Let me get this straight, so to speak.

[Sefu]

Okay, so you pick the Bae ending, meaning you and Chloe sacrifice your literal families and an entire city to a giant tornado just to be together. You promise never to leave each other, you Thelma and Louise into the sunset. Then a bit later, Chloe decides she doesn't like the whole 'settling down' thing, and leaves.

So imagine if I made a sequel to The Princess Bride and in the first 10 minutes I made sure to explain "oh, Princess Buttercup became an alcoholic and left Wesley, we're going to actually follow his adventures as he returns to pirating now."

Hey, I get that 'Pricefield' isn't a fixed outcome, but if you think back to the cosplay maelstrom on tumblr and what the in-game stats tell us, it kind of looks like you guys just did the equivalent of my "Brideless Prince" treatment to around half of the fandom.

Well, anyway. I just had to get that out of my system. I'll play through it after I get over it, which I know I will. Although it's sounding like it won't be the end of bad narrative choices for this one. But I'll do the right thing and save my review til then.

P.S. You know, if you really wanted it to be a solo Max game, you could have at least made an ending where you don't romance anyone and it -hints- that they -might- get back together... if that does happen that'd help, but it doesn't seem like it.

[peter4i4ik]

Yes, this is demolition of Max and Chloe relationships, showing Chloe a complete moron and particularly also Max. This accusation of "looking back", "settling down", "i will always love you but we must go apart" , is the dumbest teenager writing who would make a breakup scene out of nothing, just to cry.

[Snake]

Yeah I have to agree, I didn't like how you decimated Arcadia Bay for Chloe, only for them to drift apart.. like what.. but how would you write a script for future "Pricefield" games? Whilst I love Chloe, its difficult to come up with a compelling story with her after Arcadia.

Double Exposure almost felt like playing the first Life is Strange game again, but they cleverly decided to scrap the rewind time ability to travel between two realities. Essentially, seeing Chloe dead in Blackwell restroom and Chloe alive in another reality.

[Cat]

Square Enix says don't ask questions, buy dem juicy cat content or take a hike.

[Borfday Sardonicus]

I'd watch that hypothetical Princess Bride sequel if it was well written, though I'd likely be more interested in what shenanigans a drunken Buttercup was up to, than Wesley's pirate adventures.

This game however is not written well enough to be able to get away with it, which I feel is what people are actually angry about. They do not properly justify it through their writing or give any sense of catharsis related to it. I feel like you can get away with almost anything in a story if it's well written in a satisfying way. It has to feel like a natural progression of the plot and not something that a writer threw in haphazardly without thinking about how contrived it feels.

For example they just broke up a very popular lesbian pairing in Arcane but the fans of that couple aren't nearly as angry at the writers cause they did it in a way that feels satisfying, justified and well written within the story, that people aren't mad at the writers for doing it but are so entrenched in the world they are telling that it feels like an organic thing to happen in the plot. It's the difference between being upset at a character for making a bad choice cause you're invested in that character and want them to be happy, compared to being mad at the writing for breaking up the character and ruining that suspension of disbelief. If you can feel the hands of the creators in the writing, it's not done very well.

[Till :D]

It´s like they only had the "Arcadia Bay ending" in mind, writing the story of Double Exposure. Perhaps they should have opted for one ending to be canon, cause the way they handled the "Chloe lives ending" leaves things way too ambiguous.

[drummer]

Don't care, I hate Chloe. Warren is a better choice for Max (or Vinh)

[john doe]

Originally posted by drunkASMR:

Don't care, I hate Chloe. Warren is a better choice for Max (or Vinh)

wrong warren is a creep and a stalker chloe is 100% better then warren.

[drummer]

Originally posted by john doe:

Originally posted by drunkASMR:

Don't care, I hate Chloe. Warren is a better choice for Max (or Vinh)

wrong warren is a creep and a stalker chloe is 100% better then warren.

I do not think he's a creep. Warren's problem is that he is in love, but at the same time desperate to have a girlfriend, because when Max rejects him, he immediately goes with Brooke.

He's young, I've dated a good portion of guys that went through a 'Nice Guy' stage when they're teenagers but usually they grow out of it as they get older.

Warren isn't malicious and he doesn't insult Max for rejecting him (a couple of his texts seemed a little bitter though). He's just a teenage boy doing cringey teenage boy things.

"Stalker Chloe" would really do ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up things though, such as killing someone Max likes just for her approval

[rmsgrey]

Originally posted by Till :D:

It´s like they only had the "Arcadia Bay ending" in mind, writing the story of Double Exposure. Perhaps they should have opted for one ending to be canon, cause the way they handled the "Chloe lives ending" leaves things way too ambiguous.

More likely they had both endings in mind, but it's much easier to write Chloe out of the Bae ending than to write Chloe into the Bay ending, so when they wanted to have the two converge, for the purposes of only having to make the entire game once rather than twice, they converged much closer to the Bay ending.

[Borfday Sardonicus]

Originally posted by rmsgrey:

Originally posted by Till :D:

It´s like they only had the "Arcadia Bay ending" in mind, writing the story of Double Exposure. Perhaps they should have opted for one ending to be canon, cause the way they handled the "Chloe lives ending" leaves things way too ambiguous.

More likely they had both endings in mind, but it's much easier to write Chloe out of the Bae ending than to write Chloe into the Bay ending, so when they wanted to have the two converge, for the purposes of only having to make the entire game once rather than twice, they converged much closer to the Bay ending.

That's not true though. According to one of the devs in the original first draft story they came up with Safi WAS SUPPOSE TO BE Chloe, and you start out in either dead timeline or alive timeline and work your way from there in the story after discovering the other timeline and alive timeline Chloe is at risk of dying again. They canned that idea after part of the staff decided they didn't like Chloe and that Bae ending was the evil option, so changed it to being about Safi instead.

[rmsgrey]

Originally posted by Sardonicus:

According to one of the devs in the original first draft story they came up with Safi WAS SUPPOSE TO BE Chloe, and you start out in either dead timeline or alive timeline and work your way from there in the story after discovering the other timeline and alive timeline Chloe is at risk of dying again. They canned that idea after part of the staff decided they didn't like Chloe and that Bae ending was the evil option, so changed it to being about Safi instead.

So now I've heard both that one of the devs says the original idea was Max crossing between Bae and Bay timelines and trying to keep the surviving Chloe alive, and that one of the devs says the original idea was to have an original character crossing timelines, and someone high up made them change it to use Max.

I can see how either story makes sense, and explains things about how the game ended up, but it's a bit tricky getting both of them to be true at the same time...

[HunterN]

I think if you killed an entire town of people that might be a shaky basis for a relationship

[Sefu]

Originally posted by HunterN:

I think if you killed an entire town of people that might be a shaky basis for a relationship

Lmao i dunno ive debated it with myself a million times. It’s both unethical and also exactly what Id do if it were my wife vs a bunch of civilians. Hopeless romantic problem here.

[drummer]

Originally posted by Sefu:

Originally posted by HunterN:

I think if you killed an entire town of people that might be a shaky basis for a relationship

Lmao i dunno ive debated it with myself a million times. It’s both unethical and also exactly what Id do if it were my wife vs a bunch of civilians. Hopeless romantic problem here.

I was thinking of an alternate ending where they both "delete themselves" so that doesn't happen but the fans won't like it because it's violent :(

[Sefu]

Originally posted by Sardonicus:

I'd watch that hypothetical Princess Bride sequel if it was well written, though I'd likely be more interested in what shenanigans a drunken Buttercup was up to, than Wesley's pirate adventures.

This game however is not written well enough to be able to get away with it, which I feel is what people are actually angry about. They do not properly justify it through their writing or give any sense of catharsis related to it. I feel like you can get away with almost anything in a story if it's well written in a satisfying way. It has to feel like a natural progression of the plot and not something that a writer threw in haphazardly without thinking about how contrived it feels.

For example they just broke up a very popular lesbian pairing in Arcane but the fans of that couple aren't nearly as angry at the writers cause they did it in a way that feels satisfying, justified and well written within the story, that people aren't mad at the writers for doing it but are so entrenched in the world they are telling that it feels like an organic thing to happen in the plot. It's the difference between being upset at a character for making a bad choice cause you're invested in that character and want them to be happy, compared to being mad at the writing for breaking up the character and ruining that suspension of disbelief. If you can feel the hands of the creators in the writing, it's not done very well.

I think you hit the nail on the head. Its not just that the story took a dissatisfying turn, its that it did so with no real justification. Its like Austin Powers 2, except that was funny so it was fine.

And ok yeah alcoholic buttercup on the run would at least be funny.