I just finished this game.
I am honestly NEVER playing one of these choice based game ever again, not from dontnod, not from telltale, not from anyone.
The game's concept was fucking brilliant, the writing and character development were great, game was fun as fuck, choices were pretty interesting.
And in the end, none of them even mattered! you have to choose between 2 shitty endings:
Go back and erase your entire playthrough so that the game never happens (with a nice montage of your protagonist being depressed for the rest of her life)
Or sacrifice your entire town, possibly killing hundreds of people, to start your own lesbian fantasy.
Oh did I mention that the lesbian part was only a tease? You only get to really kiss chloe if you sacrifice her AND if you sided with her throughout the entire game, if not, you only get a lame hug.
I literally got this game because of the lesbian scene,
I am very fucking dissapointed.
The lesbian kiss seems to be fucking random, a lot of people dont get it, even in the sacrifice chloe ending. Even if they sided with her and didnt kissed warren.
I agree though, it was pretty fucking dissapointing to see that none of my choices mattered. also why didnt I ever went with warren to the drive in?
Anyone has a clue of who the doe was supposed to be? Or do they ever say why do max has her powers?
>>315598003I assumed the doe was Rachel's spirit, since the last time you see it is when you find her corpse.
I don't get why she couldn't just save Chloe and just not time travel anymore after that.
>>315599293
The game has a ridiculous amount of plotholes.
>that part where you have to convince Chloe you have time powers
The game explicitly tells you that you can teleport, why do you have to do all this memory bullshit?
>>315597290
The problem was that the writers wrote themselves into a corner, which is why a lot of shit used as foreshadowing in episode 1 and 2 never amounted to anything, and and also why there's plotholes out the ass.
I even heard that one of the updates retconned some shit in the earlier episodes so that the game's story took place within one week.
>>315597290
You could say that about most games anon. Nearly every action you take in the majority of games is irrelevant. For example, i could play through Half-Life 2 and choose not to kill anything. Still the same ending.
Take enjoyment from the journey, not the destination.
>>315599924
Except Half Life 2 doesn't constantly keep telling you your choices matter
>Game looks like SJW material
>Play MC like a true red pill
>Blame Teach, Trust Friend's Dad
>Was right all along
mfw
These games aren't really about choice and consequence. The illusion of consequence from the meager choices you are presented with is just there to facilitate a story or a point they want to create. I know it limits the strength of video games, trying to be a choose your own adventure movie, but these games are their own genre by now.
That said, the only game I've played like this is Walking Dead.
>>315597290
>the writing and character development were great
Nope
>>315597290
The problem is that you enjoyed this although it's really nothing special, writing is on the level of a teen tv show, choices were nothing special, there was no character development, and the main character is a girl with no identity who uses her powers to manipulate everyone into liking her, when you came to the end you saw the game ride for what it was and now you are trying to rationalize yourself liking the game before the ending.
>>315597290
>your choices matter always!
>literally ME3 tier ending
Excellent.
Are they done with this mess yet? If so, can they try to make Remember Me 2: It's Actually Good This Time now? That was an "idea guy" game if there ever was one.
>>315597290
>writing and character development were great
The dialogue was horrible, literally what.
>>315597290
I agree with you on the whole about Life is Strange.
Luckily I was playing Tales From the Borderlands and haven't been jaded completely by story games.
What shitty bait
It really hurt the more I played because I was realizing more and more how none of my choices were mattering at all nor would they ever.
>>315597290
You make choices throughout the games, and different things happen based on what you choose IN THAT MOMENT. There's still choices and different ways for your JOURNEY to play out, obviously you're always going to end up in a similar end point
If you go into these things expecting huge branching stories that can really travel in different directions after each choice like a tree diagram , you have unrealistic expectations and are possibly either retarded, autistic, or both.
>>315605956
Kinda reminds me this.
>>315606334
>That twisting
Every time. This things are killing machine.
>>315597290
>The game's concept was fucking brilliant, the writing and character development were great, game was fun as fuck
Stopped reading there. You have low fucking standards my man. Feel ashamed.
>>315606310
>expecting greatly branching scenarios is retarded or autistic
Other games have done it. This game advertised itself as if it was.
And none of your choices make any difference other than minor dialogue changes.
Even saving Kate just changes "Kate died" to "Kate almost died" and we never see her again aside from one very short scene and her forgettable text messages.
Same with Frank. If someone could die then it just meant they were going to be removed from the story either way.
>>315606334
>just looks at him in disbelief
>the cannibal doesn't even realize what he's done
Illusion of choice is often enough. If it feels like a choice, then that's enough.
>>315606310
TWD S2 did it.Though we have yet to see if it matters at all come S3. Edgy end related.
>>315607308
And it only branches at the very end. That's easy. Doing that during the whole game? Almost impossible.
>>315607308
Fucking janefags turning Clem into a heartless lesbian monster
>>315607479
Zero Escape series does it just fine.
>>315607308
If you select "I am your loyal minion, Queen Jane" then you throw AJ at the peasants.
>>315607880
Zero Escape it's just a short length visual novel with puzzle gameplay element.
>>315606334
>Fuck no fred not this time
>always stealing my fucking food
>RIP AND TEAR
>how do you like that shit fred
Fred:
>...dude, did you just eat my fucking arm?
>>315597290
>the writing and character development were great
stopped reading there
>>315607942
How extremely fitting since Life is Strange is the same with almost no puzzles.
There are also plenty of h-games that do a good job of having branching paths that lead into completely different stories that are all individually longer than LiS.
Dontknod is just incompetent.
>>315608152
I'm not saying LiS is good or anything. I'm just saying that it's more feasible for visual novel to handle shit like this much better due to lower production cost.
>>315597290
Dotnod did it the worse. At least other games atempt to give you the illusion that your choices matter. Life is Strange flat out tells you that everything you did means nothing by the end of the game. Enjoy knowing you could have been a dick to everyone thanks to endgame reset making everything you did nonexistent.
Max is cute!
The endings make no sense whichever way you slice them
If the game works on multiple timelines (like the nightmare bit suggests) then saving the bay is retarded, you don't save anything
If time powers cause the tornado then how does one big jump not? If you overright the others then just do what you did before but not use time powers. Hell you have infinite tries at different ways
If Chloe is the one who causes it you have to ask why? What is set out of whack by her being alive? Will it keep doing so in the save timeline?
How come saving her dad didn't cause a tornado in as quick a fashion as saving her did? Also just go and stop her having a car crash in that timeline
>>315599536
You can literally ZA WARDO and she only does this once
>>315608152
Most of VNs(at least the ones I've read) handle stories bit differently.
They tell you many stories instead of one based on your choices.
You made choices XYZ? Here is the story(route) number 1.
You made choices ABC? Here is the story(route) number 2.
They have many stories in one, not one story with branching paths.
>the writing and character development were great
>>315608685
Bad writing.
You kill and save many other characters so the whole Chloe thing is just a failed speculation to make sense of this bullshit plot or the writers are so bad that they didn't realize that all the other people max saves or gets killed due to time shenanigans contradicts the Chloe thing.
WHERSE THE PORN BOSS
>>315608759
Umm.. Yeah, that's how choice games like this are supposed to work. Sometimes being too nice or making a specific choice is supposed to trigger a flag that sets a specific event or route.
>in the storm I go into the house instead of saving someone, thinking it's a sidepath
>it's actually the main path, can't go back outside to save that person
>finish the game
>sacrifice Arcadia
>go through my choices to compare to other players
>Alyssa died
>the one who I left outside was Alyssa
>I warned her every fucking time for meaningless shit and then just let her die on the final day
I couldn't stop laughing for a while
I like how pretty much all the decisions in these "decisions matter" games actually don't matter.
>>315608759
It's all the same when it comes to functionality. It's a different script based on different flags and switches.
>>315608685
The tornado still cones even if Chloe is dead. You spend the most time on the storm when Chloe is dead. The idea is that she never should have used time travel because it causes an imbalance. But that doesn't mean she couldn't save Chloe seeing as the first time she sees her she rushed out to help after she's shot. She could have given her first aid or immediately called for help or even been shot by Nathan. Doing nothing should cause more problems.
>>315608984
What Walking Dead and Life is Strange are trying to do is tot ell one story but with different results. It's very different from what I described earlier.
There is no "that's how it's supposed to work". Both are just as valid ways to tell a story/stories.
Ending falls apart when you realize max can literally use her time powers to save Chloe and have everyone evacuate Arcadia bay before the storm hits. It's not a planet swallowing storm so she literally just has to abuse sme photos and normal rewinds to find ways to convince everyone to leave. What's the storm gonna do once it realizes most of the towns people and Chloe got out safely? Nothing. It's gonna resume trying to destroy the bay like it does in both endins.
Max has a power that nullifies all problems because she can fix them before they happen.
>>315608986
Trying to save her just gets her killed if you helped her before. The dialogue involved is pretty cringeworthy. She basucally says that anytime Max helps her she has to get out of the way so she backs up into a hole and dies instead of listening to you.
I wanted to fight the storm with my own two hands, I thought Max was going to get a brilliant idea whatever your last choice was, or like she needed to understand what the fuck was going on in the city in order to stop this random storm coming out of nowhere.
>>315608759
>>315608152
I think that the main reason these games don't have such wildly branching paths is because of their episodic release method. When you build an entire game from scratch, it's easier to get a good overview of how to branch stories and how to get into wildly different stories. You can also opt to have one branch cut short as it fucks things up too much and you get a premature ending after a while.
But since every playthrough has to go through each episode, that isn't possible. Furthermore, due to the linear way the game is developed, they've got a specified amount of time to work on each episode. Now consider that you make a huge choice at the end of episode 3, and that based on this choice there are 2 wildly different branches in episode 4. Either it would take twice as long to make this episode, or the content in it would be halved. Both of these things would make a playerbase extremely angry.
>>315609253
Hahhaha holy shit that is so fucking stupid
>>315609253
>she backs up into a hole and dies instead of listening to you.
>Install Life is Strange
>Open game and start a new save
>Start Episode 1
>Play up until Chloe is about to get shot
>Pause, close game
>Open internet browser, Youtube
>Look up Sacrifice Chloe ending
>Skip to right where I was, with Max standing behind the stalls
What a good, official experience.
>>315597290
>people tough a tumblr game would be any good
the game was doomed from the start, the only remarkable thing about it was that SMF clip where she dies and the guy wearing glasses rapes her.
>>315609125
You're getting caught up in the wrong details.
When making a game like this there is no discernable difference between branching paths and branching stories.
If anything paths is simpler because you can reuse a lot of core story assets, but overall it's still "if player did x then use route y".
In a well made game we should have been able to ditch Chloe and possibly never even know who she was. Could have explored with different characters and could have changed where and how Max investigates.
>>315609237
With the amount of choices both games had branching stories with every combination would have been impossible to finish before year 2020. Anyone who expected more than just 5-8 branching routes is a dumb nigger. These game's fail in the fact that only the endgame choice matters and it only has two endings instead of actual routes.
>>315609373
You're not making any sense. The same writers worked on all the episodes. It's not like they the team switched or players somehow created new paths the dev team hadn't intended. The dev team added all these options and choices themselves. They could have made at least 4 different routes instead of just two endings. They just chose to easy way out or didn't plan for shit and pulled the endings out of their ass at the last minute. It's obvious they chose both. With how bad the writing is you know these fucks did t plan and just asspulled
>>315609682
All it takes is endings that are based around how you treat scenarios like in Heavy Rain or Until Dawn.
It's that simple to make choices matter in the end.
>>315609873
>With how bad the writing is you know these fucks did t plan and just asspulled
That's my point, they don't plan. They just write the game linearly, at the end of each episode they just sit around a big table and go "All right guys, any idea what we'll write next episode?". I think they only planned who the killer was.
>>315609560
This. However. The choices would be very limited or and we'd only have like 5-8 possible outcomes.
>>315609984
Until dawn's ending was the same regardless of what you did and who died. The only variation to it was the two end credit scenes where it shows one of two cutscenes that are pretty much just the same outcome but slightly different.
>>315597290
>AND if you sided with her throughout the entire game, if not, you only get a lame hug.
Really? I think it was if you kissed her in her room, since my friend barely sided with Chloe and still got it when he sacrificed her
>>315610018
You're right. It's so obvious they has no idea what to do with the storm when it was created. They never even told us how max got her powers and why. All people have left to do is speculate in a vein attempt to make sense of holes in a story that are literally just holes. There's nothing we're not getting. Those are flt out holes. Those plot holes, forced decisions and what not were just asspulls to keep to story going. They don't make sense because the shitty writers couldn't think of a sensible way to move the plot forward so they had characters act out of character or stupid. One of the biggest examples of this is she they force the player into a cutscene after finding the dark room. They even force max to act retarded and leave with Chloe to rush into a school with a loaded gun, ready to shoot someone with witnesses everywhere. Max had always been cautious about her powers and knew she would have to rewind so she wouldnt leave evidence in the dark room. The writers knew if given the choice every power would have reminded and removed evidence. The idiots gave the MC a power that could LITERALLT solve every problem before It happened. It pissed me off how many times they forced us into cutscenes and made characters act out of character just so a problem would be caused that we couldn't prevent before hand.
A lackluster ending doesn't take away the experience you were having leading up to it, they were all pretty good episodes.
>>315610462
I think they never planned on explaining why Max got her powers. I don't really mind that they don't explain, as I'm fine with leaving something like that unexplained. Any explanation as to how someone gets time control powers is going to be fucking ass anyway.
>>315610637
Yeah, I still enjoyed the game, really liked the story with the disabled Chloe. I just really hated the nightmare part, it was just terrible.
>>315610637
Yeah, I sure enjoyed first world problems the game. It was so fun watching teens spam dialog of old memes, hella, act like premtious and act pricks over photography. Stupid game made us hate nathen only to attempt to make us feel sorry for him in the car ride. They made us hate the Max's rival(what's her name) only to try to roll it back with the generic 'she's just insecure' bullshit at the party. They did so much dumb shit like this that you'd have to have turned your brain off to not get annoyed by it,
>>315607975
Kill yourself
>>315597290
>twenty the year of out lord fifteen
>people are still being tricked by story games faking the illusion of choice
>>315610872
None of the plot points for any of the episodes were first world problems
>>315610820
It isn't exactly the problem of them not explaining how max gets the powers, it's more of a probes that they explained almost nothing of anything regarding the storm or time powers. Not even a slight hint as to why the storm REALLY Is happening, why Max can literally just do bullshit like roll back years by staring at photos but can't roll back more than 12 seconds with her standard rewind. Why can max standard, wait 12 seconds, rewind, than reset the process over and over but she can't rewind back 12 secs, the. Rewind back 12 more secs to travel backwards that way? They gave us all these limitations, rules, visions, plot points and shit without any substance. It's textbook bad writing when you answer NOTHING.
>>315611102
I'm talking about all the random teen stuff. They were all first world problems that as we can see, did not affect the ending or even change much later in the game. You can LITERALLY not say anything to suicide girl am still be ale to save her the same way as you would if you were nice to her. Thinks like that that were ultimately irrelevant to the main story is what I'm talking about. I mean, she was one of the dark room victims of course but the whole church and bullying thing was just character building for the snobby rival girl who's name I can't remember. Dealing with warrens shit means nothing. Being nice or an ass to rival girl means nothing. Telling Chloe to grow the fuck up means nothing. Nothing meant nothing. We were dealing with teen angst for nothing.
>>315611226
Well yeah, the storm part should have been explained, but I think it was just meant as a generous "chaos theory if you change too much weird shit is going to happen".
How going back in time causes a solar eclipse I don't fucking know though, at least you could argue a storm could be caused by the errant displacement of Max with her time travel keeping her in the same space.What if, during the final part, Samuel came up to Max and Chloe and explained the concept of a 「stand」
>>315611602
Another funny thing that nobody see s to realize. Max is rewinding the entire universe with ease. Every particle in the universe is being turned back by some 18(?) year old. This is not a plot complaint or anything. Just pointing out that if you look at it that way max is doing god tier shit,
>>315605503
He's got a good point
