Life Is Strange | [NO SPOILERS] Got a second fanfic printed! |
- [NO SPOILERS] Got a second fanfic printed!
- [NO SPOILERS] To all of you by Missxdelaney
- [NO SPOILERS] Life is Strange - Welcome to Blackwell Academy- just finished!
- [NO SPOILERS] Found this in my old sketchbook from when i first played life is strange before the storm. Im not really good at sketching cause i dont draw that much but i thought this was pretty neat at the time.
- [ALL] LIS2 bad reviews: politics and 'SJW agenda'
- [ALL] What kind of writings do you want to see about Life is Strange?
- [NO SPOILERS] My first tattoo
- [No Spoilers] Does anyone else find this series “cozy”?
- [ALL] My Opinions on Life is Strange: Before the Storm and Rachel Amber's Development [Extremely Long Essay Post]
- [NO SPOILERS] LiS2 Complete Season purchase problem
- [no spoilers] Max by @ilirical on Instagram
- [NO SPOILERS] what’s the best order to play the games in
- [S1] [OC] [WIP] To the ones we left behind...
- [ALL] My LiS2 Episode 5 Ending Wasn't Satisfying
- [All] Call of BattleFeel®™ Killer Bean Edition
- [NO SPOILERS] LiS 1 or LiS 2?
| [NO SPOILERS] Got a second fanfic printed! Posted: 28 Jan 2020 07:55 AM PST
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| [NO SPOILERS] To all of you by Missxdelaney Posted: 28 Jan 2020 01:11 PM PST
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| [NO SPOILERS] Life is Strange - Welcome to Blackwell Academy- just finished! Posted: 28 Jan 2020 12:50 PM PST
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| Posted: 27 Jan 2020 06:08 PM PST
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| [ALL] LIS2 bad reviews: politics and 'SJW agenda' Posted: 28 Jan 2020 12:21 AM PST So I finished LIS2 yesterday, then I checked reviews on Metacritic and I was disappointed. User Score is 4.7 / 10. Every second comment is a complaint about 'leftist propaganda', 'SJW agenda', 'politics' etc. Wow. Just wow. First of all, I loved the game so much, as well as the previous seasons. I didn't feel any pressure of 'propaganda'. As a white guy, I didn't feel like the game portrays 'every single white man as a racist' (as many comments claim). I came to the conclusion that every hate comment is from people who are racists themselves in real life. Because the normal person wouldn't butthurt about such things. I have no other explanation for their reviews. I'm not talking about those people who simply didn't like the plot twists or something else, but people who only complain about SJW agenda. Also, I don't believe all those comments are made by teenagers or young people. It's obvious that those haters, judging by their speech, are grown-ass men. The question is WHY would grown-ass racist conservatives even play a game like this? This is a game about teenagers and the previous game was too, featuring a lot of similar topics that are too sensitive for conservatives. Like someone forced them to play it and now they butthurt. Well, I get it when a franchise is like 20-30 years old and has a huge fanbase of every age, so when the significant changes to the series are coming, most people can react badly (like most Devil May Cry fans hate DmC 2013). But this is not the case for LIS, so I don't get the hate. It even feels like those reviews on Metacritic are fake, probably some community of patriots on Facebook randomly found out about this game's agenda in the news and decided to ruin the score by writing hate comments. I'm not American, btw. I'm from Russia, but even I get it that the topic of racism is a thing for the US, especially towards Latin America. Btw, I decided to check Russian reviews from some popular video game magazines and websites. And they are racist too. They also complain about 'propaganda' and that 'poor white people portrayed bad and while Mexican couple in episode 5 is good simply because they are not white' bla bla. Jeez, Sean and Daniel's grandparents are not racist, Captain Spirit's dad is not racist, that writer Brody is not racist, Finn and other guys from the farm are not, Anton the driver is not racist, people from AWAY are not racist. WTF people complain about? Also, a woman that made a review on Youtube said 'this game should bring up the 'teen' subjects, not politics and racism', yeah like the kids with Mexican roots couldn't ever face the problems this game is talking about, sure. This woman even contacted the directors of LIS2 and interviewed them, but still made an awful review, only mentioning that the game is too liberal and is not worth it. It's sad that developers, after all this work, have to face terrible reviews from stupid people who are not even the target audience of this game...There's a high chance that developers will decide to stop with this project :( Does anybody know if the game is at least paid off at the moment? Or not yet? Is the game overall considered failed or not? [link] [comments] | ||
| [ALL] What kind of writings do you want to see about Life is Strange? Posted: 28 Jan 2020 04:02 AM PST Hello /r/lifeisstrange I enjoy writing long winded essays and critical stuff about this game and what I think about them. I tend to ask this in my previous posts about the game, but no one really says what they'd like to see next from me and I have a hard time thinking of an idea that people will enjoy. I wrote a long winded post, probably my longest, about Before the Storm and what I thought of it. Despite only being up for a couple hours, it was downvoted to hell and back and no one really gave any real criticism about the post, they either ignored it or downvoted it. I don't think I'll repost it, despite writing basically 7000 words worth of my opinions on it. It sucks, but nothing I can really do since people didn't like it at all and I didn't want to start any flame wars or drama because I didn't really like Before the Storm or Rachel as a whole. So, I just decided to post this. What do you want to see critically analyzed about Life is Strange? I'll focus primarily on Life is Strange and Life is Strange 2. You can offer suggestions about Before the Storm, but considering I do hold negative criticisms about the game and that seems to garner hatred no matter what, I'm hesitant to write about it. Let me please know about what you wanna see, because I honestly love writing about Life is Strange regardless of if my opinions are positive or negative. [link] [comments] | ||
| Posted: 27 Jan 2020 06:44 PM PST
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| [No Spoilers] Does anyone else find this series “cozy”? Posted: 27 Jan 2020 09:45 PM PST Honestly, the only game series imo that is so cozy if that makes sense....the word that explains this series came to me when I was playing captain spirits... I just want to relax and drink a beer while playing these games. I remember playing the first one for the first time and just got lost in the world while downing some beers and vicariously reliving my youthful livelihood through the characters. Something about just exploring the areas and taking the dialogue in slowly made it a peaceful and engaging experience for me despite the darkness that came with it. Anyone else agree??? [link] [comments] | ||
| Posted: 28 Jan 2020 02:06 PM PST (Warning: This is an extremely long post, about 6500 words. People very much wanted to read this after I took it down, so I reposted it. Like always this is not an attack on anyone who does like Rachel or does like Before the Storm. This is simply my opinion on the game and her character, and the issues I have with both.) Now as a massive fan of Chloe Price and Life is Strange, a game I have dumped hundreds of hours into over the course of like four or five years, you'd think I would love and enjoy a prequel game where you actually play as Chloe! Well to tell you the truth... I don't like Before the Storm all that much. And I have a very weird relationship with the game and the fans it brought it. This oncoming opinion piece is primarily about the main story and Chloe and Rachel's relationship. If you want my opinions on other things, go ahead and ask in the comments. But I'll say the best parts of the game are definitely when you're not involving yourself with the main story. When you're dealing with Chloe's family or hanging around with Steph and Mikey or talking to Skip, those are the fun bits that I think are very cool and well written. But when you dive into the actual story, it begins to fall apart for me. Now to begin I missed out on the beginning and initial hype of Life is Strange. So I was obsessed, but also really hoping I'd be around for the stuff for Life is Strange 2, which at the time was announced to be in development by Dontnod and not have anything to do with the first game. Which while disappointing, I was fine with. 2017 came and around this time on places like 4chan and Tumblr, there were supposed "leaks" of concept art of a Life is Strange prequel started popping up all over. These were convincing, but not everyone wanted to lend credence to this because Dontnod had already said they were working on a Life is Strange 2 that was unrelated to Max and Chloe. I was happy and excited, but cautious simply based on not wanting to get excited about a game that might not exist. Then out of nowhere at the Microsoft E3 2017 presentation, the official trailer for Life is Strange: Before the Storm with the backdrop of Daughter's Numbers was shown. I was excited as all hell. It was only going to be three episodes, and later would be a bonus episode, but I was happy. I was excited to finally be a part of this initial pre-final release of Life is Strange and could go into theories and stuff. I was even excited to actually learn about... Rachel Amber. Now I am not the biggest fan of Rachel Amber. Prior to Before the Storm, I always wanted to know what had led her to make the decisions that she made in the original game. She had made bad decisions that were detrimental to Chloe's mental health in the long run, but what had actually led to that when Chloe and Frank and literally everyone in Arcadia Bay had spoken so highly of her? Like Max, we're led to believe that Rachel was a good person who ended up making some bad decisions. Then Before the Storm came out, and my perception completely changed by the end of the game. As I played, some of the things Deck Nine had put in were shocking. Like I could not believe what I was seeing in a game in a series that was so based in some sort of reality, Before the Storm ended up looking so much worse in comparison. One of the most important qualities of a game with a duo of main protagonists is that they need to be likable. By the end of the first episode of the game, I did not like Rachel the same way I liked Chloe in the first game. The thing with Chloe was that she made bad rash decisions which she would apologize for. Her life was shit. That much we can clear up, and that kind of thing added on with the fact that she is likely mentally ill helps you to understand why Chloe says or does the things she does. Rachel's whole deal revolves around the fact that she thinks her dad is cheating on her mom, and that upsets her. That is a definite reason to be upset, but that entire first episode leads you to believe there are ulterior motives for Rachel suddenly appearing to Chloe after their night in the prologue. It's a little unnerving for me, as someone who has been in emotionally manipulative and abusive relationships and I see a lot of that in what Rachel was doing to Chloe. Initially, we're let to believe that Rachel likes Chloe because Chloe is like her. Someone who absolutely hates the fuck out of Arcadia Bay and just wants to leave it forever. But you can slowly tell that Rachel knows how people are by reading them, she's smart that way. She's a perfect straight-A student with her father being the district attorney. She's smart, not dumb. She can easily tell that Chloe is someone with problems, and some of the ways that Rachel reacts to Chloe are clear signs that her motives for befriending Chloe are not entirely pure. One initial scene of this is when they are on the train, and Chloe begins to tell Rachel about William and his death after she asks about Bongo. Chloe misunderstands and basically starts getting upset bringing him up, but Rachel just sits there and does nothing before saying: "I meant Bongo." While Chloe gets embarrassed, Rachel could have said anything other than that to stop Chloe from feeling stupid. When they start spying, in which they spot Rachel's dad and this upsets Rachel, she makes Chloe insist to steal the wine from a couple arguing. This is the first of Rachel's really toxic behavior that involves making Chloe do something for her. Chloe suggests a liquor store, but Rachel wants to steal it but makes Chloe do the actual stealing. Of course, Chloe has this need to have someone give her some sort of positive support. And seeing that Rachel is getting irritable and upset, Chloe does it. Then they leave after they do steal it, with Rachel just swigging it down. This entire scene revolves around a huge problem caused by Rachel. Rachel took Chloe to the park with the intention of seeing if her dad was cheating. She confirms this, gets pissed, and starts getting all standoffish when Chloe assumes it's because of her. For Chloe this is completely understandable. She believes herself to be pretty shitty, and she believes she's simply being the root of the problem like she always thinks. Rachel refuses to tell Chloe what's going on with her, which becomes the root of all of this as a problem. Rachel knows Chloe has problems with social interactions. Rachel knowingly took Chloe to the park. This is all like clear manipulation going on. And when they get to the junkyard, Rachel continues to not tell Chloe what's going on. This scene in the junkyard is probably the emotional height of the entire main game, not counting Farewell. This scene is gut wrenching to watch because it's all clear signs of Rachel manipulating Chloe. Chloe starts freaking out and melting down while Rachel, with a very stale and guilting tone confronts Chloe. There is this weird thing where you can't tell if Rachel is 100% knowing she's manipulating Chloe. But there is definitely a tone of manipulation whether Rachel intended to or not, which of course results in Chloe's full on emotional breakdown with the bat. I could dissect every little moment from the game, but I'm not going to. Not because I want to, but because of something I'll discuss shortly. Let's talk about Max. Max is not seen in the main game. She is the Rachel figure of this game, along with William. We talk about Max, though, in the exact opposite way that we talk about Rachel in the first game. The thing is, we don't actually have that moment where we realize there's more to Max. Now from an outside perspective, we don't need that. As a pre-established fan of Life is Strange, we know that every hateful thing Chloe says about Max in this game is a byproduct of her BPD and abandonment in full stream. We know Max is not this tyrant abusing monster who ruined purposefully went out of her way to ruin Chloe's life. We know that Max had her own anxiety and issues from being forced to move away when she and Chloe needed each other the most. But we know Chloe has a lot of repressed issues about Max, especially during her meltdown in the junkyard. We're led to believe this breakdown is all about Rachel and Rachel walking away. But when you smash things they're primarily about Max. Which shows that she's projecting her love for Max onto Rachel. This is an important facet of Chloe's personality and subsequent problems when it comes to Rachel. Because when Rachel asks Chloe to do something or Rachel is in trouble, Chloe will do it without even thinking whether or not its good or right to do. She just... does it. And this is the primary toxic problem with their relationship. There is a clear power imbalance, even if you view it as just friendship. There are clear toxic problems here. The best way to actually explain the difference between Max and Chloe versus Rachel and Chloe is the train tracks scene. Rachel swigs from the bottle of wine they stole, while Chloe just kind of depressingly follows her. In Life is Strange, when Max and Chloe are on the train tracks, both times, they are holding each other up. First, their fingers just barely touch as they balance on their tracks while after the train sequence, they're huddled up close to each other. That first episode shows that Chloe and Rachel both definitely have severe issues they gotta work out. It shows the possibility that Rachel could be the person Chloe needs right now, but then episodes two and three are like "nah." I bring all this up because of what Before the Storm means primarily in the sense of the fandom. Of course, I needed to bring this up because it became a huge problem back in 2017. Of course I'm talking about the infamous rise of the Amberprice Legion. Who are the Legion you might ask? Well, I'll tell ya. The Legion, as they referred to themselves, were basically the Tumblr hype train. The Tumblr hype train essentially being that type of one popular fandom and then jumping ship to the next popular fandom and so on. The best example I can bring is from musicals, which I'm a fan of. So a couple of years ago you initially had Hamilton as this big musical hit. It spawned all sorts of fans on Tumblr. Then Dear Evan Hansen came out, and then nobody gave a shit about Hamilton and they all jumped on the DEH train. Then a bootleg for Heathers: The Musical surfaced and everyone crowded to that fandom. And then a 35 minute bootleg, bolstered by a new production, led everyone to crowd to Be More Chill. And finally, where we are now, was everyone jumping from the BMC ship over to Beetlejuice. There might be some more musicals in there, like Mean Girls and Spongebob, but you get the picture. Essentially something new would come out, grab the attention of Tumblr, those people would rabidly obsess over it for a few months, and then move on when the next big thing. This is what happened with Before the Storm. The BtS leaks happened, brought in people who had never heard of or played Life is Strange, and got hooked on the idea of a wlw game. Because BtS was a prequel, these people didn't want to play the original game in hopes of not being spoiled for anything that happens in BtS. Makes sense to a degree, until you realize how much BtS hinges its entire story on the player understanding Chloe's problems. The game hinges its story on you knowing Rachel ends up lying and hiding things from Chloe. The game hinges its entire fucking climax on you realizing that if you tell the truth to Chloe, damning the consequences, on knowing that Rachel will hypocritically not tell Chloe about Frank or Jefferson because "It's what's best for Chloe." All of this occurs, despite the fact we know Rachel's obsession with the truth, despite knowing it will destroy her entire family permanently. See, the issue here is that Max isn't some mysterious girl from Chloe's past for a majority of the people who played BtS. We knew Max. We knew her problems and how guilty she felt for failing to be there for Chloe. But for people who didn't play Life is Strange, Max comes off as this horrible terrible shitty abusive friend who doesn't give a shit about Chloe's mental health and that she just fucked off the minute William died. The way Chloe talks and writes about Max paints her in this image, because it's coming from Chloe's warped perception of how everyone thinks of her. And as a result, we can see the damage Chloe did to the worst parts of how she viewed Max and how she projected the good things onto Rachel. One of the things I always question is how Chloe can form romantic feelings for a girl she basically met like five hours in-game time prior to the junkyard events. But if you do view it from the perspective of her beaming all these positive loving traits she had for Max, it makes sense. When she breaks down in the junkyard and smashes things, it's all about Max essentially. Despite the fact that Max had nothing to do with anything that just happened. Why is this a problem then? Well it's a problem because anyone who identified with this group didn't give a shit about context. At the high point of BtS's popularity which was basically just the time between Episode One and Episode Three, you couldn't mention Max or Pricefield without being harassed to death by these people. Essentially taking all these "bad" things Max "did" and blowing her up into a fucking monster while they paint Rachel as this angelic being who can do no wrong, and that everything she did over the course of Before the Storm was for Chloe's best interests. And this is a problem that actually persists to this day. A never ending flame war about these things, and maybe that has tainted my perception of the game and Rachel as a character. Especially when you had these people who claimed to be "fans" harassing and issuing death threats to the developers of Before the Storm and even people at Dontnod when they eventually realized what was happening. These people who knew nothing about Life is Strange were probably shocked and confused by the ending. They don't fucking know what the Dark Room is or who Mark Jefferson is. They check it online, and suddenly they realize Rachel is fucking dead permanently and this pisses them off. These people legitimately believed that Before the Storm would somehow not be canon with the actual game? And while there are a plethora of plot holes in the canon of this game, it needed to have that connection. And when they saw there was no secret non-canon ending where Rachel and Chloe get to be happily ever after, they rioted. They laid waste to the Tumblr fandom, where I was for that time, and it never really recovered. A lot of the people who were doing that are gone now. Like I said, the hype train took them onto their next fandom leaving behind what was left for those who liked Life is Strange. Farewell came out months later with little to no fanfare from those people. To them, it was just another phase and they moved on despite the fact Farewell painted a more sympathetic approach to Max but at the same time dialing the torture porn up to eleven for Chloe. The fact that Max is moving and her parents decide the last time Max and Chloe see each other, possibly for the last time, is literally as they're burying William at his grave. And it's just kinda horrible to watch. Like, Chloe's been through enough Deck Nine do you really need to make her pain even worse by having that scene of Max just driving away from the fucking cemetery never to see Chloe again? This entire series of events primarily taints how I view this game, Rachel, and people who like Amberprice and will defend Rachel until their dying breaths as some sort of paragon of virtues. I kinda got away from the review aspect of this and the critical analysis portion, but I needed to point out some of the bias I may actually have with this game. And even before I was heavily involved with drama regarding Legion and Amberprice as a whole, when I got to episode two is when things kinda started to melt. As much as I think Rachel eventually becomes a purposefully manipulative person in Chloe's life, I think episode one initially paints her much more sympathetically than she ends up being in the other two episodes. And the reason I say this is because the first time we see her in episode two, she's just sitting there letting Chloe destroy her chances at ever recovering at Blackwell. This kinda steeps the absolute self destructive habits Chloe involves herself in while Rachel sits there and does nothing. The punishment for Rachel is her not being allowed in the play, The Tempest, something we had seen her preparing for in episode one. Chloe decides she is going to misdirect 100% of the blame to herself, despite knowing she'll lose her scholarship and be expelled. There's no scene of Rachel trying to convince Chloe not to do this, she sits there as Chloe completely blows up the entire scene beyond what's reparable. Yes, Rachel tries to initially save face for both her and Chloe by saying they both were doing it, but the minute the Tempest gets involved, Chloe takes the fall if you want her to. When it really came down to it. When Chloe was yelling and backtalking Wells to his face, Rachel sat there and said nothing. She only says "sorry" when Chloe is already expelled. Of course, not covering for Rachel only results in suspension for the remainder of the year, but assuming you actually play the game with its game-specific mechanics, that's what happens. The thing is it seems very playing it safe with Rachel. Rachel defends Chloe until she realizes that she might get kicked out of the play, and this goads Chloe into ruining any attempt she might have at getting an academic career. Their mere presence with each other causes Chloe to just self destruct completely. And I am not a fan of that kind of destruction and the only thing Rachel can say is "sorry." I'm really not gonna talk about the Tempest. There's literally nothing to say. I think it's overrated, and Rachel is using the play to goad Chloe more into doing what she says. I think this is kind of the point of no return for Rachel. This is the point when Rachel realizes she can pretty much do anything to Chloe, and Chloe will not care. She publicly changes the dialogue of the play, something that was a team effort for everyone as well as Chloe being basically forced into it, and she does this to manipulate Chloe. There's no beating around the bush with this, it's her telling Chloe that they're gonna run away and fuck off from Arcadia Bay. And it's something that Chloe has said, but she doesn't actually want to do. When Rachel kisses her twice, Chloe falls back under that spell and decides yes. I do think episode two is okay, but at the same time I do feel like this is a point when it really devolves into Rachel wanting this from Chloe, because she views Chloe a very simple way. She know Chloe is essentially broken and obsessed with finding someone who treats her like a person. But she refuses to accept this, and she does get angry when Chloe breaks this overall perception of Chloe that Rachel has. Episode three is like an ongoing slow motion disaster. It moves so quickly and so many things don't make sense or follow any sort of cohesive structure, that it's hard to enjoy in any way possible. As fucked up as Polarized is, I can appreciate the tone it was going for and it further exploring over usage of Max's powers. Here it dials up the problems to eleven, introduces an entire new plot point about James Amber hiring Damon, a drug dealing antagonist, to kill Sera, Rachel's birth mother. When Chloe and Rachel are in the junkyard, Damon shows up. So Rachel does the smart thing, and escalates the situation with the sociopathic drug dealer which results in him stabbing her. I could not believe what I was seeing, especially after how meticulous she is in everything else she does. Damon and Frank give them the choice to stop digging, and Rachel confronts them to their face. Not only is Frank on Chloe and Rachel's side, he's willing to calm him down and try to get in the way. But before he can, Rachel assaults him with a wooden board, which results in her getting stabbed. There just happens to be way too much happening in this episode. WAY TOO MUCH. We move from scene to scene from sub plot to sub plot without a moment to rest. The only real moment of rest besides the beginning is right before Chloe goes to confront Damon. I'd say this is primarily where the game loses me. Damon is a sociopath. We know this. He just stabbed Rachel and could have killed her. And Chloe decides she can totally take this psycho drug lord on her own in private. This of course leads to her nearly getting murdered and Damon getting killed by Frank, there's just way too much packed into this last episode and it suffers because of that. A lot of this might seem jumbled from my usual writings. Because there's a clearly disjointed problem with Before the Storm, and besides its overall story which seems to want to emulate the original game's mystery element, has issues regarding Chloe and Rachel. I went through this game again, story wise, to see if it had held up negatively the way I had seen it the first time. Over time I grew a very negative association with Rachel, but by now... I still don't like her. The issue is that Deck Nine can't figure out if it wants to portray Rachel positively or negatively. They fall back and forth between Rachel giving Chloe the positive support she desperately needs, but at the same time making Chloe dig deeper and deeper into nearly killing herself. And you can never fully tell if Rachel is genuinely with Chloe for Chloe, or if she's there for the fact that Chloe will agree and do anything she says and in return whispers the sweet little things that Chloe needs to hear. The story reeks of artificial drama in the main story. The first two episodes dealing with James Amber possibly cheating on his wife and making Rachel feel as though he's betraying the family is all you really need for a dramatic story like this, and it would have set it apart from the original game. But it suffers from the problem of trying to emulate that mystery that goes deeper than you initially think. You initially think that James Amber really is just trying to protect his daughter from Sera, who was a drug addict and James doesn't trust. That's all you need, you do not need to devolve James Amber into this kind of idiot villain who is hiring a fucking drug dealer to kill someone. It reeks of artificial drama that exists solely for the fact to up the drama. The themes of this game are equally confusing. The main theme is that "Sometimes truths are more horrible than lies." That is the main theme of this game and it only really shows up in episode three, which is the detriment to it. The original game and Life is Strange 2 spread their messages and themes over the course of the entire game, where with BtS the theme is basically only introduced in episode three and it's not subtle at all. They kinda just beat you over the head with it several times. You haves James Amber saying it first, then dream William, and then finally Sera. All of them telling you that sometimes a lie can save you from ruining something that someone else needs. The final choice is lying or telling the truth to Rachel. Did you go through all of that and nearly get murdered to just lie about it? It could have a bigger impact, but we know if this game is to be taken as canon, the true ending is telling the truth anyways. Rachel is obsessed with the truth of Sera so much, that Chloe is willing to die for it. That is how badly written this is especially when you put it in the context of the original game and is my primary problem with the game. My primary problem with this game is Rachel and Chloe's relationship moving faster than light. In the original game, which takes place over the course of a week, Max and Chloe's relationship develops equally and normally, but you can understand that it develops fast because they had their entire childhood history together. In BtS, you don't actually get that. Rather, you have Chloe meet Rachel, and immediately they're romantically involved after hanging out for about like five hours? Chloe's talking about a true bond that they have, and how Rachel feels it but doesn't want to act on it, and I'm wondering what the fuck this writing is. It seems like a gross misunderstanding of someone with BPD. As someone who has been diagnosed with it, and has extensively gone into things that people with this do to cope, you get attached to people. That's just how it goes, you attach to someone in particular who becomes your whole world essentially. But it takes time to forge that bond. I'm not going to meet one person and immediately become attached to the them the way that I attach to someone specifically. Whirlwind romances are definitely a thing, but they don't occur in like three hours of knowing the person nor do you begin to sacrifice everything you have for a person you've known for like two days at most. In the original game, when Max is willing to sacrifice the town for Chloe's well being you understand that. They have a bond from being little kids to the beginning of being teenagers. They are in each others lives before this game happens. Therefore, when Max is willing to do anything to save Chloe it makes total sense. They have a history together that binds them. Here it just seems like they saw the first game and decided that Chloe fell in total love with Rachel the day they met. You can go on a first date with someone, but I don't think after that first date, you'd be willing to die for this person. That's not how human relationships work. The first game works because they establish a fundamental about Max and Chloe. They grew up together. That fundamental point changes the overall dynamic of the characters. They are willing to do all this for either of each other because they have this history that binds them. There is nothing binding Chloe and Rachel because they met for like a night where Rachel was probably high and then they hung out for like a single afternoon and all of a sudden Rachel is dropping her entire life story on Chloe. It's badly written in a sense there's no real character development between these two girls. It seems probable for Chloe to have loved Rachel because by LiS, it's been four years. In BtS, Chloe is willing to die for a truth that Rachel is pushing her to find despite them only having met like two days prior. It doesn't seem realistic unless you view under one certain lens, an opinion most people will not agree with. This being if you view the game as Chloe trying to attach herself to the first person who shows her any positive attention, along with Rachel simply trying to find someone to manipulate, you can view it as that beginning of a toxic relationship. Rachel puts the truth above all else, despite knowing it may obliterate her family. If you tell the truth to her, you're being the friend that Rachel wants. If you lie to her, you protect her from losing her family. It's interesting in concept, but knowing the outcome it doesn't really matter because Rachel is always going to end up lying to Chloe and basically drifting away from her in favor of Frank and later Jefferson. The romantic inclinations of their relationship, in this lens, is nothing more than Rachel leading Chloe on, something she ends up doing. Many people interpret them as being official girlfriends and love interests, when that's not what they are at all. By the time of Life is Strange, Rachel had failed to ever fully detail to Chloe what their relationship was. Was it friendship? Or was it Rachel using Chloe as an outlet? We don't really know, because she ends up with Frank and Jefferson and eventually she dies. Before the Storm leaves more questions than actual answers. If you wanna tell the story of how Chloe and Rachel met, fine, but at least try to do it well. When you use context, all the romantic advances that occur are obviously that of manipulation. She's making Chloe think she has feelings for her to keep her on a leash without describing what they are. In the original game, Chloe never describes Rachel as a partner or girlfriend. She simply says that she loved Rachel, while in the singular letter Rachel left for Chloe she never actually details if they're really even friends by that point. The reason Before the Storm doesn't work in the end is because it tries to fill a nebulous hole that Dontnod clearly didn't want us to know that much about. Rachel was a mysterious figure. We didn't know if she was a bad person or just a person who made too many mistakes for her own good. When you begin to give solid character to Rachel, you end up viewing her in one of two ways. You view her the way Chloe views her or you view her as just someone kind of using Chloe. And when you set this up and then don't really show the extent of the relationship over the four years you lose your credit. It doesn't answer the main question people had about Rachel. People wanted to know what led to Rachel betraying and lying to Chloe? We didn't need this elaborate overly dramatic story about Chloe and Rachel's fated meeting and how Chloe revealed the truth if how her politician dad tried to have her drug addict birth mother assassinated by a local drug dealer. You don't need that. It's so over the top, all you need to know is that Rachel showed up when Chloe was alone. There. That's all you actually need from a writing perspective. When you overly explain something that's so simple, it becomes not fun to know. In something like the Exorcist, you don't need to know where the demon came from. It's more interesting to just know the demon exists and is possessing this poor little girl. When you overly explain where the demon came from, aka The Exorcist II, it suddenly becomes a panned laughing stock. And that is what happened here, at least for me. Chloe explains it best. They met when Max was gone and that was it. That's all I needed to know about how they met because we never sit here explaining how Max and Chloe met. It's clearly just a fact that these two girls met and became best friends. That's all you needed for Rachel. All you need to show in a game like this, to connect it to the first one, is show how their relationship developed over time. How it starts off strong and eventually tapers off to where Rachel is lying and sneaking around behind Chloe's back, knowing Chloe is 100% in love with her, but at the same time not actually telling Chloe what is happening to "spare her the pain." When you fail to show this, Rachel becomes hypocritical, manipulative, and overall just toxic to Chloe as a person. Chloe ends up as broken and self destructive as she is in the first game, because of how Rachel treated her and led her on. It becomes hard to pin down whether or not the game ends up even being canon because its portrayal of Rachel keeps trying to be morally grey, but ends up trying to be both sides of the board. At one point Rachel is super sympathetic and looks to be trying to help Chloe and then immediately afterwards she's putting Chloe's life into danger or manipulating her into doing things that Chloe doesn't want to do. Making her flip between the two doesn't make her morally grey, it makes her confusing as to whether you wanted people to like or hate Rachel. In the end, what do I think about Before the Storm? Even after going through this game again and realizing some things I remembered wrong, I still don't like it that much. Ignoring Rachel, the overall main story is just piss poor and overly dramatic for what it is and try to force in all the twists at the very end. You could say the same about LiS, but they drop hints all the time about the truth of the mystery. And even if you boil it down, it's essentially sociopath photographers kill a girl and try to cover up her murder. It's a murder mystery, and that's a fairly typical plot placed against an actual interesting relationship that makes sense with a cool mechanic of time travel. In BtS, I just get bored with the main story. Whenever Rachel, Frank, Damon, Sera, or anyone involved with the murder assassination pot happens, I just don't care because of how badly it's written. The only time I actually care about the game, is when we're not dealing with Rachel. The first game implies nobody wanted anything to do with Chloe, which is why she latched onto Rachel, but this game basically says she could have gone one of two ways. Either with Rachel or maybe hanging around Steph and Mikey. I won't talk about them because this post is already novel length, but I'll say that if you're doing to try and convince me Rachel was the only one there who liked Chloe then don't introduce two characters who genuinely like Chloe and invite her to play games with them because it introduces a plot hole that Chloe could have literally saved herself four years of self destructive habits by not involving herself with Rachel over Steph and Mikey. Overall, Before the Storm leaves me with the idea that this game probably should be left alone. There are so many plot holes in this game and I don't see how people don't talk about that more. Plot holes that big are signs of poor writing and the only thing holding these plot holes together are statements Toby from Square made trying to convince us otherwise by saying something like "Blackwell changed its curriculum between BtS and LiS!" But he only brought this up when people realized the discrepancies between the two games. If James Amber loves his daughter beyond all else and is also the District Attorney, why does he just suddenly stop looking for her after like two months? If Frank is such a good guy that he's willing to try and stop Damon from threatening Chloe and Rachel with a knife, why is he doing the same shit in this game? Why are you threatening a girl you saved the life of in the first game? Someone you murdered another person to save? Why is 12 year old Warren a sophomore in high school at one of the most prestigious schools in the country? Where are Steph and Mikey in the main game? They wouldn't have graduated yet. Why does Nathan get portrayed as some tragic poor white boy who we should feel bad for when he's responsible for Rachel and Chloe's kidnappings and deaths? There are so many questions and plot holes opened up by BtS that the first game can't solve, and it makes me hate this game so much more for it. Deck Nine's rushed and overly dramatic story plus its inability to give Rachel a stable characterization plus a boat load of plot holes leads to a less than desirable game, especially if you obsess over the tiny details like I do. Farewell is definitely the best part of this game, even if it is just torture porn, it actually tries to make you feel an emotion. You feel an emotion when Chloe gets shot in the first game. You don't feel anything when Rachel gets stabbed because you fully expect it the minute she comes flying at Damon with the plank of wood. It's like "What did you expect from assaulting the insane sociopath?" If you really like Chloe, like I do, it's worth playing like once maybe but only if you can get it for cheap. It goes on sale fairly frequent enough and a new physical copy of the base game is like 9$ on Amazon last time I checked. The only other plus is definitely Daughter's music and score. The fact it's in service to this game is a shame. Before the Storm, as a standalone title, is fine but contextualize it within the series and it opens an unending can of worms. I will commend it though for essentially nailing it in on the head that Chloe is a lesbian through and through and there's no debating that she is the biggest lesbian in a franchise produced by a big company like Square Enix. tl;dr: Before the Storm is poorly written and fails to ever try to stay in canon with the original game. Rachel is poorly characterized and continuously jumps back and forth between being sympathetic and being purposefully manipulative. The drama of the game is artificial and tries to throw in all of its twists in the last episode. The diehard fans of BtS and Amberprice tainted a lot of my views of the game through the infinite drama they caused. Get the game if it's on sale or clearance, but definitely check out Daughter's soundtrack it's still amazing. [link] [comments] | ||
| [NO SPOILERS] LiS2 Complete Season purchase problem Posted: 28 Jan 2020 05:25 AM PST So I just bought the Complete Season bundle of LiS2 on the PS store. I was able to download the episodes like normal, except for ep2 which still asks me to pay money for some reason. Has anyone had this problem before? [link] [comments] | ||
| [no spoilers] Max by @ilirical on Instagram Posted: 27 Jan 2020 03:24 PM PST
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| [NO SPOILERS] what’s the best order to play the games in Posted: 28 Jan 2020 12:24 AM PST I wanted to get opinions on what's the best way to replay the games, I was thinking starting with bts farewell and then playing the other three episodes and moving on to the original game but I really can't decide, what do you guys think 🤔 [link] [comments] | ||
| [S1] [OC] [WIP] To the ones we left behind... Posted: 27 Jan 2020 03:14 PM PST | ||
| [ALL] My LiS2 Episode 5 Ending Wasn't Satisfying Posted: 27 Jan 2020 09:31 PM PST So I'm pretty unsatisfied with my ending at the end of Episode 5. It's just not making much sense for me. At the border, when given the option to surrender or keep going, I chose to keep going. Daniel got Sean through the border but chose to stay behind. I always treated him nicely and he grew up to be a good kid, but they still split up. What was I supposed to do? They're both innocent kids. Why did I have to choose between Sean going to prison for things that weren't his fault and being free but alone in Mexico? What choices should I have made to keep them together? What would have happened if I chose to surrender? Seeing Sean and Daniel get older was cool, but it hurt not seeing them together. [link] [comments] | ||
| [All] Call of BattleFeel®™ Killer Bean Edition Posted: 27 Jan 2020 08:23 PM PST | ||
| Posted: 27 Jan 2020 05:22 PM PST I've decided to (finally) get one of the games because of the holiday sale on PS4. Should I get the first or second game? [link] [comments] |
![[NO SPOILERS] Got a second fanfic printed!](https://b.thumbs.redditmedia.com/DYPoF-WgkW3Otx8ElrDqMFBto41drFG_XSxJVNW4neA.jpg "[NO SPOILERS] Got a second fanfic printed!")
![[NO SPOILERS] To all of you by Missxdelaney](https://a.thumbs.redditmedia.com/KCgR58hHGhNCx6yonKm8mTM5bRHJBgVUQ0M85AZCKe8.jpg "[NO SPOILERS] To all of you by Missxdelaney")
![[NO SPOILERS] Life is Strange - Welcome to Blackwell Academy- just finished!](https://b.thumbs.redditmedia.com/9ftF6pwZjgD-aP_t-vtHQE04qbRAmNJl2MEgpVSPgmA.jpg "[NO SPOILERS] Life is Strange - Welcome to Blackwell Academy- just finished!")
![[NO SPOILERS] Found this in my old sketchbook from when i first played life is strange before the storm. Im not really good at sketching cause i dont draw that much but i thought this was pretty neat at the time.](https://b.thumbs.redditmedia.com/lISp4nW5qK5rnQxjQntgmLYMJ6LUVYzWkKXzLR6mDhs.jpg "[NO SPOILERS] Found this in my old sketchbook from when i first played life is strange before the storm. Im not really good at sketching cause i dont draw that much but i thought this was pretty neat at the time.")
![[NO SPOILERS] My first tattoo](https://b.thumbs.redditmedia.com/-u8LYMoHateueHJXz8DzBs2_dP4LYo8mdTvmY1sXkkw.jpg "[NO SPOILERS] My first tattoo")
![[no spoilers] Max by @ilirical on Instagram](https://b.thumbs.redditmedia.com/SwKr3y8XCDr_yH--FtA4bWBOI4nq5wNhtcaPI2hdYtk.jpg "[no spoilers] Max by @ilirical on Instagram")
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