Detailed Analysis - Main Narrative
Max and Chloe
At the heart of Life Is Strange’ story is the reunion and partnership of it’s main character, Max Caulfield and her best friend Chloe Price. The pair were childhood friends until Max left her home of Arcadia Bay, Oregon for Seattle. Coming back 5 years later to attend Blackwell Academy, Max, some time after her 18th birthday, discovers she has the ability to rewind time, shortly after having a nightmare about a storm. Max discovers this ability when she witnesses a girl being shot in the girls toilet by fellow Blackwell student Nathan Prescott, a wealthy and unstable individual. Using the “Rewind” ability to her advantage, Max goes around Blackwell and interacts with a few of the students around campus, often helping those who are struggling like Kate Marsh who has suffered through a wave of online abuse and bullying. Meeting with a friend Max is confronted by Nathan who physically attack her but is saved by the strange girl, who turns out to be Chloe.
Reunited Max and Chloe get to know each other again as well as learning about the new things in their life. Max came back to Arcadia Bay to study at Blackwell Academy under the tutelage of Mark Jefferson, a famous photographer turned teacher. Chloe has been struggling since her father passed and recent disappearance of her close friend, Rachel Amber. Repairing their friendship, they become involved in the affairs of Blackwell Academy, taking advantage of Max’s rewind abilities and Chloe’s knowledge as they seek to solve the 3 core mysteries of the game’s story:
1. What happened to Rachel Amber?
2. What secrets are hidden at Blackwell Academy?
3. Why is there a storm heading for Arcadia Bay?
Max and Chloe have something to offer the other as they could not solve these mysteries on their own as there separate personalities and way of thinking compliments the other. Max is shy, careful and is often the most moral at the academy most times. Chloe is reckless, confident and headstrong and her knowledge of the the filth of Arcadia Bay helps to progress their investigation along. While these 2 personalities would usually clash and they often do over the course of the story, the respect and trust Max and Chloe have for each other often trumps these flaws as they work together. While Chloe is an integral character to the story, she often causes more problems and grief then she solves but she always has Max’s back. Max isn’t the typical hero we would see in this type of adventure but her sense of right and wrong and her character growth becomes an endearing quality throughout the story.
At the end of each day, Max and Chloe witness 4 strange events that seem to point to the coming of the strange storm that Max saw in her nightmare and further shows that Max and Chloe are running out of time. As they progress through their investigation, Max and Chloe can sometimes find themselves at odds as they both have different ideas of how to move forward but these moments pale in comparison to the moments of pure friendship and joy we experience between the 2. When the bond between these 2 is strained, Max finds herself wishing she could go back to happier times, when Chloe’s father was still alive, looking at a past photo, Max discovers she can go back to the moment that was captured. She saves Chloe’s father but find that in the future, Chloe has been left paralyzed in a car accident, a car her father got her. Max tries to settle into this world, spending moments with Chloe that are joyous for the 2 but see’s that she and her family are worse off, with Chloe wanting Max’s aid for assisted suicide, a difficult decision for the players.
She eventually fixes her timeline and goes on to solve 2 of the 3 mysteries after retrieving evidence from 3 very important individuals:
1. Nathan Prescott - The rich and unstable student at Blackwell academy who has threatened and both Max and Chloe. He also runs the Vortex Club, an elite social club at Blackwell, known for their parties and drugs.
2. David Madsen - The paranoid head of security at Blackwell academy and Chloe’s step father. David spends his time, recording the whereabouts of suspicious people at Blackwell, including Nathan Prescott and where he has gone.
3. Frank Bowers - A drug dealer who is familiar with Max and Chloe. He too is worried about the whereabouts of Rachel Amber, and sells drugs to many people in Arcadia Bay, including Nathan Prescott, who uses these drugs at his parties.
Max and Chloe find a secret underground bunker known as The Dark Room, financed by the Prescott’s, where they find disturbing photographic evidence of many Blackwell students drugged and posed. The most disturbing of all, are the photos of Rachel Amber… dying of a forced overdose by Nathan, and being buried much to Chloe’s disbelief. In a panic, they find Rachel’s body and Chloe wants Nathan dead for this. As they hunt for him, they are lured into a trap, only for Max to be drugged and Chloe shot and killed… By Max’s teacher, Mark Jefferson.
Mark Jefferson
Mark takes Max to the Dark Room where he keeps her drugged and takes several photographs. Jefferson reveals himself to be a psychopath who is obsessed with capturing the moment girls lose their innocence, and that they are all his subjects. Mark manipulated Nathan’s vulnerable emotional state and the Prescott’s family money to fund his work and stay hidden.
In order to escape, Max uses her ability to enter a moment from a photograph and does this several times, even going into a memory within a memory, causing great physical strain on herself. Eventually the memories begin to break down and Jefferson, in Max’s original reality, burns her remaining photographs to hurt her, but for Max it means she’s out of moves. She is finally saved when David finds the Dark Room, confronting Jefferson and thanks to Max’s rewind ability, takes him down. David free’s Max and without her photo’s is left without any options, however she remembers a photo she took hours before Chloe was killed and resorts to find it, which puts her in the middle of the storm. The unstoppable force that Max has been dreading, has finally arrived in Arcadia Bay and after being obsessed with Rachel and The Dark Room, she let her search into the storm slide. All Max knows is that she has to find Chloe, perhaps with the both of them they can stop the storm together, atleast that’s what Max is hoping for.
She finds the picture and finally gets back and convinces Chloe to hide with her from Jefferson and so that can face the storm together. Chloe agrees and according to the timeline, they present their evidence to the police and Mark and Nathan are arrested, leaving only one thing left to do, stop the storm. As Max and Chloe make their way to the lighthouse, where Max’s nightmare took place, Max collapses and enters a dream state. In the dream she comes across many moments between her and Chloe showing how many good moments they have shared since their reunion but also when Max first save Chloe. This gives precedent that the storm first started when Max used her power to save Chloe. Max finally wakes up to see that Chloe has carried Max all the way to the lighthouse.
Max comes to the conclusion that the storm started the moment she first used her powers to save Chloe. Chloe is in support of Max going back to not save her much to Max’s dismay. Max’s final decision will the determine the final fate of Arcadia Bay and it’s inhabitants. Max has one final choice to make:
1. To either go back to the moment she save Chloe and let her die, thus preventing the storm.
2. To let the storm destroy Arcadia Bay, saving Chloe but losing the lives of countless others.
Max and Chloe’s journey was a brilliant emotional rollercoaster and the choices Max could make throughout the adventure helped to give us true agency throughout the story. Sadly coming to the final choice gives the players and Max their toughest decision yet and while it makes for an interesting conclusion to the story, it is a shame that the final decision essentially erases our other choices but was nonetheless exciting to join and made it an adventure worth replaying.
Rachel Amber
Throughout the story, there is a lingering question through every stage of Max and Chloe’s journey, what happened to Rachel Amber? While exploring the Blackwell Campus, Max finds numerous missing person posters everywhere for Rachel Amber. After being attacked by Nathan Prescott, Max is saved by Chloe and they go to her house where Max finds more posters and a picture of Rachel and Chloe. We then discover that Chloe and Rachel were close friends, perhaps even more than friends. When Max proves to Chloe her ability to rewind time as well as witnessing the potential suicide of a fellow Blackwell Student, they decide to dig deeper into the mystery surrounding Rachel’s disappearance. At a junkyard where we later find out Rachel is buried, Max encounters a spirit Doe who is immune to her rewind powers. Asking a superstitious member of the Blackwell staff, Max is told that the Doe is a spirit animal heavily indicating that the Doe could have been Rachel which is a worrying prospect as it could mean she’s not alive. This is an interesting and beautiful hint of foreshadowing.
Rachel is a driving force behind Chloe that helps push the story further as Max becomes just as committed and involved to find her. When Max and Chloe find Rachel’s body at the junkyard, Chloe is in deep despair. The Doe also watches from a distance lowering it’s head and disappearing. Knowing that the Doe was most likely Rachel, watching Chloe at the junkyard but also waiting to be found was a heart-breaking notion. The Mystery of Rachel Amber was a curious prospect and it didn’t become a massive priority for Max until things started to escalate at Blackwell and we as the players had an almost naïve hoping of finding Rachel but ultimately this was not to be and this goes to show that not everything is going to get a happy ending, no matter how hard you try and how determined you are.
Rachel Amber
The Butterfly Effect
Throughout the story Max will make a series of decisions that will impact her later choices, the characters she meets and the events she takes part in. Every time we make a decision, we always see that we have added to the butterfly effect. For those who don’t know The Butterfly Effect/Chaos Theory is the theory that where a single small moment could go on to create massive consequences. For example If you make a Butterfly flap it’s wings then all of a sudden a statue falls on top of someone and kills them. An exaggerated example but also not too much of a ridiculous one. Max and Chloe first discuss it early on in the story and don’t discuss it again but Chaos Theory is something that hangs over the heads of the players as we carefully measure our choices, major or small. While Max initially doesn’t pay much mind to it, at the climax of her journey she finally see’s what kind of effect The Butterfly effect has had, as she looks upon the storm.
When Max reaches the end of her journey, although she doesn’t clearly say it, Max has come to accept that the first time she used her powers is what caused the storm and must make either make the decision to let it pass and destroy the town or go back and not save Chloe, both decisions leave a devastating impact for Max. While many have come to the conclusion that saving Chloe is what caused the storm it is at times visually unclear if it was this or if it was when Max used her rewind ability for the first time. Either way it shows the devastating consequences that one action can do. When Max was continuing on her journey and using her abilities throughout the story strange phenomenon occur near the end of everyday:
Monday - After Max’s vision that the storm was coming for Arcadia Bay by Friday, it started snowing and this was the mildest of the events.
Tuesday - A solar eclipse occurs after Max has had to deal with Kate’s suicide, which was mesmeric if a little unsettling.
Wednesday - During the day, Max finds many dead birds and then after the day, several beached whales. As the other events show seemingly unlinked changes, this is the first visually clear example of the coming storm.
Thursday - A dual moon occurs at the end of the day when Max and Chloe are searching for Nathan Prescott.
It’s incredibly eery and odd, how one simple action or a number of actions can be compounded and cause these seemingly unlinked but yet devastating events. I hope in future entries that The Butterfly Effect is a Narrative tool that Don’t Nod continue to use in their stories.
Other Characters
