"FAREWELL" - Inconsistencies Explained

(Note: I have already integrated most of the responses from Deck Nine onto the wiki itself on the Farewell and Canon Inconsistencies pages, so I am simply making this blog post to show my full ponderings/research for anyone interested in reading things in the wider context. Thanks to writer Felice Kuan for taking the time to reply to everything here.)

INTRODUCTION

A number of "inconsistencies" have been discussed in the community regarding the "Farewell" bonus episode, but it was felt that some narrative context had perhaps been lost due to the shortness of the episode and the focus being on Max and Chloe (understandably). It was also felt that information from the writing stage may help to shed some light on some of these things, especially as certain "inconsistencies" seemed to have logical explanations or were perhaps being misinterpreted. With this in mind, one of the writers at Deck Nine was approached to see if they could assist.

The following answers provided by writer Felice Kuan have received input from Lead Writer Zak Garriss, Square Enix, and the other writers, and all of these answers can be shared widely. (However, please be mindful not to misquote.)

The workings out of potential explanations and questions presented to Deck Nine on this blog post have not been altered so that anyone interested can read them exactly as Deck Nine had read them on my document before each thing was replied to.

Audio cassette tape recording dated 6/27/2003 (27th June, 2003).

Episode text/subtitles, assets, and audio suggest Max is 8 years old on that date in 2003.

Max’s birthday: 21st September 1995.

Chloe’s birthday: 11th March 1994.

On the cassette tape date, Max would be 7 years old; she won’t turn 8 until September that year. Chloe would be 9 years old; she had turned 9 three months before the date on the tape.





Max's capsule letter to Chloe:

"How are you today? I am doing very well. It is Friday, June 27, 2003. It is summer vacation. We are making a time capsule for you and me in the future. We are making it pirate themed. Wasn't it hilarious to find?"

So the letter asset matches the tape date, which would mean two assets would need to be altered (including the line of text for the "Read" interaction on the letter). Would this be possible to do for a patch update, I’m wondering?

The only date range in 2003 where Max would be 8 is a range of 21st September (her 8th birthday) to 31st December 2003. The year alone can’t simply be changed from 2003 to 2004 because Chloe would be 10 by the month on the tape, which will just create another inconsistency as Max says Chloe is 9 when they buried it. ("I can't believe we were eight and nine when we planned this.") And also because it will contradict the dialogue where Chloe says, "This tape is from five years ago."

If the date is changed to a date when Max is actually 8, the mention of "summer vacation" on the letter would also need to be changed. Does the USA have such thing as an autumn-time middle school vacation period or some time after September 21st before the ground gets too hard in the winter? :-/



Other dialogue suggests they are both 8, but the girls are never the same age at the same time. However, I think these particular instances could be explained at a push, even though it may come across as a bit reaching:

Chloe: "This tape is from five years ago. It's a message from our past selves to our current selves."

"This tape is from five years ago. It's a message from our past selves to our current selves." Max: "So we were eight years old? That's crazy! I can't even imagine what we sounded like."

Max could be forgiven for estimating their ages to be the same as she would have been in a given year, because there are two instances in LiS Season 1 where she generalises Chloe into the same age bracket as herself when she thinks back on the past. Max may even be quickly looking at the year 2003 and subtracting 5 years from her age in the current year (2008), which would cause her to say 8 without realising that she wouldn’t be that age until the September.





Chloe: "I think I know what 8-year-old you meant by the manuscripts of Captain Bluebeard."

If the tape and letter date is changed (as I mentioned earlier), then this age comment will be accurate.





Chloe: "Because we were eight years old and the attic was the scariest place we could think of."

I think Chloe is getting swept up in age generalising here! But maybe it’s easier to say one age when you are very closely aged to somebody. It’s probably "clunkier" to say, "Because I was X and you were X and…" Neither of them are perhaps doing the mental math or forgetting they are never the same age at the same time. But I feel like this is perhaps reaching a bit. What do you think?

A part of me feels that carefully editing/cutting (maybe even re-recording) the audio and its subtitle down to "Because the attic was the scariest place we could think of" may be better. Or a re-recorded line of, "Because we were kids and the attic was the scariest place we could think of."



Backyard checkpoint:

Max: I can't believe we were eight and nine when we planned this.

Only Chloe’s age is accurate. It seems strange that Max would lump them both into the same age earlier in the episode, but then get Chloe’s age correct here but not her own. :-/

I’m just hoping that there’s a way to make this inconsistency work somehow in terms of a post-release update?



Deck Nine response from Felice Kuan:

You're of course correct about Max and Chloe's actual ages on the pirate tape (7 and 9), but it's on purpose that Max always says 8. The date of Farewell is Sept 28, so Max has recently turned 13 and therefore strongly associates herself as being 13 in the present day. When she sees 2003 on the pirate tape, she subtracts five years to get age 8. We wanted the moment to be quick, excited, and naturalistic (they want to get to listening to the tape asap), so she doesn't bother with more than that; this is the same reason that both Max and Chloe just call themselves both 8, with the exception of the line in the backyard, which was a short enough line that it didn't sound pedantic to specify two different ages. I realize that I'm giving the explanation that you describe as a reach, but for us it was actually much more naturalistic and believable to do the quick subtraction and also lump the ages together.









Joyce Smoking

(Raised by Emersen Bonasera in the LiS Facebook group.)

In Farewell, it appears Joyce is trying to give up smoking by chewing nicotine gum (as seen in her bedroom), and we see sneaky cigarette butts in a corner of the backyard. Emerson was questioning why there’s a line about Joyce hating smokers in the diner when she’s a smoker herself. She also pointed out that Chloe makes a comment in BtS that her mom was never a smoker.

My own take on this: In the alternative timeline in LiS, Max notices Joyce’s bedroom ashtray and says, "Hmmm, Joyce used to hate smokers in the diner," which would actually make a lot of sense with what we see going on in Farewell if Joyce was trying to give up smoking yet being brought into temptation by smokers coming into in the diner!

And in BtS, Chloe says, "Made that for Mom in an art class when I was like five. She was never a smoker, but it's cool. I was never an artist."

Now, here is my own take on the BtS line. I think it only seems out of place if you take it in the literal context of never as in never, ever done that thing. But if it’s taken in the "never really been into (or good at) that thing" context, then there is no inconsistency here. Just as an example: I don't drink alcohol anymore (just decided not to), so if somebody asks me if I drink and I say, "Not anymore," and they ask why, then I would probably reply with, "I was never a drinker, really," meaning that I was never really into it. So it's possible that this line could have been meant in this kind of context.

Also, Chloe was saying she was "never an artist" yet she has clearly made something, so she’s very likely using the comment in the way I am thinking, above. :)

We never actually see Joyce on that fateful day in 2008 in the original game, so nobody can really say that she wasn’t a smoker or trying to give up back then.

Is my explanation for this what was intended?



Deck Nine response from Felice Kuan:

The intent was that Joyce stress-smokes on the sly (so Chloe never saw it) and has been trying to quit when Farewell occurs. Max was supposed to discover both the gum and cigarette butts as a secret, but I believe the assets were placed more in the open than originally intended (likely for level / gameplay considerations).









Is Joyce Home?

(Raised by Laura Almeida in the LiS Facebook group.)

When attempting to blow up the dolls, Max asks, "But isn't your mom gonna freak?" Chloe responds that her mom is "probably cooking with the radio" on and "won’t hear a thing" then a short while later after they stop trying to tidy the room, Choe says they are unsupervised. It’s not clear whether Joyce or William are even at home, but Chloe’s comments suggest that at least Joyce is home. But isn’t she working at the diner? If so, wouldn’t Chloe’s comment to Max be strange if they both already know she’s at work?

So I looked into this one as well... ... and the first thing that people are doing when they talk about this one is using the word "unsupervised" when Chloe actually says "under-supervised" (which is more ambiguous and leaves more scope). But from the narrative of the episode, it’s never clear if Joyce or William are even in the house at any time, and people are wondering where the baking scene from LiS fits into the narrative.

I can only think of two scenarios where Farewell would fit into the canon, and it would be cool to know which one was planned in the writing stage so we can given an explanation to what’s being raised as an inconsistency:



Scenario 1: Joyce is home for a short time, but leaves to do a very short shift during the episode. So she probably was cooking to the radio downstairs at the start of the episode, just like Chloe speculates. (Baking scene with William from LiS takes place later in the episode - unseen.)

A work uniform with name tag is on her bed, looking ready for her to wear, but it’s a completely different colour (purplish-pink + gold-ish name tag) to the Two Whales blue shirt with black skirt that we’ve seen her and another member of staff wearing at the diner. So the colour variation looks like an inconsistency. UNLESS… this is supposed to subtly suggest to us that Joyce is holding down two jobs. Can you confirm if this speculation is correct? But if it’s just a colour inconsistency and supposed to be a Two Whales uniform, is it possible to change it to match the one she shows up to the house in at the end?

The fact that a work uniform is laid out on the bed with its hangar and looking ready to be worn would suggest to me it’s been laid out in preparation for a shift that day. If it is a Two Whales one, this would suggest she’s still there while Chloe and Max are messing around in Chloe’s room. Further to this, Max comments on the photo tucked in the apron and says, "It's so sweet that Chloe's mom takes this photo with her to work."

It’s 1:33 according to the clock in Joyce and William’s room (Chloe’s says 1:02 when we start tidying her room, which didn’t seem to take long, so the 31-minute time difference on Joyce’s clock makes sense). At 4:30pm (in LiS), William gets the phone call to pick up Joyce from a grocery store after her shift at the diner (according to the dining room clock). But would a diner shift only be for a couple of hours or so? Some people may raise that question, so here is my own reasoning behind this being possible: Since it was a Sunday and William had recently received a promotion at work (according to the note on the kitchen wall), maybe Joyce could afford to cut down on her hours a little? Maybe the short shift was to add a little more money to the pot. Maybe it was cover for someone running late or knocking off early.

The only thing I can’t explain with that scenario is why the uniform on the bed is a different colour to the Two Whales uniform she turned up at the house in at the end of the episode.



Scenario 2: Baking scene in LiS takes place before the Farewell episode begins, and William has already left to pick up Joyce. After eating the pancakes, the girls go upstairs to tidy Chloe’s room (Farewell episode starts). Joyce isn’t home from the diner yet with William, but they both think she’s home by now. Chloe would have discovered her parents aren’t home yet when she heads downstairs to get the telescope from the garage, but as William had said to Joyce over the phone that it would give him “an excuse to get a mocha”, it’s probably not that worrisome to Chloe that they aren’t back yet at this point, so she carries on playing pirates with Max in the backyard. When they come back in from outside with the time capsule, it’s almost 6:30 on the dining room clock and this is the point where Chloe looks at the time and says, "I thought they'd be home by now." Now, bearing in mind that the clock was around 4:30 when William got Joyce’s phone call in LiS and looked for his car keys, this would mean that the entire episode’s events would have had to take place from start to finish over two hours or just under, and that the time on the dining room clock would have to be wrong (or both Chloe and Joyce’s bedroom clocks would have to be wrong) if they had been baking in the morning before the episode starts. But it’s a bit strange that somebody wouldn’t have noticed the clock being wrong.

I’m only making an assumption here that the short length of the episode would have gone off track a bit with parental inclusion in the narrative or any clarity on what was happening around Joyce’s shift or the events we saw in LiS, because the focus of the Farewell episode was to be on Max and Chloe (understandably).

So from a narrative point of view, when was the baking scene from LiS supposed to have taken place in the context of Farewell?

(My note: Read the answer for the next section first to get a better context for this one.)

Deck Nine response from Felice Kuan:

The writers discussed this line a few times, leading to some really interesting discussions about our various upbringings. Here was our reasoning: William goes to pick up Joyce, which is supposed to be a short trip, and Chloe and Max head upstairs. By the time Chloe and Max are blowing up the dolls, Chloe assumes her parents have already been back awhile and are hanging out downstairs. Later on, she's mildly surprised to discover they aren't home yet, but their household is very relaxed about comings and goings, so she's (sadly) not worried at all. I believe this matches your Scenario 2. The purpose of the line is to reinforce the idea that Chloe assumes that everything is completely normal.

(Sidenote: as to your question about the uniform in the bedroom, as far as I know, it's simply her second uniform of a different color)





Different Clothing

(Raised by a few people now.)

So a lot of people have been asking why Chloe and Max are in different clothes in Farewell as they are in to LiS. But I don’t think something as blatant as this could have been a mistake.

So my original thoughts for this were:

You see Chloe's grey "Oregon" sweater and Max’s "No F*cks Given" blue T-shirt from that same day in LiS in the pile of "old clothes" on the bedroom floor when they're tidying her room at the beginning of the episode. Max mentions they had been playing "dress up" for an hour earlier instead of sorting through this pile of old clothes. Farewell seems to be implying that the sweater Chloe wore in LiS is an old sweater that she perhaps wouldn’t mind getting rid of. Maybe the T-shirt Max wore in LiS during the baking scene was one of Chloe’s old T-shirts.

They were baking with William on this day and they were known to cover each other in flour (supported by dialogue in LiS, and you can see a floury mess on the floor in the kitchen in the original game), so it’s likely they wanted to change clothes for baking. (Changing into an "old sweater" and an "old T-shirt" is a good candidate for messy baking, I’d say!)

LiS - Max's journal: "I just wish I could use my rewind power to go all the way back to the days when we were covered in pancake flour..."

LiS - Chloe (talking about baking days in the alternative timeline): "Oh my God, we covered everything in flour, even my parents."

Considering the two scenarios in the previous section on Joyce, the baking scene from LiS needs to fit into the narrative somewhere, even though it’s not seen.

If you wanted all of the clocks to be correct in both games, then the baking scene would have to take place in the afternoon leading up to 4:30pm when William gets the phone call from Joyce to collect her. This would be an unseen scene that could only occur in the transition between the backyard scene and the living room scene when they uncover the time capsule. This would mean that their digging would have been interrupted by William. He could have called them in from outside to do some baking. With this in mind, they could have changed into clothes they don’t mind getting dirty (the LiS clothes) and then changing back into the clothes they wore earlier.

Somebody in the LiS Facebook group[1] has even examined the angle of the sun and the sunlight through windows! Wow. :-O Anyway, he’s saying that at 4:30 in LiS and around 6:30 in Farewell, the sun is shining its rays through the window on the opposite side of the house to where it was shining when Max and Chloe woke up in Chloe’s room in the morning in Episode 3 of LiS. This would certainly put the time capsule opening around the afternoon time. And I noticed the sun is high up over the house kinda moving towards a midway point when you’re in the previous checkpoint of the backyard. So it could make sense that their digging up of the capsule was interrupted in the afternoon.

This is giving me a headache trying to figure out! Lol. Help! :)



What’s a bit confusing is William telling Joyce on the phone in LiS that they're cooking breakfast when the clock is showing 4:30pm ("Hey honey! Just making a fabulous breakfast with Chloe and Max"), even though breakfast is not strictly a morning thing.

However, I did notice a box of cereal and two cereal bowls next to a stack of pancakes on the little breakfast bar in the kitchen in LiS, and that looks very breakfasty… so maybe a confusion is caused by Dontnod’s game from the outset? :-/



The aim here, though, is to try and make the two games "fit" together. Even if we say the clock in the dining room in Dontnod’s game is showing the wrong time, it’s progressed two hours to around 6:30pm when Max and Chloe bring the time capsule in during Farewell, so regardless of the clock being correct or not, we know that two hours have passed since the baking took place. I’m thinking two hours is possible to make and eat pancakes, get changed, go back outside to carry on digging up the time capsule, bring it inside and look through it.



So, yeah, a lot of folks are aching to know where that baking scene slots into the narrative of Farewell, and if Max and Chloe’s clothing was discarded into that bedroom pile after baking in the morning, or whether they’ve not even done the baking yet when the episode begins.



Deck Nine response from Felice Kuan:

I'm answering this one out of order because it will help clarify some of the other answers below. The clock in LiS definitely says 4:30, but we took as canon that it's breakfast and it's supposed to be late morning. We met several times about how to resolve this issue, and ultimately decided on the explanation that the downstairs clock is simply set wrong. The correct amount of time (2 hours) elapses on the downstairs clock, but for the accurate time, only the upstairs clocks are reliable. The timeline for Farewell is as follows: The scene from LiS occurs and William departs. The girls go upstairs to clean/play dress-up/mess around, during which time William is killed. While the girls are doing all the time capsule stuff, the police are on the scene, contacting Joyce, etc.

(Re: Different Clothing...)

I saw this discussed a lot on Reddit and was really happy/impressed to see how many people noticed the original clothing in the pile. The clothing switch was critical to not give away the date of Farewell right at the start. We needed players to be able to enjoy their time with Chloe and not think about William's death until the last possible moment. We considered various ways to cover or hide their clothes, but ultimately decided to have them change clothes instead, with dress up as the explanation.









House Side Not Blue

(Raised by anon Wiki user.) "The house was already painted blue on the backyard side, to at least 50%. In this episode, the house isn't even painted at all. So, given the fact that William DIED this day....when was he supposed to do that?"

So I went into both LiS and Farewell to research this one with comparison screenshots. This one is quite important as it may seem like a very small thing, but it’s a visual detail that contradicts something in the original game concerning William’s backstory. I think it’s entirely possible for this to be corrected, but I think it all depends on what kind of "aftercare" Deck Nine have in place in terms of patch updates with BtS/Farewell. It would be really cool to see this one fixed, though.

Here are some comparison screenshots I took:

Life is Strange (top) - Farewell (bottom):

Seems that in LiS, William had indeed painted half of the house with a pale blue wash around the side, but this isn’t seen in Farewell, which is definitely an inconsistency.



Another angle showing the lack of blue paint. Life is Strange (top) - Farewell (bottom):



The above screenshots were taken with a free-camera mod just to get Max or any object interaction texts out of the way, but to prove that this difference can actually be seen in the games without mods, the next two screenshots are mod-less natural screenshots:



In LiS, Max can look at the wall of the house that faces onto the backyard and says, "William never finished painting that wall…" So the paint supplies in Farewell should be there for finishing the wall that backs onto the backyard (and the wall of the house that’s visible along the side should already have been given a blue wash).

So that person has a point with this inconsistency. This one unfortunately can’t be explained away without it being corrected.





Deck Nine response from Felice Kuan:

Wow, good catch!! We actually checked with Dontnod about the back of the house, to confirm that it was not supposed to be painted yet, but the side of the house slipped through!! The house was, of course, supposed to match the state of the house on that same day in LiS.









Plot/Wording Contradiction

(Raised by anon Wiki user.)

Chloe saying to Max in LiS (after Max asks how she knows Rachel disappeared), "Unlike you, she would have told me, okay?" So if Max has a chance in Farewell to tell Chloe about Seattle before she actually leaves, then wouldn’t this be contradicting the canon?



Okay, so this is my take on this one:

Yes, on initial thought, the tape recording variant of Max telling Chloe about Seattle would seem to support Chloe’s comment in LiS a lot more than telling her before she left, which would make that the more canon-supporting outcome in Farewell. But I think both outcomes can support Chloe’s comment in LiS, simply because...

Max had just strolled back into Chloe’s life out of the blue after already being in Arcadia Bay for a whole month without contacting Chloe. Chloe was angry, exaggerating, and being guilt-trippy with Max - speaking before she thinks (we even see this on a few occasions in LiS). A little bit like that moment in Chloe’s truck when she’s incredibly upset about Rachel’s liaisons with Frank and accuses Max of pretending to care about her like all the rest, even when she knows this is not true: "I can't trust anybody again. Everybody pretends to care until they don't. Even you!"

So, if we come at this from the angle of Chloe being angry and completely exaggerating (which, given Chloe’s behaviour in the early episodes of LiS, seems believable - plus she may even be taking the medication we found in the bathroom drawer), then I doubt that anxious little Max, already feeling guilty about not contacting Chloe, would call Chloe out on this exaggeration when she knows Chloe is coming from an angry place right now. So… what I’m saying here is that even if Max tells Chloe in person in Farewell, Chloe’s pretty angry at this time and has had 5 years to be upset and angry at Max, so things may get lost in translation with her angry outbursts. Also… maybe she was wishing Max had told her a lot sooner.

Your thoughts on this from a writing standpoint?



Deck Nine response from Felice Kuan:

Yes, it's meant to work both ways. Even if Max does tell Chloe, she's waited until the last possible minute and Chloe (knowing already from her parents) has been sitting on that knowledge and wondering if Max was going to ever have that talk. While Farewell-Chloe is very generous about Max's hesitation, LiS-Chloe looks for things to dig at Max about and can turn this into a sore point.









First Pirate Fort? - Some clarification needed

So, if you choose not to tell Chloe the truth at all about moving to Seattle, you get a cool bit of dialogue at the end about Chloe's plans to take Max to the beach to build a pirate fort so they can hide away from everything... I enjoyed this nod to something Max says to Chloe in Episode 2 of LiS: "Can we build another pirate fort and keep the world out?"

So from LiS, we know they had definitely built a pirate fort together when they were kids.

And then there's also that bit of dialogue at the end of Episode 1 of LiS when Max looks at the orientation map by the lighthouse: "Wowser, Chloe drew that to mark our treefort... So we'd always be able to find each other in case of emergency... Oh..."

So they had definitely already built a fort before by the beach . Chloe had marked it with a skull and crossbones on the orientation map next to the lighthouse, so the treefort would more than likely have been a pirate fort.

So what we know for sure is they definitely built a pirate fort and that the "treefort" could be it... or at least one of their pirate forts (they may have more).

But here is where I'm worried about the dialogue in Farewell perhaps coming across to people like it’s their very first time building a pirate fort, especially with these lines from Chloe: "I'm so excited! We're gonna have the coolest pirate hangout ever, just like we always talked about ."... and... "Exactly. Our own little place ." (Like they’ve never had their own little place before, which would be what another fort would have been.)

What would be cool is if we could know if there was any explanation in the writing stage that could place this dialogue in better context beyond what we hear in the episode. I mean if there's a chance this could have been explained in writer’s notes by them having built one in the past, but one that was perhaps smaller and less equipped? That this one is going to be one like they’ve "always talked about"... now that they are much bigger and have the means to be more ambitious. Chloe and Max just make it sound so exciting here in this scene that it does come across as something new that they've never done together before. We also know that Chloe gets the awful news about her dad right before they have the chance to head to the beach to do it, so the fort they are planning to make in this episode is never built. This is why, if there’s no background notes that can add more context to this, people could easily think that this dialogue contradicts Dontnod’s canon of the tree fort.



Here is the dialogue in Farewell that I refer to:

VO_E4_S04_CHLOE_201=Cool. Let's find something fun to do.

VO_E4_S04_MAX_202=Okay, what's the plan?

VO_E4_S04_CHLOE_203=I'm taking you to the beach! We haven't been since school started.

VO_E4_S04_MAX_204=Yeah. That's true.

VO_E4_S04_CHLOE_205=It's gonna feel different now, though.

VO_E4_S04_MAX_206=Why?

VO_E4_S04_CHLOE_207=Because we're pirates again. We can't go to a beach without taking it over. Or at least making a hideout.

VO_E4_S04_CHLOE_208=So! You wanna do that?

VO_E4_S04_MAX_209=Make a hideout?

VO_E4_S04_CHLOE_210=Yeah. One that's really tucked away, so people won't mess with it. Or even see it.

VO_E4_S04_MAX_211=I know exactly where we could put it. You know those two rocks? Right by the grassy part?

VO_E4_S04_CHLOE_212=Oh yeah, that's perfect. Oh, man! We could probably make it big enough to keep things there.

VO_E4_S04_MAX_213=Like a food stash. And towels and stuff?

VO_E4_S04_CHLOE_214=Yeah, and a flashlight. And maybe blankets. So we can go there at night.

VO_E4_S04_MAX_215=I guess we could... Do you think it's allowed?

VO_E4_S04_CHLOE_216=Who cares if it is or isn't? Pirates break rules.

VO_E4_S04_CHLOE_217=We should sneak out there with a real bottle of rum. What do you say?

VO_E4_S04_MAX_218=Yeah. Let's... let's do that.

VO_E4_S04_MAX_219=I bet that would be beautiful. One day I want to see glowing sand.

VO_E4_S04_CHLOE_220=Me too! My dad saw it once with my mom. He said their feet made blue fluorescent footprints!

VO_E4_S04_MAX_221=Oh my god. I want to take a picture of that so bad.

VO_E4_S04_CHLOE_222=Oh, you have to. We can go every night to make sure we don't miss it.

VO_E4_S04_CHLOE_223=I'm so excited! We're gonna have the coolest pirate hangout ever, just like we always talked about.

VO_E4_S04_MAX_224=Yeah, and... hide from everything.

VO_E4_S04_CHLOE_225=Yup. We'll make it super cozy. Nothing will get in and bother us.

VO_E4_S04_MAX_226=Yeah, and it would just be for us.

VO_E4_S04_CHLOE_227=Exactly. Our own little place.

VO_E4_S04_CHLOE_228=This is so awesome. Let's get some snacks and go scope it out.



Deck Nine response from Felice Kuan:

The beach hideout was intended to be a separate thing from the tree fort, an extension of their fondness for hideouts, but serving a different function for the girls. A key difference is that it's more adult and therefore more pirate-like--it's slightly forbidden, in a public place but without people noticing, and potentially used for illicit things like spying on people, going at night, or drinking rum. Furthermore, it's been a long time since the tree fort, as Farewell has them returning to their "pirate phase" after several years.









Chloe Hating Math - Contradiction to report card?

In LiS, Max comments to Chloe, "What do you know about Chaos Theory, Miss "I Hate Math"?", and Chloe responds with, "Five years ago, asswipe. Some people change...and your situation is the perfect storm for quantum physics." But her report card in Farewell from the last school term (her last year in Junior High before starting at Blackwell) shows her with an A in Pre-Algebra, which I believe falls under Mathematics.

Now, my only explanation for this would be that there were certain subjects I really hated at school or that bored me, but I could still get good grades in those subjects if I found the teacher easy to please (i.e. lower marking standards!), or if I knew exactly what to do to tick all the right boxes, even if the homework was dull and boring.

I also note that Pre-Algebra is the only subject on her report card that has a comment in one of the columns. So I was thinking this could be something the teacher has written like, “A marked improvement. Well done.”

She could have worked extra hard to get that A so she can secure her scholarship to Blackwell. It’s often the case that a student will try harder to get the grade requirements for certain places.

Deck Nine response from Felice Kuan:

Pre-Algebra is indeed math. This is a good catch, one we didn't explicit take into account with her report card. I agree with you that it's entirely possible to hate a subject and still do well, so I'm glad that can still make sense. It was really important to us to show Chloe's academic strength, first to be consistent with admission to Blackwell and her continued success in the alternate timeline, and secondly, because we love that aspect of Chloe.









Not Narrative Related - MINOR STUFF - Missing Subtitles and Audio?

I noticed in the game files that two lines are present but seem to be missing from the episode when Max looks at the Invention Plans. The dialogue highlighted in yellow is the line that’s actually in the episode, subtitled, and existing as audio read by Hannah:

VO_E4_S04_CAPSULEINVENTIONPLANS1_MAX_001_M=These are awesome. Chloe's always been good at making up cool things to do.

VO_E4_S04_CAPSULEINVENTIONPLANS3_MAX_001_M=Well, this is... ambitious.

VO_E4_S04_CAPSULEINVENTIONSPLANS2_MAX_001_M=Fireball gloves: the next best thing to real superpowers.



It seems like the fireball gloves line was meant for this page:

And the "ambitious" line was meant for this page?

I can’t find any audio for the other two lines in the game files, so I’m assuming they were left out (not recorded) for a reason. That first line Max says does seem to summarise the context of all pages, so I’m guessing that it was perhaps felt the other two lines weren’t all that necessary?



Deck Nine response from Felice Kuan:

We changed the lines on this to make it more about Chloe's role in their relationship, rather than just about the inventions themselves.









Not Narrative Related - MINOR STUFF - Missing Location (Garage?) and Assets?

I cannot seem to find these assets in the episode, but audio exists for them. :-o Because these assets are sandwiched between assets for Joyce’s bedroom and the Attic in the game files, it seems like an explorable location was cut from the episode. (I’m suspecting the Garage where Chloe said the telescope might be.) Maybe it was initially planned for Max to look for both the telescope and the amulet, but due to the short length of the episode, this would have been a bit lengthy and taken the focus off Max and Chloe’s time together too much. If these assets below were actually made, it would be really nice if they can be archived on the wiki’s "Unused Content" pages so people can see the art. Seems a shame for it to go unseen if it exists. :)

E4_S03B_GRILLBOOK_001=The Art of an Open Flame

E4_S03B_GRILLBOOK_002=How to master meals made on the grill

Max’s comment: VO_E4_S03B_GRILLBOOK_MAX_001_M=Have I mentioned how much I'm going to miss Price family barbeques?



E4_S03B_HONEYDOLIST_001=Fix bathroom sink -- leaking again (crossed out)

E4_S03B_HONEYDOLIST_002=Get Chloe's kite out of the tree (crossed out)

E4_S03B_HONEYDOLIST_003=Fix wobbly chair (crossed out)

E4_S03B_HONEYDOLIST_004=Replace broken hose spigot

E4_S03B_HONEYDOLIST_005=Thanks, love you!

Max’s comment: VO_E4_S03B_HONEYDOLIST_MAX_001_M=Is there anything Chloe's dad can't fix?



E4_S03B_JOYCENOTE_001=Hey honey,

E4_S03B_JOYCENOTE_002=I hope you have a wonderful day

E4_S03B_JOYCENOTE_003=Love you!

E4_S03B_JOYCENOTE_004=Joyce

Max’s comment: VO_E4_S03B_JOYCENOTE_MAX_001_M=Aw. I wonder how long that's been there.



E4_S03B_MODELAIRPLANEKIT_001=1933 Fairey Firefly II

E4_S03B_MODELAIRPLANEKIT_002=1:48 Scale Model

E4_S03B_MODELAIRPLANEKIT_003=184 Part Resin kit

E4_S03B_MODELAIRPLANEKIT_004=Ages 13+

Max’s comment: VO_E4_S03B_MODELAIRPLANEKIT_MAX_001_M=Chloe's dad always seemed interested in World War II. Guess he's taking up a new hobby.



E4_S03B_PHOTOTIPS_001=Start Shooting

E4_S03B_PHOTOTIPS_002=Quick tips to improve your photos!

Max’s comment: VO_E4_S03B_PHOTOTIPS_MAX_001_M=I need to get a book like this!



E4_S03B_REPORTCARDS_001=PRICE, Chloe

E4_S03B_REPORTCARDS_002=Science - A - Focused, Attentive, Pleasure To Have in Class

E4_S03B_REPORTCARDS_003=History - A - Good Effort, Focused, Good Participation

E4_S03B_REPORTCARDS_004=English - B - Attentive, Close to an A

E4_S03B_REPORTCARDS_005=Phys Ed - A - No absences

E4_S03B_REPORTCARDS_006=Mathematics - A - Good Effort, Attentive

Max’s comment: VO_E4_S03B_REPORTCARDS_MAX_001_M=I really hope Chloe likes it at Blackwell. She's always loved school.



E4_S03B_WWIIBOOK_001=All the front lines

E4_S03B_WWIIBOOK_002=A selection of true stories from allied soldiers, pilots, and sailors from all over the world.

Max’s comment: VO_E4_S03B_WWIIBOOK_MAX_001_M=This must be Chloe's dad's reading list.





Deck Nine response from Felice Kuan:

Yes, the garage was cut for pacing/length. None of the assets you mentioned went beyond script level (i.e. they weren't made). This includes the detergent and coffee mug. The items you mentioned are actually the remaining ones after we found homes for most of the other assets planned for the garage.









Not Narrative Related - MINOR STUFF - Missing Subtitle and Interaction?

There’s some audio about the Price household switching their detergent brand in the files, but there’s no subtitle file, so it would seem this one was outright removed. I’m suspecting this was in the garage?

Audio file: VO_E4_S03B_DETERGENT_MAX_001_M - "I’ve never seen this brand before. They must have just switched to it."



(Previous Deck Nine explanation also applies here.)









Not Narrative Related - MINOR STUFF - Missing Interaction?

There’s a coffee mug audio and subtitle text in the files, but I can’t seem to find this mug in the episode. Was it removed? Was it planned to be seen in the suspected unused garage location above, or in Joyce and William's bedroom?

VO_E4_S03B_COFFEEMUG_MAX_001_M=This mug has seen many cups of coffee. Chloe's dad must use it all the time.

Was it this pale blue mug we saw on the dining room table in LiS, by any chance?

(Previous Deck Nine explanation also applies here.)









Not Narrative Related - MINOR STUFF - Missing Interaction?

This exists in the first game on the fridge and also in Farewell, and I was always curious about the story behind this, or anything Max would say about it, because it’s just so random! I notice it’s an asset inside the same folder where all of the "posters" are kept that appear as collections when you view your journal (or map in the case of Farewell). So this seems to suggest that it was an interaction at one stage. I can’t find anything about it in the game files, though. Can you shed any light on what happened with this? Was there a line that was scripted for this interaction at all?



Deck Nine response from Felice Kuan:

Haha! This was originally going to be something you could look at, with an attempted explanation for those bizarre words. Ultimately, we felt it wasn't our place to explain Dontnod's mysterious intentions with this poster, so we cut it.









Not Narrative Related - MINOR STUFF - Clock differences

Visual difference with the dining room clock in Farewell. No second hand. No movement. No ticking. Could simply be down to a stylistic difference and the different game engines of the two games. (Not a big deal!) Maybe even budget or time constraints, as if a second hand was added like in LiS, then it has to go around the clock like in LiS, then it’s got to have the ticking sound like in LiS, and then you’ve got to make all of the clock hands move in real-time like in LiS. Might have been too much effort for such a short episode. It doesn’t affect the narrative at all. (Only adding it here, as it was a difference that has been spotted.)

Deck Nine response from Felice Kuan:

I don't know about this directly, but I'd assume it's because we didn't make it a real-time clock.









Not Narrative Related - MINOR STUFF - Menu screen checkpoint

In the game files, there are 5 checkpoints:

GLOBAL_DATA_NAME_EP4_S01=Bedroom

GLOBAL_DATA_NAME_EP4_S02_A=Price House - Upstairs

GLOBAL_DATA_NAME_EP4_S02_B=Attic

GLOBAL_DATA_NAME_EP4_S03=Backyard

GLOBAL_DATA_NAME_EP4_S04=Price House - Downstairs



However, Collector Mode shows just 4 checkpoints:

Bedroom

Attic

Backyard

Price House - Downstairs

Looks like the Bedroom and Upstairs checkpoints were perhaps merged together because of the exploration outside Chloe’s room being a bit short to be a checkpoint on its own. With the two name options there, would Price House - Upstairs have been better for encompassing not only Chloe’s bedroom but also Joyce’s bedroom as well as the landing area and the bathroom? It would match the Price House- Downstairs checkpoint naming too. :) Just a minor curiosity as some of us were wondering why the first checkpoint was called Bedroom when we do some exploring outside Chloe’s room as well.



Deck Nine response from Felice Kuan:

The checkpoints in the game files are based off our script names, which we split that way for our own internal use. I'm not sure how the names for Collector Mode are decided :)



- End. Thanks for reading. :)