#lis comic

After watching the trailer for the newest installment in the Life is Strange franchise I couldn't help but notice that it seems... familiar or at least similar to another piece of media in the Life is Strange franchise. Like the quote above, the game seems to follow the story of Max once more as she tries to save another friend from death. Had they not revealed who the friend was so early, I would have thought it to be Chloe, but it's a woman named Safi.

As the trailer continues to play, we see Max mourn Safi and visits a memorial for her. It's at this memorial where things take a weird turn of events.

Max begins hearing her voice and eventually learns she can visit parallel timelines.

This is the part where the trailer gets familiar. Like I had seen this before in a watered down way. It took me a bit of time, but then I realized I had seen Max go through this before. Max Caulfield has traveled through timelines; through different realities in the Life is Strange comics.

(Now I will fully admit that I haven't finished reading the comic series, but I have gotten a couple volumes and what I have read it's a bit of a mess.) And if you have read the comics you know that it's debated among the fans whether or not the comic series is canon or not given how loose it follows the games. For those who don't know the comics, it takes place a year after The Storm. The comic follows the Bae route with Max and Chloe in Seattle with new friends. They're all watching the news and given it's the anniversary of the towns destruction, that's what the focus is on. It's in this first issue that the first sign of trouble is seen. Max is slipping back into different timelines. She is loosing control of her power.

So the two go back to Arcadia Bay where Max continues to have trouble staying in the correct timeline. (There's more, but I don't want to spoil too much of the comic series. Also I eventually wanna do a deep dive into them.) Now there are differences between the trailer's storyline and the comic's, the first one is that it seems Max is in control in the game. Although it's the similarity of jumping between timelines that have me so invested in what little we saw of the new trailer.

Obviously Deck Nine is going to touch upon the jumping timelines given that was mentioned in the trailer, but to what extent? I believe it might follow a bit of the comic with Max loosing control, unless they decide to lean more into the narrative of the mystery like they did with True Colors. The later seems like the route they'll go, but given that we are focusing on Max again it would be almost disloyal to the fans to not touch upon the past and only remain in her "present" past. Ultimately I just hope that while we have the mystery of this new character that the story doesn't feel disjointed like it did in True Colors and Before the Storm.