A new episode came out at the end of March Life is Strange – Games about Tikhonya who conquered time. In the first series, The Chrysalis, it all starts as a simple story about the “butterfly effect” and Laura Palmer of the Facebook generation. Dontnod Entertainment studio has made an audiovisual cut of popular foreign culture, but decided not to limit myself.
► It is difficult for a player to associate himself with Max, she is too sluggish and inert.
The story of Maxine Colefield, a girl dressed in a t -shirt with a touching deer, ends on a rather gloomy note, but in the continuation of the clouds over the heroine are more thorough. The impressions of the game are deceiving. The French do not make the "life of Adele" with a rewind of time, as it might seem, but "Donny Darko".
This time, instead of publishing a traditional review, we just talk about the game. And soon you will have an interview with the co-founder of the Dontnod Entertainment studio-developer Jean-Maxim Maurice, which will also be many curious. I hope you have already passed both episodes. If not, then keep in mind that there will be serious spoilers further.
But before we start, I will explain why in Life is Strange Be sure to play.
The second series became clear that the game works correctly with the episodic format. This is a detective about a missing girl named Rachel Embers, encouraging attentiveness: some things do not tell you in direct text, you have to think up. Moreover, the first episode makes sense to go again taking into account what you learned about the characters by the end of the second series. It is possible that in Life is Strange there will be meta-game, as in True Detective , whose fans studied the series at the time of the release of each series and built crazy theories about how the journey of Rast Cole and Martin Hart will end.
► Kate do not give a pass even in the bathroom – at this stage it is already on the verge of a breakdown.
Life is Strange – This is a game that is important and needs to be discussed. And now we will tell you why it is much more curious than it seems. There is no road back.
Attention! The text will certainly have spoilers.
You can fly: your actions have serious consequences
One of the key lines in Life is Strange spin around Kate march. Kate is strongly suppressed by the fact that a strange video with her participation is walking on the campus: at one of the parties of the Vortex closed club (resembles American student fraternities), Kate, being frankly uneasy, kisses the guys. She doesn’t remember what happened next, but cruel fellow students joyfully spread the video along social networks and do not miss the opportunity to mock a girl – deeply believing and practicing abstinence, by the way.
On Kate, the whole world has been upset. For everything else, for an unknown reason, David Madsen, Head of the Academy Security Service. In the first episode, Max sees how Madsen screams at Kate – at the same time we have a chance to intervene or stay away and take a picture of a mockery. A little later we will find out that Madsen is watching a poor girl and holding her photos at home.
► veteran of the war in Vietnam, it seems, is not as bad as it is at first exposed to the game.
By the end of the second episode, Kate does not withstand and thinks to jump from the roof of the hostel. The culmination is the scene where we dissuade it from suicide. By this moment, Max can no longer control his abilities, so each word can lead to disaster – you can’t rewind the time. This is one of the two key points in which your past decisions finally lead to the result.
As the co-founder of Mystake Casino the studio Jean-Maxim Maurice told me, it is important not only to communicate with Kate correctly, but also to help her for two episodes-I comforted here, there I erased an offensive inscription on the board next to the room, answered the alarming call … The solution chain affects the finale. There are seven of all such reference points, and it is important that Max will act correctly at least four times. After this “test”, Kate asks our heroine a couple of questions and if you answer them incorrectly, jumps from the roof.
In this and subsequent moment Life is Strange clearly shows the consequences of our solutions. After suicide, the action is transferred to the director’s office, where Max has a chance to tell who is to blame for the fact that Kate decided to jump.
► The role of Chloe in history is still secondary, it is much more interesting to follow other characters.
Guilty may be Nathan Prescott, a rich and unbalanced young man who sells drugs at the academy and almost shot chloa. It was he who, according to Kate, pumped her with a potion. Second candidate David Madsen – it was not for nothing that he followed the girl and shouted at her. Madsen can be forced to leave school: if Max did not stand up for Kate and has a photograph in his hands, then he will be kicked out.
Separate solutions can play a cruel joke with Maxine. If the girl in the first episode stands up for Chloe at home and admits that she smoked grass, then the accused Madsen will substitute her, and our heroine will be expelled from the academy. What are the consequences, you can only guess.
The director’s room has another person – our photograph teacher, Mr. Jefferson. Shortly before the incident, he spoke Kate nasty things and suggested that she liked being a “star” – perhaps this was the last straw. Jefferson decided to blame only 7% of all players; Mostly the main villain was Nathan Prescott.
Very in vain.
The top of the lake: the overall picture consists of little things
► Max becomes painful from diligent rewinding of time, and blood begins to flow from her nose.
Life is Strange shows us secondary characters through small details and scraps of dialogs. A pleasant, seemingly teacher of photography after some events and facts, you perceive in a completely different way. So, in the first episode there is a hint that he is sleeping with the students: in any case, the girl with a green hairpin says, not forgetting to add that she learned everything from the “reliable” source.
Guesses are confirmed in the second series. If you find a letter from the missing Rachel in Chloe's cache, you will read that the girl found an unusual and mature friend, but if Chloe recognizes his name, he will probably be angry. Of course, Rachel dreams of becoming a model, and Jefferson is a successful photographer. If you look at the schematic photos of the teacher in the classroom and on the street, you can see that he takes off girls of the same type.
The last couple of weeks before the nervous breakdown Kate played the role of Mr. Jefferson's assistant. At the end of each episode, we are shown a frame with folders on which female names are written. The owner of the folders is unknown. In the first series, we see that the last folder is marked "Rachel". At the end of the second episode, the camera changes the plan and shows the table – it has an album of Kate and two packages of pills. It is possible that in the disappearance of Rachel and the whole situation with Kate march is involved.
► Mr. Jefferson is nervous if you ask him about Rachel.
Another coincidence: the numbers on cars correspond to a particular series. Chloe has it " Twin Pix " – she is looking for a missing rachel. The drug dealer Frank on the trailer – “ Breaking Bad ". Then everything becomes more curious. By car, David Madsen's mark “TRDTCTV” ( True Detective ), that is, he could follow Kate simply because it is confused in a not -so -pleasant story.
The most interesting, of course, is the situation with our photographer. "TPFTHLK" means Top of the Lake – This is a series about the disappeared girl, isolated commune and children's pornography.
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For now Life is Strange leaves behind a bunch of questions and does not allow to unravel the secret. It is possible that by the end of the game Life is Strange The Donny Darko and the effect of the butterfly will truly expand: we saved Chloe and this launched a chain of events that distorts the world (remember the solar eclipse and sudden snowfall) and leads to a strange catastrophe with a hurricane. Then in the finale you have to let the girl die in the toilet.
On the other hand, out of a conversation with Jean-Maxim, I learned that these scenes are most likely scrolling in the imagination of Max and metaphorical, like the name of the Vortex club (“whirlwind”), and the icon that shows the rewind of time.
The main thing is that Life is Strange tries to fully answer other important questions. What, for example, to do if there is no hope left at all? At the end of the second episode, developers advise everyone who in one way or another the events in the game, go to the site and learn about the hotline for preventing suicide.