Max causing the tornado doesn't make sense.

[Gargarensis]

Near the end of the game, Max claims that she causes the tornado because she saved Chloe. This checks out if you choose to go back and let Nathan kill her: it's the Bay Ending. So, okay: Max is the proverbial butterfly, whose flapping is the start of a huge series of events.

But the analogy is broken. You see, a butterfly causes the most subtle air current, and the point of the Chaos Theory is that said air current will provoke a slightly bigger one, and so forth, and they will escalate and end up creating a hurricane. The analogy with a human being who can go back in time is quite simple to understand: change one event in the past, and the future is different. After you end the game, this question remains, at least for me: exactly how did Max's intervention create a small air current? Was it the blow that Chloe delivers to Nathan's stomach? Well, a kick certainly is stronger than a butterfly's flap, so it could be.

To tell you the truth, I thought that God, or the gods, gave Max her powers to help her fight the tornado. I though the Prescotts were involved in that natural disaster: Nathan being in charge of something called "End of the World Party" pointed in that direction. Also, in the Dark Room, you find a letter by Nathan's father in which he tells Nathan that he has to follow his destiny as a member of the family. At that point, I was convencied that the Prescotts were reptilians and were creating the tornado for some evil purpose.

The butterfly at the start is a reference to the eponymous effect. They should have left it at that, and not mix up the terms of the analogy with time travel. I mean, imagine that in the movie by Asthon Kutcher, his hometown were destroyed by a tornado in every time line.

[3477]

Agreed.

All the chaos theory stuff is a red herring and all kinda points towards the "science" characters not really understanding nearly as much as they might like to think.

[Arianna Starr]

If you watch or read through some of the interviews over the years with some of the Dontnod devs, the Life is Strange game was originally written as 8 episodes long, Square Enix refused to give them more time on the game. They had to cut a lot of it to meet the timeframe SE gave them.
The storm was originally going to be caused by the Prescott family.

[3477]

Originally posted by aristarr1980:

The storm was originally going to be caused by the Prescott family.

Did they specify as in made by or in reaction to?

[Mallet - Maybe found sens]

Originally posted by Gargarensis:

But the analogy is broken. You see, a butterfly causes the most subtle air current, and the point of the Chaos Theory is that said air current will provoke a slightly bigger one, and so forth, and they will escalate and end up creating a hurricane. The analogy with a human being who can go back in time is quite simple to understand: change one event in the past, and the future is different. After you end the game, this question remains, at least for me: exactly how did Max's intervention create a small air current? Was it the blow that Chloe delivers to Nathan's stomach? Well, a kick certainly is stronger than a butterfly's flap, so it could be.

You're taking the butterfly analogy too literally.
It's mean to mean small seemingly insignificant events has a bigger and bigger outcome down the line.

[3477]

Originally posted by Max Caulfield:

Originally posted by aristarr1980:

The storm was originally going to be caused by the Prescott family.

what they would gain from destroying whole town?

Land grab at rock-bottom prices, rebuild however they want, accelerate the gentrification process they began with shutting down the harbour and starting Pan Estates. Profiteering from disasters like this is an age-old moneymaking scheme, and manufacturing those disasters for that purpose is almost as old.

Such a narrative fits perfectly with Sean Prescott's cryptic reference in his letter to giving the town an enema and overhaul.

But it still doesn't make sense in LiS given they've already clearly got the power to eventually take over AB without any storm - the years needed to rebuild everything and the loss of income in the meantime far outstrip any delay in continuing their ongoing gradual takeover.

[3477]

It could still be in ruins but if there were acquisitions etc. going on one would at least expect signage that there would be new developments "coming soon" or the plaque mentioning reconstruction efforts (which David implies were completely futile up to the time that he left).

One possibility of harmonizing all this is that the Prescotts didn't know how to contain what they'd summoned either, and thought it was going to be a regular survivable storm instead of the enormous ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ it ended up being.

Another possibility is that Max and Chloe worked out the plot and were working behind the scenes for years to make sure AB was never rebuilt and the Prescott Plot never able to come to fruition.

Another ambiguity for the fanfics...

[Gargarensis]

Originally posted by aristarr1980:

If you watch or read through some of the interviews over the years with some of the Dontnod devs, the Life is Strange game was originally written as 8 episodes long, Square Enix refused to give them more time on the game. They had to cut a lot of it to meet the timeframe SE gave them.
The storm was originally going to be caused by the Prescott family.

Well, THAT makes sense. I'm happy to see my instincts were right. The "End of the World Party" was named on purpose.

Originally posted by Max Caulfield:

what they would gain from destroying whole town?

If the Prescott family can conjure a tornado, it means they have supernatural powers. If so, their purpose can't be mundane. Nathan's friends were in something called "The Vortex Club". Maybe that's what the tornado was supposed to open - a vortex, in the place where the town stood.

[Gargarensis]

Originally posted by Max Caulfield:

LIS1 remake when

Well, according to the user who replied before, Dontnod Entretainment have only to make three more episodes, and of course rewrite events in the game that point to Max being responsible for the tornado.

[3477]

Do we actually have a source on anything aristarr1980 mentioned?

All I've been able to find for the 8-episodes thing was someone digging through the game files and finding that there's one thing in the code that allows for up to 8 episodes in the game... this all seems about as canon as the zillion-projectile BFG that never made it into Doom.

Anyway, I for one really appreciate that the storm wasn't established to be something created by the Prescotts but always implied in the actual game to be its own thing. Makes the implied story-world so much bigger than just another good guys bad guys showdown. (I still haven't forgiven Peter Jackson et al. for making Caradhras' resistance to the Fellowship into the direct result of Saruman's intervention...)

[disclosure of interest: I am very much of the "storm sent by spirits to destroy Prescott" school and have a lot riding behind the symbolism that such a setup leaves open.]

[Mallet - Maybe found sens]

Originally posted by 3477:

Do we actually have a source on anything aristarr1980 mentioned?

All I've been able to find for the 8-episodes thing was someone digging through the game files and finding that there's one thing in the code that allows for up to 8 episodes in the game... this all seems about as canon as the zillion-projectile BFG that never made it into Doom.

I haven't been able to find anything either, and even then it wouldn't really matter much in a discussion like this, since they had to change their original plans.

[Gargarensis]

Originally posted by 3477:

All I've been able to find for the 8-episodes thing was someone digging through the game files and finding that there's one thing in the code that allows for up to 8 episodes in the game... this all seems about as canon as the zillion-projectile BFG that never made it into Doom.

Well, the BFG did make it into the game.

Originally posted by 3477:

[disclosure of interest: I am very much of the "storm sent by spirits to destroy Prescott" school and have a lot riding behind the symbolism that such a setup leaves open.]

I prefer any version over the one that became canon - my thesis is that Max being responsible for the tornado doesn't make sense, so if it was created by the Prescotts or by the gods against the Prescotts, I'll take it.

Originally posted by Art3mis Jinx:

I haven't been able to find anything either, and even then it wouldn't really matter much in a discussion like this, since they had to change their original plans.

The problem is that they hastily changed the game's finale but left all the rest of the content. The game that we know heavily hints that the Prescotts are responsible for the tornado. Well, only if that interview is real, and they really blalmed Square Enix for the change of plans.

[3477]

Yes, there is a BFG in Doom, but I meant this (as realized by a mod) as opposed to what we see in canon.

Anyway, more pressing point:

I prefer any version over the one that became canon - my thesis is that Max being responsible for the tornado doesn't make sense, so if it was created by the Prescotts or by the gods against the Prescotts, I'll take it.

The good news is that it's not. Max is no more reliable with her "This is MY storm!" than Warren or Chloe (who she seems to have taken more advice from about this than anyone else) - all we know is that letting Chloe die in the bathroom will prevent the storm, but that doesn't mean that Max or even her power was ontologically the source of the storm, merely that this particular use of her power was causally related to the storm somehow.

The only possibility we can conclusively eliminate, based only on what we see in the game, is the notion that Max's use of her time travel inherently was going to cause the storm - you don't see the torn photo in the Bay Ending bathroom scene, which means that every use of the time travel up to at least the tearing of the photo has left some kind of impact in the universe. The time travel cosmic residue just isn't shown to be something that more time travel can undo.

[ElfPrince1937]

It does make sense in hindsight that the game was originally going to be longer, even more so if there was originally going to be a plot involving the Prescotts--specifically Sean Prescott himself--causing/creating the tornado.

One of the lines that was kept in the game alludes to this: an e-mail from Sean Prescott talking about--and no, I'm not kidding--"giving this town an enema." Something tells me that, canonically-speaking, he wasn't just talking about setting up some woodside real estate ala Pan Estates.

Not to mention the "real" name of the Dark Room, which was also kept in the final version:

The Stormbreaker Bunker.

Add in all the canned food, and it's pretty clear that Sean Prescott was actively preparing for an apocalyptic situation, as if he somehow knew in advance what was coming.

[ElfPrince1937]

Originally posted by Max Caulfield:

>Prescott created tornado
>theories that Rachel is tornado or Max caused it by her power are wrong

I mean, I still consider it a plausible theory that the tornado could have been Rachel's spirit come back for revenge...just that Rachel as the Tempest (see what I did there?) was..."summoned," I guess? By Arcadia Bay itself, because the land sensed that it was being harmed by Sean Prescott's business ventures (grabbing all the harbor fishing rights, putting fishermen out of work, Pan Estates, etc.).

Even if Rachel was the tornado, it would still hold true that the Prescotts "created" the tornado, in a sense.

They just didn't do so knowingly, or were (reasonably) afraid of what they had unleashed by angering "the land."

[ElfPrince1937]

Originally posted by Max Caulfield:

Originally posted by Darkgamester301:

was..."summoned," I guess? By Arcadia Bay itself,

why AB didnt summoned God Almighty?

Let's not go down that road of nature spirits vs. Christianity, lol.

I just meant that if we assume Arcadia Bay is one of those places where the land itself is sentient--that is, there actually is a spirit or spirits "of the land"--then it makes sense that said spirit(s) would create some kind of force to resist people like the Prescotts, who actively exploit the land's natural resources.

A good comparison is that of the human body using white blood cells to fight off disease; the Prescotts were an infection on Arcadia Bay, the land created one hella (yes, pun) of an immune system to drive out said infection.

Doesn't hurt that the "avatar" of the storm happened to be a victim of the Prescotts herself, and someone who had a personal stake in making sure Chloe escaped Arcadia Bay safely (Rachel).

That's my theory, anyway.