stuff about Rachel is part of why I don't really want to get into BTS just yet. I don't really want to/care to know anything more about Rachel Amber. Like you say, she's more a symbol than a person. I actually thought of that particular theory because of what we know of BtS so far (what with The Tempest parallels and Rachel's possible wind powers or at least a very strong connection to nature shown at the end. Though there are some hints that Rachel could have been guiding things along in the original too, the doe for example). I don't mind a bit of re-contextualization to be honest seeing as if things are going where I think they're going, the endings to the original game are going to look a lot better with that information in mind. Besides that, it's still a pretty fun game overall and in my opinion a worthy successor to the original. It's nice to get a chance to see these characters one last time as odds are good that none of them will be showing up in DontNod's official sequel (speaking of which, there hasn't been any further news on that yet has there?). You might want to wait until at least Episode 2 is out as the game is a bit light on plot so far (with the only real hints being right at the end) but I'd still say it's worth picking up. Larryb fucked around with this message at 12:10 on Sep 12, 2017 |
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Sep 12, 2017 12:04
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Larryb posted:I forget, but does the first game ever really explain why Max fell out of contact with Chloe for so many years? I'm not sure if it's stated explicitly but it must have been difficult for Max to speak to Chloe after her dad died. The experience was pretty traumatizing for Max too, having been present at Chloe's house shortly before it happened. Also some of it is just regular old friends losing touch with time and distance, which is a normal part of growing up. I don't think Max realized how much it hurt Chloe, and as a teenager she was probably thinking more about her own life in exciting new Seattle than brokedown, lovely Arcadia Bay. This isn't to condone or condemn her behavior, but people just drift apart sometimes.
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Sep 12, 2017 13:08
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Makes sense. An interesting thing about Life is Strange is that, if you think about it, there really are no heroes in this series. While only a few are genuinely malicious nearly everyone involved contributes to the problem in some fashion whether it's their own fault or not. Hell, Max herself ends up causing more damage by the end than any of the actual villains do.
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Sep 12, 2017 14:43
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