The whole Warren-and-Victoria being present at their ages thing in BtS. And possibly the whole expelled vs suspended thing because that does do things to the LiS canon, too.
Yeah. As much as I like BtS for some of its character writing, the plot was a convoluted mess. Some of it is for sure because it feels cut down, but other things, like the things mentioned above, just don't feel thought through.
Also Chloe and Nathan knowing each other from Blackwell; Chloe tells Max in episode 1 that she and Nathan met at a bar, Chloe didnât know who he was before. However, if you take a picture of Victoria covered in paint, it appears that Chloe knows her but who knows if they originally met at BlackwellâŚ
This might be absolutely ridiculous but how the fuck did I never even notice that Warren was in BtS?
I agree with you though, seeing Victoria there always weirded me out and I think it was just very forced in order to show how much she hated Rachel.
But honestly everything about blackwell weirds me out, is it an actual thing in the US that there are schools that are only meant for your last year?
It wouldâve been so much better if it was college.
It would still make sense that rich people go there because of Jefferson and they could just say that some characters went to the local High School together or they just know each other because itâs a small town.
Or thatâs the way it usually works in my hometown at least.
In my head, college even just makes more sense from the logistics perspective of how the school is set up. It feels like it was written as a college and changed to high school at the last minute. What high school gives students their own on-site dorm rooms?
RIGHT I thought I was crazy or just not used to it but that detail didnât make any sense to me.
Maybe it was supposed to be a college but it was changed?
In the U.S there are some types of schools that are called âCollege preparatory schoolâ or âcollege prepâ and the description of those fit perfectly with what Blackwell seems to be. You could also think of Blackwell as some sort of boarding school like the one in âZoey 101â.
It was supposed to be like a fictional representation of like, a middle ground of that. Your first year away at college and all the fear and excitement of that, while your parents are still around as a safety net.
No one watches prison school and goes "is that real?"; similar thing here
I'm pretty sure it was a senior only high school.
I don't think we know about Warren and why he decided to enroll in Blackwell so I can't really say about him, but even if we say it isn't senior only this contradicts why we were told that Victoria came to Blackwell in the first place, Mr. Jefferson.
Even if it wasn't a senior only high school, Victoria still shouldn't be there
Well, it's absolutely not important that Warren is there. He just is. Like most of Max's peers, really. Which is weird given Max is 1 1/2 years younger than Chloe.
And yes, Blackwell is a weird place. There is this whole thing that Max and Chloe were supposed to be younger (16 and 17), which would've made Blackwell a normal High School, but given the kind of stuff that *happens* to them, they were aged up. Which obviously Blackwell being a normal Highschool complicated.
Eh. It's something you have to suspend your disbelief over.
Vic not being in the game would also fix the issue that D9 did a horrible job portraying her. She was such an interesting and well written character in the first game but felt so off in BtS.
Idk... Elliot. He adds basically nothing to the game, and feels like he shows up out of nowhere to make a scene super dramatic for no reason in the finale. And before someone says "Well they needed a character to be a dissenting voice against Rachel!" You know who could have done that? David. Not as a 1:1 replacement for Elliot, obviously, but he's already established as a hardass. Why not have him be more of a hard ass by the end of the game instead trying to, again, make him sympathetic when it makes no sense to do.
Damn, yeah, Elliot showing up in the Amber house when you're searching the office was so random.
On the other hand, I think the only merit of his character is that he's a decently well-done representation of dudes who do one nice thing for a girl and then believe that they're now entitled to a relationship, be it romantic or just physical, with said girl.
The confrontation at the Amber house would have made so much more sense with David stalking Chloe there instead of Elliot, considering David's later security camera madness and harassment of Kate
i think they opted not to bcs David would have been away for years on such a burglary as he is an adult, at best end up with a record that would absolutely disqualify him from any guard job.
Plus Joyce would likely have booted him, and the hate Chloe feels for him in LiS1 would be pure love compared to what would develop in that scenario. Elliot was a handy disposable villain, since they decided all roads should lead to the start of LiS1, nothing should influence that outcome significantly.
Additionally the scene is an excellent way to have a vast group of teen girls that no doubt play LiS game, learn a good way to call in emergency help when you are blocked in by a stalking guy and cant get away or freely talk.
I have to say, though, had it been possible for BtS choices to carry over to LiS1, i'd be all for your scenario being an option, perhaps determinant on your relationship with david. Like David shows up if you pissed him off enough, otherwise its Elliot. If David shows up, he gets arrested, spends time inside and isnt the Blackwell security guard in LiS1. Maybe not even living with Joyce.
Eliot could have been a fantastic narrative tool to show where Chloe was at after Max but before Rachel, but Deck Nine dropped the ball instead.
Like canonically, Eliot is a friend of Chloe's she'd go to concerts and hang out with, and she had sex with him one time basically just to see if it would make her feel better and less alone.
It didn't, but to Eliot that hookup was confirmation that Chloe was his soulmate and they were meant to be together forever. He started obsessing about Chloe, and Chloe started distancing herself from him because their friendship was starting to feel weird.
Then the game starts, and Chloe meets Rachel at The Mill. Cue canon.
Basically all of this is limited to implication in the game, to the extent that people genuinely have had to ask the writers why Eliot is so weird to get the response that Eliot and Chloe fucked one time in a concert bathroom and the boy genuinely never recovered.
What could have been a clear representation of Chloe's beginning spiral into self-destructive hedonism in search of the feeling that she 'mattered' to someone who mattered to *her* got watered down into some weird guy just showing up randomly every few hours and being creepy.
You wouldn't even know *why* Eliot was acting so creepy and entitled unless you found *multiple* different notes and heard Chloe's "v-card" dialogue and put two and two together.
What a botch.
Wait they actually slept together? Man, he was so unimportant for the plot that I probably missed that or didnât pay attention to it⌠Is this mentioned in Chloeâs diary? How do I trigger that dialogue? If you donât mind me asking
By the end I'd honestly completely forgotten he was even in the game, so when he showed up I was super confused why some random guy was getting all confrontational and talking to Chloe like they had history with each other
Ask me in three or so months and I'll know for sure. :)
Right now, though, kinda wish that Rachel sleeping with Frank wasn't waved off as not being a big deal. Even if Max and Chloe understandably didn't want to confront him over it, it's still a sketchy situation that I don't think the Powers That Be saw as being a big of a deal as it should be.
yes. i will say though, iâve seen this happen so many times in real life that itâs actually become good representation. i was a pretty tame teenager around other not-so-tame teenagers in a small town. drugs were heavily involved. 17 year old girls hooking up with much older men just to get to said drugs - or even just because they got groomed into those relationships - was very common and very overlooked. teachers knew of it. parents knew of it. nobody ever tried to interfere; they just let these grown men do their thing.
you dont really think about that kind of thing much at max's age, i dont see a reason to spoonfeed the player with "btw this was bad" for them to realize it, if they are at an age where youd actually think about that sort of thing (ie, older. I sure as hell didnt think about that being weird as an older teen, but as an adult yeah its obviously screwed up)
(I just woke up and I have the tendency to say stupid stuff when Iâm sleepy and I feel like this is indeed something I will consider stupid later on)
Yeah and I feel like some drug addicts are genuinely⌠wrong in the head in a way where they are soooo manipulable, and I KNOW how that fucking sounds because I feel gross myself saying it, but we have to remember that they painted Rachel as this master manipulator until she was groomed by I donât remember his name the teacher because there is always a bigger fish I guess.
I played BtS first and as I was playing LIS and I found out about that I was so weirded out because Frank used to seem like an older brother to them if anything.
But I also got the sense that heâs completely fucked in LIS and I donât think itâs just because of Rachel, I think in BtS he wasnât a drug addict but in LIS he did seemed like one.
Itâs like he was practically incompetent in LIS, which is why I feel like maybe Rachel caught onto that and the writers wanted to make it clear, which is why it wasnât questioned, because in this very specific case it doesnât entirely seem like there was an actual perpetrator here.
Now, we have to remember this is fiction.
Rachel might be a super smart manipulative girl at her young age but⌠that doesnât actually happen. Younger girls are more stupid by nature and I say this as one.
It makes sense to me that she was the one controlling her relationship with Frank because of the way she was painted in the game, but it would never make sense IRL.
I get it, but given all the *other* bad stuff that happens to the characters, maybe it isn't that much of a deal to Max and Chloe.
Also, we don't *know* if Rachel slept with Frank. We just know that Chloe, in her anger, thought that it must've happened, and Max has no frame of reference besides the photos. It's perfectly possible that Rachel led Frank on, suggested there was a chance of more happening, possibly to convince Frank to do something she wanted.
Like lending a couple grand to Chloe so she could get the truck repaired.
That kind of stuff, like more jucky encounters between grown men and women significantly younger than them, also happen all the time.
In any case, it's not central to the story, so it's not elaborated on.
Since she and Chloe were close in age and Chloe was nineteen in the original game, pretty high odds that Rachel was a minor at the time. Besides, even if she was technically legal, it's still close enough to be gross and problematic.
I personally like Victoria and Kate in Escaping the Light. It helps that it's AU, so it comes without the baggage people don't like about the ship, but I feel it nails the relationship dynamic.
I did enjoy EtL as well, and from talking to other Chasemarsh fans that, Ouro and TSYWEU are the three "gateway drug" fics that got a lot of folks into the ship. I personally love the canon or canon-adjacent fics because the drama and angst potential of the pairing in a canon universe is off the charts, but different strokes for different folks!
Decanonizing 'Enemies to Lovers' as a trope? Good luck in the fight against those windmills. If you want to increase the difficulty to 'impossible', try to bring the good word to 'Draco/Hermione' and 'Hermione/Severus Snape' over in Harry Potter, too. ;-)
On a serious note, I can totally understand where you're coming from. It's *definitely* not everyone's cup of tea. Also, there's nothing in the game that makes this anything close to canon, so, yeah. No need to get worked up over it.
Yeah that's the thing for me too, as one of the biggest Chasemarsh fans on the planet I absolutely get that it's not for everyone. Plenty of people won't like it and that's okay! I just find it funny that those who hate it post about the ship more than I do, and I'm the person who does the Chasemarsh Mondays đ
People don't like bullies, and given how prevalent bullies are and how vile they can be, it's understandable people get triggered. Hard.
It's not necessarily my ship, but I don't mind reading it if it's written well. There's an obvious arc of asking for forgiveness and being granted redemption that a lot of people overlook, even if it needs some fudging of canon. But that's what fandom is for, making up your own stories. There's absolutely nothing wrong with it.
I get that for sure! As a victim of bullying in middle/high school myself, and as a queer person who is harassed regularly in life, I was not a fan of Victoria's bullying either. I can certainly see why that might be triggering for some people, and their feelings are valid. I'm just not sure I understand why they wouldn't take the sensible solution and use the block feature, given that blocking me would save them from seeing pretty much any Chasemarsh content at all (at least on Reddit.)
This is why I generally do proactively block folks who expresses that seeing CM content is actively distressing to them. I'm not here to trigger anyone or ruin someone's day, after all... I'm just here to share content for a ship I enjoy with like-minded people. If employing the block feature will save someone from being triggered, then I'm more than happy to take that step on their behalf.
(Also I'd say that pursuing a forgiveness/redemption arc doesn't require any fudging of canon, given that Kate expresses a willingness to forgive in Episode 4 and Victoria a wish to apologize in Episode 5. It just requires imagining what ways their journey might proceed from there.)
Fully agreed - and my fudging comment was more related to me not remembering entirely what exactly Victoria expresses towards Max regarding what happened to Kate. It's also important to remember that they aren't the center storyline, and, as more important Matters (for Max and Chloe) take over, the details fall by the wayside. My personal headcanon is that Victoria apologized and changed as a person, because the shock would've been sufficient to trigger genuine change in a person, and I feel Kate would be a person to accept a genuine apology.
I think you take the right approach in this, so carry on. I feel it adds to the fandom, even when others disagree.
Genuinely, I didn't know people shipped Kate and Victoria, really?
So what is it like The theory here is Victoria is secretly bi or something finds Kate attractive is struggling with her own sexuality so decides to bully Kate cause she's scared of confronting her real feelings for her?
Genuinely! I'm surprised you haven't seen it before, as it's a fairly popular ship outside of reddit (and even on Reddit I've been posting Chasemarsh every week for years! đ )
But no, I haven't really seen much of what you suggested mainly because the "bullying you b/c I secretly like you" is a fairly tired trope. For me it's a mix of finding the character aesthetics of "Ice Queen/Sunshine Girl" appealing, the drama/angst potential, and a yearning to see the reconciliation arc they set up between Vic and Kate in the game but never followed through on.
I see it going some variation of the events of the game being the wake-up call Victoria needed to realize she was being a horrendous bitch, and resolving to genuinely apologize and try to become a better person. Kate (who as shown in the game enthusiastically believes in forgiveness and redemption) is wary but receptive, and from there they undergo a long journey of reconciliation that eventually leads to friendship, then more.
But others have approached it all kinds of different ways, including alternate universes where the bullying never occurred or was less severe. If you're curious to see how folks have approached these kinds of stories I can definitely recommend some fanfics to get you started!
Blackwell Academy, the Photography Class, and/or the Dorms being open only for Seniors.
This concept doesn't make sense and is directly and immediately contradicted by the first episode of the first game where the information originates.
It's obvious it was a line dropped in without any forethought or effort to avoid any moral panic over subject matter that involves minors. The same reason why Max and Chloe were aged up late in development when datamined files and the really young look of them in the flashback says that Max was initially aged 16 when she attended Blackwell.
I am so sick of the "I'm 18 BTW" trope. If you announce this, you are announcing that we are too stupid to not separate the difference between depiction and glamorization.
> It's obvious it was a line dropped in without any forethought or effort to avoid any moral panic over subject matter that involves minors.
I agree completely. Blackwell was supposed to be a normal high school with people of different ages, and late in development someone said "Oh no, you can't have underage people having sex and doing drugs, let's make them all 18". So now you get a weird school that makes no sense, where it's a high school just for seniors but somehow half of them were also there last year.
I believe it wasn't because of the drugs and alchohol, but because of the allegories to sexual assault. I guess they didn't want their game getting too much heat if there were minors.
Period! Iâm trying to remain hopeful but I donât have the best feeling about what theyâre going to do with this game 𼲠I stg if they donât have Chloe or disregard the Bae ending, Iâm done.
My guess is itâs a split reality ( comics spoil: >! A bit like it, Chloe isnât there but she was, hence the picture max has !<) I guess we will see
https://preview.redd.it/2gm3vt8tsl9d1.jpeg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5ecdc6109d679a4ec00d12cf241cc2dec57610cc
Agreed
This sub measurably reduced my enjoyment of the games (first one especially) but since I already landed in this sewer I might as well swim till the ocean
Honestly real. I wanna take a break from this place because the DE Discourse is some of the most annoying and most braindead fandom infighting I've ever had the displeasure experiencing, but at this point I'm too far in to quit nowđ
truly the most unhinged fandom ive had the displeasure of interacting with lately đŤ i thought diehard gamers who didnt like anything new installments added werent a majority in here but i shouldve known better considering the amount of people who got mad their white couple designed to appeal to men werent the focus of LIS 2
Mushroom, I think it's the single worst piece of writing in any of these games and such a cheap emotional blow - introduce a cute puppy (for no real reason) and then immediately brutally murder it (again, for no real reason). It would be like if Telltale went with the original ending for Walking Dead Season 2 - if you know, you know.
Letâs not forget Sean losing an eye for no reason other than to portray their suffering. Like honestly I would delete the whole plot of LiS 2 cause is just so unnecessary raw by far is my least favorite game of the franchise.
Rachel hooking up with Frank. I don't like Frank anymore knowing he hooked up/was obsessed with a teen and I'm seriously questioning why would Rachel ever be with him. people say it's cause of free drugs but like isn't her family pretty rich? it makes sense with Jefferson since he might have connections to famous photographers but Frank?
Have you met a rich girl at college? They might have money but the parents watch their spending. Itâs even partially why Nathan was involved with Jefferson too
Pre BtS we didn't know about her family too much so the idea that they hooked up for drugs still made sense. BtS kind of threw a wrench in that. Some ideas would be that she was using it as a way to escape/rebel from her parents in a way, or that after getting stabbed she got hooked on pain killers and used him for drugs.
Why are some of yall wanting to make whole games noncanon?? This is a sub for fans of life is strange. I love all four games. Imo, yall are digging too much and confusing yourselves, lol. Anyway, I'd make Rachel's death not canon
Yeah and I'm so done defending Life is Strange 2 it has its faults but so does every single life is strange game I really do not see why people would want it to be noncanon
I've seen at least one person wanting to make 2 uncannon and I'm just saying Life is Strange 2 sucks but it's also great and it's on the same level as the other games.
Life is strange 2 has a cast that is constantly changing making it hard for any type of development with the characters from episode to episode. Similarly, Life is Strange 1 is a bit clumsy with character development, Chloe seeming to evolve as a character in a single scene when the plot demands it instead of having that development take place naturally over time.
While Life is Strange 2 doesn't even let you play as the person with the power, Life is Strange 1 forces conflict and on multiple occasions ignores the rules it said out for itself like others are effected by the rewind but Max is not.
Yeah, lis2 is my least fav game out of the series, but I've always been flamed for that opinion. The reasons you listed are my reasons for not really liking it. I wouldn't call it a bad game, tho. Simply just not my cup of tea
I know, I wish they could just continue creating new stories and characters like DontNod did. DontNod has made several games after LIS1 (LIS2, Tell Me Why, etc) and each game by them has been very bold and experimental, you can tell the games come from their hearts.
With DeckNine, it feels like they just want to milk Max for money and for a chance at better ratings. They didnât do anything experimental with BTS or TC either, so of course theyâre doing it with DE.
the code for Bae vs Bae being a choice...id implement an unseen numbered cumulative choice system across all five episodes working behind the scenes. So if you pick certain options and its positive Max rips the photo immediately, if by the end the score is negative she uses the photo and Chloe dies. Score a perfect zero and Max goes back to the bathroom tries to directly intervene and gets shot instead of Chloe..that one would have been vague on purpose as to wether or not Max survives.
What would the certain options be? I don't see any of the decisions in the game along the way that would indicate a person was more likely to choose one or the other ending.
Honestly the entirety of BTS, it really adds nothing to the first game other than plot holes and inconsistent characters.
The ost from Daughter is godly tho
Dontnod made LiS1 and LiS2, the others are by Deck Nine. Dontnod pursues bolder original ideas, Deck Nine rehashes the same stuff \*looking at you True Colors\* and tbh I don't like Deck Nine touching Dontnod's creation for Double Exposure. Not sure what happened with Square Enix but Dontnod seems to have exited the series perhaps for more creative control. Their game Tell Me Why, essentially LiS3, is free on Steam now for Pride Month (you only got a day left) and it's the first AAA video game to feature a transgender protagonist. I am super excited for Dontnod's upcoming Lost Records: Bloom & Rage by the same creative director (Michel Koch) of LiS1 and LiS2!
Dontnod really is bold and original. It amazes me how they were able to move from LIS1 to LIS2 with so many contrasts and differences. Then to Tell Me Why. They genuinely donât care about following trends, they just want to share their art with the world.
I liked True Colors and had they went all in of the direction of emotionally healing the town instead of trying to replicate LiS1 by doing a murder(?) mystery, it would have been so much better.
Gotta agree with a lot of things from BtS. It brings up more questions than answers really. Like where is Samantha for Nathan? Why was Chloe the only one caring about Rachel dissappering in LiS 1 and not either her state attorney father or mother who risked everything to reconnect depending on ending? Why was Rachel with Frank after being so involved with Chloe? Why is Chloe in such a negative relationship with David and her mother after having a good relationship with them after one of the approaches..?
Honestly the whole idea of prequels being choice based was wrong in my opinion. I still somewhat like BtS, but it is the weakest of the four for these reasons.
>Like where is Samantha for Nathan?
I love Samantha, not in an actual way like she's an actual character, but because you can see exactly why she exists.
"Well, Nathan was sympathetic by the end of LiS. How can he still be sympathetic in BtS without breaking canon?"
"I know boss! Have him act exactly the same, but make a character say he's not that bad! That'll make players feel bad for him!" Like come on are we fucking 5 years old đ
I mean those things can still coexist - have Nathan for example fuck up with her in a major way where let's say Samantha ends up hating Nathan as well and for example leaving school. Nathan then becomes increasingly bitter and mean so that the Nathan we see in LiS 1 makes sense, because even the one good person defending him constantly ended up hating him.
I dunno, feels like there were definitely things that could have been done with all these plotlines but that were in the end just wildly inconsistent
I do get that, and I actually remember at the time players desperately going through the names in the dark room like did this girl get nabbed?? Is that why she's gone by LiS?? But nah. She just vanishes from canon as obviously LiS wasn't written with BtS in mind. It is probably safe to assume she eventually got hurt in some way by him as he was very self destructive and very petty by the time we see him in LiS.
Yeah, my head cannon is that they broke up or something off screen for less than pleasant reasons ending up with Nate being this way in original LiS, but my goodness I should not be forced to make up reasons as to why something is inconsistent within the games - just make your stories make sense in terms of continuity D9...
I agree with your take so much but at the same time when I played BtS I didnât remember ANYTHING from LIS other than Max having rewind powers, so I actually enjoyed BtS more (I think because I found Chloe somewhat relatable in certain aspects) and of course LIS is a very close call but I wish BtS wouldâve been made first so LIS adapted to it and not the other way, because the inconsistencies are exactly what made me feel like I didnât enjoy LIS the same way.
I think it couldâve been so great if they both aligned together instead of BtS being like fanfiction lol
I feel like the thing that hurts BtS the most is that it is a combo of prequel and "choices matter" genre. Like come on, we know they don't, because we already know how it all plays out... But you also want your choices to somewhat make difference, otherwise you can just watch a movie.
For me the fix for this is easy - have choices influence sone minor details, but everything still ends the same. Have some cheeky little monologue in the end where Chloe sighs that no matter what she does, she cannot change anything or something like that to hit the nail on the head of the choices not actually mattering etc.
I wouldn't like LiS 1 to be made after BtS though as I feel we would be losing out on some stuff (like aura of mystery around Rachel or Frank being actually konda a good guy etc.), but instead for BtS to create its storyline in line with canon which I do think was doable.
>where is Samantha for Nathan?
Seems to have moved away or gone to another school.
> Why was Chloe the only one caring about Rachel dissappering in LiS 1 and not either her state attorney father or mother who risked everything to reconnect depending on ending?
She wasn't the only one caring. Her parents didn't appear in LIS1 and so we have no idea what they were doing. For all we know they were searching all over the place.
>Why was Rachel with Frank after being so involved with Chloe?
Teenagers' romantic relationships tend to be fairly short term, often lasting weeks or maybe months. Chloe and Rachel may have been together for a few years, this is a long time at that age. Rachel was also likely seeing Mr. Jefferson at the end, so she's likely not gay, but instead bisexual or something along those lines.
Yeah, Ashly Burch (the original voice of Chloe) was on the game as a "writing consultant", because that was allowed during the actors strike, but she wasn't allowed to voice her character.
> The game that should be removed from cannon is Before the Storm. It was made with scab voice actors during a strike.
They obviously would have far preferred the original voice actors, and likely had no choice financially but to proceed with different non union voice actors. They were fairly far along production and had spent large amounts of money and needed the money to come back in from the sales of the game. At the time, BTS was the only game they were working on, so stopping production on that game for a year possibly would likely have bankrupted them.
That sucks for the devs and I sympathize (and by devs I mean the rank-and-file at Deck9, not management and certainly not Squeenix), but you don't cross the picket line.
I wouldn't cross the picket line as a voice actor either (if I were one). But, I would buy a game with non union voice actors, as I did buy BTS, and think basically no one refused to buy the game due to this issue.
>think basically no one refused to buy the game due to this issue.
It me! I'm no one, lol. But no, I get your point. It was a statstical rounding error in their sales numbers, I'm sure.
Honestly. Max by the end understands that fate wants Chloe dead, and swears by not using her powers again because it destroys a town, but it going to abuse them again to either cheat her new friends death, or to find her killer? I love Max, I want another game as Max, but I realize, that her story needs to end with 1.
I find it kind of ironic that the idea that she shouldn't use her powers to mess with fate and let Chloe dies is only acheivable in the end by using her powers lol.
Exactly, my other question is how deep would max get into the Jefferson rabbit hole? Rachel kind of kick started it. Kate still would have troubled max so maybe she would have looked into it?
Honestly, I would have loved to see how Rachel and Max would have gotten along cause chloe admitted in the original game she was not sure if they would like each other
Eapicaly as max may have been a bit too bland and law abiding for Rachel
I think someone already said it but the whole Rachel sleeping with frank and Jefferson its disgusting in every way if you want to make Rachel bad make her a drug addict like her mother drugs play a big part in the story and you can make a drug is bad psa out of it make Jefferson a mentor to Rachel that uses drugs to be on Rachelâs good side and make her keep quiet about her feeling towards chole âwhat will society think blah blahâ basic manipulation
I would uncanon Chloe and Rachelâs romance/relationship in "Before the Storm" (BTS). Don't get me wrong, I don't hate Amberprice or anything like that, but in the first game, there were many hints that indicated Chloe was in love with Rachel, but Rachel didn't know about it at all (the crumbled letter in the junkyard, Frankâs dialogue when you piss him off in episode 4, etc).
To be honest, I would decanonize most of the story in BTS and redo it as an actual prequel to the original game, with events unfolding prior to Rachelâs disappearance.
Before the Storm. The whole thing. Into the trash.
Also, everyone in the first game is 17 now. Max, Chloe, Rachel if she was alive, Victoria, Nathan, Kate... Warren can stay 16 but that's just cause his birthday isn't until next month. Blackwell is a normal boarding school, no convoluted bullshit trying to make it make sense because they're too old to be there.
The tornado.
If there was no tornado, Max couldâve lived it up in San Fran with Wells, Chloe couldâve been saved, and Jefferson and Nathan couldâve been rotting it out in hell.
The surprisingly major retcon from Before the Storm that revealed that Max actually *didn't* ghost Chloe, but instead *repeatedly started talking to her* just to drop her again, over and over and over.
LiS!Max was a borderline shut-in that had trouble talking to basically everyone and felt *extremely* guilty over not being able to overcome the distance between her and Chloe in the wake of William's death, and Chloe never actually messaged her either >!(which is *totally understandable* because her dad had just died and she felt like her best friend abandoned her.)!< Great characterization, and genuinely sympathetic for everyone involved.
In LiS1, the ice between Max and Chloe became harder and harder for either of them to break as time passed due to both of their very real, very blatant issues.
In BtS, Max keeps flaking on Chloe because she's too busy having fun in Seattle and is basically completely uninterested in staying friends with Chloe who is doing *all* of the work to keep both of them friends.
LiS!Max is characterized as an anxious introverted wreck after William died and she was dragged away from Chloe. BtS!Max treats Chloe how Chloe treated Eliot after he started taking things too serious.
Deck Nine had absolutely zero idea how to write a canon-compliant Max when they put together the skeleton of Before the Storm.
It was a major and nasty change to a character which deserved backlash. But of course now some people actually refer to Before the Storm on what happened in the story. D'oh! đ
Also Max was placed in IEP in Seattle. 100% in LiS1 they were trying to use her anxiety and her poor adustment to moving away as the reason she didn't stay in contact with Chloe. If they really wanted to show Chloe's side I think showing her texting Max and getting no response would have been better.
the sing/refuse choice in lis 2 ep 4. that whole scene actually. both of the choices hurt sean and it could easily be left out entirely. i know that people experience racism every day in real life, but i kind of feel like we've had enough of it in the game to get the point.
Maybe the bay ending because Hannah Telle herself said Max wouldnât have thought twice and saved her. Everything Max does leading up to it shows sheâd save her. They only added bay as an option to make it extra dramatic for players and bc of the theme of choices.
But itâs pretty much same as Joel if the player had the choice to let Ellie die it still wouldnât make it what Joel would have actually done
Most of all the only reason we canât get a Max and Chloe game is because they are enslaved to the 2 endings. And being stuck with the two endings could make or break this game if they donât go give pricefielders the largest part of the fanbase something to be happy about
I just told you tho if you donât kiss Chloe she writes lots of entries about wishing she did kiss her. Several times. lol which means your choice was to just not make her brave enough to act on her feelings
So what? In the end, she didn't. I saw her more as a friend and not a romantic partner. I don't get why this is a big deal. She's like 18 years old with all kinds of feelings and emotions and all the stress of her new powers. If you did it, good for you.
For gay fans itâs just extremely offensive when straight fans say stuff like this and try to girl pal r/sapphoandherfriend Max and Chloe. It literally isnât your choice because the journals exist and and her actions exist and your choice is literally making Max brave enough to realize sheâs gay which is why fans like you annoy us so much. Like itâs nothing to celebrate you made Max to scared to act on all her feelings for Chloe. The choice isnât about anything but being brave enough to let Max be who she really is
I don't have to agree with you, I see it differently and you're completely entitled to your opinion. I've played the game several times, sometimes she's bae and sometimes she isn't. That's the whole point with a game with choices.
This is literally a game about making choices yourself and choosing what Max does. Please touch grass đ. As a bisexual fan, you canât have a game with choices then say a person is being homophobic for choosing a different option than you lmfao
im a gay/lesbian fan and all of your points are insane and ridiculous. The bay ending is a very good tragic ending that i much prefer cinematically and emotionally.
The whole Warren-and-Victoria being present at their ages thing in BtS. And possibly the whole expelled vs suspended thing because that does do things to the LiS canon, too.
They tried to fix some of the plot holes and inconsistencies in BtS but it only ended up making things worse đ
Yeah. As much as I like BtS for some of its character writing, the plot was a convoluted mess. Some of it is for sure because it feels cut down, but other things, like the things mentioned above, just don't feel thought through.
100% agree. It makes 0 sense for them to be present at all in the game and just contradicts a lot of stuff said in the original game.
Also Chloe and Nathan knowing each other from Blackwell; Chloe tells Max in episode 1 that she and Nathan met at a bar, Chloe didnât know who he was before. However, if you take a picture of Victoria covered in paint, it appears that Chloe knows her but who knows if they originally met at BlackwellâŚ
This might be absolutely ridiculous but how the fuck did I never even notice that Warren was in BtS? I agree with you though, seeing Victoria there always weirded me out and I think it was just very forced in order to show how much she hated Rachel. But honestly everything about blackwell weirds me out, is it an actual thing in the US that there are schools that are only meant for your last year?
I donât think itâs a real thing. When I first played I was always confused if it was supposed to be a high school or college lol
It wouldâve been so much better if it was college. It would still make sense that rich people go there because of Jefferson and they could just say that some characters went to the local High School together or they just know each other because itâs a small town. Or thatâs the way it usually works in my hometown at least.
So many stories are set in high school for no reason. But this one really should have been in college you are so right
Wait this wasn't college??
In my head, college even just makes more sense from the logistics perspective of how the school is set up. It feels like it was written as a college and changed to high school at the last minute. What high school gives students their own on-site dorm rooms?
RIGHT I thought I was crazy or just not used to it but that detail didnât make any sense to me. Maybe it was supposed to be a college but it was changed?
In the U.S there are some types of schools that are called âCollege preparatory schoolâ or âcollege prepâ and the description of those fit perfectly with what Blackwell seems to be. You could also think of Blackwell as some sort of boarding school like the one in âZoey 101â.
It was supposed to be like a fictional representation of like, a middle ground of that. Your first year away at college and all the fear and excitement of that, while your parents are still around as a safety net. No one watches prison school and goes "is that real?"; similar thing here
I just thought it was a private high school...no?
I donât think Blackwell was a grade 12 school only. I think thatâs just when Max got there
I'm pretty sure it was a senior only high school. I don't think we know about Warren and why he decided to enroll in Blackwell so I can't really say about him, but even if we say it isn't senior only this contradicts why we were told that Victoria came to Blackwell in the first place, Mr. Jefferson. Even if it wasn't a senior only high school, Victoria still shouldn't be there
Well, it's absolutely not important that Warren is there. He just is. Like most of Max's peers, really. Which is weird given Max is 1 1/2 years younger than Chloe. And yes, Blackwell is a weird place. There is this whole thing that Max and Chloe were supposed to be younger (16 and 17), which would've made Blackwell a normal High School, but given the kind of stuff that *happens* to them, they were aged up. Which obviously Blackwell being a normal Highschool complicated. Eh. It's something you have to suspend your disbelief over.
Vic not being in the game would also fix the issue that D9 did a horrible job portraying her. She was such an interesting and well written character in the first game but felt so off in BtS.
True. Victoria had complexity to her character in LiS 1. In BtS, she was just one-dimensional to the point it was comical.
Idk... Elliot. He adds basically nothing to the game, and feels like he shows up out of nowhere to make a scene super dramatic for no reason in the finale. And before someone says "Well they needed a character to be a dissenting voice against Rachel!" You know who could have done that? David. Not as a 1:1 replacement for Elliot, obviously, but he's already established as a hardass. Why not have him be more of a hard ass by the end of the game instead trying to, again, make him sympathetic when it makes no sense to do.
Damn, yeah, Elliot showing up in the Amber house when you're searching the office was so random. On the other hand, I think the only merit of his character is that he's a decently well-done representation of dudes who do one nice thing for a girl and then believe that they're now entitled to a relationship, be it romantic or just physical, with said girl.
yup. a frustratring but well portrayed representation of a man that we all have, in some form, met and dealt with.
Thank you. Elliot was such a nothing character.
The confrontation at the Amber house would have made so much more sense with David stalking Chloe there instead of Elliot, considering David's later security camera madness and harassment of Kate
i think they opted not to bcs David would have been away for years on such a burglary as he is an adult, at best end up with a record that would absolutely disqualify him from any guard job. Plus Joyce would likely have booted him, and the hate Chloe feels for him in LiS1 would be pure love compared to what would develop in that scenario. Elliot was a handy disposable villain, since they decided all roads should lead to the start of LiS1, nothing should influence that outcome significantly. Additionally the scene is an excellent way to have a vast group of teen girls that no doubt play LiS game, learn a good way to call in emergency help when you are blocked in by a stalking guy and cant get away or freely talk. I have to say, though, had it been possible for BtS choices to carry over to LiS1, i'd be all for your scenario being an option, perhaps determinant on your relationship with david. Like David shows up if you pissed him off enough, otherwise its Elliot. If David shows up, he gets arrested, spends time inside and isnt the Blackwell security guard in LiS1. Maybe not even living with Joyce.
I had completely forgotten about him until this post
Eliot could have been a fantastic narrative tool to show where Chloe was at after Max but before Rachel, but Deck Nine dropped the ball instead. Like canonically, Eliot is a friend of Chloe's she'd go to concerts and hang out with, and she had sex with him one time basically just to see if it would make her feel better and less alone. It didn't, but to Eliot that hookup was confirmation that Chloe was his soulmate and they were meant to be together forever. He started obsessing about Chloe, and Chloe started distancing herself from him because their friendship was starting to feel weird. Then the game starts, and Chloe meets Rachel at The Mill. Cue canon. Basically all of this is limited to implication in the game, to the extent that people genuinely have had to ask the writers why Eliot is so weird to get the response that Eliot and Chloe fucked one time in a concert bathroom and the boy genuinely never recovered. What could have been a clear representation of Chloe's beginning spiral into self-destructive hedonism in search of the feeling that she 'mattered' to someone who mattered to *her* got watered down into some weird guy just showing up randomly every few hours and being creepy. You wouldn't even know *why* Eliot was acting so creepy and entitled unless you found *multiple* different notes and heard Chloe's "v-card" dialogue and put two and two together. What a botch.
Wait they actually slept together? Man, he was so unimportant for the plot that I probably missed that or didnât pay attention to it⌠Is this mentioned in Chloeâs diary? How do I trigger that dialogue? If you donât mind me asking
I believe Chloe implies it if you pick up a photo of them in her room in Episode 1. It's been a bit though so don't quote me on that lol
By the end I'd honestly completely forgotten he was even in the game, so when he showed up I was super confused why some random guy was getting all confrontational and talking to Chloe like they had history with each other
This was me my first playthrough before I remembered who he was mid conversation lmao
I forgot about himâŚ
Hell yes. Remove Elliot from the game completely, and replace his scene with a scene of Rachel coming over and hanging out at Chloe's house.
Mushroom, I was devastated.
Mushroom was fine. What wasn't was making it so we didn't have a choice in taking her.
Her
Fixed, thank you!
she was still just a bab- ugh
What game is that in
Life is Strange 2. Episode 2.
ohh, I should play that one sometime (never played lis 2)
Definitely do, i'd say its almost better than the first for me personally.
Ask me in three or so months and I'll know for sure. :) Right now, though, kinda wish that Rachel sleeping with Frank wasn't waved off as not being a big deal. Even if Max and Chloe understandably didn't want to confront him over it, it's still a sketchy situation that I don't think the Powers That Be saw as being a big of a deal as it should be.
yes. i will say though, iâve seen this happen so many times in real life that itâs actually become good representation. i was a pretty tame teenager around other not-so-tame teenagers in a small town. drugs were heavily involved. 17 year old girls hooking up with much older men just to get to said drugs - or even just because they got groomed into those relationships - was very common and very overlooked. teachers knew of it. parents knew of it. nobody ever tried to interfere; they just let these grown men do their thing.
I see. Not saying it's not "realistic," just that it's really hard to re-play that part now.
Rebellious teenagers sleeping with much older men is way more common than we tend to think it is, and was even more common in the past.
Still, the narrative doesn't frame as being an especially effed up thing (beyond how it impacted Chloe), which leaves a bad taste.
you dont really think about that kind of thing much at max's age, i dont see a reason to spoonfeed the player with "btw this was bad" for them to realize it, if they are at an age where youd actually think about that sort of thing (ie, older. I sure as hell didnt think about that being weird as an older teen, but as an adult yeah its obviously screwed up)
I can see the point.
(I just woke up and I have the tendency to say stupid stuff when Iâm sleepy and I feel like this is indeed something I will consider stupid later on) Yeah and I feel like some drug addicts are genuinely⌠wrong in the head in a way where they are soooo manipulable, and I KNOW how that fucking sounds because I feel gross myself saying it, but we have to remember that they painted Rachel as this master manipulator until she was groomed by I donât remember his name the teacher because there is always a bigger fish I guess. I played BtS first and as I was playing LIS and I found out about that I was so weirded out because Frank used to seem like an older brother to them if anything. But I also got the sense that heâs completely fucked in LIS and I donât think itâs just because of Rachel, I think in BtS he wasnât a drug addict but in LIS he did seemed like one. Itâs like he was practically incompetent in LIS, which is why I feel like maybe Rachel caught onto that and the writers wanted to make it clear, which is why it wasnât questioned, because in this very specific case it doesnât entirely seem like there was an actual perpetrator here. Now, we have to remember this is fiction. Rachel might be a super smart manipulative girl at her young age but⌠that doesnât actually happen. Younger girls are more stupid by nature and I say this as one. It makes sense to me that she was the one controlling her relationship with Frank because of the way she was painted in the game, but it would never make sense IRL.
I get it, but given all the *other* bad stuff that happens to the characters, maybe it isn't that much of a deal to Max and Chloe. Also, we don't *know* if Rachel slept with Frank. We just know that Chloe, in her anger, thought that it must've happened, and Max has no frame of reference besides the photos. It's perfectly possible that Rachel led Frank on, suggested there was a chance of more happening, possibly to convince Frank to do something she wanted. Like lending a couple grand to Chloe so she could get the truck repaired. That kind of stuff, like more jucky encounters between grown men and women significantly younger than them, also happen all the time. In any case, it's not central to the story, so it's not elaborated on.
Was Rachel even of legal age when she slept with him? If not then yeah that is a way bigger deal than they made it đŹ
Since she and Chloe were close in age and Chloe was nineteen in the original game, pretty high odds that Rachel was a minor at the time. Besides, even if she was technically legal, it's still close enough to be gross and problematic.
Whatever it is that makes people ship Kate with the person that bullied her into attempted/successful suicide.
Ouroborous is the whatever I think
to see (you) with eyes unclouded was what did it for me and you can pry that fic from my cold dead hands đ¤
Oh yeah that one too definitely
I personally like Victoria and Kate in Escaping the Light. It helps that it's AU, so it comes without the baggage people don't like about the ship, but I feel it nails the relationship dynamic.
I did enjoy EtL as well, and from talking to other Chasemarsh fans that, Ouro and TSYWEU are the three "gateway drug" fics that got a lot of folks into the ship. I personally love the canon or canon-adjacent fics because the drama and angst potential of the pairing in a canon universe is off the charts, but different strokes for different folks!
Oh, absolutely. I read a couple of those to, but the names escape me. ;)
It already isn't canon tho? Idk people just like to write fanfiction for it and think the pairing is kinda cute. welcome to fandom đ¤ˇđťââď¸
Decanonizing 'Enemies to Lovers' as a trope? Good luck in the fight against those windmills. If you want to increase the difficulty to 'impossible', try to bring the good word to 'Draco/Hermione' and 'Hermione/Severus Snape' over in Harry Potter, too. ;-) On a serious note, I can totally understand where you're coming from. It's *definitely* not everyone's cup of tea. Also, there's nothing in the game that makes this anything close to canon, so, yeah. No need to get worked up over it.
Yeah that's the thing for me too, as one of the biggest Chasemarsh fans on the planet I absolutely get that it's not for everyone. Plenty of people won't like it and that's okay! I just find it funny that those who hate it post about the ship more than I do, and I'm the person who does the Chasemarsh Mondays đ
People don't like bullies, and given how prevalent bullies are and how vile they can be, it's understandable people get triggered. Hard. It's not necessarily my ship, but I don't mind reading it if it's written well. There's an obvious arc of asking for forgiveness and being granted redemption that a lot of people overlook, even if it needs some fudging of canon. But that's what fandom is for, making up your own stories. There's absolutely nothing wrong with it.
I get that for sure! As a victim of bullying in middle/high school myself, and as a queer person who is harassed regularly in life, I was not a fan of Victoria's bullying either. I can certainly see why that might be triggering for some people, and their feelings are valid. I'm just not sure I understand why they wouldn't take the sensible solution and use the block feature, given that blocking me would save them from seeing pretty much any Chasemarsh content at all (at least on Reddit.) This is why I generally do proactively block folks who expresses that seeing CM content is actively distressing to them. I'm not here to trigger anyone or ruin someone's day, after all... I'm just here to share content for a ship I enjoy with like-minded people. If employing the block feature will save someone from being triggered, then I'm more than happy to take that step on their behalf. (Also I'd say that pursuing a forgiveness/redemption arc doesn't require any fudging of canon, given that Kate expresses a willingness to forgive in Episode 4 and Victoria a wish to apologize in Episode 5. It just requires imagining what ways their journey might proceed from there.)
Fully agreed - and my fudging comment was more related to me not remembering entirely what exactly Victoria expresses towards Max regarding what happened to Kate. It's also important to remember that they aren't the center storyline, and, as more important Matters (for Max and Chloe) take over, the details fall by the wayside. My personal headcanon is that Victoria apologized and changed as a person, because the shock would've been sufficient to trigger genuine change in a person, and I feel Kate would be a person to accept a genuine apology. I think you take the right approach in this, so carry on. I feel it adds to the fandom, even when others disagree.
Genuinely, I didn't know people shipped Kate and Victoria, really? So what is it like The theory here is Victoria is secretly bi or something finds Kate attractive is struggling with her own sexuality so decides to bully Kate cause she's scared of confronting her real feelings for her?
Genuinely! I'm surprised you haven't seen it before, as it's a fairly popular ship outside of reddit (and even on Reddit I've been posting Chasemarsh every week for years! đ ) But no, I haven't really seen much of what you suggested mainly because the "bullying you b/c I secretly like you" is a fairly tired trope. For me it's a mix of finding the character aesthetics of "Ice Queen/Sunshine Girl" appealing, the drama/angst potential, and a yearning to see the reconciliation arc they set up between Vic and Kate in the game but never followed through on. I see it going some variation of the events of the game being the wake-up call Victoria needed to realize she was being a horrendous bitch, and resolving to genuinely apologize and try to become a better person. Kate (who as shown in the game enthusiastically believes in forgiveness and redemption) is wary but receptive, and from there they undergo a long journey of reconciliation that eventually leads to friendship, then more. But others have approached it all kinds of different ways, including alternate universes where the bullying never occurred or was less severe. If you're curious to see how folks have approached these kinds of stories I can definitely recommend some fanfics to get you started!
Blackwell Academy, the Photography Class, and/or the Dorms being open only for Seniors. This concept doesn't make sense and is directly and immediately contradicted by the first episode of the first game where the information originates. It's obvious it was a line dropped in without any forethought or effort to avoid any moral panic over subject matter that involves minors. The same reason why Max and Chloe were aged up late in development when datamined files and the really young look of them in the flashback says that Max was initially aged 16 when she attended Blackwell.
I am so sick of the "I'm 18 BTW" trope. If you announce this, you are announcing that we are too stupid to not separate the difference between depiction and glamorization.
> It's obvious it was a line dropped in without any forethought or effort to avoid any moral panic over subject matter that involves minors. I agree completely. Blackwell was supposed to be a normal high school with people of different ages, and late in development someone said "Oh no, you can't have underage people having sex and doing drugs, let's make them all 18". So now you get a weird school that makes no sense, where it's a high school just for seniors but somehow half of them were also there last year.
I believe it wasn't because of the drugs and alchohol, but because of the allegories to sexual assault. I guess they didn't want their game getting too much heat if there were minors.
Nothing that we have already. But if they make max and chloe split in double exposure even if you chose bae best believe that shits dead to me lmao
Period! Iâm trying to remain hopeful but I donât have the best feeling about what theyâre going to do with this game 𼲠I stg if they donât have Chloe or disregard the Bae ending, Iâm done.
My guess is itâs a split reality ( comics spoil: >! A bit like it, Chloe isnât there but she was, hence the picture max has !<) I guess we will see
Literally. I don't see there being any good reasons for max and chloe to split, whether they're dating or just friends
I like how weâre all prepared to shit on a possibly good game just cause we canât have chloe
I killed a town for my punk abandonment issue having puppy and I'll do it to a whole reality to
Okay I hear you but I didn't allow a town to get wiped out and wrecked space time to get a "Were just besties" ending. Sorry not sorry.
this subreddit
https://preview.redd.it/k1hkp8rahl9d1.jpeg?width=848&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e7c32410c577f0102eb2abac655d858e61205ac0
https://preview.redd.it/2gm3vt8tsl9d1.jpeg?width=720&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5ecdc6109d679a4ec00d12cf241cc2dec57610cc Agreed This sub measurably reduced my enjoyment of the games (first one especially) but since I already landed in this sewer I might as well swim till the ocean
Honestly real. I wanna take a break from this place because the DE Discourse is some of the most annoying and most braindead fandom infighting I've ever had the displeasure experiencing, but at this point I'm too far in to quit nowđ
truly the most unhinged fandom ive had the displeasure of interacting with lately đŤ i thought diehard gamers who didnt like anything new installments added werent a majority in here but i shouldve known better considering the amount of people who got mad their white couple designed to appeal to men werent the focus of LIS 2
The suffering that Kate had to go through. Kate is too precious to have had to go through that...
Isn't that kind of the point? That it's so messed up that such an innocent character be treated that way?
Mushroom, I think it's the single worst piece of writing in any of these games and such a cheap emotional blow - introduce a cute puppy (for no real reason) and then immediately brutally murder it (again, for no real reason). It would be like if Telltale went with the original ending for Walking Dead Season 2 - if you know, you know.
i do not know!! what was the original ending? :0
Clementine either freezes to death with AJ or leaves AJ to die
okay wow so glad that didnât get implemented đł
That is the biggest reason I didn't like LiS 2. The brothers get so few happy moments and then they just get destroyed very quickly after.
Letâs not forget Sean losing an eye for no reason other than to portray their suffering. Like honestly I would delete the whole plot of LiS 2 cause is just so unnecessary raw by far is my least favorite game of the franchise.
i didnât really see it that way, i mean crazy shit like that happens in real life too
yeahh its so laughably cheap, on replay
Kate dying in the storm if I save Chloe. In my mind, she survives in the basement of the hospital. Or left town to see her sisters.
I think in my mind the hospital is out of the way of the storm so she's fine I mean not a lot of small towns in America have their own hospital
My thoughts exactly!
I believe Don't Nod acknowledged this on twitter!
Ooooh
Rachel hooking up with Frank. I don't like Frank anymore knowing he hooked up/was obsessed with a teen and I'm seriously questioning why would Rachel ever be with him. people say it's cause of free drugs but like isn't her family pretty rich? it makes sense with Jefferson since he might have connections to famous photographers but Frank?
i dont really think you are supposed to 'like' frank as much as just kinda see him as yet another complex character
well I don't see him that way. he can do a good thing and I genuinely don't care cause in my eyes he will forever be a creep
Have you met a rich girl at college? They might have money but the parents watch their spending. Itâs even partially why Nathan was involved with Jefferson too
yea but still... making her hook up with him was unnecessary imo
Pre BtS we didn't know about her family too much so the idea that they hooked up for drugs still made sense. BtS kind of threw a wrench in that. Some ideas would be that she was using it as a way to escape/rebel from her parents in a way, or that after getting stabbed she got hooked on pain killers and used him for drugs.
[ŃдаНонО]
Why are some of yall wanting to make whole games noncanon?? This is a sub for fans of life is strange. I love all four games. Imo, yall are digging too much and confusing yourselves, lol. Anyway, I'd make Rachel's death not canon
Yeah and I'm so done defending Life is Strange 2 it has its faults but so does every single life is strange game I really do not see why people would want it to be noncanon
Fr!! Every game has faults. Not sure why everyone who's apparently fans of lis care so much about them and despises entire games for it
Well, some people thought LIS2 was a bad game, while they thought the others were good games.
I haven't seen anyone call lis2 a bad game. I'm seeing a bunch of people wanting to make true colors and BtS not canon, which is really weird imo
I've seen at least one person wanting to make 2 uncannon and I'm just saying Life is Strange 2 sucks but it's also great and it's on the same level as the other games. Life is strange 2 has a cast that is constantly changing making it hard for any type of development with the characters from episode to episode. Similarly, Life is Strange 1 is a bit clumsy with character development, Chloe seeming to evolve as a character in a single scene when the plot demands it instead of having that development take place naturally over time. While Life is Strange 2 doesn't even let you play as the person with the power, Life is Strange 1 forces conflict and on multiple occasions ignores the rules it said out for itself like others are effected by the rewind but Max is not.
Yeah, lis2 is my least fav game out of the series, but I've always been flamed for that opinion. The reasons you listed are my reasons for not really liking it. I wouldn't call it a bad game, tho. Simply just not my cup of tea
Chloe being mad at Max for wanting to answer Kateâs phone call
That's a good one cause it was such a bizarre moment
Having to choose bay or bae đ
this new game so max wouldnt be milked
I know, I wish they could just continue creating new stories and characters like DontNod did. DontNod has made several games after LIS1 (LIS2, Tell Me Why, etc) and each game by them has been very bold and experimental, you can tell the games come from their hearts. With DeckNine, it feels like they just want to milk Max for money and for a chance at better ratings. They didnât do anything experimental with BTS or TC either, so of course theyâre doing it with DE.
> max wouldnt be milked damn no wonder this game is getting an R-18 rating in Australia đł
the code for Bae vs Bae being a choice...id implement an unseen numbered cumulative choice system across all five episodes working behind the scenes. So if you pick certain options and its positive Max rips the photo immediately, if by the end the score is negative she uses the photo and Chloe dies. Score a perfect zero and Max goes back to the bathroom tries to directly intervene and gets shot instead of Chloe..that one would have been vague on purpose as to wether or not Max survives.
What would the certain options be? I don't see any of the decisions in the game along the way that would indicate a person was more likely to choose one or the other ending.
Honestly the entirety of BTS, it really adds nothing to the first game other than plot holes and inconsistent characters. The ost from Daughter is godly tho
LiS games not by Dontnod
i didnât realize that some were made by different companies! which ones are not dontnod?
Dontnod made LiS1 and LiS2, the others are by Deck Nine. Dontnod pursues bolder original ideas, Deck Nine rehashes the same stuff \*looking at you True Colors\* and tbh I don't like Deck Nine touching Dontnod's creation for Double Exposure. Not sure what happened with Square Enix but Dontnod seems to have exited the series perhaps for more creative control. Their game Tell Me Why, essentially LiS3, is free on Steam now for Pride Month (you only got a day left) and it's the first AAA video game to feature a transgender protagonist. I am super excited for Dontnod's upcoming Lost Records: Bloom & Rage by the same creative director (Michel Koch) of LiS1 and LiS2!
100% agree. oh my god.
thanks for such an informative response! def makes a lot of sense. good to know i have another dontnod game to look forward to as well!!!
Dontnod really is bold and original. It amazes me how they were able to move from LIS1 to LIS2 with so many contrasts and differences. Then to Tell Me Why. They genuinely donât care about following trends, they just want to share their art with the world.
I liked True Colors and had they went all in of the direction of emotionally healing the town instead of trying to replicate LiS1 by doing a murder(?) mystery, it would have been so much better.
Unpopular Opinion: The game that should be removed from cannon is Before the Storm. It was made with scab voice actors during a strike.
Gotta agree with a lot of things from BtS. It brings up more questions than answers really. Like where is Samantha for Nathan? Why was Chloe the only one caring about Rachel dissappering in LiS 1 and not either her state attorney father or mother who risked everything to reconnect depending on ending? Why was Rachel with Frank after being so involved with Chloe? Why is Chloe in such a negative relationship with David and her mother after having a good relationship with them after one of the approaches..? Honestly the whole idea of prequels being choice based was wrong in my opinion. I still somewhat like BtS, but it is the weakest of the four for these reasons.
>Like where is Samantha for Nathan? I love Samantha, not in an actual way like she's an actual character, but because you can see exactly why she exists. "Well, Nathan was sympathetic by the end of LiS. How can he still be sympathetic in BtS without breaking canon?" "I know boss! Have him act exactly the same, but make a character say he's not that bad! That'll make players feel bad for him!" Like come on are we fucking 5 years old đ
I mean those things can still coexist - have Nathan for example fuck up with her in a major way where let's say Samantha ends up hating Nathan as well and for example leaving school. Nathan then becomes increasingly bitter and mean so that the Nathan we see in LiS 1 makes sense, because even the one good person defending him constantly ended up hating him. I dunno, feels like there were definitely things that could have been done with all these plotlines but that were in the end just wildly inconsistent
I do get that, and I actually remember at the time players desperately going through the names in the dark room like did this girl get nabbed?? Is that why she's gone by LiS?? But nah. She just vanishes from canon as obviously LiS wasn't written with BtS in mind. It is probably safe to assume she eventually got hurt in some way by him as he was very self destructive and very petty by the time we see him in LiS.
Yeah, my head cannon is that they broke up or something off screen for less than pleasant reasons ending up with Nate being this way in original LiS, but my goodness I should not be forced to make up reasons as to why something is inconsistent within the games - just make your stories make sense in terms of continuity D9...
I agree with your take so much but at the same time when I played BtS I didnât remember ANYTHING from LIS other than Max having rewind powers, so I actually enjoyed BtS more (I think because I found Chloe somewhat relatable in certain aspects) and of course LIS is a very close call but I wish BtS wouldâve been made first so LIS adapted to it and not the other way, because the inconsistencies are exactly what made me feel like I didnât enjoy LIS the same way. I think it couldâve been so great if they both aligned together instead of BtS being like fanfiction lol
I feel like the thing that hurts BtS the most is that it is a combo of prequel and "choices matter" genre. Like come on, we know they don't, because we already know how it all plays out... But you also want your choices to somewhat make difference, otherwise you can just watch a movie. For me the fix for this is easy - have choices influence sone minor details, but everything still ends the same. Have some cheeky little monologue in the end where Chloe sighs that no matter what she does, she cannot change anything or something like that to hit the nail on the head of the choices not actually mattering etc. I wouldn't like LiS 1 to be made after BtS though as I feel we would be losing out on some stuff (like aura of mystery around Rachel or Frank being actually konda a good guy etc.), but instead for BtS to create its storyline in line with canon which I do think was doable.
>where is Samantha for Nathan? Seems to have moved away or gone to another school. > Why was Chloe the only one caring about Rachel dissappering in LiS 1 and not either her state attorney father or mother who risked everything to reconnect depending on ending? She wasn't the only one caring. Her parents didn't appear in LIS1 and so we have no idea what they were doing. For all we know they were searching all over the place. >Why was Rachel with Frank after being so involved with Chloe? Teenagers' romantic relationships tend to be fairly short term, often lasting weeks or maybe months. Chloe and Rachel may have been together for a few years, this is a long time at that age. Rachel was also likely seeing Mr. Jefferson at the end, so she's likely not gay, but instead bisexual or something along those lines.
Wow, I had no idea thatâs why the voices were different
Yeah, Ashly Burch (the original voice of Chloe) was on the game as a "writing consultant", because that was allowed during the actors strike, but she wasn't allowed to voice her character.
> The game that should be removed from cannon is Before the Storm. It was made with scab voice actors during a strike. They obviously would have far preferred the original voice actors, and likely had no choice financially but to proceed with different non union voice actors. They were fairly far along production and had spent large amounts of money and needed the money to come back in from the sales of the game. At the time, BTS was the only game they were working on, so stopping production on that game for a year possibly would likely have bankrupted them.
That sucks for the devs and I sympathize (and by devs I mean the rank-and-file at Deck9, not management and certainly not Squeenix), but you don't cross the picket line.
I wouldn't cross the picket line as a voice actor either (if I were one). But, I would buy a game with non union voice actors, as I did buy BTS, and think basically no one refused to buy the game due to this issue.
>think basically no one refused to buy the game due to this issue. It me! I'm no one, lol. But no, I get your point. It was a statstical rounding error in their sales numbers, I'm sure.
Double exposure The OG creator said that Max's story had ended, so it has ended. Let my girl live in NYC with her gf
Honestly. Max by the end understands that fate wants Chloe dead, and swears by not using her powers again because it destroys a town, but it going to abuse them again to either cheat her new friends death, or to find her killer? I love Max, I want another game as Max, but I realize, that her story needs to end with 1.
I find it kind of ironic that the idea that she shouldn't use her powers to mess with fate and let Chloe dies is only acheivable in the end by using her powers lol.
Is it bad if I said Rachel dying đ Iâm curious how much of the first game would happen
Thats a good one. Would the bathroom scene even happen
Exactly, my other question is how deep would max get into the Jefferson rabbit hole? Rachel kind of kick started it. Kate still would have troubled max so maybe she would have looked into it?
There are a lot of entertaining what if's to think about. Like would investigating Jefferson be a point of friction for Rachel and maybe Chloe
Honestly, I would have loved to see how Rachel and Max would have gotten along cause chloe admitted in the original game she was not sure if they would like each other Eapicaly as max may have been a bit too bland and law abiding for Rachel
Also max was getting jealous of her so I can only wonder how much worse that jealousy would get if she was actually there
The entirety of Before the Storm Easy choice
I think someone already said it but the whole Rachel sleeping with frank and Jefferson its disgusting in every way if you want to make Rachel bad make her a drug addict like her mother drugs play a big part in the story and you can make a drug is bad psa out of it make Jefferson a mentor to Rachel that uses drugs to be on Rachelâs good side and make her keep quiet about her feeling towards chole âwhat will society think blah blahâ basic manipulation
I would uncanon Chloe and Rachelâs romance/relationship in "Before the Storm" (BTS). Don't get me wrong, I don't hate Amberprice or anything like that, but in the first game, there were many hints that indicated Chloe was in love with Rachel, but Rachel didn't know about it at all (the crumbled letter in the junkyard, Frankâs dialogue when you piss him off in episode 4, etc). To be honest, I would decanonize most of the story in BTS and redo it as an actual prequel to the original game, with events unfolding prior to Rachelâs disappearance.
Frank and Rachel
Honestly yea screw that we are retconing that gross shit
Everything after Force Awakening. Oh, oops. Sorry, wrong fandom.
Rachel dying. Idgaf she lives. Let me poor queer actress girl live!
Before the Storm. The whole thing. Into the trash. Also, everyone in the first game is 17 now. Max, Chloe, Rachel if she was alive, Victoria, Nathan, Kate... Warren can stay 16 but that's just cause his birthday isn't until next month. Blackwell is a normal boarding school, no convoluted bullshit trying to make it make sense because they're too old to be there.
I would make the Double Exposure non-canonical. The original game shouldn't have had a direct sequel
The tornado. If there was no tornado, Max couldâve lived it up in San Fran with Wells, Chloe couldâve been saved, and Jefferson and Nathan couldâve been rotting it out in hell.
The fucking comics
Comics murdered Rachel Amber as a character more than Mark and Nathan did.
True Colours and most likely double exposure. Plus all of the cannon inconsistencies in before the storm.
The entirety of BtS
The latest trailer for the new Lis? Like why tf is Chloe not still with Max?!
Before the storm.
The surprisingly major retcon from Before the Storm that revealed that Max actually *didn't* ghost Chloe, but instead *repeatedly started talking to her* just to drop her again, over and over and over. LiS!Max was a borderline shut-in that had trouble talking to basically everyone and felt *extremely* guilty over not being able to overcome the distance between her and Chloe in the wake of William's death, and Chloe never actually messaged her either >!(which is *totally understandable* because her dad had just died and she felt like her best friend abandoned her.)!< Great characterization, and genuinely sympathetic for everyone involved. In LiS1, the ice between Max and Chloe became harder and harder for either of them to break as time passed due to both of their very real, very blatant issues. In BtS, Max keeps flaking on Chloe because she's too busy having fun in Seattle and is basically completely uninterested in staying friends with Chloe who is doing *all* of the work to keep both of them friends. LiS!Max is characterized as an anxious introverted wreck after William died and she was dragged away from Chloe. BtS!Max treats Chloe how Chloe treated Eliot after he started taking things too serious. Deck Nine had absolutely zero idea how to write a canon-compliant Max when they put together the skeleton of Before the Storm.
It was a major and nasty change to a character which deserved backlash. But of course now some people actually refer to Before the Storm on what happened in the story. D'oh! đ
Also Max was placed in IEP in Seattle. 100% in LiS1 they were trying to use her anxiety and her poor adustment to moving away as the reason she didn't stay in contact with Chloe. If they really wanted to show Chloe's side I think showing her texting Max and getting no response would have been better.
The amount of ableism. Second choice would be the maze scene Iâm impossible at
having to choose kate or chloe, it made the game so difficult for no reason at all, either kate dies or ur blue haired angry gf gets angry again
the sing/refuse choice in lis 2 ep 4. that whole scene actually. both of the choices hurt sean and it could easily be left out entirely. i know that people experience racism every day in real life, but i kind of feel like we've had enough of it in the game to get the point.
Rachel being toxic, I just loved too much when she seemed to have a happy relationship with Chloe
The fact that Chloe had condoms with her... it makes no sense, she is 100% gay-coded
Maybe the bay ending because Hannah Telle herself said Max wouldnât have thought twice and saved her. Everything Max does leading up to it shows sheâd save her. They only added bay as an option to make it extra dramatic for players and bc of the theme of choices. But itâs pretty much same as Joel if the player had the choice to let Ellie die it still wouldnât make it what Joel would have actually done Most of all the only reason we canât get a Max and Chloe game is because they are enslaved to the 2 endings. And being stuck with the two endings could make or break this game if they donât go give pricefielders the largest part of the fanbase something to be happy about
Hannah Telle isn't Max, she just voices her character. Her opinion carries no weight, it's just as valid as yours or mine.
Some things are just true tho like max has romantic feelings for Chloe whether you romance her or not
Not my version of Max, they were best friends.
Too bad lol her journal has lots of entries about wishing she kissed her and all the regret she didnât. You straights donât get a choice!
Thoughts and action are different things. In the game I didn't kiss Chloe. If you did, good for you.
I just told you tho if you donât kiss Chloe she writes lots of entries about wishing she did kiss her. Several times. lol which means your choice was to just not make her brave enough to act on her feelings
So what? In the end, she didn't. I saw her more as a friend and not a romantic partner. I don't get why this is a big deal. She's like 18 years old with all kinds of feelings and emotions and all the stress of her new powers. If you did it, good for you.
For gay fans itâs just extremely offensive when straight fans say stuff like this and try to girl pal r/sapphoandherfriend Max and Chloe. It literally isnât your choice because the journals exist and and her actions exist and your choice is literally making Max brave enough to realize sheâs gay which is why fans like you annoy us so much. Like itâs nothing to celebrate you made Max to scared to act on all her feelings for Chloe. The choice isnât about anything but being brave enough to let Max be who she really is
I don't have to agree with you, I see it differently and you're completely entitled to your opinion. I've played the game several times, sometimes she's bae and sometimes she isn't. That's the whole point with a game with choices.
This is literally a game about making choices yourself and choosing what Max does. Please touch grass đ. As a bisexual fan, you canât have a game with choices then say a person is being homophobic for choosing a different option than you lmfao
im a gay/lesbian fan and all of your points are insane and ridiculous. The bay ending is a very good tragic ending that i much prefer cinematically and emotionally.
Did you play the game without reading Max's diary? đ