Life is Strange- Episode 5 talk

Warning: Spoilers ahoy

This blog post will have consequences…

And with that we say good bye to Arcadia Bay. Episode 5 of Life is Strange was finally released the day before Back to the Future Day which was well, ahem, timed. I was initially playing the game on my PC but it’s in for repairs and it was not going to be returned in time for the release date. So I decided to spend £15 buying the game on the PS4. I could have played Episode 5 straight away but apparently if you play a later episode without playing the others, the game chooses random choices for you. I wanted to retain my choices so I replayed the previous four episodes again.

In hindsight, I probably didn’t need to do that, because it seems that choices that you make don’t really have a big impact on how the game ends. No matter what choices you make they won’t matter because you either choose to save Chloe so many of the characters possibly die, or choose to save Arcadia Bay which means the choices you made never happened.

I sound like I’m being negative, but trust me, I LOVED this game. The first four episodes felt a lot more grounded (around the time travel aspect) exploring themes such as bullying, abuse, grief, friendship, and of course, high school drama. The final episode decided to go down the trippy nightmare route, it kind of reminded me of the final showdown in Arkham Knight, luckily there were no tanks.

The good thing about episode 5 was that it is was hella creepy, and did a great job of messing with my head. The struggle that Max went through going through time was really powerful. I decided to sacrifice Chloe in the end, but I did have few minutes of dilemma, showing the game really gets you invested in Chloe and Max’s relationship. Another thing I liked was the music which could be said about the whole game. I’m not into indie folk music that much, but the soundtrack for this game is awesome. I can’t listen to Syd Matters- Obstacles without tearing up.

A disappointment was the villain, Mr Jefferson, who was way over the top, ended up being really corny rather than sinister .I felt a little scammed that a lot of the episode just seemed to be a recap of the previous episodes but in the trippy dream world. There could have been more gameplay with new scenes, maybe a short playable epilogue of some sort. It kind just went “sacrifice Chloe/ Arcadia Bay, sad music montage, then okay bye!”. The tornado also felt really forced by the end, I don’t think this game needed a big dramatic third act, the game worked better at the more human moments with Max and Chloe exploring the Bay and interacting with the other characters.

My biggest gripe is that we never find out why Max has time travel powers, and what’s the point of having them if they are going to cause natural disasters. Maybe we’ll find out in the sequel, I hope it gets one because I really did enjoy this game and can’t stop thinking about it, the last time a game stayed in my mind was the Last of Us. I like the direction that video games are going in by having more emotional depth, hopefully this will help them be more appreciated as forms of art.