r/lifeisstrange • u/Dino-Dragonfly-736 • 6h ago
[ALL] Life Is Strange 1 has a unique aura Spoiler
I've read people describing this feeling. It's so strangely healing, mysterious, and nostalgic that it makes me feel a kind of anemoia.
To be honest, I played it looking for something similar to games like Telltale's The Walking Dead, games that involve choices, etc. If I had known what the game was about, I probably would never have played it hahaha, but luckily I played it without knowing what it was about or who its target audience was, which was a good thing. I would have missed out on a great game, since its target audience is very different from me, as I'm a heterosexual man, and I first played it last year, as a young adult at 23, but I feel as if I had played it in 2015. It makes me nostalgic for a time I never experienced that way.
It really surprised me in a very good way.
I've already played it twice, and I feel like replaying it.
It's incredibly immersive and, in a way, healing.
For me, Life Is Strange 1 is really good, and 2 is the best, Before the Storm is also good, although a few steps below. I didn't like True Colors and only got through one chapter. I haven't played the newer ones yet, and I also played Tell Me Why looking for something similar to LIS, but I honestly thought it was outright horrible.
Obviously, I think the game has some bad points, one big one to be exact, and that's Chloe. In several situations, I dislike her. I'm not saying I hate her, but there are many times when I do dislike her...
It's in my top 10 games of all time. And its soundtrack is beautiful, and I listen to it quite often.
And yes, I'm going to replay it for the third time.
I always choose to save Arcadia Bay. I really can't kill the entire town just for Chloe. I've only seen the ending where you save Chloe because I've watched gameplay of someone choosing it, just to see what it's like, since I could never choose that option myself.
The game accompanies me like few others do. The game really is healing.
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u/Bosterm It's time. Not anymore. 6h ago
What didn't you like about Chloe?
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u/Dino-Dragonfly-736 6h ago
Well, Chloe can be a bit toxic and selfish, and sometimes she can be a bad person. Obviously, she has her good qualities too, but I think her bad qualities outweigh her good ones.
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u/Bosterm It's time. Not anymore. 5h ago
When is Chloe a bad person? Usually she's just a bit rude.
I guess she wanted to kill Nathan, but tbh I suspect she wouldn't have gone through with it.
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u/Dino-Dragonfly-736 5h ago
It's not really about her being rude. I'm rude too, and I had a pretty punk attitude when I was a teenager.
What bothers me is how she treats Max sometimes. For example, she gets upset when Max wants to answer Kate's call, and the whole thing about stealing money from the school's fund for students with disabilities is really messed up. That's inexcusable.
Some of her actions are genuinely selfish and unfair, and understanding her trauma doesn't mean I have to justify everything she does.
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u/Bosterm It's time. Not anymore. 5h ago edited 5h ago
There's a critical nuance to Chloe getting mad about Max answering the phone call: Chloe does not know that Kate is suicidal. From Chloe's POV, Max has just spent five years ghosting Chloe and not calling even once, and now that Chloe has finally seen Max again and are trying to rekindle their friendship, Max is willing to interrupt all of that to talk to somebody she's known for a month on the phone.
Is she out of line? Perhaps, but she does apologize for it later when she learns what was actually going on with Kate.
As for the handicapped fund, both Max and Chloe have reason to think that it's actually a corrupt bribe. Who leaves multiple thousands of dollars in an envelope? Why not write a check or make a bank transfer?
But more importantly, Max is able to talk Chloe out of stealing the money pretty easily.
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u/Dino-Dragonfly-736 3h ago
The money was explicitly labeled as a fund for students with disabilities, and Chloe wanted to take it to pay her own debts. And even if it was corrupt money, she could have used the opportunity to help those students instead. But being a good person isn't the point, right? The fact that she even considers doing something like that says a lot.
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u/Bosterm It's time. Not anymore. 2h ago
It's not a fund for students, it's a fund for Blackwell to do renovations. Specifically, to build a ramp outside the dorm, even though the dorm has stairs and presumably no elevator. Making Blackwell actually accessible would probably cost tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars.
But back to Chloe, you should read about Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Chloe is drowning in problems, she can barely think about anyone other than herself because no one is there to give her support until Max shows up.
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u/mirracz Pricefield 6m ago
The fact that she even considers doing something like that says a lot.
Yes, it says that she wants to survive.
Frank literally threatened her and Max with a knife. He threatened to hurt her over text messages. So it's self-preservation.
And Frank is totally capable hurting them, as seen in the confrontation in the next episode.
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u/forgetfulalchemist 5h ago
She didn't know Kate waa suicidal and that was money Wells was pocketing
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u/mirracz Pricefield 8m ago
Chloe treats Max really great. She supports her, keeps boosting her confidence, defers to her judgement. There's basically only two cases where she's mean towards her. Kate's call (which is understandable reaction, given their backstory) and after finding about Rachel and Frank (which is also understandable). And for both Chloe apologizes and makes up for them.
That's the point of Chloe. she's flawed. Some of her instinctive reactions are not exactly right. But that's how her trauma shaped her. Inside her, she's a good, caring person. And the more she's with Max, the more does that person shine through.
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u/forgetfulalchemist 5h ago
"She's toxic" is another thing Bayers say all the time, do you guys have a secret playbook or something?
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u/Citizen_Gamer 2h ago
Life is Strange is really good about LGTBQ representation, but I don't think being heterosexual makes you "not the target audience". I think being a thinking, feeling human being makes you the target audience. I'm straight and I love the hell out of these games and these characters.
Sorry to hear that True Colors didn't hit for you. That's in my top 3. Also, I'm not hating on you, but I don't understand people that don't absolutely love Chloe 😅. Yeah, she's sometimes rude and lashes out, but it's because she feels abandoned by everyone in her life, including Max. She's put up walls to try to protect herself. Getting through those defenses and reconnecting with her is the joy of the first game.
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u/Jpab97s Shaka brah 6m ago
I think people forget that in LiS1 we're seeing Chloe process a whole new loss all over again. Rachel's disappearance is very recent, and she was really important to Chloe.
It's like seeing someone at their worst and assuming that's who they are.
In BTS, Chloe is actually very capable of being a fairly reasonable teenager, depending on how you play.
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u/TritonJohn54 Forget the horror here 1h ago
DontNod really captured lightning in a bottle with LIS1. And they've never quite been able to replicate it. Nothing of theirs that i've played has been bad, but LIS1 stands out among their work.
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u/Rich_Safety7653 1h ago
Il tell you a little oddity of there's that's so under the radar it's like it never happened but I thought was ok-harmony the fall of reverie. Not a bad little concept but I think it only sold 3 copies.
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u/NightSpaghetti 1h ago
LiS1 has that dreamy, almost mythological aura and I can't explain it. I went into the game completely blind and I definitely think it's the best way to experience it. I played it for the first time last year and it's instantly put itself close to the top of my all time favourite video games.
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u/mirracz Pricefield 4m ago
Part of the unique aura are the endings and how carefully they are constructed to be ambiguous and not clear-cut.
It's never "kill the entire town just for Chloe". That's backwards. This ending is refusing to kill Chloe to save the town. Arcadia Bay is getting sacrificed only figuratively. All Max does is she refuses to sacrifice Chloe and just lets the down get destroyed.
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u/forgetfulalchemist 6h ago
Can we at least have a limit on how many trite cliche Chloe hate screeds we get a day
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u/Dino-Dragonfly-736 6h ago
Relax, I never said I hate Chloe. I said that sometimes I don't like her, which is different...
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u/forgetfulalchemist 6h ago
It's always the same "I don't like Chloe's attitude" "how could you choose Chloe over the town" at least get new material
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u/Dino-Dragonfly-736 5h ago
Lmao, calm down, you got it wrong. I never said I hated her.
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u/forgetfulalchemist 5h ago
I'm saying you're parroting Bay rhetoric
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u/Dino-Dragonfly-736 5h ago
Relax, please 🥺🌷
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u/forgetfulalchemist 5h ago
I am relaxed, you just need to understand poorly thought out arguments will get backlash
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u/theorieduchaos I'm a human time machine 6h ago edited 6h ago
you're supposed to feel ambivalent about chloe at times. because she's flawed. and yet that's what makes the writing so poignant and realistic. that's not a failure of the narrative. it's supposed to make you feel something—you also should feel that way about most characters characters as well. hell, i felt chloe's pain deep within then she talks about max—her bestest friend—abandoning her when she needed her most. we get to understand why she is the way she is through the pain and trauma she experienced.
if you're able to sympathize with her, and also call her out when necessary, that's how it's supposed to be. that's how her relationship with max grows throughout the game.
personally, the complexity of chloe (and the many characters) is the highlight of this game. i wouldn't want perfect characters. i want characters that move me.