One of the biggest complaints Iâve heard regarding the story of the first LIS game ever since it came out is that both Bae and Bay endings nullify the choices the player made and therefore basically render the whole point/appeal of the game obsolete.
Iâve been thinking about it lately though, and I disagree.
While itâs true that the game couldâve given more weight to certain choices rather than creating an illusion of importance, I donât think the endings are an issue here or undermine the message of the game. If anything I think they support it.
I think we can all agree that the main message of the first LIS game is, among other things, growing as a person, taking responsibility for your actions, facing your issues head on and moving on. While many people donât make it sound like it, I believe that both endings embody that in their own way, it just depends what kind of Max you play/become.
But Iâm talking about the storm and final choice presented themselves. In a game where at the end you must choose between rewinding all the way back to the beginning and not commit the first action which kicks off the story and letting a tornado tear down an entire town filled with people you went through hell and back to help or save, itâs evident how someone can feel like the game about choices and consequences is being hypocritical.
But do your choices truly not matter with the storm?
More under the cut
Afterall, whatever Max chooses doesnât change the fact that the things that happenedâŚ. Happened. Even in the rewind ending. Because either way all of those choices, interactions and experiences changed Max as a person and taught her important lessons. The choice you make by the end is still informed by those things and not made in a vacuum. And just that is enough to show that the choices you made in LIS continue to matter. But I can find other reasons too.
In the Bae ending, Max keeps her relationship with Chloe (no we donât talk about Double Exposure in this household I have my grievances with it) which is really the thing she traded the town for. Chloe also experienced what Max did and witnessed her choices and their consequences, so that alone means that whatever you did in that game still had an impact even with the town reduced to nothing. Furthermore, in LIS 2 itâs basically confirmed that there were survivors with Davidâs cameo. In fact, heâs someone who was impacted by Maxâs choices in one way or another.
As for Bay, youâd think that following the logic I just explained, the opposite is true for this ending. Nobody remembers anything Max did before her big rewind, hell, Chloe doesnât even get to *meet* her. And yet, through the montage of pictures we can see what Maxâs adventure changed in this timeline, namely Mark and Nathan being brought to justice, which is pretty big considering that in the other ending itâs not really as black and white. Max was probably able to help Kate more in this ending as well.
At the end of the day, whatever choice you make, it remains aligned with Maxâs development which centres around responsibility and moving on, accepting consequences of choices and learning to live with them. In both endings Max lives with her choices, no matter how bitter the outcomes are. She probably wouldnât have been able to do that without the events of the game.
While I can see why some people feel betrayed or tricked by the game, or like the endings were cheap cop outs, I believe that it gets us to reflect on what makes a choice or action âmeaningfulâ.
Honestly, and maybe this is a tad pretentious, but I feel like we could compare these endings/the storm to death itself. We all die eventually, including everyone weâve ever known, and very few of us are politicians, celebrities, or anything of the sort so weâll be forgotten a lot quicker and probably wonât have a huge impact on the world in the grand scheme of things. Thatâs where the question âWhat is lifeâs meaning?â comes from, no?
But despite this, does it really mean that our choices and experiences just donât matter? Was our time here a waste? Is this some big paradox of the human experience?
I believe that with Maxâs story, weâre (maybe unintentionally) driven to ponder these questions. Which is fitting for a game called Life Is Strange.
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Life is Strange, Bury Your Gays, and Bullshit Endings
In the face of the coming super-storm, I spent the spare moments between making preparations to finish up Life is Strangeâcoincidentally, a game about a storm. Seeing as Before the Storm just began coming out, now is probably as good as any time to analyze this game.
It is, at its heart, is a story about two girls falling in love. Letâs get that cleared up right off the bat. We have Max, who just moved back from Seattle to Arcadia Bay and is pursuing photography at Blackwell Academy. We have Chloe, a punk rebel whose father died and who was left behind by Max without so much as a call or text in 5 years. Max gets a vision of a monster tornado in class, heads to the bathroom, takes a picture of a butterfly, and gets time manipulation powers that she uses to save Chloeâs life.
From there, the story becomes a quest to find out what happened with Rachel, a âfriendâ of Chloeâs that went missing. Thereâs a mystery with why Nathan is drugging other girls and with Frank the drug dealer and his relationship to Rachel. Chloe and Max work together as partners in time as Max saves Chloeâs life over and over again. Itâs all fine and funâuntil Episode 4 and 5.
We find out Nathan killed Rachel, that the photography professor Jefferson has been posing the drugged girls in some sick photo session and that heâs been using Nathan, and in Episode 5 things get really intense as we find out the major plot twist of the game: the powers Max has been using has been causing the storm and to save the town of Arcadia Bay, you have to let Chloe die in the bathroom.
You have two choices: sacrifice Arcadia Bay or sacrifice Chloe.
So the ending is a mess. It received backlash from both critics and fans. Even just attempting to look up the ending I didnât play ended up in dozens of results that were venting their displeasure. Why? The idea of the storm being caused by Maxâs own power and messing with the time stream is an interesting idea enough. Maybe this could work in a different story. However, this is not that story.
From the set-up, we are given a few questions besides those of the main plot: Where did these powers come from? Why did Max receive them? What are they for? What is Rachelâs goal as she shows up in repeated symbolism? What is causing the storm?
The problem with the ending is not only that itâs an unnecessary and rather frustrating example of the âbury your gaysâ trope but also that it leads to more questions than it answers.
What is causing the storm? Maxâs powers.
Where did these powers come from? Rachel? A butterfly? If so, then that leads to
What are they for? If they are connected to Rachel, and they were given to Max at a time where Chloeâs life is in danger, then itâs to protect Chloe.
 But if those two are correct, then why does the ending insist that that is the wrong path to take? Why is it so adamant that Max shouldâve never used her powers? Because if she shouldâve never saved Chloe, why did she get those powers in the first place?
I would like to return to a previous point: the fact that this story is one of two girls falling in love.
Chloe and Max grow closer and closer throughout the course of the game. By Episode 5, Max is utterly obsessed with saving Chloe so much so that she throws away an ideal reality just to get another shot at saving her. Throughout the entire game, her one priority is Chloeâs happiness and survival. And even though the player has the option to romance Warren, why would they? They barely get any time together in the game and the two women are a much more interesting story and dynamic.
So could this story be one of the hubris of not being able to accept fate, not being able to accept death? Completely. Thereâs just one big problemâthe beginning of the game starts out with Max seeing a vision of the tornado and then receiving her powers. So the audience is convinced the powers are supposed to be used to prevent this and it being linked to Rachel reinforces this. So the plot twist that the powers caused the tornado is shocking, but less in that âOh man, the foreshadowing makes so much sense! How did I not see that coming?â but more in a ââŚWait, what?â way.
You see, if the powers were the cause of the storm, then why did she have the vision before she got them? What was the purpose of receiving of them? To save Chloe? Then why does the game seem to be disappointed in you if you do? What about Rachel?
What was the point of this game? With the reveal of this plot twist, it seems the point was that you shouldnât have played the game at all.
Endings should wrap things up in a satisfying enough way. Thereâs something to be said about leaving some plot threads loose and up to the audienceâs imagination. Instead Life is Strange gives its players a half-woven sweater and says âHere, you fill in the holes we didnât.â
Itâs, plot wise, the inferior ending. Yet, the ending where you save Chloe isnât nearly as long. They show about 20 seconds of them driving through town where everyone seems dead, which is insane, because surely theyâve faced storms before. Theyâre clearly upset. They donât show any snapshot of a hopeful future like the other ending does, which is better done and at least tries to give a sense of closure. Itâs infuriating. The game seems to want one to take the ending where Chloe dies and Arcadia Bay survives yet itâs essentially the ending that goes against everything the game has been setting up.
It also seems to imply that Chloe has to die for the storm to not come. Yet, Chloe dies in Episode 4 briefly and the storm is still coming. In the Save Arcadia Bay ending Max still uses her knowledge of the future to prevent Jefferson from hurting any more girls. So why canât she just save Chloe? It doesnât make sense. Itâs a contrived mess just so that the player has to choose between an entire town and Chloe. Itâs âbury your gaysâ at its worse.
This was supposed to be the hardest choice of the game. As a player, I agonized over every decision, no matter how small. I would sit there, mapping out consequences and reactions. Yet, with the big conclusion that was supposed to elicit that reaction I found that it was, in fact, the easiest choice of the game. Max wouldnât let Chloe die and neither would I. The writers failed in that.
Alright, with a few changes and rearranging we can make this a game where the protagonist gets powers and abuses them to save their loved one yet has to eventually accept that they must die. However, should we make this that game?
This is a game, at its core, about two women falling in love. Yet, one of the endings results in Chloe dying on the bathroom floor, alone, never knowing that she would come to find such a friend and lover in Max. It is a miserable, depressing ending that makes no sense in the context of what the game has established.
Putting aside the narrative mess, itâs cruel and disturbing that the game insists that these two were drawn together by fate yet cannot be together. Rachel is discovered to be dead, who was in a previous relationship with Chloe, and then Chloe is dead as well? How many gays will they bury?
Itâs unfair that the heterosexual relationship that was only added for what? Options? is allowed to have a happy ending. Max repeatedly establishes she isnât interested in him throughout the course of the game. Yet, this beautiful set-up with the two leading ladies must end in tragedy.
It becomes even more infuriating that only in the ending where Chloe dies do they actually kiss and confess their feelings. In the other ending it is left more ambiguous as to what that relationship is which is horribly unfair seeing as the straight couple got their kiss regardless of whatever decision one makes. So after all that build-up, one either gets a tragic kiss as Max leads Chloe to her death or a silent and ambiguous ending as they drive out of what used to be Arcadia Bay.
Their queer audience deserves better and Max and Chloe deserve better.
 It would be bad even if it made sense within the narrative. However, it sticking out like a sore thumb in terms of not making sense is a lot worse. She didnât die because she had to but because the writers attempted oh so desperately to shove it in. They wanted a dark, edgy twist on the ending which couldâve been accomplished without this. Episode 5, while being the most interesting on a game-play level, was the worse on a narrative level.
It couldâve been a game focused around the fact that no one is expendable. No one should be sacrificed. It shouldâve had those two endings, each with Chloe surviving.
This is a blog about representation. Life is Strange is so difficult and heart-wrenching because of the fact that it had the potential to be so much more. I can only recommend it with a huge asterisk regarding the ending and how Episode 5 played out. Thereâs something to be said about giving the audience a choice but itâs really hard to overlook the narrative crumbling around each choice. Before the Storm is a prequel to this that seems to be focused around Rachel and Chloeâs relationship, which we already know ends terribly. Letâs hope theyâre somewhat smarter about that.
Perhaps the storm truly is Rachelâs revenge on Arcadia Bay. At least, after playing through it, I know Iâd burn the town into a big black disk as well.
Yes, itâs âselfishâ in a numbers sense, but can we actually think about her family?? Their lives are mentioned often, but not how their lives would be, because...
Joyce, who has already lost her husband and who always wanted to see her daughter flourish....finds out she was shot dead in a bathroom after getting involved with serious shit. Maybe David improves after his success, but does he really learn to be as open and caring as he did after Max and Chloe? Does he tell her that he should be more truthful with her and more trusting of her?
David, who has honestly fucked up, but loves his family. He âsucceedsâ in the the sacrifice Chloe ending--he proves himself, but his new daughter is dead. They never made up. Chloe never gets to find out he was sorry and was going to therapy to be better for her and her mom.
Max, poor Max, who has been saving everyone, whether it was literally or from being an asshole with no real friends or both, loses her best friend and love. Without being able to apologize for going silent all those years, without being able to tell Chloe that, actually, she loves her. She gets Chloeâs things from Joyce...is Chloeâs journal in there? The ones with all the letters she never sent to her? Max, who would give up her huge success in San Francisco for Chloe, loses her. She has to be there, in the bathroom as sheâs shot, and canât tell her any of this or how much she means to her.
Everyone grows into better people (except Jefferson, who can go to Hell) and while that would surely still happen in the sacrifice Chloe ending, it still happens in the sacrifice the Bay ending. Maybe itâs optimistic, but itâs not like a tornado is an auto-death either. But more importantly than that, none of them would die like Chloe did--before growing and learning how much they mattered.
I picked Bae over Bay and I just canât bring myself to regret it.
Life is Strange (Original) Spoilers for whole game.
Why (to me) Bae>Bay is the best ending for Life Is Strange (Original Game).Â
I know it's like over a year after its release but my interest in this game never died, I was waiting for a good time to post this and with before the storm coming out periodically over the next few months and the annoucement that s2 is in the works, here it is.Â
I presume if you decided to click on this post, you have played the original Life is Strange until the very end of episode five. I also presume you are very angry at the game for only having two direct endings: Saving Arcadia Bay or Saving Chloe, Maxâs implied Girlfriend or best friend depending on the decisions made throughout the 5 episodes. Here I will say my reasons for believing the best ending for Life is Strange is saving Chloe, you may agree or disagree itâs a free world. This is just my opinion.
It makes most of the game you just finished completely non-canon. I know this is a very selfish reason. But do we as players, who just devoted a lot of time to this game, really want everything that we just played to not exist in the world of the game? It has been heavily implied by the developers that completely resetting the timeline back to Chloe dying in the bathroom also affects Max, causing her to forget the week that could have existed. As a player that extremely irks me that Max will not be the same Max that we shaped during our gameplay.
Put yourself in Maxâs shoes. Imagine yourself standing on a cliff beside someone you love whether romantically or platonically. You are the one deciding to kill someone you love. Can you really say wholeheartedly that you would sacrifice them? In its essence, human nature is very selfish. In my opinion, you are one of the kindest people in the world if you could sacrifice someone so close to you for people you barely know. Even if you do prefer the bay>bae ending you must admit that the bae>bay ending is slightly more realistic for Max as a character.
This ending is much more open-ended for fan interpretation. This is very much a personal thing, I personally much prefer stories that give very open endings so that the fans can decide what their own canon ending is. I find the Bay>Bae ending much more constricting. Especially as someone who likes to write and play with different ideas in stories. You can imagine this ending to be as weirdly happy or sad as you want. (my own canon ending for lis is for another day and for after before the storm has finished in case I want to revise it)
A big argument against the bae>bay ending is the fate of Mark Jefferson being unknown compared to in the bay>bae ending in which he is arrested for his crimes and assumed to receive jail time. There is a chance he dies in the storm however that is not guaranteed as the game never shows how far the barn is from Arcadia Bay. Also, if he was in the bunker during the storm he would easily survive it. You see as Max never goes to the party in the canon October 11th, does Mark stay at the party until the storm starts to come or does he take someone else (probably Victoria) back to the dark room instead of his planned victim, Max? But no matter what happens to him during the storm, Max and Chloe can still report what they âbelieveâ the barn to be, leading the cops to countless evidence against Jefferson. The only barrier would be getting into the bunker and hoping the cops do believe Max and Chloe which I think they would. (they are white after all)
Lastly, I believe the death of Chloe, a canon queer character is unfair to many of the wlw who decided to play Life is Strange due to the possibility of seeing a canon wlw relationship in a pretty popular game. Especially as the #BuryYourGays trope was very strong in 2015.
The only thing I do see as a complete downside to this ending is obvious; the destruction of Arcadia Bay and the deaths it would cause. Although, as I said earlier this ending is very open and the shots we do get off Arcadia Bay do not show it completely destroyed, very damaged but not entirely gone. The chance is slim for survivors but still possible.
The deciding factor for myself when I originally played Life is Strange Episode 5 back when it was first released was the fact that in the situation Max was in I would without hesitation choose someone I love, however selfish that would make me.
Iâd love your opinions. I would prefer no fighting over this though, this is just my opinion.
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a tiny detail but i hate that chloe calls max âmaxineâ at the end because max doesnât like being called that but it chloe calling her that makes it seem like its fine and itâs not a plot hole but g*d they couldnât even stay consistent about that