Detailed Analysis - Context
Journal
As Max undergoes her journey to reconnect with Chloe and becomes embroiled in the mysteries at Blackwell, she will often add a number of entries to her journal. Learning more about how Max perceives the world and events around her allows us to get a better insight. Where we are able to hear her deep thoughts and the opinions of others, learning how Max feels about this in her journal. She makes note of nearly everything that happens to her and the events that happen depending on the choices the player choices. As Max makes note of the events that happen around her, she also explores the areas she’s in and all the notes she finds. When exploring Max can come across a number of school posters, notes, and important documents that she makes up for in her journal. These can be incredibly important for Max as she recalls back to these documents to help her progress and also help us to understand more of the characters we come across. Finding letters from Sean Prescott to his son Nathan, show the terrible relationship they have as Nathan clearly needs psychiatric help and Sean is obsessed with sealing his family’s legacy. Max will also take photos that she adds to her photographic portfolio throughout the game. These photos will be obvious or will need to be achieved through decisions that Max will need to do. The photos themselves are collectibles and they are used to emphasize life in Arcadia Bay, especially with the recent occurrences. The journal, while a gameplay mechanic, is an effective narrative tool to delve deeper into how Max feels about recent events and people as well helping her to keep track of all the information she has found.
Text Messages
During the story, Max will receive multiple texts from characters in the game from various people. These texts can happen multiple times throughout the game and can provide Max and the player with valuable information and context to either progress the story and also fill in certain blanks. Times like how Max reached out to Warren on how to build a bomb to break into the principles office helped so we could find the school’s information and knowledge on Nathan, Kate, and Rachel. Other times the texts are mostly just there to show that there is an active world that is still progressing without Max and Chloe. During the alternate reality where Max saves William’s life we learn that Max has done a lot of traveling and had a lot of fun in her life but has not made a lot of time for Chloe in her life. She also is shown to be friends with people like Victoria Chase and Nathan Prescott. Knowing what type of people they are like it is incredibly baffling that Max would be friends with those people but it also gives another context about these characters and they are also somewhat different in the timeline that Max has created, compared to their original personalities with Victoria being timid and Nathan being more fun.