About this image

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Well, I recently played Life is Strange. It held my thoughts for a while, and I decided to create what I believe to be a fitting pose for one of it's characters.

Feel free to skip it if you just want the technical information and my final thoughts.

I will preface this by saying that everything I write is related to the experience I personally had with the game, with the decisions that I personally made based on what I thought was right.

I don't believe that there is a "wrong" way to experience the game, nor any wrong choices; while I very much love Chloe as a character I understand that others might not have that instant connection, reach different conclusions and make different decisions.
And that's fine. It is how it should be. It is what makes us - all of us, as people - different and interesting. It's the very core of individuality, after all.

Before I begin running off trying to explain my thoughts, allow me to bring this slightly altered quote from the bible:

"Peradventure there be fifty righteous within the city: wilt thou also destroy and not spare the place for the fifty righteous that are therein?"
"If I find fifty righteous within the city, then I will spare all the place for their sakes."
"Peradventure there shall lack five of the fifty righteous: wilt thou destroy all the city for lack of five?"
"If I find there forty and five, I will not destroy it."
"Peradventure there shall thirty be found there."
"I will not do it, if I find thirty there."
"Peradventure ten shall be found there."
"I will not destroy it for ten's sake."
"Peradventure one shall be found there."
"I will not destroy it for his sake."

(For those of you who don't know, and don't want to look it up, this is part of the Sodom and Gomorrah story.)

I suppose that very much gives away my choice at the end of the game, but personally I really couldn't see any other option from my point of view, given the elements in play.

Now, I'm going to throw out a spoiler alert, so that all of you who haven't played the game and intend to can skip this until the spoiler end section:

Almost every single character portrayed in the game has, at one point or another, irritated me to a certain degree.

The students, who despite being portrayed as sad, scared and horrified by Kate almost committing suicide are found less than three days later partying and getting wasted.
Yes, I understand the saying that "life must go on" but surely at least a few of them would realize that it is extremely distasteful; for the love of God and all that is holy, the party is being thrown while Kate is lying in the hospital. They didn't even wait for her to return to Blackwell.

The security and police, who seemed more helpless and harmful than anything else; David Madsen could have altered the whole game just by catching Nathan sneaking in a gun at the very beginning, to name just one tiny thing (Blackwell is supposed to be a gun-free zone). There were dozens of other occasions that the police and security could have stopped the whole thing from happening, but they didn't.

The staff, who have been working with a serial killer and psychopath that has been kidnapping, drugging and killing their students for years upon years without doing anything; the principal in particular comes across as uncaring and harmful given his reaction to Max's first conversation with him.

The parents who send their children to Blackwell, despite there being so many cases of kidnapping there. Specifically, parents who send their daughters there (because no male was ever kidnapped according to the names in the Dark Room).

I guess that, in particular, the thing that upset me most is the way the entirety of Arcadia has handled Chloe (Joyce and David most of all). Somehow, I just couldn't see her suffer any more than she already has, because we see very early on how easy it is for her to be happy. How easy it is for her to return to her carefree nature, and it horrifies me to think what she had to go through to become so filled with spite and anger.
Hell, all it took was a joint (which is "almost legal" there) and some music, and even that momentary happiness was cut short by David freaking out on her.

It's almost comical how Joyce says the last time she saw Chloe truly happy was when she was thirteen, when the only way Chloe grown to be so sad and miserable was if Joyce herself did nothing but side with David against Chloe for five straight years.

Unsurprisingly, the first time Joyce doesn't side with David, he freaks out on her, and gets the boot.

When it came to the final decision, initially I chose to save Chloe because I cared about her more than the other characters and Arcadia Bay felt like one big portal to Hell that I was happy to see gone.
I would like to extend what Max and Chloe said about the Dark Room to the whole of Arcadia Bay: "That place actually feels evil."

When I went over things, I realized another thing: Chloe is the only one who could help Max.
After everything she went through, Max will have serious mental trauma and issues for just about the reminder of her life, which would have been depressing even if people would have believed her, but nobody will believe a teenage girl claiming she could rewind time and saw disasters and tragedies and endured captivity and torment.

Effectively, sacrificing Chloe then becomes sacrificing Max as well, because there are incredibly few people who can see others get shot, jump off a roof and die to other hazards (Evan getting hit during the twister, the fisherman getting electrocuted etc) without going insane.
Yes, Max could have rewound time to save them (and my Max did), but the memories are still there. They don't go away just because Max would have liked them to.

Also, what of Joyce? She was already forced to bury her husband, what will she do if she has to bury her daughter as well?

A lot of questions, very few answers, but as I only really care for three characters (in order, Max, Chloe and Kate) and all three survive the tornado (Kate being away with her folks) I believe that the best outcome for them - the best way they can go on with their lives - is by allowing the tornado to destroy Arcadia Bay.

Another thing to think about: at the start of the game, Max is a starry-eyed, innocent geek girl. As the game progresses, Max can become somewhat of a saintly hero or martyr (intervening for Kate, taking the blame for Chloe so David won't hit her, preventing Kate's suicide, comforting Victoria instead of ridiculing her etc) and by the end of the game she's a full fledged angel of wrath (the scene back at the classroom when Max hands in her photo was incredibly satisfying, and I felt the blazing red reflecting in Max's usually calm blue eyes was perfect).

If the game developers weren't so focused on setting up a choice between sacrificing Chloe or sacrificing Arcadia Bay, they could have allowed Max to take a photo during the plane scene, rewinding to it after she called Chloe in the gallery to tell her to get her folks to safety.
This would have shown Max's character development (in that she learned to think with her powers in mind, rather than as a normal teenage girl) just as much as her saying she is clumsy and should use the chair to reach the chlorine did.

And frankly, that would've been a better ending, as far as I'm concerned; the confrontation sequence wouldn't exist, and it would have been a pity that we would have never gotten to see Jefferson shot as he deserved. The nightmare, too, would've had to go that way.
But it would have been well worth it, in my opinion.

Now, I know a lot of people really care about Warren, and might say he is righteous, but in my opinion the fact he can beat a man almost to death if Max doesn't stop him precludes that option. Yes, said man may have severely needed to be taught a lesson, but not like that.
Also, the fact he appears during the nightmare as one of those chasing Max very much precludes that option, in my opinion.

Speaking of the nightmare, I think it had the exact opposite effect of what the developers intended; I believe they created it the way they did to make the choice a "Greater good against Max's greatest wish" affair, but in reality the nightmare is so damning towards all the other characters that it is possibly the thing that desensitized me towards their deaths and the destruction of the bay.

Yes, it portrays Chloe in a positive light, and that does help push me towards sparing her, but honestly if I believed there was a single righteous within the bay, I would not have destroyed it, for his sake.

There were none, and when Chloe whispered "It's time..." all I could answer was "Not anymore."

I realize a lot of those opinions might not be popular, but those are my thoughts about the game. I invite everyone to share theirs, as I believe there is no wrong opinions - just different people viewing an interactive experience from a different angle, reaching different decisions and ultimately enjoying a story in a different way.

Now, it's time to end the spoiler and provide the usual information.
Before that, though I want to say that this was a great game despite everything, and I thoroughly recommend it to anyone who has not yet played it. The soundtrack is also superb, if you just want to give that a listen. My personal favorite track is "Piano Fire", despite how little sense the lyrics make.
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Technical information:
The background is a part of Duke City. Specifically, right in front of he school building.
The clothes used are marked as "SR" in my game. I do not honestly know any more about them.
I decided to use one of my Lattamer Elves, Victoria, though I realize it hardly matters.
Pose by me.
Fingernails from Apachii Goddess Store.
OBGEv3 effects used.
Slight post-processing to minimize hand color mismatch (should probably get around to fixing the apachii goddess fingernail models).
Filetype JPG.

Final thoughts:
Thank you to everyone who took the time to read this gigantic wall of text, and I hope it provided some fresh perspective of the game or was at least slightly interesting.

I would very much like to hear your thoughts about the game, or about what I wrote.

Have a wonderful day, today and every day,
-Sleepy