Does anyone else think Max is kind of cruel to Chloe?

[ra1n3b0w_]

I genuinely don’t think Max is a sweet baby little angel that people make her out to be. I really don’t. She complains that Chloe didn’t want to go places that her and Rachel were planning to go…she has zero sympathy around that. Obviously she wouldn’t want to. She doesn’t even text or call to make sure the person she had just ignored for 5 years is okay after losing everything. Literally everything.

[texasgoldrush]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย rhizzyful:

I genuinely don’t think Max is a sweet baby little angel that people make her out to be. I really don’t. She complains that Chloe didn’t want to go places that her and Rachel were planning to go…she has zero sympathy around that. Obviously she wouldn’t want to. She doesn’t even text or call to make sure the person she had just ignored for 5 years is okay after losing everything. Literally everything.

She thinks Chloe is being a hypocrite.

[Stigma]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย texasgoldrush:

She thinks Chloe is being a hypocrite.

And she's right.

[Cat]

I don't keep in touch with my friends too so I wouldn't say she's bad because of that.

[Rachel D.]

Okay so, now the stuff involving around the places that Chole and Rachel wanted to go in the PAST I'm afraid we're dealing with chole and knowing chole she's still dealing with Rachel's death and obviously if max is saying "Hey can we go to Los Angeles?" Or something like that. Yeah chole is of course gonna say no, she had original plans to go to places with Rachel which is actually preety confirmed in before the storm (if you go through Rachel's romance route) that she feels preety strong feelings TOWARDS Rachel and obviously chole will feel attachment I'm preety sure.

Now onto the max now calling or texting after 5 years, max for some reason was prolonging this for..whatever reason she had like "Oh I'm guilty" and "I'm too shy to text back" (and there is literal implications of her being shy because she doesn't text back for 5 years even though she feels LITERALLY GUILTY AND WANTS TO TEXT BACK? Yeah 100% Max's fault there. But I'm preety she blames it on her guiltiness 100% onscreen and shyness offscreen but idk might be both ways.)

[脆皮嘎嘎]

Each of us is unique and should be treated and respected equally. Supporting LGBT groups means supporting diversity and tolerance, and making love and understanding the main theme of this world. Come on, be brave!

[rmsgrey]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Rachel D.:

Now onto the max now calling or texting after 5 years, max for some reason was prolonging this for..whatever reason she had like "Oh I'm guilty" and "I'm too shy to text back" (and there is literal implications of her being shy because she doesn't text back for 5 years even though she feels LITERALLY GUILTY AND WANTS TO TEXT BACK? Yeah 100% Max's fault there. But I'm preety she blames it on her guiltiness 100% onscreen and shyness offscreen but idk might be both ways.)

The thing is, it's not going to be like Max sat down and decided "I'm not going to text back for at least five years". Instead, she'd have put off sending a text because she wanted to decide what she wanted to say first, or because she had other things to do, and then not thought about it until the next time she put it off, and then it'd been a week and she'd have to apologise for not having been in contact, and that only made it easier to put off until she had time to find the perfect words, and then after a month, she wanted to be able to start with an explanation, but she didn't really have a particular reason for why it'd been so long, so she didn't have any way to explain it, and any excuses she thought up seemed unconvincing, and so she kept putting it off and putting off thinking about her reasons until it had gone on so long that she was now in the habit of feeling guilty and putting it off - and putting it off for another week didn't seem so bad now that it had been months, and before she knows it, it's been five years, she's still telling herself she means to get around to it someday, but she never actually does...

[Barny600]

This is also funny, because in Life is Strange 2 (made by Dontnod, the original developers of the first LiS game), if you choose to sacrifice Arcadia Bay you can meet David Madsen towards the fifth episode of the game, telling basically that both Max and Chloe have moved on from the trauma of Arcadia Bay together, and in a phone call we get to know they are trying to apply Max's photos in some of New York art galleries, implying they are currently visiting the city as the time the events of LiS2 are taking place.

Basically, this means that when Deck Nine wrote that "Chloe didn’t want to go places that her and Rachel were planning to go", they had to essentially retcon what the original writers and devs intended to level the Bae (Sacrifice Arcadia Bay) ending with the themes of the Bay (Sacrifice Chloe) ending.

[texasgoldrush]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Barny600:

This is also funny, because in Life is Strange 2 (made by Dontnod, the original developers of the first LiS game), if you choose to sacrifice Arcadia Bay you can meet David Madsen towards the fifth episode of the game, telling basically that both Max and Chloe have moved on from the trauma of Arcadia Bay together, and in a phone call we get to know they are trying to apply Max's photos in some of New York art galleries, implying they are currently visiting the city as the time the events of LiS2 are taking place.

Basically, this means that when Deck Nine wrote that "Chloe didn’t want to go places that her and Rachel were planning to go", they had to essentially retcon what the original writers and devs intended to level the Bae (Sacrifice Arcadia Bay) ending with the themes of the Bay (Sacrifice Chloe) ending.

Because it wasn't honest. Not everyone likes the Bae ending.

But here they make David just wrong, what a character says or believes isn't set in stone. David believed Max moved on which isn't true. Either Max or Chloe hid the state of their relationship to him.

[Cat]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย texasgoldrush:

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Barny600:

This is also funny, because in Life is Strange 2 (made by Dontnod, the original developers of the first LiS game), if you choose to sacrifice Arcadia Bay you can meet David Madsen towards the fifth episode of the game, telling basically that both Max and Chloe have moved on from the trauma of Arcadia Bay together, and in a phone call we get to know they are trying to apply Max's photos in some of New York art galleries, implying they are currently visiting the city as the time the events of LiS2 are taking place.

Basically, this means that when Deck Nine wrote that "Chloe didn’t want to go places that her and Rachel were planning to go", they had to essentially retcon what the original writers and devs intended to level the Bae (Sacrifice Arcadia Bay) ending with the themes of the Bay (Sacrifice Chloe) ending.

Because it wasn't honest. Not everyone likes the Bae ending.

But here they make David just wrong, what a character says or believes isn't set in stone. David believed Max moved on which isn't true. Either Max or Chloe hid the state of their relationship to him.

Which is exactly why he said " they had to essentially retcon what the original writers and devs intended to level the Bae (Sacrifice Arcadia Bay) ending". David was only mistaken after they retconned it.

[Stigma]

Since when has what David's believes been a gospel for anything?

[Barny600]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย texasgoldrush:

Because it wasn't honest. Not everyone likes the Bae ending.

What do you mean by "it wasn't honest"?
Judging by the stats on the original game, both endings are a 50/50 with general audiences,, but as it was even noticed by the people involved with the games (both Deck Nine and Dontnod), the online community has a loud preference towards the sacrifice Arcadia Bay ending and keeping Chloe alive together with Max. And before DE, the official LiS account was the first one to repost many fan artworks portraying both Max and Chloe in romantic affairs (the Pricefield so to speak), and with the official comic book that was set in a possible post Sacrifice Arcadia Bay timeline there was a clear interest into cathering to that crowd, and for a good reason since you would generally want to keep that core audience for future games.

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Cat:

Which is exactly why he said " they had to essentially retcon what the original writers and devs intended to level the Bae (Sacrifice Arcadia Bay) ending". David was only mistaken after they retconned it.

Correct. And to speak, it's clear that for the original developers that each ending required a sacrifice and that Max had to move on and accept the consequences of her actions. If you cared about Chloe and her relationship with Max, they made quite clear that for the player the choice to keep Chloe alive was for a meaningful relationship.

Here's some quotes from Michel Koch, the main game developer and director who worked on the first two Life is Strange games and now on Lost Records-Bloom & Rage:

From GamesRadar[www.gamesradar.com]:

GR: Bringing anything to an end is always going to breed discussion and criticism. I know that some people were disappointed with the perceived imbalance of the two endings. Is there anything about how the game ended that you would prefer to alter in retrospect?

MK: The way the game ends, with those two choices, two endings, that's really the way we had thought of it from the beginning. Of course, we read some of the criticism, and when you get so invested in anything - a game, a show, a book - you're creating your own ideal version of the ending in your mind. And I guess in some ways what Max is doing is trying to make her own ideal version of the world. But in the end, you have to face consequences. That's the message of the game, that, in the end, Max has to take one of those two decisions. We're really happy with those endings, because it really conveys for us that main message. You cannot try to cheat everything, you cannot make things perfect. Either you have to accept grief, to accept the death of a loved one or the other choice is to take the decision to sacrifice everything else you know for the person you love - you have to choose to accept that pain. That's what we mean by the Sacrifice Arcadia Bay ending - Max and Chloe are living together, not looking back, because Max made this really hard choice of sacrifice for Chloe. I don't think we'd change anything.

From ShackNews :

Zek asks: Are you surprised by how many people chose to sacrifice Arcadia Bay?

Koch: No, I am not, actually. We were always thinking it would be quite a heavy decision, and I'm not sure of the statistics, but I think it's about 50/50. It's good, because we never wanted to have one ending be the "right" one and one be the "wrong" one. It's really the right the one, because the player is choosing it. You are presented with saving Arcadia Bay or Chloe and we really wanted this decision to be yours. We are not saying one is better than the other. You have to make the decision and sacrificing Arcadia Bay, for us, is not a bad decision, it is your decision. If you're really willing to sacrifice a lot of things, because you wanted to keep this important relationship you have, that's your choice and we're not saying one is better than the other.

Answering a fan on Twitter[x.com]:

The ending where Chloe lives dis not feel ambiguous to me. You sacrifice everyone for Chloe, they leave together, saying they always will be together. I don't know maybe that was a mistake but to me it was clear enough, and beautiful. This kind of.choice and sacrifice you do it for love, I didn't felt it was necessary to show more as the message and feeling felt powerful enough. And their smiling in the car felt enough to me to induce what will happen next.

I also thought that with all the destruction and death it would not have been the right moment for a kiss. This will happen after the ending, the next days, in our imagination, but still, to me this is where it is leading for sure. And this is also the point, their relation is so strong and the player connected to Chloe if he did this choice, so I didn't think anything more had to be shown, because the player knew how both characters felt.

With this context, it's a lot more valuable to keep into consideration what the original dev had to say about their endings, that what an external studio like Deck Nine had to say, whose only involvment with the first game was a prequel story focused on Chloe (which had plenty of issues on it's own, but it gave a lot more respect to her character and Max even if she was only present in a single episode).

[texasgoldrush]

Once again, Dontnod's writing is "dishonest", meaning its unrealistic to what really would happen.

The comic actually addressed this with Max still having the trauma of the storm. So Deck Nine were not the only ones who think that Max and Chloe not looking back is dumb writing.

[Barny600]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย texasgoldrush:

Once again, Dontnod's writing is "dishonest", meaning its unrealistic to what really would happen.

Just because it is realistic (as if it is something that would happen irl), doesn't mean it makes for a good narrative experience. And also, it is worth noting that is fully realistic for couples or friends to remain together for the rest of their lives as opposed to break off, or to overcome trauma alongside each other.

The point of the original game is to move on from the past and accept the future, even if it is not perfect and comports a huge deal of trauma, which is not told in plain sight but it is clear within the game narrative (and that seems to be true within LiS2 and its four endings). But even with trauma, Dontnod clearly understood that you can have a bittersweet yet satisfying conclusion.

[Stigma]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Barny600:

The point of the original game is to move on from the past and accept the future, even if it is not perfect and comports a huge deal of trauma, which is not told in plain sight but it is clear within the game narrative (and that seems to be true within LiS2 and its four endings). But even with trauma, Dontnod clearly understood that you can have a bittersweet yet satisfying conclusion.

Yeah. Save Arcadia Bay comes to mind..

[Barny600]

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Stigma:

Yeah. Save Arcadia Bay comes to mind..

Same for Saving Chloe. In short, Dontnod did care about the player agency about the endings and made clear that both endings are right for you. If you care about Chloe and her relationship, you get that. If you care about Arcadia Bay and its people, you get that.

Both endings are bittersweet but highly different, because in both of them Max/the player has to move on with either one of those things, because there's no real perfect ending. I think it's a lot more stupid that with Double Exposure, D9 devalues that simple concept with the idea of "Why hasn't Max just walked into the storm to stop it? Is she stupid?".

โพสต์ดั้งเดิมโดย Stigma:

Since when has what David's believes been a gospel for anything?

In the context of LiS2, it was a simple but useful way to show how the choices you made in the first game worked out, and how Dontnod intended for the character to go; if you choose to save Chloe, she and Max are mostly happy with bumps along the road, they have reconciled with David and they are visiting New York trying to apply to some art galleries, stating that they have moved on and face the future alongside each other; if you choose to save Arcadia Bay, you learn that David and Joyce have divorced but still mantain a friendly relationship with each other, while Nathan Prescott is going to get bailed out of prison for mental infermity.

To me, it's quite clear that David was a mean for the Dontnod devs to give an insight on the past game and how they intended the game to go, rather than the messy retcon Deck Nine made with Double Exposure.