If I'm not mistaken, they had multiple endings in mind, but with people complaining that Episode 5 was taking too long to be released, they cut a lot out. Nathan was intended to be alive in Episode 5, if the player made the right choices in ep 1-4. There was even an unused Ep 5 audio file where Jefferson said he needs to take a break (from Max's Dark Room Shoot) and go deal with Nathan.
Do you have any source for this? I'm not doubting, but I'm sure because of PR reasons the devs and Square Enix keep saying that everything went as planned and there were no budget problems at all. I'd just really like to know what really happened lol.
I always felt that there was something bigger going on! My theory was always that Nathan's dad was the big bad, and Jefferson more of a red herring. Why would you have a bunker filled with provisions to survive a natural disaster if you didn't know it was coming - given that this was an area that never gets hit by tornados?!
Let's not forget that it also makes "The Vortex Club" obvious foreshadowing. I think it suggests that members of it were in Nathan's elite, and would be kept safe from whatever vortex was coming that the Prescott family was at least intimately aware of. It also makes "The End of the World Party" more than just a flashy name. As the story played out, there's little to no in-universe justification for naming the party that.
germankiwigal Exactly! The biggest potential disaster we have to prepare for here is if the Cascadia Subduction Zone has a major earthquake. The coast would feel the worst impacts of that earthquake, plus they would also almost certainly get hit by a tsunami. You don't build an underground bunker for that! That would get you killed! You only build an underground bunker if you are expecting a tornado. It makes no sense otherwise.
There was definitely a few story lines and consequences cut from the game. For example, if you tag "Max was here" in Chloe and Rachel's hideout, you get the butterfly icon in the top left. This is never mentioned again no matter what you do.
I remember when the trailer for Episode 4 came out, there was a line from Nathan where he said the storm was coming and they just cut it completely from the game. I always hated that, His character had a lot of potential but they just kill him off screen or send him to jail. Him having visions of the storm would have been really intresting, it sucks that they cut it.
I think the key point is: STAY OUT OF IT - Chloe took Nathan's gun STOP WARREN - Nathan kept the gun And,consider that Nathan could be alive in ep5 originally (according to the unused dialogue),this explains everything.
If Chloe takes his gun, Nathan is vulnerable and dies. If Nathan keeps the gun, he isn't vulnerable and is then alive in ep5...? It all makes sense in my head
but who went to get him in his supossed death was jefferson, and jefferson was taking care of max in the dark room, so he couldn't have defended himself against jefferson without a plot mark like a shot hole for example in jefferson)
I always thought that Nathan could have had similar powers to Max. The difference being, Nathan couldn’t handle having clairvoyance or time travel, we see this from his mental fragility. Maybe he saw something he shouldn’t have, or knew everything that was to happen.
Yeah it sure seems like they cut out a lot. The Prescotts knowing about the storm was a huge cut. Also what about all the graffiti implying Max might be stuck in a time loop? It's sad to think that Dontnod might have been rushed to finish and a lot of these plot points were simply unresolved
@@reverseashv2169 yeah im interested, this is the first ive heard of the time loop. i know lots of graffiti can be found in the environment referencing the supernatural, time and destiny. Idk if thats what they mean
My question is was David's hinted involvement just a bad red herring or a cut plot point? And Samuel having Rachel's scarf too. I love this game but seeing these in the game and knowing that they lead to nothing just really annoys me and I try to ignore it.
Madsen is probably an intentional red herring. He's resolved pretty easily after the end note. The Samuel thing...man I do not get. There's probably something there. I wonder if any unused Samuel assets have been data mined?
I don't know, it's weird. And the suspicion is cleared up a lot easier than with Samuel. I mean, how did he get Rachel's scarf? And then they drew attention to it by mentioning it in the nightmare sequence so I feel like it really was just an unresolved red herring.
David was also clearly prepping for the storm - he had all these provisions in the garage that Max even specifically points out. This is never explained or even referenced again. And yeah, Rachel's scarf - that one was annoying because there were a number of hints that her and Samuel hung out, yet nothing came out of us discovering this.
There are so many things pointing to a different ending. The note in the barn about the Prescotts building a bunch of bomb shelters. The homeless lady saying they use to do good things. Nathan's dad talk about leading him into a room ( what I think "Rachel in the dark room" was suppose to mean, not just a literal dark room for photos). Trying to move everyone to pan estates. Calling the club the vortex and having an end of the world party. Nathan saying he SAW the tornado. I really like the theory that the Presscotts are actually trying to save as many people as possible.
It's just so unsatisfying and a bit frustrating because we felt like something so much bigger was going to happen...and it didn't. I wish that the ending could've set us up for a sequel where all of these things were discovered
It’s a shame they didn’t use the remaster as an opportunity to show what their original intended story was, and better connect BtS with its remaster as well.
it has been SOOO long since i've played this game. but from what i remember, nathans family is building on some kind of indian burial ground, most likely his father in charge of the project. i honestly thought max got her powers from the tobanga (that indian tribe), which are hinted at maaaany times in the game (in pamphlets, totem poles, subtle text) to help stop that development. and to also somehow tie up all of the 'strange' things that were going on in the game.
Pacifist Run: "The ending is like a middle finger to us players where this is the only choice that really matters." Me: "Yes! Finally someone said it other than me!"
For a game featuring a girl with superpowers, the theme of being "powerless" is recurrent. No matter how much she tries to avoid or to stop things, such as Chloe's death or the storm itself, Max simply can't change the ultimate fates of her friend and Arcadia Bay. In a way, the ending does justice to this, making us, the players, feel as powerless as Max... it would be less of a middle finger and more of a well-thought punch to the gut, if it weren't for the alternative ending where the player can choose to save Chloe and franky ignore all the people that probably died in that storm.
@minjeongista I mean "powerless" exactly in the sense she couldn't change Chloe's fate. At least not without bringing the Storm to Arcadia Bay, which she also couldn't avoid as long as Chloe was alive. Max is constantly reminded by the Universe that she is not in control or that she has, at best, very limited control over things, even though her powers should allow her to alter the timeline however she wants, in theory. Just like the player, Max has to choose between Bae or Bay, and there's nothing she can do about it.
I hate when time travel themed movies/games include someone going way back in time and changing everything. Bitch why did I spent hours watching these non-impotant events then ?
The point of "this action will have consequences" is that it's felt by the protagonists and the players who care about what happens to them after the credits roll. Regardless of the ending you chose, Max has built up this Trauma in her system. She will always remember what happened, it will affect her for the rest of her life, and she can't tell anyone.
What an interesting concept, why bother making any ending when you can just use your imagination and *make pretend* all of the effects of the consequences.
Its not a silly point. It is exactly what happened. At the end of the day all those little choices shape you as a player and your max. And you of course have no idea the final choice would erase all your progress so you play to create your own environment. Course its shit it was all reduced to a 2 option choice but i enjoyed making my own Arcadia Bay.
I'm another one who hates the endings. I keep wishing they really had gone with more mysticism. The doe is a benevolent, protective animal in mythology and we see it associated with both Max (on her shirt) and Rachel (standing above her grave in Ep.1). Which makes sense cos both of them are protectors of Chloe. It would've been so much more satisfying if Rachel had been looking after Chloe one last time and was engineering things to stop the storm and get Max & Chloe together. Chloe even says she thinks Rachel is behind everything in Ep. 5, but it comes to nothing, and we're presented with two totally forced choices that crap on the game no matter which you choose.
Also, some players found out from the game files that they originally planned to make 8 episodes, not just 5, meaning almost half of the story didn´t make it into the final product because they ran out time and money. But considering how these types of mystery stories usually play out, if I had to guess I´d say that the Prescotts were originally meant to be the main villains of the story, and Jefferson was supposed to be a twist antagonist for the middle part of the game who works for them. And after Max deals with Jefferson one way or another, while knowing that the Prescotts gave him the bunker and that they somehow know about the storm, she would now be left with this mystery to solve, and possibly finding out where her powers come from. Would make sense to leave these mysteries for the climax of the game (episodes 6-8). Because as it stands, storywise the game is now quite fragmented and disjointed since the Dark Room/Jefferson/Rachel plot ended up being basically a side story that takes most of our time anyway because the storm/Chloe plot didn´t have enough substance for the entire game. If they could´ve made 3 more episodes, I´m sure they would have united these two separate storylines somehow.
@@ExistentialismNeymarJunior True. In Episode 5 they reused so much animations, locations etc. Even the part before the final choice where Max says they should just stay in Chloe´s room and tell David everything, but then for some reason the duo ends up near the lighthouse for the climax feels strange, as if something between those scenes is missing...
@@foxial5358 yeah this game had everything it’s story, writing, atmosphere, soundtrack, artstyle, and characters are better than any game right now as they all focused on gameplay/graphics instead of a story with heart and soul. Episodes 1-4 were absolutely amazing. Very sad to see the wasted potential of this game. Probably square enix and other developing companies wouldn’t let DontNod go past 5 episodes because the casual fan base wouldn’t buy anything past the usual telltale 5. Ep 5 was decent but sad to see how it ended compared to the masterpieces that were 1-4. Sadly 9 years later DontNod sold the rights to Life is strange and a company called D9 is ruining the entire LiS 1 story and characters with the new sequel and we will never get a directors cut of 5-8. If I were DontNod instead of making LiS 2 I would’ve kept episodes 1-4 get rid of the original episode 5 and then make 5-8 as a directors cut or remaster/remake and release it in like 2018/2019. But this game is all history now and D9 is going to continue to ruin the story sadly. This game will always be my favorite game of all time though even after everything was cut no game hits the soul as deep as this one
@@ExistentialismNeymarJunior Exactly! Your idea of realeasing the game with 8 episodes would´ve been absolutely perfect! 💖I think they planned to have a much more fleshed out version of the Presscott storyline, but when the rest of the story was cut, they just ignored it in Episode 5. It´s truly sad we´ll never know what the original plan was. :( Even before LiS1 was fully done, I recall DontNod saying they wanted LiS to be an anthology series with a new character, theme, and story in each game. That’s why LiS2 was so different in every way. They probably would’ve also made True Colours insanely different from the first two if D9 didn’t take over. But I agree LiS1 still has the most interesting story, powers, characters and atmosphere of the series. Unlike with the later games, everything that happens services both the narrative and the characters. And LiS1 should´ve stayed as a one-shot story that didn´t need prequels, sequels or spin-offs because good stories always end in time. But alas, whenever something becomes popular, companies will always choose money. I think the fall of this franchise started with BtS, which avoided all the difficult and more mature topics/themes that LiS1 clearly hinted about Chloe and Rachel (Like Rachel being groomed by 35/45+ men, Rachel likely knowing about the Dark Room and being arrested by David when she was carrying Jefferson´s drugs in the campus, Chloe having an arc from innocence to rebellion, Chloe´s feelings for Rachel being one-sided, Chloe´s fallout with Joyce and David, etc.). Instead, they focused on fluff and a random sob story about Sera that has nothing to do with the events of LiS1. D9 was fan service-y by making BtS while DontNod took risks for artistic purposes.
There was a theory that the Prescotts were a cult and knew about people having powers. They knew that Rachel had powers, and wanted Nathan to transfer it to himself using photography so they got Mark Jefferson to teach Nathan and funded their Dark Room project. But Nathan squandered that and so Sean is upset with Nathan and they have to go find a new power user - which ends up being Max and she gets caught in the Dark Room anyways but not for the same reason. I think this would've been really cool to see, that 1, there was a larger conspiracy that just never comes to fruition because Sean didn't take care of his son properly and so Nathan fucks up and 2, Jefferson accidentally gets in the way of the Prescotts just by simply being the bigger antagonist to the story. But this probably would've taken a lot more effort to implement and changed up the endings too, and also increases the lore of the supernatural portion of the game, which DontNod didn't really want to do and never really explain in any of the LiS games.
They planned LiS to be 8 episodes originally but they had budget and time issues to the point where they couldn’t even make the sacrifice bay ending. They also probably knew that 8 episodes wouldn’t sell because the casual fan base wouldn’t buy so square enix wouldn’t allow them to do it. LiS biggest mistake was making it an episode based game like telltale. If they made it a full game or they were their own separate company free from the pressure of square enix it would’ve been the greatest game of all time in my opinion
I honestly don’t understand why you couldn’t save both Chloe and Arcadia bay. Max was perfectly capable of doing both. I found the ending ultimately quite stupid and frustrated as hell
both official endings were so underwhelming. I feel like they questioned the ending that was meant to happen, which shouldn’t have happened as I’m sure the one that was planned out would’ve been much more satisfactory.
i absolutely agree with everything you said. there's simply too much evidence and too much left hanging to not come to the conclusion that something was removed. it's such a shame because this was legitimately my favorite game at that point, and i was really looking forward to see how they wrapped everything up, but... nothing was resolved. i hadn't considered that they may have done it in an effort to reuse the content in future games though. that almost makes me a little more hopeful about what's to come. thank you for your commentary! thoroughly enjoyed it.
I get the sense that it was deliberate and on purpose for story reasons. What makes it mysterious and strange, is that it isn't really explained. If they went into great details about how she got her powers and what the storm was about, it might of come across really convoluted and ruin the story.
i hope they make a remake of all the episodes with better face animation, redone dialogue, and the ending what they were going to do with episode 5 but didn't :(
This video is so great. The entire time I was playing I was thinking that the Prescotts had like... a weather controlling machine or powers from the Indian burial grounds or something, and they were causing the storm to cleanse Arcadia Bay so they could build what they wanted there. I was definitely super disappointed when all of the mysteries and things like the strange glyphs weren't even brought up again. And all of the choices made didn't even matter and all boiled down to two choices :') I don't think chloe or max or chaos theory created the storm. There was something else at work there, and they falsely concluded the storm was coming due to Max using her powers. I never understood why the game punished us for using its chore mechanic. Like what was the point lol
Am I the only person who liked the nightmare sequence? It was interesting to visually see Max's mind and internal conflict. Also, they totally made fun of their own annoying bottle scene.
I feel like the storm was coming to punish the Prescotts, but when Chloe died, the Prescotts went down, so no need for a storm. I feel like if the original ending had been about finding a way to ruin the Prescott family, Chloe and Max could have had a happy ending that didn't involve the death and destruction of an entire town.
Parees Gillard because Nathan was just a puppet and his father would have been the antagonist and he still lived unless the tornado took down the town.
I don't think the point here is to redeem him or not. He did horrible things, criminal things, but the point here is that if you paid attention to the game you would see he was severely mistreated, manipulated, not provided support or given the medical attention he needed. This is all evidenced throughout several episodes of the game. All of this could have been avoided if he was given what he needed. If he was treated properly for his mental and emotional problems from the START. Hence, the "Nathan deserves better" thing. He's a product of his environment, and people have sympathy for that cause they can see where it went wrong.
I played it recently and I could feel that was something else, something mysterious behind the events. And the story never directly touches it for some reason. Max's nightmare was not only about her inner fears or guilt. she was basically being judged. I don't like to think her power serves only as a game mechanic and I hope they will explore those secrets in the sequel.
While we don't clearly know where her powers came from, they did serve a purpose in the end. Near the end but before the nightmare sequence I think, she wound back to the Jefferson lesson from the beginning once again and she sent a text message to David with everything she found out about Mr Jefferson. That didn't stop the storm, but it caused Jefferson to be arrested. That's why Kate is still alive and well in the end at Chloes funeral. My believe is that Max got these powers from the Rachel Ambers lingering spirit and that it was their purpose to both give her spirit peace by defeating her killer and also to give a Chloe who was destined to die, a last happy week with her best friend.
But she didn't do anything. The message you're remembering only allowed her to survive the Dark Room, but if she hadn't done anything, she never would have been there in the first place. If she hadn't been in the bathroom, had never time travelled at all, the events would have happened exactly as they did in the sacrifice Chloe ending - Nathan would have been arrested, and then turned on Jefferson. As for the last "happy" week with her friend, while there were some great moments, most of that was spent trying to solve the mystery and avoid being killed. And then you're forced to watch her die. Again. Or sacrifice a town full of your friends. Nice. The only explanation that even remotely makes sense in the context of what we are given is that Max was given her powers by Chloe to save herself. We see the butterfly (with the same shade of blue as Chloe's hair) right before she gets her powers, and we see the butterfly land on and then fly off of Chloe's coffin at the end. In the original sequence in the bathroom, Max runs out after hearing the shot. She doesn't do that in any other version of that sequence. So maybe when she ran out, she would have ended up dead - say the gun he dropped goes off when it hits the ground, killing her. Even that is a stretch though. Really it just comes across as a cop out, rushed ending.
LiS had so much potential but it's like the creators just decided to make the entire game focus on Chloe after Pricefield took off as a popular pairing
I felt the idea that Max would ultimately cause the storm at the end was pretty apparent from day one. There are repeated references to "chaos theory", an appropriately bastardized definition of chaos theory which you'd expect the teenage characters to have. Mr. Jefferson was also teased early on with his class lecture about capturing students in "a moment of desperation". There's no way that wasn't planned. For Mr. Prescott to somehow be responsible for the storm would be a bizarre twist that wouldn't fit the story. The game does actually explain what he was talking about with his "enema" line. He was working on new property developments that would force a lot of the locals out. I think your insistence that it's too elaborate to be a red herring is mistaken nor do I buy the cadence argument. The Prescott family ark does pay off just not in the way we expected. Nathan's unhealthy and loveless relationship with his father explains why he would seek a surrogate father figure in Mr. Jefferson. With this in mind it makes perfect sense we'd never see him because that's the defining trait of Nathan's father, he's absent. I think the mystical elements were followed up on, but again not in the way that we expect. In addition to the references to chaos theory the story has many allusions to environmentalism and respect for nature. Max's power is a violation of nature and it carries with it all the consequences of violating the natural order of things. For this reason I'd reject any implication that anyone else was supposed to have special powers or that Mr. Prescott or Nathan were supposed to be causing the storm or even know about it. That would turn the story into some comic book esque superhero battle which isn't what it's supposed to be. Max's power isn't a gift from on high, it's a unique destructive aberration. I think the quote from the trailer was just an example of a misleading trailer. It's also possible it was something intended for the Nightmare sequence that got cut. I do think you have a point though that there seems to be something missing, I just don't think it was a major change to the ending. On my second play through I was very surprised to learn the "beat down" moment didn't have any major impact on the story. When I first played I was certain this moment determined whether or not Nathan lived or died. I payed close attention and saw how both played out. I noticed that if you stop Warren, Nathan grabs his gun before running away. If you don't the gun is taken away. I assumed that if Nathan still had his gun he could protect himself from Jefferson. I was disappointed to learn that's not the case. I notice another plot point that seemed to go nowhere in a conspicuous manner. Convincing Victoria to stay away from Nathan ended up being a meaningless accomplishment, since Nathan's already dead at that point. I wonder if there were originally plans for your decisions to effect whether or not Victoria lives or dies as well. Finally this whole thing got me thinking. In the end we ultimately get two choices, but there was an obvious third choice, one so obvious I can't believe I didn't think of it right now and I have no doubt one of the writers at least considered at one point. Max should have had the option of sacrificing herself. I imagine this idea would have been thrown out because it's a more attractive option then the other two. In a game it's easier to martyr yourself then sacrifice someone else. Perhaps they never thought of it or perhaps they didn't have the budget but maybe this could have been an "underlined" option, something you only get to do if you've made other decisions correctly. This could have added some weight to the nightmare sequence which I agree was somewhat out of place and relatively pointless (although I did enjoy how trippy it all was). Somewhere in the whole nightmare could be the key to realizing that you could go back to that bathroom, but instead of staying hidden you could emerge, startling Nathan and causing him to shoot you.
I might remember it wrong, but isn't convincing Victoria to stay away from Nathan will make her stick to Mr. J instead and she would end up in the dark room with Max?
Fun fact: in the game files, people found that there were supposed to be 8 episodes, not 5. Presumably, they either didn't have the budget since they were a smaller team at the time, or it was due to a majority of people complaining that episode 5 was taking far too long to release; my guess is the ladder. So the fact that the ending felt rushed would make sense if it was intended for there to be another 3 episodes, instead of the 5 that we got. I honestly really wish that they would do a remake of the first game, giving us the intended story that we never got to see fully develop. I feel like a lot of people would honestly agree, as seeing an entire alternate timeline of events from what we received would be extremely interesting. Even if they just tweaked the first few episodes to fit the story, but left them largely the same as in the original, and then just made what was intended, I think it would be very well received.
I think the theory about the game being rushed by squareenix to compete with a different game is true, and that it affected the games outcome in the last episodes pretty significantly
True, there was just too many hints and clues suggesting that the Prescotts knew about the storm, the game focused on that family way too much for it to have meant nothing, but all of this was dropped/ignored in the last episode. In Episode 4 when Max and Chloe go to the barn, before they find the dark room, there is even an unskippable cutscene that suggests the Presscotts knew about the storm even several decades before it happened ("The Prescotts bring bomb shelter boom to town"). And this scene with old photos, letters and newspaper articles strongly hints at their family legacy/history, so perhaps this was originally supposed to be an important part of the plot. And are we supposed to believe Nathan´s father somehow didn´t know that Jefferson was using their bunker like it is said in Episode 5? Because in Episode 1 Nathan even says to Chloe "That´s my family, not me" which suggests he has no control over his family money, not even enough to pay Chloe to keep her quiet after he drugged and assaulted her. So how can he pay for the dark room and all those expensive equipment that Jefferson used without his family knowing like Jefferson says in Episode 5?
Even though I loved what we got, I felt like there should've been a bit more but with we got, it's still my favourite video game of all time. Great theory though.
At first I thought the storm was coming because Max was messing with Chloe's real destiny which was to die of course. But after playing before the storm episode 1 I think the storm is Rachel as you do see some of her powers in that episode
Also there's the antipsychotic medication Nathan is taking because his father doesn't agree with Nathan's therapist. Maybe he's being treated for schizophrenia that he doesn't actually have, and he has some kind of power? Maybe there could have been an ending where choices you make in interacting with Nathan lead Nathan to a place of better mental health, similar to saving Kate from suicide or convincing Victoria that you don't have to be enemies. Instead of ending with the life lesson that we should all refrain from using time powers, maybe the storm could have been symbolic of how cliques and bullying in small things lead to larger, destructive consequences in the community. The "everyday hero" who is just kind to people might never do something cinematically heroic but their choices save the world. Any person could be captured in a bad moment and made to look evil, but if you take the time to see them more fully, you see that moment is not the entirety of who they are.
Considering that drugs are shown to be the one thing that keeps Max from using her powers, it´s an interesting detail put into the game that Sean Prescott apparently forces his son to take his medication while Nathan´s psychologist says Sean doesn´t seem to care about his son´s mental health. Even Max points out in Episode 4: "I don´t think this prescription has helped Nathan at all." And then this plot point doesn´t lead anywhere in Episode 5.
Like...when I played the game I felt like they were hinting at the Prescotts being some weird supernatural thing. Strange talk about legacy and destiny and...it all just gave me a vibe that they were more than just rich people evil greed.
ive only stumbled upon this gem a couple of weeks ago. ive run through it a couple of times now and explored most of the different choices. i have to say, i enjoyed the nightmare scene, for different reasons - one of them being the sneaking around. we often dream about things that happened to us. so that helped with the immersion for me. and it continued the nightmare theme from the first episode. i did get snippets of the supernatural during my playthroughs. i cant say i wouldnt have appreciated it if dontnod had explored that theme a bit more thoroughly.
This is gonna be me rambling a lot but okay I think the game shouldve worked more with the whole "Trying to save everyone" Idea As in, if you are nice to all of your classmates(and i mean all of them) save alyssa, save kate, then your ending should be more tipped towards sacrificing chloe however if you try to save everyone in the game, then you will have to watch them all be killed. If you do things like letting kate die, accusing nathan etc etc the game continues as normal, and you think youre doing the right thing, then it gives you an ending of saving chloe In the end, your actions really do matter, and there isn't a cop out choice for the ending (also if you try saving all of your classmates and still being nice to chloe, but use your power to be friends with everyone and find the truth about Mark, then you get an ending where everybody still dies. yes, including kate) the only person left is you, becase in the end, you cant save everyone OOOOOH also can i just mention how max sees the storm BEFORE she gets her powers? natural disaster much?
i want a sequel where some journalist or student investigates what happened in Arcadia Bay 5 years after the death of Chloe. Let me explain. 5 years after her death, a journalist goes back to Arcadia Bay to investigate what happened and uncovers some dark secrets that even Max and Chloe didn't know. She could go visit Jefferson in Prison and Nathan too, question the Prescotts and ask them what happened. And we can see Max when she is older, she explains she had a vision and then the journalist says "of a tornado?". Max is shocked and we discover that this journalist or student has some visions or nightmares about Arcadia Bay and that there is something creepy going on. Max says that everything ended with the death of Chloe and that Max does not have powers anymore. The journalist reaches a dead end until she herself discovers that she has some sort of power (have to elaborate on that) this is really a draft BUT it could be interesting to go over what happened maybe explore the theories of multiverse, lucid dreaming, astral projection, it could be so much more interesting. Oh and I even thought that the journalist or student could be Max's daughter but it would have to be 20 years after minimum lol. This plot would be better with the Chloe's death ending than Arcadia Bay but idk we could maybe work something out !!
THIS is what life is strange: remastered needs to include. they need to finish some of these random plots that they left open in the original game. especially regarding Nathan and the Prescotts!
I think including the “bottle mission” in the nightmare sequence at the end was BRILLIANT. This nightmare was supposed to be torture, and finding bottles was in fact a form of torture in this game.😊
I agree, it also shows the writers are aware of what went wrong in the game. I also remember there's a moment in chapter 3 where Max is about to grab an object but she says something like "you are clumsy Max, you know that object will fall and you'll rewind time, so let's just do it right and grab this box first"
@@Ricardo7250 some people think “if you realised the bottle mission was stupid, why did you include it in the game again?”. Some people don’t appreciate the genius of this decision.
At this point I only hope dontnod is working on a sequel. They should make the "Arcadia Bay gets destroyed" ending canon and the game should be about the two finding out the Prescotts caused the storm.
should have been that Max saves Chloe without her powers. and then explain everything to Chloe and they get married later also you don't know if anyone dies, they could be warned
they originally planned to have Chloe fall into a coma after being shot in the Sacrifice Chloe ending and she'd wake up a few days later in hospital with Max by her side and they'd reconnect there and rebuild their friendship and live happily ever after but they decided against it obviously
Tatjana M. Even though that sounds nice , her powers where given to live one more week with Chloe so she can have more time with her. All her power does is buy her more time
Gut shots aren't often fatal. Max changed the future by hiding behind the wall - she chose to let Chloe die. But we already know Chloe's death doesn't stop the Storm (when Jefferson kills Chloe the Storm still strikes). Max time-traveled through a photo to let Chloe die which means if Time Travel caused the Storm, the Storm will STILL hit after Chloe's funeral. Literally the only way for Max not to change the future is to reach out shouting "No!" when Chloe is shot... and then rush to Chloe's side and apply pressure to the wound to try and keep Chloe from bleeding out. It may have been enough that Chloe would survive long enough to reach the hospital. And by not using time travel at that moment the time loop could have been broken, Max forgets that entire week, but Chloe lives. And after several days wakes in the hospital and sees her best friend who saved her life.
What really annoys me about the ending where you go back in time and let chloe get shot is the fact that there's no reason to let her die. The idea about going back to then was that you go back before you did any rewinding, so then you don't cause the storm. So, from that point, as long as you don't rewind, everything's fine. Why do you have to let chloe die? Hitting the fire alarm to stop her death from happening doesn't involve rewinding time anymore than letting her get shot. You rewinded to before Nathan even gets in the bathroom, so you have plenty of time do to whatever you need to stop him from shooting her. No matter what you do (as long as you don't rewind), in that timeline, no rewinding happens, so whatever you do there will be no storm, so why let chloe die? her dying or surviving has nothing to do with the storm. it was you rewinding time, which you already undid. really frustrating to watch her do nothing for no reason. Technically though even after letting Chloe die in that final cutscene, Max could still rewind to that moment if she kept the photo and then saves chloe. You'd have to continue the game without rewind ability (cause obvs you'd start the storm again) but I think it would actually be really interesting - you already know how to take down Jefferson cause you already know about the dark room (so you don't even have to rewind to take him down). This leaves you to continue the game in the way this video is talking about - with Jefferson gone and you knowing that the Prescotts were the ones who gave him the dark room in the first place, you're left with the Prescotts as the main antagonists. Because they somehow knew about the storm, that also leaves you with that mystery to solve, and potentially learn where your powers came from. This also ties in with the timeloop thing - you can't use your rewind powers like you used to cuase you know that would cause the storm, however, we know from ep. 5 ending that you can rewind to the moment before chloe dies, so every time you mess up and rewind, you have to replay that moment over and over again. its not exactly a permanent loop, but its close enough imo. There are a few places where this doesn't match up, like, nathan isn't going to get to say the missing dialogue from the trailer when he said that cause that situation is unlikely to happen in such an altered timeline, but something similar enough could happen. Overall I think it's pretty possible to have a Life is Strange 2 where all the crap is overridden and we get the true ending without even retconing anything, it just plays out. tho it would be weird to see max's reaction to finding out she could have saved chloe after all lol. like 'whoops didn't think of that :s'
Failed tension build up was really present in this game, from Davids research and files, Joyces debt, the homeless woman, Nathan's dad, and even Mr. Jefferson's motive was stupid. His motive was simply art and thats it, i find that to be a bad use of tension build up as we were expecting something huge. Also the ending wouldve been better if they had kept Nathan alive as theu orginally planned, i think it wouldve made the game more interesting.
I just want to put this here: a couple things we know is Nathan atleast kidnapped Chloe and Kate since Chloe wakes up and has to kick him away and Kate saying Nathan drove her to the hospital aka the dark room, I would then believe he did kill Rachel and that story about her overdosing was true: something still feels weird abt mr Jefferson and Nathan’s relationship maybe something more was going on like Jeffson was blackmailing Nathan idk
It´s explained in LiS that Jefferson was like a father figure to Nathan, who was his pupil and wanted to make his own pictures. He was still learning from Jefferson and wasn’t actually supposed to kidnap Rachel, but Nathan lusted her. It’s why he then accidentally overdosed Rachel and killed her. It´s also why he didn’t succeed in assaulting Chloe in his dorm room. Jefferson had to clean up Nathan´s mess and decided to avoid him. This is all directly stated or implied in the game. Episode 5 even originally was meant to have a letter from Nathan to Jefferson (who has been angry with Nathan and avoided him several months now) where is admits "Yes, I know I fucked up with R." That´s why the style of the picture where Rachel is awake and furious is different than Jefferson's, which is what Max immediately points out. Jefferson is even written to brag that he was behind every other death that can happen in the game (Chloe, Nathan, Victoria), so it wouldn´t make sense for the writers to make him randomly blame Nathan only about Rachel´s death, and then not give us any options to find out the truth. After the long exposition scene between Max and Jefferson in Episode 5, Rachel's subplot is definitely closed and we aren´t given any options to do further investigation. And it´s later confirmed again when Max talks to Frank.
Yeah, the email on Nathan's computer really got me, especially when kate talks abt the prescotts having some kind of aura around them and being evil or having something to do with death. I wish they added onto that instead of scrapping it completely
I thought the long time consequence of letting Warren continue to beat up Nathan vs stopping him was that you had the opportunity to take Nathan’s gun. So if you lost your gun to Frank and didn’t get it back before your confrontation on the beach, it was another way to have one. Or you could end up with 2 guns, but even when you have 2 only Chloe has a gun when they meet Frank. It’s not just a dialogue difference.
I think that the main reason why it is considered a "main story change" action is because if Warren is stopped, Nathan holds onto the gun, and if he isn't, Chloe takes the gun. That comes into play later when you encounter Frank at the beach, I believe.
What is worse is that allegedly, ep5 was released as it was due to fans wanting it to be released asap. After life is strange, they made a "sequel" to it and were given much more time and the result was... Even more lackluster than the first game and they didn't even put a gameplay mechanic in it. What happened to dontnod in between now and then? It's like the first and the second game are completely different products.
Welp im saying this the nice way. Youre missing the whole point of LIS2 and I dont even like LIF2. In the first game Max has the powers and can use it and do what she wants. LIF 2 is made to be completly different. As it is not the player that can use/have powers but a kid thats 9 years old. DONTNOD clearly went the other way with LIF2 because if you choose in LIF2 to have Daniel use his powers with evil intnent he also turns evil. Thats the pont. We the players are shaping how Daniel uses his powers. Thats the gameplay mechanic. Was it good? No lol but they really fking tried to make something special something that D9 hasnt even tried.
Double exposure by D9 makes LiS 2 look like a masterpiece. But yeah LiS 2 was good but I wished LiS 1 was 8 episodes like they planned they sadly had to make ep 5 rushed with a very limited budget and they couldn’t even make the sacrifice bay ending
I don't think the glyph graffiti mentionned at 6:55 is a mystical insight of the upcoming storm. It is a reference to a French Sci-Fi book called "la Horde du Contrevent" which tells the adventures of a group of trained fighters and travellers who try to find the origin of the wind blowing endlessly on their world. The glyph is present in the book, it is a depiction of how each member is placed in the group. IMO it's just another "cool nerd kid" reference the devs put there, as the Twin Peaks reference on the car plates, or Max saying she actually likes the Final Fantasy movie. Thank you for this video 😊 it's interesting to think the developers had bigger plans for the story, which would kind of save the disappointing ending if that's what really happened.
It really felt like something much more was missing in ep 5. Although great, it would've been nice to play through the unused content that the developers were originally going to put in for that ep. Extending the length would've also been sweet.
Let's be nice everybody. It's all fun and games until somebody is about to jump off a roof and your time travel powers have been turned off for dramatic effect.
maybe the reason nathan went crazy and was obsessed with death was because he was psychic or something maybe he saw dead things all the time and thats why he was so fascinated with dead birds... and people. Maybe with the stress of his family, seeing dead things, and killing Rachel he just snapped
I agree, it would have been much more interesting if the plot twist was that Chloe didn't have to die, and that the Prescotts were who the storm was coming after to punish/they knew about the upcoming storm but bribed the news and city to not tell anybody. It would have been a much better ending if Chloe AND the townspeople could both be saved in that manner. That way, Max can keep on rewinding time to figure out how to get the entire town to escape the storm. If all this makes no sense, I'm talking about a plot that could be very similar to "Your Name," in which they prevent people from being killed in a disaster.
i feel as though they wanted to go for a game with a branching storyline that made our choices a lot more meaningful... but either they didn't have a big enough budget, or they didn't have enough time to do so
That note from his father can be explained by Jefferson being the author. It's written in the weird style he uses talking to Max in episode 5 and he also mentions Nathan saw him as a father figure so it could be some kind of weird cultist way to call each other in privacy.
when i saw draco i screamed. i love the villains or well enemies in the story, i don’t know, it’s just they always have a side of the story...and it makes it more interesting for me.
Just gonna throw this out there, never saw Chloe as a love interest, just a really close best friend, like a bromance but between girls. That's why the whole "save Chloe" ending never really made much sense to me. Chloe nobly and selflessly sacrificing herself for her family and a whole town who have friends, family, and loved ones of their own felt much more satisfying than sacrificing everyone just to run away together as lovers. Which again, as I viewed Max and Chloe as close friends just felt out of Character.
1- The Prescotts have a company that manage and studys space-time continuous. 2- They also study time travel to know about the consequences of messing up with time and space and use it as benefit. 3- Sean Prescott drugs Nathan to give him time powers or precognition (only working on precognition) that's why he's so crazy and knows about the storm. 4- Thanks to Nathan, the Prescott family knows about the storm, building the shelter. 5- They know that the human race is evolving to the point of developing unique abilities, like telekinesis and other psychic powers, including the manipulation of space-time. They want that for unkown motives (probably to use time travel for they're own benefit) 6- They know that someone has time powers in Arcadia Bay. 7- If Max sacrifices Arcadia Bay, the Prescotts drop the time travel topic knowing the devastating consequences, focusing on other powers. 8- If Max sacrifices Chloe, the Prescotts think that all the visions that Nathan had were just his crazy mind f*ck3d up by drugs, and all the study of space-time continuous is cancelled, dropping the time travel topic, focusing on other powers. (The same as 7 lol) Conclusion: The Prescott are just some secret company that knows about time travel and supernatural stuff as well to use it for money.
Cool theory, but in the episode 4 when Max and Chloe go to the Prescott barn and before they find the Dark Room, they find old newspaper articles revealing that the bomb shelter boom happened already in the mid or early 20th century. Meaning the Prescotts have been preparing for the storm for a very long time, long before Nathan was even born. So I think it´s more likely that the original plan was to reveal that the whole Prescott lineage, being the oldest family of the town, has supernatural abilities (most likely future vision, which is the opposite of Max´s power) and it being passed through the generations, and that´s how they took control of Arcadia Bay so easily.
I think they were coming with something when they made us progress through the last episode, walking lost through time and space, but also through Arcadia Bay where you could actually see some of your choices having impacts (saving emo-girl or not, the homeless etc,...). I was ready to accept both endings if they had made these choices impacts appear after the storm actually destroy Arcadia bay. Emo girl and a few people you warned raising from the rest of the dinner ashes or something I don't know x) But they did not a shame.
Something I would have enjoyed as both replay value and to satisfy a good ending where you could save both Chloe and Arcadia would be to hint that there are actually three endings but the third ending requires for you to get absolutely every step of the way 100% right. I understand how Life is Strange was trying to create a moral core in making you choose one ending over the other, and that's great, but for those who really wanted a happier ending should have that option to go back and replay the entire game through in effort to accomplish that desired ending. By doing that, the core message is delivered AND we get a satisfying ending - not to mention replay value.
my theory is that all of the timelines max creates during the events of the game all exist along beside eachother so no matter what you choose for the ending the ending you didnt choose still happens on a different timeline, youre just choosing which timeline you want to stay in, mainly thought of this because nightmare max says "Im one of the Max's you left behind" also it helps me sleep at night that the town would of been destroyed anyway on a different timeline
I think the answer is that they just ran out of money during the last chapter. The last chapter was simply a series of cut scenes with some linear action between them. They left so many loose ends like the homeless woman, the weird ant behavior, and many others. I think they intended all these things to come together, but they just couldn't pull it off. I still have a hunch that the homeless woman is Max from the future.
It seems to me that in the cut-out content, there could be a moment where Nathan saves Max from a dark room, if we treat him well. I think so because he already tried to save her. Even if not on his own, but at least he warned her about the danger, he didn't even warn Victoria, but even knowing that he was about to die, he called Max in the hope that he could help. And I'm really confused by the moment with the storm, maybe Nathan could even help somehow, figure out how to save everyone, he's definitely not an ordinary person, like Max, maybe he has abilities that he doesn't know about and blames on mental illness.
Would like to see a "Director's Cut" or remix of the original Life is Strange (or at least chapter 5), which offers even more possibilities in story choices and endings, but while staying true to the themes of the game as they are; such as an option for Max to be the one to sacrifice herself for Chloe at the end.
I feel that all of these kids have some sort of connect when it comes to time travel or having some physiological role for Arcadia Bay and around the area of Arcadia Bay.
There are other moments in the game too where your reaction is different, but visual effects that can change the story are absent. They originally planned to make 8 episodes, so this storyline involving Nathan (and possibly his family too) was most likely abandoned when they knew it would only be 5 episodes.
I believe Nathan’s family was behind something causing the storm. And if Nathan kills Chloe, his family gets pulled away from that, distracted dealing with Nathan. And perhaps their plans are even uncovered and foiled. But by Max stopping him from killing Chloe, the plans carried on as normal and the storm still happens. That would make sense for why she saw the vision of the storm before she does her initial time travel, as warning to her that her actions will have consequences. Nathan either knows it will cause a storm because that’s part of their plan (maybe washing out the whole town to build something?) or Nathan could see the future, making him a foil to Max. It would have made more sense for them to team up for some reason. I would have very much liked for Before the Storm to center on the Prescott’s plot, Rachel’s relationship with Frank, as well as the one she had with Jefferson. Nathan could have had feelings for her and then grew obsessive and jealous when he found out about her Jefferson, and end right before the set up of Nathan killing her. BTS was a pretty big let down that could have been used to explore the absconded Prescott plot line. The certainly abandoned Rachel’s implication she had powers as well. And if Rachel, Max, and Nathan all had supernatural abilities than something is mystical about Arcadia Bay (Indian Burial Ground?)
I'm late I know but it was disappointing that Nathan was killed off screen in chapter 5. I always suspected there was more the story and the Prescott Foundation as is evident when you discover the bunker. I don't know the behind the scenes stuff at the time but I feel like Sean Prescott should have had a bigger part to play as well. The explanation Warren offers towards the end feels like something the writers cobbled together in the last minute.
I'm so glad this popped up in my recommended. Personally I was all over the subreddit while we were in that sort of "detective mode" and was all over the cut content that 4chan got their hands on. We all sort of just.. Dropped it when we realized it was ignored. Not a lot of people remember this, or if they do, they don't talk about it. Which is a shame because it's so fascinating. What the heck was truly going on with Nathan? Great video! Edit: I completely forgot about those damn wind glyphs! Wasn't there also some weird noise coming from inside the lighthouse, or the building next to it?
yeah i would say that even with the cop out it still fits preaty good with "time is like a river" theory that the game was emplying with chloe dying all over again, and for her not to die u had to build some time dam from choices that were saving chloe from her self and also all the time breaking apart enviorment reaction. So not as saisfying but the same level of satisfaction as intersteller i would say
I mean, I never did play Life is Strange while it was actually happening. I literally just finished it for the first time yesterday, but I could tell during the entire thing there was build-up throughout the story that I knew was never going anywhere. Because my brother had played it in front of me enough to catch my interest, so as I'm not generally a #holycrapkeepspoilersawayfrommeatallcosts type of audience member -- and because to me, one of the most important aspects of any story I like is rather or not the ending ruins it for me -- I looked its ending up. On the one hand, reading a plot summary doesn't really prepare you for how a story will actually feel when you're watching and into it. So I don't feel that I was too much less let down by the way it all turned out than most people who played it from the beginning seem to have been. But on the other, a story that induces good feelings and lets you down still does let you down. Life is Strange isn't too clearly "about" any of its three core aspects. Mystery, mysticism, and character relationships are all pretty equally spaced through the first three episodes. I suppose also in four, on paper, but again: it's all about the feeling it induces. And episode four's feeling is really and truly just fine, even if it suffers from the whole "sense of penultimate winding down" that most multi-installment story writers seem to take as "make it more depressing". I mean, really... Would it have been so bad to have found out Rachel Amber was alive? Either way, episode five just largely starts sucking from minute one of itself. Right from the opening shot, this whole thing feels like way too much. Too much of a jump from some dark but distant themes into a straight-up nightmare situation right away. And it's not enough that you escape it once; lazily, it is brought back over and over, with resolution with David being the only good point to come out of it. Which is kind of how this episode almost colors the whole Life is Strange experience. The literal nightmare sequence is the most obvious example of game padding, but the bigger problem is that it's a big fat mess of WTF. Like, where the shit did this come from, tonally? And no, it's not okay to call it good on the grounds of being "psychologically explorative", because it's not really even that. The change in Jefferson's character, and how it's supposedly ruined Max's whole world and mindset is not enough. Nor is her alternate reality hopping. Nor is her suddenly extra serious questioning of her powers. The mysticism being dropped and unexplained from the story is a HUGE fault. Because it IS based in our reality, and as far as I know, people don't just wake up in class with time rewinding powers. So revealing where that came from should have been a huge priority. As should have involving other characters in the mystery, and as should have bringing about an actual resolution to the questions. I could have lived with all of these things in their current state had it been a different ending, though. I guess the whole "Chloe versus Arcadia Bay" generic crap could have stayed, but there should at least be a couple of ways to earn a possibility of having your cake and eating it, too. Don't try to teach us lessons or make some kind of "thought provoking" point. It isn't cool, innovative, or realistically attractive. Just effing give us a good resolution, and don't screw around. Now, if ever I go back to play Life is Strange, the whole thing will be damaged by the reality that I will always have a shitty ending, regardless of what I pick. That's not okay, and it's always one of the biggest faults against any writer. A shame, as everything leading up to episode five was pretty amazing, otherwise.
The game was still so memorable to me, the fact that i was watching a youtuber playing into the nightmare part left me so many confusing parts..glad someone made a point out of this
If I'm not mistaken, they had multiple endings in mind, but with people complaining that Episode 5 was taking too long to be released, they cut a lot out. Nathan was intended to be alive in Episode 5, if the player made the right choices in ep 1-4. There was even an unused Ep 5 audio file where Jefferson said he needs to take a break (from Max's Dark Room Shoot) and go deal with Nathan.
One of the many reasons why developers should listen to their fans but far not always do as they demand.
Do you have any source for this? I'm not doubting, but I'm sure because of PR reasons the devs and Square Enix keep saying that everything went as planned and there were no budget problems at all. I'd just really like to know what really happened lol.
I know it was an interview on youtube with the devs, but I can't remember which. You'll have to forgive me, it was late 2015 when i saw it.
WELL I WISH THEY WOULDVE USED THAT DAMN ENDING THAT WAY HE DIDNT DIE A HORRIBLE DEATH WHAT THE HELL
Damn this fanbase is retarded and impatient
I always felt that there was something bigger going on! My theory was always that Nathan's dad was the big bad, and Jefferson more of a red herring. Why would you have a bunker filled with provisions to survive a natural disaster if you didn't know it was coming - given that this was an area that never gets hit by tornados?!
ok now you made me really think O_O that makes sense.
Let's not forget that it also makes "The Vortex Club" obvious foreshadowing. I think it suggests that members of it were in Nathan's elite, and would be kept safe from whatever vortex was coming that the Prescott family was at least intimately aware of. It also makes "The End of the World Party" more than just a flashy name. As the story played out, there's little to no in-universe justification for naming the party that.
Yes, the people in Arcadia bay saw that wierd shit was happening, so it was partially a joke to name the party that.
germankiwigal Exactly! The biggest potential disaster we have to prepare for here is if the Cascadia Subduction Zone has a major earthquake. The coast would feel the worst impacts of that earthquake, plus they would also almost certainly get hit by a tsunami. You don't build an underground bunker for that! That would get you killed! You only build an underground bunker if you are expecting a tornado. It makes no sense otherwise.
There was definitely a few story lines and consequences cut from the game. For example, if you tag "Max was here" in Chloe and Rachel's hideout, you get the butterfly icon in the top left. This is never mentioned again no matter what you do.
I just want a god damn sequel with the original characters *slams fist down*
+made by fucking DONTNOD *very important clarification*
Jib Besh I liked LiS 2 with Sean and Daniel better
well you got your sequel but not all the characters are there
LiS 2 was a real lazy piece of crap.
@@qrowing it's not better than LIS 1 but it isn't crap
EXACTLY! There was definitely going to be a bigger storyline.
I remember when the trailer for Episode 4 came out, there was a line from Nathan where he said the storm was coming and they just cut it completely from the game. I always hated that, His character had a lot of potential but they just kill him off screen or send him to jail. Him having visions of the storm would have been really intresting, it sucks that they cut it.
it would have been cool if max and nathan became friends at the end idk
I think the key point is:
STAY OUT OF IT - Chloe took Nathan's gun
STOP WARREN - Nathan kept the gun
And,consider that Nathan could be alive in ep5 originally (according to the unused dialogue),this explains everything.
If Chloe takes his gun, Nathan is vulnerable and dies.
If Nathan keeps the gun, he isn't vulnerable and is then alive in ep5...?
It all makes sense in my head
Raezer that's what I also thought
Yezhov_Liu i never knew that he would die no matter what you do. i thought he died because i stayed out of it
but who went to get him in his supossed death was jefferson, and jefferson was taking care of max in the dark room, so he couldn't have defended himself against jefferson without a plot mark like a shot hole for example in jefferson)
i think nathan would have been one of the options to save max depending on her choices through the game.
I always thought that Nathan could have had similar powers to Max. The difference being, Nathan couldn’t handle having clairvoyance or time travel, we see this from his mental fragility. Maybe he saw something he shouldn’t have, or knew everything that was to happen.
Yeah it sure seems like they cut out a lot. The Prescotts knowing about the storm was a huge cut. Also what about all the graffiti implying Max might be stuck in a time loop? It's sad to think that Dontnod might have been rushed to finish and a lot of these plot points were simply unresolved
The Red Eft wait where was this graffiti at?
@@reverseashv2169 yeah im interested, this is the first ive heard of the time loop. i know lots of graffiti can be found in the environment referencing the supernatural, time and destiny. Idk if thats what they mean
My question is was David's hinted involvement just a bad red herring or a cut plot point? And Samuel having Rachel's scarf too. I love this game but seeing these in the game and knowing that they lead to nothing just really annoys me and I try to ignore it.
Madsen is probably an intentional red herring. He's resolved pretty easily after the end note. The Samuel thing...man I do not get. There's probably something there. I wonder if any unused Samuel assets have been data mined?
I don't know, it's weird. And the suspicion is cleared up a lot easier than with Samuel. I mean, how did he get Rachel's scarf? And then they drew attention to it by mentioning it in the nightmare sequence so I feel like it really was just an unresolved red herring.
David was also clearly prepping for the storm - he had all these provisions in the garage that Max even specifically points out. This is never explained or even referenced again. And yeah, Rachel's scarf - that one was annoying because there were a number of hints that her and Samuel hung out, yet nothing came out of us discovering this.
germankiwigal There were numerous hints that he was aware of Max's powers or even had some of his own, but nothing came of it.
Those are clearly intentional red herrings. They lead nowhere because that is literally their purpose.
There are so many things pointing to a different ending. The note in the barn about the Prescotts building a bunch of bomb shelters. The homeless lady saying they use to do good things. Nathan's dad talk about leading him into a room ( what I think "Rachel in the dark room" was suppose to mean, not just a literal dark room for photos). Trying to move everyone to pan estates. Calling the club the vortex and having an end of the world party. Nathan saying he SAW the tornado. I really like the theory that the Presscotts are actually trying to save as many people as possible.
It's just so unsatisfying and a bit frustrating because we felt like something so much bigger was going to happen...and it didn't. I wish that the ending could've set us up for a sequel where all of these things were discovered
It’s a shame they didn’t use the remaster as an opportunity to show what their original intended story was, and better connect BtS with its remaster as well.
it has been SOOO long since i've played this game. but from what i remember, nathans family is building on some kind of indian burial ground, most likely his father in charge of the project. i honestly thought max got her powers from the tobanga (that indian tribe), which are hinted at maaaany times in the game (in pamphlets, totem poles, subtle text) to help stop that development. and to also somehow tie up all of the 'strange' things that were going on in the game.
mauwiepaws Do you mean Native American and cool theory
Hush, yeah sure, political correctness and what not. and thanks!
lmao it's funny cause if you really wanna be pc the correct term is indigenous
Remember. He was also building bunkers. And the End of The World party.
Pacifist Run: "The ending is like a middle finger to us players where this is the only choice that really matters."
Me: "Yes! Finally someone said it other than me!"
I gotchu
For a game featuring a girl with superpowers, the theme of being "powerless" is recurrent. No matter how much she tries to avoid or to stop things, such as Chloe's death or the storm itself, Max simply can't change the ultimate fates of her friend and Arcadia Bay. In a way, the ending does justice to this, making us, the players, feel as powerless as Max... it would be less of a middle finger and more of a well-thought punch to the gut, if it weren't for the alternative ending where the player can choose to save Chloe and franky ignore all the people that probably died in that storm.
@minjeongista I mean "powerless" exactly in the sense she couldn't change Chloe's fate. At least not without bringing the Storm to Arcadia Bay, which she also couldn't avoid as long as Chloe was alive. Max is constantly reminded by the Universe that she is not in control or that she has, at best, very limited control over things, even though her powers should allow her to alter the timeline however she wants, in theory. Just like the player, Max has to choose between Bae or Bay, and there's nothing she can do about it.
I hate when time travel themed movies/games include someone going way back in time and changing everything. Bitch why did I spent hours watching these non-impotant events then ?
I feel like there was a lot more that was supposed to happen. They had so many other hints of things and clues. I'm really unsatisfied, honestly.
The point of "this action will have consequences" is that it's felt by the protagonists and the players who care about what happens to them after the credits roll. Regardless of the ending you chose, Max has built up this Trauma in her system. She will always remember what happened, it will affect her for the rest of her life, and she can't tell anyone.
What an interesting concept, why bother making any ending when you can just use your imagination and *make pretend* all of the effects of the consequences.
+Pacifist Run, was that a roast?
It should be, given how silly JEC REX's point was.
Its not a silly point. It is exactly what happened. At the end of the day all those little choices shape you as a player and your max. And you of course have no idea the final choice would erase all your progress so you play to create your own environment. Course its shit it was all reduced to a 2 option choice but i enjoyed making my own Arcadia Bay.
@@PacifistRun bc it’s called real life, you should try it sometime
Nathan had a shaggy dog story ending. He could’ve been developed characteristically better.
I'm another one who hates the endings. I keep wishing they really had gone with more mysticism. The doe is a benevolent, protective animal in mythology and we see it associated with both Max (on her shirt) and Rachel (standing above her grave in Ep.1). Which makes sense cos both of them are protectors of Chloe.
It would've been so much more satisfying if Rachel had been looking after Chloe one last time and was engineering things to stop the storm and get Max & Chloe together. Chloe even says she thinks Rachel is behind everything in Ep. 5, but it comes to nothing, and we're presented with two totally forced choices that crap on the game no matter which you choose.
Also, some players found out from the game files that they originally planned to make 8 episodes, not just 5, meaning almost half of the story didn´t make it into the final product because they ran out time and money.
But considering how these types of mystery stories usually play out, if I had to guess I´d say that the Prescotts were originally meant to be the main villains of the story, and Jefferson was supposed to be a twist antagonist for the middle part of the game who works for them. And after Max deals with Jefferson one way or another, while knowing that the Prescotts gave him the bunker and that they somehow know about the storm, she would now be left with this mystery to solve, and possibly finding out where her powers come from. Would make sense to leave these mysteries for the climax of the game (episodes 6-8).
Because as it stands, storywise the game is now quite fragmented and disjointed since the Dark Room/Jefferson/Rachel plot ended up being basically a side story that takes most of our time anyway because the storm/Chloe plot didn´t have enough substance for the entire game. If they could´ve made 3 more episodes, I´m sure they would have united these two separate storylines somehow.
Yeah they had an extremely limited budget. They had so little money that they couldn’t even make an ending for sacrifice bay
@@ExistentialismNeymarJunior True. In Episode 5 they reused so much animations, locations etc. Even the part before the final choice where Max says they should just stay in Chloe´s room and tell David everything, but then for some reason the duo ends up near the lighthouse for the climax feels strange, as if something between those scenes is missing...
@@foxial5358 yeah this game had everything it’s story, writing, atmosphere, soundtrack, artstyle, and characters are better than any game right now as they all focused on gameplay/graphics instead of a story with heart and soul. Episodes 1-4 were absolutely amazing. Very sad to see the wasted potential of this game. Probably square enix and other developing companies wouldn’t let DontNod go past 5 episodes because the casual fan base wouldn’t buy anything past the usual telltale 5. Ep 5 was decent but sad to see how it ended compared to the masterpieces that were 1-4. Sadly 9 years later DontNod sold the rights to Life is strange and a company called D9 is ruining the entire LiS 1 story and characters with the new sequel and we will never get a directors cut of 5-8. If I were DontNod instead of making LiS 2 I would’ve kept episodes 1-4 get rid of the original episode 5 and then make 5-8 as a directors cut or remaster/remake and release it in like 2018/2019. But this game is all history now and D9 is going to continue to ruin the story sadly. This game will always be my favorite game of all time though even after everything was cut no game hits the soul as deep as this one
@@ExistentialismNeymarJunior Exactly! Your idea of realeasing the game with 8 episodes would´ve been absolutely perfect! 💖I think they planned to have a much more fleshed out version of the Presscott storyline, but when the rest of the story was cut, they just ignored it in Episode 5. It´s truly sad we´ll never know what the original plan was. :(
Even before LiS1 was fully done, I recall DontNod saying they wanted LiS to be an anthology series with a new character, theme, and story in each game. That’s why LiS2 was so different in every way. They probably would’ve also made True Colours insanely different from the first two if D9 didn’t take over. But I agree LiS1 still has the most interesting story, powers, characters and atmosphere of the series. Unlike with the later games, everything that happens services both the narrative and the characters. And LiS1 should´ve stayed as a one-shot story that didn´t need prequels, sequels or spin-offs because good stories always end in time. But alas, whenever something becomes popular, companies will always choose money.
I think the fall of this franchise started with BtS, which avoided all the difficult and more mature topics/themes that LiS1 clearly hinted about Chloe and Rachel (Like Rachel being groomed by 35/45+ men, Rachel likely knowing about the Dark Room and being arrested by David when she was carrying Jefferson´s drugs in the campus, Chloe having an arc from innocence to rebellion, Chloe´s feelings for Rachel being one-sided, Chloe´s fallout with Joyce and David, etc.). Instead, they focused on fluff and a random sob story about Sera that has nothing to do with the events of LiS1. D9 was fan service-y by making BtS while DontNod took risks for artistic purposes.
There was a theory that the Prescotts were a cult and knew about people having powers. They knew that Rachel had powers, and wanted Nathan to transfer it to himself using photography so they got Mark Jefferson to teach Nathan and funded their Dark Room project. But Nathan squandered that and so Sean is upset with Nathan and they have to go find a new power user - which ends up being Max and she gets caught in the Dark Room anyways but not for the same reason. I think this would've been really cool to see, that 1, there was a larger conspiracy that just never comes to fruition because Sean didn't take care of his son properly and so Nathan fucks up and 2, Jefferson accidentally gets in the way of the Prescotts just by simply being the bigger antagonist to the story. But this probably would've taken a lot more effort to implement and changed up the endings too, and also increases the lore of the supernatural portion of the game, which DontNod didn't really want to do and never really explain in any of the LiS games.
That would've been so good ngl such a wasted potential 😞
They planned LiS to be 8 episodes originally but they had budget and time issues to the point where they couldn’t even make the sacrifice bay ending. They also probably knew that 8 episodes wouldn’t sell because the casual fan base wouldn’t buy so square enix wouldn’t allow them to do it. LiS biggest mistake was making it an episode based game like telltale. If they made it a full game or they were their own separate company free from the pressure of square enix it would’ve been the greatest game of all time in my opinion
I honestly don’t understand why you couldn’t save both Chloe and Arcadia bay. Max was perfectly capable of doing both. I found the ending ultimately quite stupid and frustrated as hell
same
I know if they would have gave max the chance she could have saved both Chloe and the town both
both official endings were so underwhelming. I feel like they questioned the ending that was meant to happen, which shouldn’t have happened as I’m sure the one that was planned out would’ve been much more satisfactory.
i absolutely agree with everything you said. there's simply too much evidence and too much left hanging to not come to the conclusion that something was removed. it's such a shame because this was legitimately my favorite game at that point, and i was really looking forward to see how they wrapped everything up, but... nothing was resolved. i hadn't considered that they may have done it in an effort to reuse the content in future games though. that almost makes me a little more hopeful about what's to come.
thank you for your commentary! thoroughly enjoyed it.
I get the sense that it was deliberate and on purpose for story reasons. What makes it mysterious and strange, is that it isn't really explained. If they went into great details about how she got her powers and what the storm was about, it might of come across really convoluted and ruin the story.
i hope they make a remake of all the episodes with better face animation, redone dialogue, and the ending what they were going to do with episode 5 but didn't :(
your profile picture= my face as I read this
I wish, but they won't.
they will.
@@Nathadegold well both of yall might be surprised
Ik this is an old comment but they are now
The fact alone that it was called the “vortex club” made me think he or they were gonna have something to do with it
Episode 4 was so amazing.
Episode 5 was a major letdown exposition bomb.
Everything you pointed out I agree 100%.
This video is so great. The entire time I was playing I was thinking that the Prescotts had like... a weather controlling machine or powers from the Indian burial grounds or something, and they were causing the storm to cleanse Arcadia Bay so they could build what they wanted there. I was definitely super disappointed when all of the mysteries and things like the strange glyphs weren't even brought up again.
And all of the choices made didn't even matter and all boiled down to two choices :')
I don't think chloe or max or chaos theory created the storm. There was something else at work there, and they falsely concluded the storm was coming due to Max using her powers.
I never understood why the game punished us for using its chore mechanic. Like what was the point lol
Am I the only person who liked the nightmare sequence? It was interesting to visually see Max's mind and internal conflict.
Also, they totally made fun of their own annoying bottle scene.
What if Nathan killed Chloe to stop the storm?
christian kabuto :3 Him killing Chole was a accident
I feel like the storm was coming to punish the Prescotts, but when Chloe died, the Prescotts went down, so no need for a storm. I feel like if the original ending had been about finding a way to ruin the Prescott family, Chloe and Max could have had a happy ending that didn't involve the death and destruction of an entire town.
Taylor Brogan but Nathan was killed in the last episode, so why did the storm not chill out?
Taylor Brogan Wow, I really like this idea of an end. And it makes so much more sense...
Parees Gillard because Nathan was just a puppet and his father would have been the antagonist and he still lived unless the tornado took down the town.
#NathanDeservedBetter
#mydude
just one emotional phone call does not redeem him
I don't think the point here is to redeem him or not. He did horrible things, criminal things, but the point here is that if you paid attention to the game you would see he was severely mistreated, manipulated, not provided support or given the medical attention he needed. This is all evidenced throughout several episodes of the game. All of this could have been avoided if he was given what he needed. If he was treated properly for his mental and emotional problems from the START. Hence, the "Nathan deserves better" thing. He's a product of his environment, and people have sympathy for that cause they can see where it went wrong.
angvyen No. Fuck him. He killed Rachel and I don't give a fuck about his mental dumb ass problems
@@Oriel-Incentivized-Growth I don't think he killed Rachel.
I played it recently and I could feel that was something else, something mysterious behind the events. And the story never directly touches it for some reason. Max's nightmare was not only about her inner fears or guilt. she was basically being judged. I don't like to think her power serves only as a game mechanic and I hope they will explore those secrets in the sequel.
While we don't clearly know where her powers came from, they did serve a purpose in the end. Near the end but before the nightmare sequence I think, she wound back to the Jefferson lesson from the beginning once again and she sent a text message to David with everything she found out about Mr Jefferson. That didn't stop the storm, but it caused Jefferson to be arrested. That's why Kate is still alive and well in the end at Chloes funeral. My believe is that Max got these powers from the Rachel Ambers lingering spirit and that it was their purpose to both give her spirit peace by defeating her killer and also to give a Chloe who was destined to die, a last happy week with her best friend.
Drace90 yeah. That makes sense. I was thinking about that. Besides, it was the deer that was basically teaching Max how to use the teleport.
But she didn't do anything. The message you're remembering only allowed her to survive the Dark Room, but if she hadn't done anything, she never would have been there in the first place. If she hadn't been in the bathroom, had never time travelled at all, the events would have happened exactly as they did in the sacrifice Chloe ending - Nathan would have been arrested, and then turned on Jefferson. As for the last "happy" week with her friend, while there were some great moments, most of that was spent trying to solve the mystery and avoid being killed. And then you're forced to watch her die. Again. Or sacrifice a town full of your friends. Nice.
The only explanation that even remotely makes sense in the context of what we are given is that Max was given her powers by Chloe to save herself. We see the butterfly (with the same shade of blue as Chloe's hair) right before she gets her powers, and we see the butterfly land on and then fly off of Chloe's coffin at the end. In the original sequence in the bathroom, Max runs out after hearing the shot. She doesn't do that in any other version of that sequence. So maybe when she ran out, she would have ended up dead - say the gun he dropped goes off when it hits the ground, killing her.
Even that is a stretch though. Really it just comes across as a cop out, rushed ending.
Would anyone also think the episodes 6 and 7 should have been released
ColeTrain Yahh
Yaasssss
Me and a mate dissected LIS. We never got over how many holes the ending had. It was still a good game.
LIS was intended to be a 5 episode game
LiS had so much potential but it's like the creators just decided to make the entire game focus on Chloe after Pricefield took off as a popular pairing
I felt the idea that Max would ultimately cause the storm at the end was pretty apparent from day one. There are repeated references to "chaos theory", an appropriately bastardized definition of chaos theory which you'd expect the teenage characters to have. Mr. Jefferson was also teased early on with his class lecture about capturing students in "a moment of desperation". There's no way that wasn't planned.
For Mr. Prescott to somehow be responsible for the storm would be a bizarre twist that wouldn't fit the story. The game does actually explain what he was talking about with his "enema" line. He was working on new property developments that would force a lot of the locals out. I think your insistence that it's too elaborate to be a red herring is mistaken nor do I buy the cadence argument. The Prescott family ark does pay off just not in the way we expected. Nathan's unhealthy and loveless relationship with his father explains why he would seek a surrogate father figure in Mr. Jefferson. With this in mind it makes perfect sense we'd never see him because that's the defining trait of Nathan's father, he's absent.
I think the mystical elements were followed up on, but again not in the way that we expect. In addition to the references to chaos theory the story has many allusions to environmentalism and respect for nature. Max's power is a violation of nature and it carries with it all the consequences of violating the natural order of things. For this reason I'd reject any implication that anyone else was supposed to have special powers or that Mr. Prescott or Nathan were supposed to be causing the storm or even know about it. That would turn the story into some comic book esque superhero battle which isn't what it's supposed to be. Max's power isn't a gift from on high, it's a unique destructive aberration. I think the quote from the trailer was just an example of a misleading trailer. It's also possible it was something intended for the Nightmare sequence that got cut.
I do think you have a point though that there seems to be something missing, I just don't think it was a major change to the ending. On my second play through I was very surprised to learn the "beat down" moment didn't have any major impact on the story. When I first played I was certain this moment determined whether or not Nathan lived or died. I payed close attention and saw how both played out. I noticed that if you stop Warren, Nathan grabs his gun before running away. If you don't the gun is taken away. I assumed that if Nathan still had his gun he could protect himself from Jefferson. I was disappointed to learn that's not the case.
I notice another plot point that seemed to go nowhere in a conspicuous manner. Convincing Victoria to stay away from Nathan ended up being a meaningless accomplishment, since Nathan's already dead at that point. I wonder if there were originally plans for your decisions to effect whether or not Victoria lives or dies as well.
Finally this whole thing got me thinking. In the end we ultimately get two choices, but there was an obvious third choice, one so obvious I can't believe I didn't think of it right now and I have no doubt one of the writers at least considered at one point. Max should have had the option of sacrificing herself. I imagine this idea would have been thrown out because it's a more attractive option then the other two. In a game it's easier to martyr yourself then sacrifice someone else. Perhaps they never thought of it or perhaps they didn't have the budget but maybe this could have been an "underlined" option, something you only get to do if you've made other decisions correctly.
This could have added some weight to the nightmare sequence which I agree was somewhat out of place and relatively pointless (although I did enjoy how trippy it all was). Somewhere in the whole nightmare could be the key to realizing that you could go back to that bathroom, but instead of staying hidden you could emerge, startling Nathan and causing him to shoot you.
I might remember it wrong, but isn't convincing Victoria to stay away from Nathan will make her stick to Mr. J instead and she would end up in the dark room with Max?
CedrickTheHun yeah, if you don't warn her, she doesn't get kidnapped and killed by jefferson.
Fun fact: in the game files, people found that there were supposed to be 8 episodes, not 5. Presumably, they either didn't have the budget since they were a smaller team at the time, or it was due to a majority of people complaining that episode 5 was taking far too long to release; my guess is the ladder. So the fact that the ending felt rushed would make sense if it was intended for there to be another 3 episodes, instead of the 5 that we got.
I honestly really wish that they would do a remake of the first game, giving us the intended story that we never got to see fully develop. I feel like a lot of people would honestly agree, as seeing an entire alternate timeline of events from what we received would be extremely interesting. Even if they just tweaked the first few episodes to fit the story, but left them largely the same as in the original, and then just made what was intended, I think it would be very well received.
Holy cow this game could have been even BETTER. And it’s already one of the greatest games ever made!
I think the theory about the game being rushed by squareenix to compete with a different game is true, and that it affected the games outcome in the last episodes pretty significantly
True, there was just too many hints and clues suggesting that the Prescotts knew about the storm, the game focused on that family way too much for it to have meant nothing, but all of this was dropped/ignored in the last episode. In Episode 4 when Max and Chloe go to the barn, before they find the dark room, there is even an unskippable cutscene that suggests the Presscotts knew about the storm even several decades before it happened ("The Prescotts bring bomb shelter boom to town"). And this scene with old photos, letters and newspaper articles strongly hints at their family legacy/history, so perhaps this was originally supposed to be an important part of the plot.
And are we supposed to believe Nathan´s father somehow didn´t know that Jefferson was using their bunker like it is said in Episode 5? Because in Episode 1 Nathan even says to Chloe "That´s my family, not me" which suggests he has no control over his family money, not even enough to pay Chloe to keep her quiet after he drugged and assaulted her. So how can he pay for the dark room and all those expensive equipment that Jefferson used without his family knowing like Jefferson says in Episode 5?
Even though I loved what we got, I felt like there should've been a bit more but with we got, it's still my favourite video game of all time. Great theory though.
At first I thought the storm was coming because Max was messing with Chloe's real destiny which was to die of course. But after playing before the storm episode 1 I think the storm is Rachel as you do see some of her powers in that episode
Also there's the antipsychotic medication Nathan is taking because his father doesn't agree with Nathan's therapist. Maybe he's being treated for schizophrenia that he doesn't actually have, and he has some kind of power? Maybe there could have been an ending where choices you make in interacting with Nathan lead Nathan to a place of better mental health, similar to saving Kate from suicide or convincing Victoria that you don't have to be enemies.
Instead of ending with the life lesson that we should all refrain from using time powers, maybe the storm could have been symbolic of how cliques and bullying in small things lead to larger, destructive consequences in the community. The "everyday hero" who is just kind to people might never do something cinematically heroic but their choices save the world. Any person could be captured in a bad moment and made to look evil, but if you take the time to see them more fully, you see that moment is not the entirety of who they are.
Considering that drugs are shown to be the one thing that keeps Max from using her powers, it´s an interesting detail put into the game that Sean Prescott apparently forces his son to take his medication while Nathan´s psychologist says Sean doesn´t seem to care about his son´s mental health. Even Max points out in Episode 4: "I don´t think this prescription has helped Nathan at all." And then this plot point doesn´t lead anywhere in Episode 5.
Like...when I played the game I felt like they were hinting at the Prescotts being some weird supernatural thing. Strange talk about legacy and destiny and...it all just gave me a vibe that they were more than just rich people evil greed.
ive only stumbled upon this gem a couple of weeks ago. ive run through it a couple of times now and explored most of the different choices. i have to say, i enjoyed the nightmare scene, for different reasons - one of them being the sneaking around. we often dream about things that happened to us. so that helped with the immersion for me. and it continued the nightmare theme from the first episode.
i did get snippets of the supernatural during my playthroughs. i cant say i wouldnt have appreciated it if dontnod had explored that theme a bit more thoroughly.
This is gonna be me rambling a lot but okay
I think the game shouldve worked more with the whole "Trying to save everyone" Idea
As in, if you are nice to all of your classmates(and i mean all of them) save alyssa, save kate, then your ending should be more tipped towards sacrificing chloe
however if you try to save everyone in the game, then you will have to watch them all be killed.
If you do things like letting kate die, accusing nathan etc etc the game continues as normal, and you think youre doing the right thing, then it gives you an ending of saving chloe
In the end, your actions really do matter, and there isn't a cop out choice for the ending
(also if you try saving all of your classmates and still being nice to chloe, but use your power to be friends with everyone and find the truth about Mark, then you get an ending where everybody still dies. yes, including kate)
the only person left is you, becase in the end, you cant save everyone
OOOOOH
also can i just mention how max sees the storm BEFORE she gets her powers? natural disaster much?
i want a sequel where some journalist or student investigates what happened in Arcadia Bay 5 years after the death of Chloe. Let me explain. 5 years after her death, a journalist goes back to Arcadia Bay to investigate what happened and uncovers some dark secrets that even Max and Chloe didn't know. She could go visit Jefferson in Prison and Nathan too, question the Prescotts and ask them what happened. And we can see Max when she is older, she explains she had a vision and then the journalist says "of a tornado?". Max is shocked and we discover that this journalist or student has some visions or nightmares about Arcadia Bay and that there is something creepy going on. Max says that everything ended with the death of Chloe and that Max does not have powers anymore. The journalist reaches a dead end until she herself discovers that she has some sort of power (have to elaborate on that) this is really a draft BUT it could be interesting to go over what happened maybe explore the theories of multiverse, lucid dreaming, astral projection, it could be so much more interesting. Oh and I even thought that the journalist or student could be Max's daughter but it would have to be 20 years after minimum lol. This plot would be better with the Chloe's death ending than Arcadia Bay but idk we could maybe work something out !!
wait that would be so cool for a sequel,, i lowkey want to make a fanfic about that now 😭
@@rd-pg5iv Feel free but if you do credit me 😌 can't wait to read it !
THIS is what life is strange: remastered needs to include. they need to finish some of these random plots that they left open in the original game. especially regarding Nathan and the Prescotts!
I think including the “bottle mission” in the nightmare sequence at the end was BRILLIANT.
This nightmare was supposed to be torture, and finding bottles was in fact a form of torture in this game.😊
I agree, it also shows the writers are aware of what went wrong in the game. I also remember there's a moment in chapter 3 where Max is about to grab an object but she says something like "you are clumsy Max, you know that object will fall and you'll rewind time, so let's just do it right and grab this box first"
@@Ricardo7250 some people think “if you realised the bottle mission was stupid, why did you include it in the game again?”. Some people don’t appreciate the genius of this decision.
At this point I only hope dontnod is working on a sequel. They should make the "Arcadia Bay gets destroyed" ending canon and the game should be about the two finding out the Prescotts caused the storm.
+SpiderMax I think that would piss off people who actually thought that Chloe's dead caused it. Would be pretty funny seeing the reactions.
I believe the sequel is going to have an all new set of characters.
+BradiusMaximus It will.
Prequel, as far as I know. They making a sequel too? If they are, that's awesome
Kade B Deck9 is making Before the Storm, which is a prequel. Don't Nod will be making a sequel.
should have been that Max saves Chloe without her powers. and then explain everything to Chloe and they get married later
also you don't know if anyone dies, they could be warned
they originally planned to have Chloe fall into a coma after being shot in the Sacrifice Chloe ending and she'd wake up a few days later in hospital with Max by her side and they'd reconnect there and rebuild their friendship and live happily ever after but they decided against it obviously
Tatjana M. Even though that sounds nice , her powers where given to live one more week with Chloe so she can have more time with her. All her power does is buy her more time
We dont know why Max was given her powers or if they were even given to her, thats just your theory
Gut shots aren't often fatal. Max changed the future by hiding behind the wall - she chose to let Chloe die. But we already know Chloe's death doesn't stop the Storm (when Jefferson kills Chloe the Storm still strikes). Max time-traveled through a photo to let Chloe die which means if Time Travel caused the Storm, the Storm will STILL hit after Chloe's funeral. Literally the only way for Max not to change the future is to reach out shouting "No!" when Chloe is shot... and then rush to Chloe's side and apply pressure to the wound to try and keep Chloe from bleeding out.
It may have been enough that Chloe would survive long enough to reach the hospital. And by not using time travel at that moment the time loop could have been broken, Max forgets that entire week, but Chloe lives. And after several days wakes in the hospital and sees her best friend who saved her life.
Robert Howard exactly!
Maybe some day they'll be a Life Is Strange Restoration project like there was with KOTOR 2 The Sith Lords.
WE NEED A SEQUEL LITERALLY ABOUT SEAN PRESCOTT. HE'S LIKE A BIG MYSTERY AND FOR WHAT REASON?!
Someone should write a fan fic of this
What really annoys me about the ending where you go back in time and let chloe get shot is the fact that there's no reason to let her die. The idea about going back to then was that you go back before you did any rewinding, so then you don't cause the storm. So, from that point, as long as you don't rewind, everything's fine. Why do you have to let chloe die? Hitting the fire alarm to stop her death from happening doesn't involve rewinding time anymore than letting her get shot. You rewinded to before Nathan even gets in the bathroom, so you have plenty of time do to whatever you need to stop him from shooting her. No matter what you do (as long as you don't rewind), in that timeline, no rewinding happens, so whatever you do there will be no storm, so why let chloe die? her dying or surviving has nothing to do with the storm. it was you rewinding time, which you already undid. really frustrating to watch her do nothing for no reason. Technically though even after letting Chloe die in that final cutscene, Max could still rewind to that moment if she kept the photo and then saves chloe. You'd have to continue the game without rewind ability (cause obvs you'd start the storm again) but I think it would actually be really interesting - you already know how to take down Jefferson cause you already know about the dark room (so you don't even have to rewind to take him down). This leaves you to continue the game in the way this video is talking about - with Jefferson gone and you knowing that the Prescotts were the ones who gave him the dark room in the first place, you're left with the Prescotts as the main antagonists. Because they somehow knew about the storm, that also leaves you with that mystery to solve, and potentially learn where your powers came from. This also ties in with the timeloop thing - you can't use your rewind powers like you used to cuase you know that would cause the storm, however, we know from ep. 5 ending that you can rewind to the moment before chloe dies, so every time you mess up and rewind, you have to replay that moment over and over again. its not exactly a permanent loop, but its close enough imo. There are a few places where this doesn't match up, like, nathan isn't going to get to say the missing dialogue from the trailer when he said that cause that situation is unlikely to happen in such an altered timeline, but something similar enough could happen. Overall I think it's pretty possible to have a Life is Strange 2 where all the crap is overridden and we get the true ending without even retconing anything, it just plays out. tho it would be weird to see max's reaction to finding out she could have saved chloe after all lol. like 'whoops didn't think of that :s'
That's exactly what I was thinking when I finished the game
Failed tension build up was really present in this game, from Davids research and files, Joyces debt, the homeless woman, Nathan's dad, and even Mr. Jefferson's motive was stupid. His motive was simply art and thats it, i find that to be a bad use of tension build up as we were expecting something huge. Also the ending wouldve been better if they had kept Nathan alive as theu orginally planned, i think it wouldve made the game more interesting.
I just want to put this here: a couple things we know is Nathan atleast kidnapped Chloe and Kate since Chloe wakes up and has to kick him away and Kate saying Nathan drove her to the hospital aka the dark room, I would then believe he did kill Rachel and that story about her overdosing was true: something still feels weird abt mr Jefferson and Nathan’s relationship maybe something more was going on like Jeffson was blackmailing Nathan idk
It´s explained in LiS that Jefferson was like a father figure to Nathan, who was his pupil and wanted to make his own pictures. He was still learning from Jefferson and wasn’t actually supposed to kidnap Rachel, but Nathan lusted her. It’s why he then accidentally overdosed Rachel and killed her. It´s also why he didn’t succeed in assaulting Chloe in his dorm room. Jefferson had to clean up Nathan´s mess and decided to avoid him. This is all directly stated or implied in the game.
Episode 5 even originally was meant to have a letter from Nathan to Jefferson (who has been angry with Nathan and avoided him several months now) where is admits "Yes, I know I fucked up with R." That´s why the style of the picture where Rachel is awake and furious is different than Jefferson's, which is what Max immediately points out. Jefferson is even written to brag that he was behind every other death that can happen in the game (Chloe, Nathan, Victoria), so it wouldn´t make sense for the writers to make him randomly blame Nathan only about Rachel´s death, and then not give us any options to find out the truth. After the long exposition scene between Max and Jefferson in Episode 5, Rachel's subplot is definitely closed and we aren´t given any options to do further investigation. And it´s later confirmed again when Max talks to Frank.
I really need a Nathan DLC
Yeah, the email on Nathan's computer really got me, especially when kate talks abt the prescotts having some kind of aura around them and being evil or having something to do with death. I wish they added onto that instead of scrapping it completely
I thought the long time consequence of letting Warren continue to beat up Nathan vs stopping him was that you had the opportunity to take Nathan’s gun. So if you lost your gun to Frank and didn’t get it back before your confrontation on the beach, it was another way to have one. Or you could end up with 2 guns, but even when you have 2 only Chloe has a gun when they meet Frank.
It’s not just a dialogue difference.
I think the Prescotts knew, they were cultists. Their damn bunker was named Stormbreaker, for gods sake!
I think that the main reason why it is considered a "main story change" action is because if Warren is stopped, Nathan holds onto the gun, and if he isn't, Chloe takes the gun. That comes into play later when you encounter Frank at the beach, I believe.
i think this game (and the ending) is perfect but i really wish that we got to see the prescott’s story fleshed out more
What is worse is that allegedly, ep5 was released as it was due to fans wanting it to be released asap.
After life is strange, they made a "sequel" to it and were given much more time and the result was... Even more lackluster than the first game and they didn't even put a gameplay mechanic in it.
What happened to dontnod in between now and then? It's like the first and the second game are completely different products.
Welp im saying this the nice way. Youre missing the whole point of LIS2 and I dont even like LIF2. In the first game Max has the powers and can use it and do what she wants. LIF 2 is made to be completly different. As it is not the player that can use/have powers but a kid thats 9 years old.
DONTNOD clearly went the other way with LIF2 because if you choose in LIF2 to have Daniel use his powers with evil intnent he also turns evil. Thats the pont. We the players are shaping how Daniel uses his powers. Thats the gameplay mechanic. Was it good? No lol but they really fking tried to make something special something that D9 hasnt even tried.
Double exposure by D9 makes LiS 2 look like a masterpiece. But yeah LiS 2 was good but I wished LiS 1 was 8 episodes like they planned they sadly had to make ep 5 rushed with a very limited budget and they couldn’t even make the sacrifice bay ending
I wish they had much more gameplay about Nathan and his story and a redemption arc, I want to see my baby boy better instead of death
I don't think the glyph graffiti mentionned at 6:55 is a mystical insight of the upcoming storm. It is a reference to a French Sci-Fi book called "la Horde du Contrevent" which tells the adventures of a group of trained fighters and travellers who try to find the origin of the wind blowing endlessly on their world. The glyph is present in the book, it is a depiction of how each member is placed in the group. IMO it's just another "cool nerd kid" reference the devs put there, as the Twin Peaks reference on the car plates, or Max saying she actually likes the Final Fantasy movie.
Thank you for this video 😊 it's interesting to think the developers had bigger plans for the story, which would kind of save the disappointing ending if that's what really happened.
It really felt like something much more was missing in ep 5. Although great, it would've been nice to play through the unused content that the developers were originally going to put in for that ep. Extending the length would've also been sweet.
You've looked into this so much! Great job. Honestly, I wish that this had been extrapolated on.
great vid! it's really motivating to see a small channel put so much effort into uploads
Thank you so much! It's motivating to see my work being recognized as well! I really appreciate gestures like this!
theory's this is awesome
Much appreciated Victoria! Can't wait to see you in Before the Storm!
Pacifist Run XD thx u
Maltonium well now you're totally stuck in the Retro zone 😞😞😟
sad face
Let's be nice everybody. It's all fun and games until somebody is about to jump off a roof and your time travel powers have been turned off for dramatic effect.
Originally there was going to be 7 episodes but do to the budget the story was cut down to 5 episodes
maybe the reason nathan went crazy and was obsessed with death was because he was psychic or something maybe he saw dead things all the time and thats why he was so fascinated with dead birds... and people. Maybe with the stress of his family, seeing dead things, and killing Rachel he just snapped
I agree, it would have been much more interesting if the plot twist was that Chloe didn't have to die, and that the Prescotts were who the storm was coming after to punish/they knew about the upcoming storm but bribed the news and city to not tell anybody. It would have been a much better ending if Chloe AND the townspeople could both be saved in that manner. That way, Max can keep on rewinding time to figure out how to get the entire town to escape the storm. If all this makes no sense, I'm talking about a plot that could be very similar to "Your Name," in which they prevent people from being killed in a disaster.
i feel as though they wanted to go for a game with a branching storyline that made our choices a lot more meaningful... but either they didn't have a big enough budget, or they didn't have enough time to do so
I didn't know that dialogue even existed. I'm completely rethinking how Nathan should have been used in the ending.
8:39
That note isn't from Nathan's father, but from Mr Jefferson.
Right? I don't think I said it was. I just happened to pick it up in this footage
😂
That note from his father can be explained by Jefferson being the author. It's written in the weird style he uses talking to Max in episode 5 and he also mentions Nathan saw him as a father figure so it could be some kind of weird cultist way to call each other in privacy.
when i saw draco i screamed. i love the villains or well enemies in the story, i don’t know, it’s just they always have a side of the story...and it makes it more interesting for me.
I really like your theories, you have very good arguments for each and every theory. Keep on doing this
Just gonna throw this out there, never saw Chloe as a love interest, just a really close best friend, like a bromance but between girls. That's why the whole "save Chloe" ending never really made much sense to me. Chloe nobly and selflessly sacrificing herself for her family and a whole town who have friends, family, and loved ones of their own felt much more satisfying than sacrificing everyone just to run away together as lovers. Which again, as I viewed Max and Chloe as close friends just felt out of Character.
i love life is strange so much, but it’s so upsetting thinking about how a lot was probably cut from it
1- The Prescotts have a company that manage and studys space-time continuous.
2- They also study time travel to know about the consequences of messing up with time and space and use it as benefit.
3- Sean Prescott drugs Nathan to give him time powers or precognition (only working on precognition) that's why he's so crazy and knows about the storm.
4- Thanks to Nathan, the Prescott family knows about the storm, building the shelter.
5- They know that the human race is evolving to the point of developing unique abilities, like telekinesis and other psychic powers, including the manipulation of space-time. They want that for unkown motives (probably to use time travel for they're own benefit)
6- They know that someone has time powers in Arcadia Bay.
7- If Max sacrifices Arcadia Bay, the Prescotts drop the time travel topic knowing the devastating consequences, focusing on other powers.
8- If Max sacrifices Chloe, the Prescotts think that all the visions that Nathan had were just his crazy mind f*ck3d up by drugs, and all the study of space-time continuous is cancelled, dropping the time travel topic, focusing on other powers. (The same as 7 lol)
Conclusion: The Prescott are just some secret company that knows about time travel and supernatural stuff as well to use it for money.
Cool theory, but in the episode 4 when Max and Chloe go to the Prescott barn and before they find the Dark Room, they find old newspaper articles revealing that the bomb shelter boom happened already in the mid or early 20th century. Meaning the Prescotts have been preparing for the storm for a very long time, long before Nathan was even born.
So I think it´s more likely that the original plan was to reveal that the whole Prescott lineage, being the oldest family of the town, has supernatural abilities (most likely future vision, which is the opposite of Max´s power) and it being passed through the generations, and that´s how they took control of Arcadia Bay so easily.
I feel bad for Nathan. He never wanted to hurt anyone, he was just really messed up.
scared, potter
You wish
*Smug looks around the room*
I think they were coming with something when they made us progress through the last episode, walking lost through time and space, but also through Arcadia Bay where you could actually see some of your choices having impacts (saving emo-girl or not, the homeless etc,...). I was ready to accept both endings if they had made these choices impacts appear after the storm actually destroy Arcadia bay. Emo girl and a few people you warned raising from the rest of the dinner ashes or something I don't know x) But they did not a shame.
Something I would have enjoyed as both replay value and to satisfy a good ending where you could save both Chloe and Arcadia would be to hint that there are actually three endings but the third ending requires for you to get absolutely every step of the way 100% right.
I understand how Life is Strange was trying to create a moral core in making you choose one ending over the other, and that's great, but for those who really wanted a happier ending should have that option to go back and replay the entire game through in effort to accomplish that desired ending. By doing that, the core message is delivered AND we get a satisfying ending - not to mention replay value.
my theory is that all of the timelines max creates during the events of the game all exist along beside eachother so no matter what you choose for the ending the ending you didnt choose still happens on a different timeline, youre just choosing which timeline you want to stay in, mainly thought of this because nightmare max says "Im one of the Max's you left behind" also it helps me sleep at night that the town would of been destroyed anyway on a different timeline
I think the answer is that they just ran out of money during the last chapter. The last chapter was simply a series of cut scenes with some linear action between them. They left so many loose ends like the homeless woman, the weird ant behavior, and many others. I think they intended all these things to come together, but they just couldn't pull it off. I still have a hunch that the homeless woman is Max from the future.
It seems to me that in the cut-out content, there could be a moment where Nathan saves Max from a dark room, if we treat him well. I think so because he already tried to save her. Even if not on his own, but at least he warned her about the danger, he didn't even warn Victoria, but even knowing that he was about to die, he called Max in the hope that he could help. And I'm really confused by the moment with the storm, maybe Nathan could even help somehow, figure out how to save everyone, he's definitely not an ordinary person, like Max, maybe he has abilities that he doesn't know about and blames on mental illness.
Would like to see a "Director's Cut" or remix of the original Life is Strange (or at least chapter 5), which offers even more possibilities in story choices and endings, but while staying true to the themes of the game as they are; such as an option for Max to be the one to sacrifice herself for Chloe at the end.
I assumed that Nathan would be time traveler like max
Same
I feel that all of these kids have some sort of connect when it comes to time travel or having some physiological role for Arcadia Bay and around the area of Arcadia Bay.
2:33 That choice wasn't just choosing something to say, it was having a reaction too. So I guess that's why they put that kind of visual effect.
There are other moments in the game too where your reaction is different, but visual effects that can change the story are absent. They originally planned to make 8 episodes, so this storyline involving Nathan (and possibly his family too) was most likely abandoned when they knew it would only be 5 episodes.
I believe Nathan’s family was behind something causing the storm. And if Nathan kills Chloe, his family gets pulled away from that, distracted dealing with Nathan. And perhaps their plans are even uncovered and foiled. But by Max stopping him from killing Chloe, the plans carried on as normal and the storm still happens. That would make sense for why she saw the vision of the storm before she does her initial time travel, as warning to her that her actions will have consequences. Nathan either knows it will cause a storm because that’s part of their plan (maybe washing out the whole town to build something?) or Nathan could see the future, making him a foil to Max. It would have made more sense for them to team up for some reason. I would have very much liked for Before the Storm to center on the Prescott’s plot, Rachel’s relationship with Frank, as well as the one she had with Jefferson. Nathan could have had feelings for her and then grew obsessive and jealous when he found out about her Jefferson, and end right before the set up of Nathan killing her. BTS was a pretty big let down that could have been used to explore the absconded Prescott plot line. The certainly abandoned Rachel’s implication she had powers as well. And if Rachel, Max, and Nathan all had supernatural abilities than something is mystical about Arcadia Bay (Indian Burial Ground?)
I'm late I know but it was disappointing that Nathan was killed off screen in chapter 5. I always suspected there was more the story and the Prescott Foundation as is evident when you discover the bunker. I don't know the behind the scenes stuff at the time but I feel like Sean Prescott should have had a bigger part to play as well. The explanation Warren offers towards the end feels like something the writers cobbled together in the last minute.
I'm so glad this popped up in my recommended. Personally I was all over the subreddit while we were in that sort of "detective mode" and was all over the cut content that 4chan got their hands on.
We all sort of just.. Dropped it when we realized it was ignored.
Not a lot of people remember this, or if they do, they don't talk about it. Which is a shame because it's so fascinating. What the heck was truly going on with Nathan?
Great video!
Edit: I completely forgot about those damn wind glyphs! Wasn't there also some weird noise coming from inside the lighthouse, or the building next to it?
yeah i would say that even with the cop out it still fits preaty good with "time is like a river" theory that the game was emplying with chloe dying all over again, and for her not to die u had to build some time dam from choices that were saving chloe from her self and also all the time breaking apart enviorment reaction. So not as saisfying but the same level of satisfaction as intersteller i would say
I would just boil this whole fuck up down to the writers not being patient enough to properly and thoroughly tell their story.
I mean, I never did play Life is Strange while it was actually happening. I literally just finished it for the first time yesterday, but I could tell during the entire thing there was build-up throughout the story that I knew was never going anywhere. Because my brother had played it in front of me enough to catch my interest, so as I'm not generally a #holycrapkeepspoilersawayfrommeatallcosts type of audience member -- and because to me, one of the most important aspects of any story I like is rather or not the ending ruins it for me -- I looked its ending up.
On the one hand, reading a plot summary doesn't really prepare you for how a story will actually feel when you're watching and into it. So I don't feel that I was too much less let down by the way it all turned out than most people who played it from the beginning seem to have been. But on the other, a story that induces good feelings and lets you down still does let you down.
Life is Strange isn't too clearly "about" any of its three core aspects. Mystery, mysticism, and character relationships are all pretty equally spaced through the first three episodes. I suppose also in four, on paper, but again: it's all about the feeling it induces. And episode four's feeling is really and truly just fine, even if it suffers from the whole "sense of penultimate winding down" that most multi-installment story writers seem to take as "make it more depressing". I mean, really... Would it have been so bad to have found out Rachel Amber was alive?
Either way, episode five just largely starts sucking from minute one of itself. Right from the opening shot, this whole thing feels like way too much. Too much of a jump from some dark but distant themes into a straight-up nightmare situation right away. And it's not enough that you escape it once; lazily, it is brought back over and over, with resolution with David being the only good point to come out of it.
Which is kind of how this episode almost colors the whole Life is Strange experience. The literal nightmare sequence is the most obvious example of game padding, but the bigger problem is that it's a big fat mess of WTF. Like, where the shit did this come from, tonally? And no, it's not okay to call it good on the grounds of being "psychologically explorative", because it's not really even that. The change in Jefferson's character, and how it's supposedly ruined Max's whole world and mindset is not enough. Nor is her alternate reality hopping. Nor is her suddenly extra serious questioning of her powers.
The mysticism being dropped and unexplained from the story is a HUGE fault. Because it IS based in our reality, and as far as I know, people don't just wake up in class with time rewinding powers. So revealing where that came from should have been a huge priority. As should have involving other characters in the mystery, and as should have bringing about an actual resolution to the questions.
I could have lived with all of these things in their current state had it been a different ending, though. I guess the whole "Chloe versus Arcadia Bay" generic crap could have stayed, but there should at least be a couple of ways to earn a possibility of having your cake and eating it, too. Don't try to teach us lessons or make some kind of "thought provoking" point. It isn't cool, innovative, or realistically attractive. Just effing give us a good resolution, and don't screw around. Now, if ever I go back to play Life is Strange, the whole thing will be damaged by the reality that I will always have a shitty ending, regardless of what I pick. That's not okay, and it's always one of the biggest faults against any writer. A shame, as everything leading up to episode five was pretty amazing, otherwise.
The game was still so memorable to me, the fact that i was watching a youtuber playing into the nightmare part left me so many confusing parts..glad someone made a point out of this
I agree. Three was amazing and shocking and four made me cry...five let me down.