Farewell Arcadia Bay: Part 2

Warning: This entry contains spoilers for Life is Strange and Life is Strange: Before the Storm.

For those of you who have stumbled onto this page out of nowhere, this entry is the second part of an article I posted back in mid-March that started this strange journey of mine, my “Farewell to Arcadia Bay.”

As what happens so often with Life is Strange, I’ve spent a lot of time reflecting on the series since writing that original article, leading me to further understand more about myself and what these games mean to me. As I’ve stated before, I find that Life is Strange is a kind of mirror that shows you who you really are, and the kind of values you hold… if you’re willing to look. It really is the kind of fiction I love best, where the more you think about it, the more you discover, and the more you discover… the more you end up loving the series even more than you thought before.

Heads up, this entry is MUCH longer than the previous one… I kinda went nuts.

Just in case you’re wondering what to expect, I’ll be continuing the themes set out by the first article by recounting the experiences I had playing through the Life is Strange series with my parents, sharing their insights as people who grew up in a very different world from me, as well as analysing the series from my perspective.

In the previous entry, my perspective was based around my experience with these games as a teacher and focused primarily on the themes of Before the Storm and how they differed from the first Life is Strange in its message. However, for this second part, I’d like to share my thoughts on some of my personal philosophies that have come into focus while playing the series all over again. Looking into the mirror that is Life is Strange, I’ve come to some realisations about myself that I hadn’t really thought about before, at least, not consciously.

Class is in session…

To start off, for everyone who is dying to know what my parents think of the first Life is Strange and the series in general after playing both games, I’ll say it right upfront: They absolutely fucking loved it and say it’s one hell of a unique experience that they’ve never had before. They ended up having quite the journey going through Before the Storm, Farewell then Life is Strange in that order, and it’s not something they’re going to forget any time soon.

After my parents and I had finished playing Life is Strange (a week earlier than I thought we’d play it), there was A LOT to talk about and we had quite the discussion about everything that same night. In fact, when my parents came back over to my place a week later over the Easter break, my mum admitted to me that she and my dad had been thinking a lot about the events of Life is Strange that entire time and wanted to talk more about it with me. It’s amazing, even my parents can’t escape the grip of “post-Life is Strange reflection.”

However, before diving straight into their experiences with the original Life is Strange, the question has been asked: What did my parents think of the events depicted in Before the Storm and what were their opinions on how the characters of that game handled those events?

Playing Before the Storm with my parents

I’ll be honest here, I purposefully glossed over the details of what my parents thought of Before the Storm when writing that first article because I had planned to include it all in this second entry alongside their thoughts on the first game. It makes more sense to do it this way because it allows me to connect the discussions we had over both games inside a single article.

So, here we go again, this is going to be one hell of a ride…

Just to remind everyone, the playthrough I had with my parents was the second time I had played Before the Storm, and just like with my original playthrough, I decided to channel my inner-Chloe by making all the decisions I thought she would make rather than what I would do in her place. This is the exact opposite of what I did with Max in the first Life is Strange as I felt that Max and I had more in common in terms of the way we think and make decisions.

This is an important factor to state upfront because I wanted my parents to experience a story that was purely (or as pure as I could make it) from a troubled teenager’s perspective rather than an adult in the guise of a teenager. I wanted to make Chloe’s self-destructive side more apparent, especially in regards to her desperate need to feel close to someone. I also wanted to show, what Chloe felt, was a desecration of her father’s memory by David’s intrusion into her family life.

With that said, while all the decisions were mine to make as Chloe Price, I did allow my parents an opportunity to get involved by getting them to choose the graffiti options throughout the game (baby steps, they’re new to this). We ended up with a funny moment at the very start where you’re able to write on the side of Frank’s RV.

“Do you want me to graffiti something about free candy or drugs?” I asked my parents. My mum spoke up and declared, “Free candy!” and I was all too happy to oblige. As soon as Chloe was done, I turned to my mum and told her flatly, “You realise you’re implying that the person who owns this RV is a paedophile, right?” To which my mum gave a shocked gasp as my dad laughed.

Good times.

Busted.

And yes, my parents were very understanding of Chloe’s anger and spite toward David and the betrayal she felt toward Joyce, and I totally agree with their interpretation of the situation.

As my dad put it, it was a dangerous time for David to come into the picture as Chloe was still grieving for her father. He felt that the entire situation was handled poorly by both Joyce and David who didn’t take Chloe’s feelings into consideration at all. We all agreed that when dealing with this kind of situation where a single parent finds a new partner, the child should be included in the decisions regarding the speed in which that relationship develops regardless of what the parent wants to happen.

Of course, they were still very much aware of how difficult it must have been for Joyce to be raising a child by herself while trying to make ends meet. She was under a lot of stress and it was clear why she needed someone to hold on to for support… and David was just the person she needed.

With that said, my dad still made the point that Chloe, naturally lacking life experience, wouldn’t have the level of emotional fortitude required for yet another big change in her life to happen as quickly as it did. I think that’s why he tended to side more with Chloe in regards to her home situation. She had a right to feel angry and it was completely natural for her to reject David the way that she did.

Naturally, I made sure to choose every option that was the most venomous toward David and the options where Chloe tried to manipulate her mother (poorly) into siding with her. That meant that while I still had Chloe rip David a new one while in his car, I still tried to get her to thank him for the lift when they got to Blackwell just because that’s what Joyce wanted her to do. Every moment between them was tense and while many would see Chloe’s petulant behaviour as being wrong or incorrect, my parents looked at Chloe and the way she acted with empathy. They cast no blame on her for acting the way she did, they just understood that this is how someone of her age in that situation would react.

The more I think about it, the way my parents reacted and talked about Chloe’s family life, I get the feeling that they both enjoyed seeing Chloe’s defiance toward David and felt the way she did, that David was intruding and didn’t belong there, at least, not yet.

At this point in time, the only experience my parents had with David was from the perspective of how Chloe saw him in Before the Storm. However, it was still clear to them that despite his old-fashioned way of doing things and his complete lack of sensitivity, he was trying to be a good person.

Indeed, my dad understood what kind of man David was. He most likely came from a low socio-economic status family himself, was poorly educated, and he probably felt that joining the service was the only way he could make something of his life. The truth is, Chloe was very lucky that Joyce was able to find someone like David rather than the kinds of boyfriends many single mother’s end up introducing into their family lives in the real world.

While many may not like David, he is definitely not the worst case scenario as Chloe makes him out to be. It’s just that he came at a very delicate time for Chloe where she was still dealing with the loss of William and Max… with David entering the picture, Chloe felt she was losing Joyce as well.

Speaking of William, I started to think a lot about his depiction throughout the series from the perspectives of Chloe and Max and how they viewed him as a wonderful father and great man. Indeed, Before the Storm does challenge this notion somewhat with Joyce hinting that William wasn’t perfect, but we never really get to find out what made him “not so perfect” as he is always seen through the eyes of our two lead characters. What kind of man was William? There’s so little information to go on and what scraps you can find (on the surface) don’t hint at anything negative at all.

The information you do get about the man from sources such as emails and such make him out to be an all-round decent person. So what was Joyce referring to when she said that William wasn’t perfect? As my dad says, children often don’t see what their parents are really like at that age and construct an idealised image of them. Indeed, when confronted with the truth of the matter in regards to her idealised image of her own father, Chloe is never really able to come to any kind of resolution to the issue and leaves it at that.

Dreams of William

The good news is that I did eventually come up with a plausible explanation to this question, though you’ll have to wait till later to find out what it is if you haven’t already come to the same conclusions yourself. In the meantime, the fact that Chloe never comes to any kind of resolution about her father, in my mind, hints that she hasn’t actually started healing the deep emotional wound caused by her father’s death… rather, she just puts a band-aid over it, the band-aid that is Rachel Amber.

It was also interesting to see what my parents thought of the differences between Chloe’s family life when compared to Rachel’s. My dad and I were both amused at the comment Chloe makes when she saw Rachel’s house for the first time, saying that this is how “real people must live.” We both agreed that it was Chloe who was leading a life of normality in comparison to the rest of the world while Rachel was the outlier.

We ended up discussing our observations of how single parent families/broken homes are so common in today’s world that it has become the new baseline for how children grow up these days. The traditional nuclear family is becoming a thing of the past and is somewhat of a rarity in some places around the world. The way I grew up in my family with my mother, father and siblings all under the one roof is something a lot of people out there won’t get to experience in their lifetime.

And yes, I’m probably going to end up offending a lot of people with my line of thinking on this subject, but I’m not going to deny that growing up in a traditional nuclear family provided me with a hell of a lot of advantages over those who grew up in single parent households/broken homes. I’ve seen way too many examples of the negative effects such family environments can have on kids, both from people I’ve grown up with and from observations I’ve made of the students that I teach.

To be perfectly blunt, it’s getting worse and it’s hard to watch these kids self-destruct their lives because they don’t have the kind of emotional support and guidance they need in their home environment from both of their parents. There’s only so much a teacher can do with these kids and it’s asinine to expect schools to raise your children for you. But that’s where we are today, a world where parents expect everyone and everything else to raise their kids for them… if the parents are even in the picture to begin with.

In any case, it is worth noting that in Before the Storm, just because Rachel has a stable family life, that doesn’t mean it’s perfect, regardless of the discovery of her father’s apparent infidelity. My dad and I had a discussion about how, so often, parents are so protective of their children that they don’t allow them to experience the world as it is. Rather, they construct a fairy-tale world around them in hopes that nothing can possibly hurt them. “It’s all theatre,” as Chloe puts it. Though, while she is referring to the lies holding the Amber family together, it can also be interpreted in other ways, particularly the lies people tell their loved ones to try to protect them.

Will you run away with me?

As a result, when their children finally do go out into the real world, they find that they don’t have the experiences necessary to deal with any of it and end up regressing, running away and/or lamenting on how the world is not fair and that this isn’t the reality they were told to expect. Though, with Rachel, it is apparent early on that she does have the urge to escape from the fantasy world that she (and, unbeknown to her, her father) has constructed around her. The question I ask is whether she is actually trying to escape into the real world or into yet another carefully constructed fantasy of her own design?

In further discussions with my parents, I noticed that they had become quite fond of Chloe Price. My mum admitted to me that her maternal instincts were making her want to tell Chloe to stop bothering with other people’s lives and to focus more on taking care of herself. My dad also felt very protective of Chloe and as a result, they were both a lot more sceptical of Rachel and didn’t quite trust her intentions toward Chloe.

I mean, I’m pretty critical of Rachel throughout my previous articles on Before the Storm, but my parents REALLY didn’t like the way Chloe was being led around by Rachel so easily. However, my dad understood the nature of the loyalty that quickly developed between the two over the course of those three days. He recounted a few stories back in Fiji where such loyalties developed very quickly between the most unlikely of friends and that, when it came down to it, people of this age will stick by their friends no matter what, even if it’s not in their own best interest and ends up hurting them.

A delicate situation

In the end, while my parents may not have been fans of Rachel Amber, they understood that no one was in any position to come between them. This is what James Amber was so worried about in his dealings with Chloe, he knew that allowing their friendship may be a mistake, but he couldn’t do anything about it. Hell, even when shit does hit the fan, he knew he still couldn’t do anything about it because it would only serve in alienating his daughter against him if he rejected Chloe in any way.

While my parents saw, very clearly, how Rachel was able to control Chloe, they also understood that it would do more harm to separate them despite the fact that the relationship developing between them may not be the best thing for Chloe. I think this is what frustrated my mum the most, the fact that she could see how things were playing out, how Chloe was becoming overly dependent on Rachel for everything.

On an interesting note, during the scene when we take part in The Tempest, my dad recalled that the last school theatre production he was involved in during his time teaching in Fiji was, in fact, The Tempest. His familiarity with the play allowed him to make the connection between the roles of Prospero/Prospera and Ariel with Rachel and Chloe, and how, like Prospera, Rachel was using Chloe for her own schemes, not willing to let her go like Ariel until their tasks were complete.

It became even more interesting for him when I pointed out how the ad-libbed part of the play that Rachel and Chloe performed wasn’t just a declaration that the two of them wanted to stay by each other’s side, but an indication of Rachel’s intention to continue using Chloe in her schemes later in the game.

Though, it is interesting to note Rachel’s sudden urge to leave Arcadia Bay with Chloe when they were having their little night-time stroll back to Rachel’s house. I honestly think Rachel was trying to jettison her plans and just run away with Chloe, away from all her troubles… though, she is still using Chloe as a vehicle to make that happen.

I know, I know, Rachel fans hate it when I talk negatively about Rachel. Again, I’m not saying Rachel is doing this consciously to hurt Chloe, but the fact is, she is being manipulative in regards to Chloe despite her motives… and Chloe is all too willing to follow her lead. Again, there’s further evidence throughout the rest of the series to suggest that, while Rachel isn’t trying to intentionally hurt Chloe or anyone else, her free spirited nature and art of manipulation ends up hurting Chloe anyway and ultimately leads her to her own demise.

Just to push this point home, I’m not saying Rachel is a horrible person who is purposefully doing horrible things. What I am saying is that she’s so good at morphing her image to fit whatever scenario she finds herself in to control those around her that it does have an adverse effect on someone like Chloe. She doesn’t realise that aspects of her character are actually harming Chloe rather than helping her and if she was mature enough to realise this, she would change for the better, for herself and for Chloe… because I do believe Rachel does truly care about Chloe, in that I have no doubts.

It really is another one of those tragic elements written into this series that a lot of people find hard to deal with. You want these characters to have a picturesque life together, as you can plainly see if you’ve ever stumbled onto any of the fan art for this series, but nothing about the characters in this story affords such fantasies to come true. The truth of the matter is that we do end up seeing how Chloe changes over the years, losing herself in the process, and the consequences of the way Chloe and Rachel’s relationship progressed that led them to their ends… or possible end, in Chloe’s case.

Speaking of the truth, that’s exactly what my parents chose to do at the end of the game. While I played through the entire game making each decision as I thought Chloe would make them, when it came time to make that final choice, I allowed my parents to make the call. Whatever they thought Chloe should do is the ending we went with.

They chose to tell Rachel everything, saying that she deserves to know the truth about what happened with Sera and what James Amber did to keep her from seeing Rachel. In their view, Rachel should know the truth even if it does destroy the image of her father. She has the right to know the truth and she has the right to meet her birth mother. Luckily for them, I had done my research on the possible outcomes for the ending of Before the Storm to make that a reality for them. In this second playthrough of Before the Storm, I told Rachel the truth and was able to convince Sera to meet her daughter at the lighthouse during the closing montage at the end of the game.

As my dad said to me, in any personal relationship you form, the truth cannot be compromised. James Amber may have had reason to wait till Rachel was older to learn about her birth mother, but he was wrong for going to such lengths to keep Sera away from her daughter and to lie to Rachel about how her birth mother felt about her… and I 100% agree with his assessment of the situation… but at the time, when we had hit that moment with the two options floating there on the screen, I started to debate with my dad about his reasoning, saying that his views on the matter were flawed. (WHAT?!)

Let me explain… in my first playthrough of Before the Storm, I chose to “protect” Rachel from the truth, however, this decision was made because I was making the kind of choices I thought Chloe would make rather than what I would do in her place.

As I’ve explained before in my review of Before the Storm, the reason why I chose that option was because it created a tragic link between Before the Storm and the first Life is Strange by having Chloe and Rachel’s relationship sealed with a lie.

To further elaborate on why I chose to lie to Rachel, I felt that, throughout the events of Before the Storm, I got the impression that Chloe was learning all the wrong lessons from everything that had happened. On top of that, I was taking Chloe’s insecurities and overwhelming need to feel close to someone into account when making that final choice.

In my mind, Chloe feared what would happen if Rachel found out the truth, that in doing so, she could lose trust in everyone around her, including Chloe herself. With Chloe being so desperate to keep Rachel in her life, she made the selfish decision of hiding the truth from Rachel, not to protect her relationship with her father, rather to protect the status-quo that was established with her and Rachel and their newly blossomed friendship/love.

She wanted to preserve what she had now, which is fitting because they ended up staying in Arcadia Bay despite always telling each other that they would leave, and their friendship continued just as it started, with the two of them rebelling against everyone and everything in Arcadia Bay, Rachel in the lead, with Chloe following behind.

The truth.

After all the times Rachel had used Chloe to further her own agenda, Chloe ends up doing the same thing to Rachel… and that’s why I chose to hide the truth from Rachel, to complete that vicious little circle.

…and that was Chloe’s choice, not mine. So why the fuck was I trying to justify that choice to my dad as if it was my own? Somehow, after making that choice in my first playthrough, I started taking ownership of that decision as if it was coming from MY personal viewpoint… and that disturbs me greatly.

When I realised what I was doing, I stopped halfway through my rebuttal to my dad and said, “No, you’re absolutely right. The importance of the truth is paramount no matter how much it may hurt to know it. I have no idea why I was even arguing against telling the truth since I’ve always believed in its importance long before I even played any of these games.”

I ended up spending quite a lot of time after that trying to figure out what happened inside my brain to convince me that upholding James Amber’s lie was the right thing to do. I felt ashamed of myself for defending that choice because it goes against everything I believe.

Though, as it turned out, because I spent so much time thinking about that troubling discovery, it helped put some things into perspective when we got to the end of the first Life is Strange, and I ended up forming some interesting connections between some of the themes running through these games that I hadn’t considered before.

Since we ended up playing these games “out of order” as it were, my parents were quite satisfied with the way Before the Storm ended. They felt that there was potential for things to get better for both Chloe and Rachel despite the emotionally turbulent adventure they had just been through… and when that final scene in the dark room hit, they had no clue as to what it meant. Don’t worry, I kept my mouth shut about it, I wanted them to experience the horror of it all unspoiled.

Goodbye.

The next day we played the Farewell bonus episode where my parents finally got their first taste of the kind of endings Life is Strange truly leaves you with. The image of Chloe curled up on the floor of her room, hugging that tape recorder tightly to her chest, stuck with them. They started to understand a lot more about Chloe’s struggle and became even more endeared to her.

After we finished playing the Farewell episode, I reminded them that there’s another game in the series, the original game where you play as Max Caulfield who is reunited with Chloe 5 years from where the bonus episode left off and 3 years after Before the Storm’s ending… where they will get an explanation as to the true meaning of that mysterious scene at the end of Before the Storm.

Oh boy, they immediately agreed to play the first Life is Strange and said we’ll play it when they come back over to my place during the Easter break. Though, as it turned out, we ended up playing the game a week earlier than expected.

Playing Life is Strange with my parents

As we sat down to play the first episode of Life is Strange, I was curious to see how my parents would handle this game compared to Before the Storm. After all, the first Life is Strange is a lot more “gamey” in comparison, considering the mechanics of Max’s rewind powers.

Thankfully, this would be my third playthrough of the game and I was familiar enough with it to make it a smooth ride… except for finding the bottles in the junkyard… that’s rough no matter how many times you play it, ouch.

In any case, we ended up playing Life is Strange over two days, splitting it up with two episodes on the first day and the last three episodes over the second day. We were going to play just one episode that first day, but, of course, my parents wanted more.

So let’s start down the road to our journey’s end…

The Farewell bonus episode introduced my parents to a younger Max Caulfield and, since we ended up playing this series out of release order, they were coming into the first Life is Strange from a much different perspective than the rest of us.

Unlike with my first playthrough, my parents had already met most of these characters and knew what to expect… at least, they thought they knew what to expect. For my parents, the tone of the series had already been set with Before the Storm and Farewell and they were eager to see what had happened to Chloe over the last three years.

It’s funny how that worked out, they’ve become so invested in Chloe Price through following her story in Before the Storm that the first things they asked during the opening scene in Jefferson’s classroom was, “Where is Chloe?” I had to assure them that we will end up meeting Chloe later in the game but kept my lips sealed as to how and when.

I did note that while my parents asked about Chloe, they didn’t ask about Rachel Amber. However, out in the hallway, questions began to rise about what happened to her as we took our first look at her missing poster.

For this playthrough of the game, I tried to be as thorough as I could, trying not to miss any detail so that my parents could get as much of the story and clues as possible. Though, like with Before the Storm, I did skip over the journal entries in the dairy since that’s a pretty big time sink.

What has Chloe gotten herself into?

Finally, they get their first glimpse of Chloe Price in the girl’s bathroom as that infamous scene plays out… and then the gunshot. My parents were dead silent during this moment and the rewind back to Jefferson’s classroom. They made no comments, they just watched as I got myself out of there and ran all the way back to that bathroom. They never said anything about that moment, but the fact that they were silent all the way through that scene spoke volumes to me.

My parents told me that it was sad and disappointing to see how much Chloe had lost her way over the years. My mum pointed out that Chloe was once someone who was sure of herself and had strength hidden within, but now she had become a person who was too dependent on others, relying on their strength rather than her own. She saw how this change occurred throughout the events of Before the Storm and how it led her to the state she’s in at the start of Life is Strange. In my parents eyes, the relationship Chloe had with Rachel didn’t help her grow. Instead, it made her regress and become subordinate to someone else rather than helping her become someone who could take charge of her own life.

After saving Chloe with my newly discovered time powers, I made my way out of the girl’s bathroom to get our first glimpse of two more returning characters, David and Principal Wells. The interaction with Wells was our first opportunity to make a choice that would affect the course of the game, and while I did take narrative control over Before the Storm, I decided to give my parents control over the decisions we would make for Life is Strange.

This time, it was all up to them to make the important decisions.

This early decision was an easy one to make for them, of course they were going to tell Principal Wells about what Nathan was doing in the girl’s bathroom. They did exactly what I did in my first playthrough of the game because it’s a no-brainer. Student brings gun to school, you tell the Principal.

We explored everything we could around the grounds of Blackwell Academy and the dorms, got Warren’s flash drive and made our way to the car park for the next Chloe-related scene. I made sure to look around the car park before triggering the scene, allowing them to spot Frank’s RV and Chloe’s truck with the missing posters tucked away in the tray.

After playing through the events of Before the Storm and Farewell, the reunion between Max and Chloe became a lot more tense, at least for me. Chloe had been through so much since then and Max was walking back into her life not knowing anything about what her friend had been through without her. I started to understand Chloe’s frustration with Max throughout Life is Strange a lot more than I did when I played it the first two times.

Shake that bony, white ass!

The rest of the episode was pretty standard, we found out more about Chloe’s home life as it is now and what’s been happening with Chloe. More and more, my parents got the sense that Chloe really had lost her way and they found that very sad. They got the sense that Chloe had thrown away everything that had made her a stronger person over the years and that she was trying to hide from all of her problems… and now, with Rachel gone, she’s once again having to try to deal with the things she’s been trying to run away from for all this time.

At the end of that first episode, just like when we came to the end of the first episode of Before the Storm, my parents wanted me to start the next episode immediately. It was interesting to see the way they were reacting to the first Life is Strange after playing Before the Storm. For them, this was a story about Chloe Price more than it was about Max Caulfield and her newly discovered time powers.

During the second episode, we tried to support Kate as much as possible, even answering Kate’s phone call despite Chloe. However, things took a turn for the worst during the end of that episode… to be blunt, I fucked up and Kate died.

In my two earlier playthroughs of the game, I had successfully coaxed Kate down from that ledge, but this time I screwed up two of the options with one of them being about the Bible verses… now, you have to understand something… we’re Indian and I’m atheist, so when it comes to Bible verses, none of us have a fucking clue. I had also forgotten how you can find clues to help you with this last part in Kate’s room. It was down to the Proverb and Matthew 11:28… and we chose poorly.

It was already an extremely tense moment for all of us, so when Kate jumped, I could feel my dad tensing up as my mum let out an audible gasp. My worst nightmare happened right in front of my eyes and I was gripping that controller so tightly I felt like I was going to tear it in half. I honestly had to set it down for a moment to calm myself down.

I’ve always been able to save her, even the first time I played the game. My dad simply shrugged his shoulders, saying that that’s just how life is, you can’t do anything about it. But for me, I was doing exactly what Max was doing, questioning what I could have done differently and regretting not being able to make a difference for Kate. I let her down. Fuck.

It was a very sombre end to that second episode and as the credits rolled, my dad looked at his watch and realised it was already 1 AM. We stopped for the night, my dad telling me they had to digest everything that had just happened. We all went to bed with Kate’s death on our mind… actually, I didn’t go to bed right away. I came here, to my PC, and looked up exactly what I needed to do to save Kate. Matthew 11:28… I will never forget it.

Damn, I did NOT feel good at all going to sleep that night. I’m so sorry Kate.

We picked things back up the next day, but the events of last night were still with us as we headed into that third episode. With Kate gone, I had this continuous gnawing feeling at the back of my mind and it really did change a lot for me, having played the game multiple times. I definitely didn’t feel that warm glowing feeling I felt the first time I played, that sense of relief I got from having made a difference for Kate Marsh. Instead, the world felt a little more hollow without her.

As we played through the third episode and came to the shock ending of the alternate timeline, of course, we headed straight into the next episode, and it’s here where I came to a realisation about two things.

Earlier I mentioned that I wanted to know what kind of man William actually was and what made him not so perfect as Joyce hinted at in Before the Storm. The funny thing is that it’s the conversation with Joyce upstairs that gave me the clue I needed to figure things out. She mentions that Chloe and William always side against her when they have an argument. This one line is what made all the evidence click into place to make perfect sense of what kind of man William truly was.

Returning to that fateful moment…

William really is a good guy in every way, however, he also has absolutely no sense of discipline when it comes to his daughter. In fact, whatever Chloe wants is how it goes for him, she basically ends up walking all over him which makes him not such a great parent in that regard. I can imagine this creating all sorts of problems between him and Joyce in both timelines as they weren’t acting like a united parental team when it came to keeping a girl like Chloe under control.

I’m sure Joyce felt that she had to act like the bad guy in every situation with Chloe and William and she really didn’t enjoy playing that part. But what could she do about it? William was still a loving husband and the bond he shared with his daughter was very close… and that’s why it’s so hard to pin down what made William not so perfect. His major fault was that he adored his daughter so much that it hindered his ability to be the kind of parent that was best for his daughter’s growth into an adult.

This is very evident when Chloe describes her relationship with her father as that of equals… unfortunately, as much as it is nice for a parent to treat their child that way on the surface, you can’t be a friend to your child at that age, you NEED to be their parent.

And it really does make perfect sense when you think about it, because it aligns very well with the way Chloe is characterised throughout Before the Storm. The way she is able to brush off structure and rules so easily and how she isn’t able to learn from her mistakes and bludgeons through life, satisfied that she’s getting what she wants, without thinking of the consequences of her actions.

The other thing I realised from this alternate timeline is the fact that Rachel Amber is still missing and what implications this has for the events that occurred during Before the Storm. Yes, I know, retroactive continuity and all that… but hear me out. The only difference between how things go down in the main timeline in comparison to the alternate timeline is the fact that her disappearance has gained national interest.

Let’s extrapolate the events of Before the Storm in this alternate timeline. Had William lived, Chloe would never have found the need to rebel as much as she did to cause her to go to that Firewalk concert, which in turn, never sparks the events that leads Rachel to take an interest in Chloe in the first place.

Chloe and Rachel

With Chloe out of the picture, Rachel still would have ditched school to go to that park and discovered her father with that strange woman… and she would’ve had to come to terms with her new reality even on her own. Eventually, whether it happens similarly to how it happened in Before the Storm or not, she would have confronted her father about his infidelity and discovered the truth about her birth mother.

Without Chloe’s intervention, that would’ve been that. James Amber would have made sure that Sera never got anywhere near Rachel and Rachel would have been led to believe that her birth mother never really cared about her to begin with. Her relationship with her father would’ve been strained, as the events that led to her stabbing wouldn’t have had the effect of showing her how much her parents cared about her, and she would have to live with the fact that she never got to know Sera.

Rachel would cling to her good little schoolgirl persona since Chloe was never in her life to break her out of her act, meaning that she never really opens up to anyone until much later on. This is most likely why her disappearance is such a publicised event in the alternate timeline rather than in the main timeline where everyone knows of her and Chloe’s rebellious ways and the fact that they both wanted to get the hell out of Arcadia Bay. So, while the relationship with Frank Bowers probably never happened since she met him thanks to Chloe in the main timeline, I can imagine her still falling for Mark Jefferson anyway in both timelines. But why does she fall for him to begin with? Because he is a mirror image of her. He puts on an act to hide his true nature and manipulates everyone around him, just like her.

To cut to the inevitable… for Rachel, there really is NO happy ending.

So what does this all mean for Chloe and her overall impact on Rachel Amber? It’s just as my mum feared and it really does hammer in the point that Chloe is Rachel’s subordinate in all this. Rachel simply did her own thing as Chloe faithfully followed her through it all, totally dependent on Rachel for everything throughout those three years.

It’s interesting to note that the Chloe Price we meet in that alternate timeline craves a sense of any kind of independence, to be her own person who can make her own decisions and not have to depend on her parents, nurses and doctors for anything. She is imprisoned within her own body and knows the value of being independent while the Chloe Price from the main timeline has all the freedom in the world to do practically anything she wants, yet she depends solely on Rachel Amber to choose a direction for her.

My mum hit the nail right on the head when she says that Chloe has lost her way and is overly dependent on Rachel. She also noticed that when Max came back into the picture, Chloe started to fall into a pattern of following Max as well, essentially using her as a substitute Rachel Amber. Max leads, Chloe follows… it use to be the other way around when they were younger.

So when alternate timeline Chloe asks Max to overdose her on morphine, it is the request of someone who has no control of her life, asking for her best friend to help her fulfil her choice to die on her own terms. An independent choice that depends on someone else to accomplish.

My parents were silent for a moment as they considered the options before them, until my dad finally spoke up and said he wouldn’t do it. My mum shot back immediately calling him out on his decision, saying that he’s said many times that if he were in this position, he’d want control over ending his own life to avoid that kind of suffering. My mum stated that Chloe had the right to end her own life to avoid such suffering… and with that, we were at a stalemate.

I need a moment…

My dad argued that the legal ramifications for Max would be dire, that, if she performed this act, she may end up throwing her own life away. I stayed silent through their debate, but from what I could gather, while they both agreed that a person has a right to end their own life, my dad was worried about the consequences Max would face performing that action for Chloe on a legal basis.

I was adamant that this decision be made by them and not me, so I wasn’t going to break the tie by putting “my vote” on the table. Rather, I reminded them that there’s a third “I don’t know” option that can be selected that will allow Chloe to talk more about why she wants this.

My parents agreed and we watched the extra lines of dialogue. My mum was pretty firm on her decision and wouldn’t budge, so I turned to my dad and asked him what he would do if there were no legal consequences to this action. I told him that the game is not going to take us in that direction if we do choose to honour Chloe’s request. My dad thought about this for a moment and said, yes, he would fulfil Chloe’s request if there were no legal ramifications, but in real life, he would find another way to allow Chloe to perform the action herself to end her own life.

Just to make absolute certain, I asked again if they both agreed to Chloe’s request and they agreed firmly.

Returning back to the main timeline, we continued with our investigation into Rachel’s disappearance. Thankfully, unlike last time where I wounded Frank, I took the time to try to figure things out with him and ended up showing my parents the three likely outcomes, Frank and Pompidou dead, Frank wounded and that illusive scenario where everything works out fine. They seemed pretty impressed with the way the game had those scenarios in place.

So, with Frank fine and well and deciding to help us, we headed to see what evidence we could find in Nathan Prescott’s dorm room. It’s at this point that I realise we would have visited Kate by now if she were still alive… *sigh*

While exploring Nathan’s room, I made sure to linger on that photograph he kept of Chloe unconscious on the ground, the same pose that mimicked the one she was in at the end of the Farewell bonus episode. So it’s no surprise that when we were confronted by Nathan while making our escape and Warren stepped in… both my parents were adamant that we let Warren beat the shit out of Nathan.

They tried to hide it, but they were PISSED OFF. My dad firmly told me, “let him beat Nathan” as the decision screen popped up while my mum nodded in agreement. Throughout the entire game, my parents have ended up making all the exact same decisions I made throughout my two playthroughs of Life is Strange… until this point.

In my two earlier playthroughs, despite all the bullshit Nathan was involved with, despite him being a bully and a murderer, as we find out later… I could still see how tortured Nathan was during this point in my playthroughs and I didn’t want to become like him, using his same tactics against him felt wrong to me. However, my parents, having just seen that image of Chloe wanted revenge, and so they got their revenge, using Warren as their tool.

This was the first time my parents and I disagreed on what decision to take during our playthrough of Life is Strange, up till then, every decision they chose aligned with what I did during my original playthroughs. Because of this moment, the thought entered into my mind what they would end up doing with the game’s final decision. I wasn’t sure but the “needs of the many” argument does get thrown around a lot and it wouldn’t surprise me if that’s the way things went. I’d just have to wait and see.

Things came into focus for them as we found the dark room and then Rachel’s burial site at the junkyard. I get the feeling they felt just as pissed off about how things had turned out as Chloe was when we headed into that Vortex Club party. But, they did managed to set aside some of that emotion to warn Victoria Chase about what was going on.

When we got to the end of the fourth episode, my parents were just as shocked as I was the first time I played the game to see Jefferson standing over Max having just killed Chloe. We entered that final episode and they kept silent throughout all of it… they wanted to see this through till the end.

As Max Caulfield and Chloe Price made their way up to that lighthouse and stopped by that cliff-side, having their last moments together before the storm, when that final decision screen paused the game, I put that controller down…

For my parents, it’s been a long road coming up to this finale and I wanted to give them time to think and rationalise their decision. There was a long silence as I waited for them to come up with a decision to make… and finally, my mum spoke up.

She hesitated at first, but said we should save the town, and as she said this, my dad agreed with her. However, I wasn’t about to hit that button immediately based off of this alone. I’ve waited a long time for this final moment and I wanted to know exactly what reasoning they had for this final decision.

So, my dad explained the standard utilitarian approach of the “needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few” which we’ve all heard many times, especially if you’ve seen The Wrath of Khan. We ended up discussing this idea of the “needs of the many” and what that actually meant, especially in the context of choosing the lives of other people over the life of someone you love and care for the most.

As the decision was re-framed, it reminded my parents of exactly what we were doing to save the town, who we were sacrificing. It wasn’t just one life for the many, it was someone they had come to care about in this story spanning many years. My parents fell silent again, thinking further about the difficult choice ahead of them. It wasn’t as simple as they had initially thought and now they were both stuck. Eventually, my dad asked me what I chose, but I smiled and shook my head at him, telling him he’s not going to palm this one off on me and that I already made my choice in my previous playthroughs. No, this time, it was their choice to make, not mine.

Sacrifice an entire town of good people who are just trying to live their lives to save the one you love and care for the most, or sacrifice the one you love and care for the most to save an entire town of good people who are just trying to live their lives.

After a while, my mum spoke up again and said, “On second thought, sacrifice Arcadia Bay.” She was really thinking hard about this.

My dad nodded slowly and I couldn’t tell if he was agreeing with my mum to appease her, as he did slyly answer after her each time, or if he had come to his own determination to the situation. Finally he said that he had come to the point in his life where the most important things to him are the people he cares for the most and that he would do anything to protect them over everyone and everything else in the world.

It’s been a long road…

However, he said that in real life, there are certain moments where you will have to make a snap decision that will challenge this. Whether to save the person right in front of you that you don’t know or save the person you love who is further away. In that moment, you don’t think, you just save whoever is right in front of you.

I agreed with the reasoning of his example, saying that in the moment, when you don’t have time to think and can only act, yes, that would be the proper course to take. However, the decision before us isn’t about making a snap decision. We have time to process this decision and act based on our own moral compass.

Me: “So, what’s it going to be? You have only two options: Sacrifice Chloe or sacrifice Arcadia Bay?”

Mum and Dad: “Sacrifice Arcadia Bay.”

Again, I wasn’t going to press that button until I was sure this is what they wanted, so I asked, “Why?”

My dad answered, saying that if it were my mother, myself or my brother or sister in Chloe’s place, he would choose to sacrifice the town in order to save us. We were the most important people in his life and he would not choose anyone or anything over us. My mum agreed with him.

Again, I asked if they were absolutely sure about this decision. They both said to choose the “Sacrifice Arcadia Bay” option.

Satisfied that they had made up their mind since they did change it initially, I pressed the button… and in doing so, realised that aside from one instance, my parents had just played through the entirety of the first Life is Strange making all the same choices I had made in my first two playthroughs.

For the anomaly, the decision to beat Nathan, that can easily be explained with their emotional reaction at seeing Chloe in that photo and being enraged toward Nathan in comparison to the lesson’s I’ve learned over the years when dealing with bullies. In that case, my life experiences and their emotional reaction clashed, however… for the rest of it…

Every other decision was the same. I suddenly realised that I really am my parent’s child. I’m me because of them.

As we watched the ending scene with Max and Chloe driving out of the destroyed ruins of Arcadia Bay to begin their new lives together, my dad again asked me what decision I had made.

I told him, I chose to sacrifice Arcadia Bay and save Chloe Price in both of my earlier playthroughs of Life is Strange. There is no other choice I would ever make and when I made that decision in my original playthrough of the game, I did so without hesitation, I knew what I had to do.

Of course, the magnitude of the decision wasn’t lost on me. I knew that I would be murdering all the people in Arcadia Bay, including everyone who I had come to care about and support, including Kate Marsh, who I had saved in my first two playthroughs of the game. I remember, during that first playthrough, I instinctively stood up as I made the choice to sacrifice Arcadia Bay, it just seemed like the right thing to do.

From that very moment, I owned that decision to sacrifice the many to save the one I loved and cared for most… and while I’ve already talked about this decision in a previous article…

As I began to explain my decision to my parents, with the context of everything I had just experienced over the course of these two games, something suddenly clicked in my head and I came to realise a lot of things about myself that I hadn’t considered before.

Another moment of reflection

I explained to my parents that while I do believe in doing what is best for the community and society in general, and while I did genuinely care about people like Kate Marsh, there is a point in which the needs of the many DO NOT outweigh the needs of the one when that one is the person you most care about. And while that may seem selfish on the surface, I’ve come to realise that it really isn’t.

The final decision in Life is Strange is all about something very specific for me: Loyalty.

Every discussion I’ve seen about the ending to Life is Strange goes into depth about the morality of choosing the many or the one, basically pitting the utilitarian approach against your emotional connection to the person being sacrificed as to whether to help the many or the one.

For me, it’s about loyalty and what that means to me.

Another morning with you

If someone has managed to earn my loyalty, which is not an easy thing to do, and that person is the one who I love and care for the most, there is no other choice. I will always choose to side with the person I am most loyal to no matter what.

The reason is because if I can’t be there for that person in their darkest hour, even when the entire universe is against them, then what was the purpose of that relationship to begin with? If I can’t commit to that person and protect them when they needed me the most, then everything about that relationship meant nothing and I was just in it to take advantage of them.

That’s why the decision was so easy for me to make. I would never abandon the person I love and care for the most in the entire world for anyone or anything when they have earned my loyalty and commitment. To turn my back on them for any reason would be to say that the relationship we have means NOTHING to me to begin with. It would be the most dire betrayal you could ever cast on them and I can’t stand by and let that happen.

And yes, Chloe does give you an “out” during that last moment in the game. What Dontnod were trying to do with this scene was present you with a completely neutral platform to choose one of those two choices. Whether you think they did this successfully or not isn’t the point, the point is that this is meant to be a choice YOU make based on WHO YOU ARE and not something where the developers are trying to make you choose one option over the other.

I choose to commit to the one I love, to continue to be loyal to them, to place my trust in them and for them to place their trust, loyalty, love and commitment in me.

That’s the other important factor Before the Storm added to this mix for me: Trust.

This isn’t like the blind loyalty Chloe has for Rachel in Before the Storm, where she follows her without question. In order to gain my loyalty and trust, you really need to EARN it, but once you have it… you have it. With that said, that doesn’t mean I’ll do everything the other person wants to do without question. For example, throughout the game, whenever Chloe made unreasonable demands, I turned those demands down and tried to steer her in a better direction. This is in contrast to the relationship Chloe has with Rachel where she simply goes along with whatever Rachel says because she wants to appease her.

Max Caulfield and Chloe Price

Just like how I tried to do good by the people of Arcadia Bay, I’ll try to support that person who I love and care for the most by trying to steer them to do good for others for their own sake… but ultimately, when it comes to that choice of choosing the world or that person you love and care for the most… the world can burn in hell. No questions, no hesitation. I do genuinely care about Kate Marsh and tried my best to make a difference for her, but when it comes to her or the person I care for the most, she loses, just like everyone else.

As flowery as that may sound, that really isn’t what I’m going for when I say all of that. It is a matter of whether the relationships you form mean anything to you or not and whether you are willing to do what it takes to protect the one you love the most even if it means forsaking everyone else… and that’s where we go back to the revelation I had back when we were discussing the end of Before the Storm regarding the truth.

If you are to commit to someone, to be loyal to them and love and care about them that much, then the truth is paramount in that relationship. You must be able to trust each other completely in everything you do and every decision you make for each other. That’s why, when I started to take ownership of the decision I thought Chloe would make at the end of Before the Storm and tried to justify it, I felt ashamed of myself. In not upholding that truth, I went against everything I believe in and it disturbed me greatly that such a thing could happen so easily. It reminded me that even when you are so confident about your own principles, you need to stay vigilant.

Trust is essential to loyalty because if you are ever put into the position where you have to choose between the world or the one you love and care for the most, that person needs to trust you in the decision you make for their sake. In the case of the ending for Life is Strange, Chloe did give Max an “out” as I said before, but she also didn’t want Max to abandon her like she had felt so many other people had done so before in her life. It was hard earned over the course of those five episodes for Max, but Chloe trusted Max to make the decision she felt was the right one to make, no matter which choice it ends up being.

It’s those two things, loyalty and trust, that I saw shining through in this most recent playthrough of the Arcadia Bay instalments of Life is Strange.

And as I type all of this up, I’m aware that a lot of people reading this part are probably asking themselves what the hell I’m talking about and why this even matters. The reason this matters to me is because it’s part of my belief structure, and the reason I’m articulating it here is because Life is Strange has brought this part of my belief structure out into my conscious mind where I’m starting to make sense of it all.

For other people, they’ll find something else about themselves from this game that is specific to them… for me, I’ve determined what’s most important to me and why those things are so damned important.

That’s the power these kinds of games have, and I fucking love it.

Farewell Arcadia Bay…

…at least, that’s what I thought until I started typing up this entry. Turns out, there are plans for a comic series of Life is Strange based around Arcadia Bay… and I don’t really know how I feel about that. For me, this series is so good because of the medium in which it’s presented. It’s the interactive nature of video games that makes the stories told in Arcadia Bay so “transcendent” as it were, so reading a comic book series doesn’t really sound all that appealing to me.

I dunno, maybe I’ll be proven wrong and something interesting will come out of it, who knows.

What I do know is that Dontnod and Deck Nine both did an exceptional job at adding something special to the medium of video games and I for one appreciate the hell out of all the effort put into it all. It’s definitely not a game series for everyone, but for those of us who do enjoy it, it’s going to be pretty hard to top, especially with Life is Strange 2 in our future.

It was hard enough to capture lightning in a bottle twice over, can it be done a third time? Whatever Dontnod Entertainment does with Life is Strange 2, I wish them well on making it a good story that further challenges the nature of video games as we know it. I also hope Vampyr works out well for them too… I know I have it pre-ordered already. Oh, and I’m also eager to see what Deck Nine has in store for their future as well.

Both of these developers have done a hell of a job. Thanks for making this series come alive for me and so many others. Life is Strange and Before the Storm are both up there in my list of favourite video games of all time.

And, there goes another brutally long article, if you made it this far, congratulations, I guess. Seems like you’re so much of a fan of Life is Strange that you’ll consume absolutely everything related to it no matter what. I don’t know if that’s admirable or a cause for concern…

Max, you don’t look so good…

Either way, I hope you enjoyed this two-part “Farewell Arcadia Bay” article series. Whether you agree with my views or not, I know I had a really good time writing these articles and getting my thoughts out there. These games are brilliant examples of media that opens the door to having discussions about topics people wouldn’t normally talk about, and I hope I’ve managed to contribute something to that discussion.

Thanks for taking the time to read my articles.