XP: Life is Strange Episode 2

[This post has been edited to include a link to the documentary trailer, and with the real statistic of the risk of sexual assault. The statistic I put earlier was a placeholder which I forgot to change.]

Carrying on with the next episode! I might throw in a random “What I Saw” TV show blog post in between these gaming XP posts, so if you’re dying to read my thoughts on all the twists and turns of this game you might end up having to wait even longer. Although given my track record for coming out with posts regularly, I may just be bullshitting. I keep forgetting to add spoilers warning, and the synopsis is largely spoiler free so that is your rubicon if you want to play the game first.


Episode 1

What I played:

Life is Strange Episode2: Out of Time
The school is buzzing with a viral video of Kate making out with a bunch of random guys in a “Vortex Club” party. Max proves to Chloe that her rewind power is real and Chloe insists they test out her powers and mess around with shooting a gun in the junkyard. Frank crashes their party and makes it clear he wants his money, and Chloe confronts him on where he got Rachel’s bracelet, which he is wearing. Chloe almost dies, again, by getting her foot caught in train tracks. Back at Blackwell Academy, Kate can no longer stand the shame of the viral video. An unscheduled eclipse occurs, giving a really dark omen about what impact Max’s meddling with time is really having.

What I experienced:

Now that all the characters and plot have been introduced, the story starts to take more shape. Bullying takes center stage as Max wakes up the next day and finds the entire school is talking about a viral video of Kate, the devout Christian, at a “Vortex Club” making out with several guys. Victoria seems like she is the mastermind behind the video, and she writes down the link to the video on the bathroom mirror to help make it even more viral. When Max talks to Kate she reveals that she doesn’t remember much from the party, and the last thing she remembered was having one sip of wine offered to her by Nathan. The only thing she remembers after that is Nathan taking her some place that was all white like a hospital, but it wasn’t one. Chloe had admitted at the very end of the first episode she had partied with Nathan and felt like she had been drugged but she got away before anything happened; whereas Kate was not so lucky.

The premise for the episode is very sensitive, where it is obvious that Kate was drugged and therefore easily influenced to do something she wouldn’t normally do: like allow herself to be kissed by other men. This episode raised awareness for an issue that may be well known to all but spoken about by only a few. Women face a very real threat for sexual assault in college campuses across the U.S. There is a documentary, The Hunting Grounds, which covers just how widespread the problem is. And the threat of sexual assault isn’t only on college campuses. Statistics show that 25% of women in college will experience some type of sexual assault in their lifetime. Bringing such a serious issue up in a videogame is a very brave thing to do, even if the creators did blunt the severity of assault by not having it be full on rape. Although just to be clear, ANY kind of physical contact when in a condition that leaves a person unable to give consent is wrong. It’s just I feel it is a rarity that it stops before it reaches rape unless the perpetrator is interrupted, and as depressing as it would have been I think it would give a really big acknowledgement of what really happens to women if they had a character experience that level of trauma. The lessons are: Ladies, don’t ever take a drink that you yourself did not prepare or see get prepared (if from a bartender). Men, don’t be fucking assholes and drug/assault women!

Moving on, you can choose to encourage Kate to report being drugged or discourage her, since by now Max has been informed by the principal her report of Nathan bringing a gun to school is being ignored due to his rich family’s connections. Justice is a hard thing to come by for sexual assault victims, and most never even get reported. Kate still feels a little down no matter what you choose to do, and while the episode climax is related to Kate, all roads leading out of the climax are not the same and have a really big impact on the tone of the story.

Max meets Chloe’s mom, Joyce, at the diner that she still works at and they have a nice little heart to heart about how much Chloe has changed over the 5 years. The death of Chloe’s father and Joyce remarrying a paranoid army veteran has caused Chloe to rebel on all fronts, even though the only enemy she is fighting is herself. Joyce represents every parent’s struggle to see their child grow into a happy and responsible adult. Joyce asks Max to be a more positive influence on her daughter, because the reality is teenagers respond more to their peers than to their parents.

While talking to Chloe after she arrives you are given a choice to answer Kate’s phone call or ignore it as they are about to leave the diner. Chloe gets mad if you answer the call, even though she has no idea what is going on with Kate at the moment. I think that moment highlighted the fact that people make assumptions on what they know, and its hard for people to imagine the world outside their own bubble. This is how people get classified as an “other” in our society, which I have mentioned quite a bit in my posts on The Walking Dead. Humans have a limited scope to care about others, and if someone is not within the clan they are not someone worth worrying about. Once we get to know the person, however, they no longer are an “other” and we realize we are more similar than not. But to Chloe, anyone outside of her definition of family (Joyce, her dad, Max, and Rachel Amber) are classified as other and not worth bothering about.

After Max proves to Chloe that her powers are real through some impossible predictions, she whisks Max away again to her and Rachel Amber’s hideout: the junkyard. There Chloe has Max tests her powers while messing around with a gun she stole from her step-dad, David. Max blacks out after rewinding so many times, and when she wakes up a drug dealer whom Chloe owes money crashes their shenanigans. Chloe notices the drug dealer, Frank, is wearing one of Rachel Amber’s bracelets and confronts him; however he pulls a knife out and Max, who is holding the gun at the time, has to choose between shooting or not. The gun doesn’t fire even if you choose to shoot, but the consequence is either keep the gun or have Frank take it when you fail to pull the trigger. There is another consequence, but it doesn’t occur until a later episode.

Max saves Chloe yet again after they mess around the train tracks and Chloe somehow gets caught on the track. You use her rewind to keep the oncoming train from pancaking her friend until you figure out a way to rescue her. This left me with a feeling like fate itself was trying to kill Chloe, and that thought is kind of a theme for the rest of the story. How much of what we do is fate, and how much is really up to us? Depending on your philosophy, either we have free-will but it doesn’t matter anyways because the world will keep doing it’s own thing (existentialism), how do you even define what choice really is (metaphysics), or we’re just the universe’s play thing (religion).

Upon returning to class Max interacts with her classmates more, and you can choose to keep up the mean girls war with the Vortex Club or befriend one of it’s members. The consequence of that action doesn’t become known until a later episode. Then there is Warren, where Max is given more opportunity to give mixed signals by thinking he is cute when helping him to complete his science lab, or just ignoring him and letting him fail. You also talk to the science teacher, who is heading a petition to block the installation of surveillance cameras around the campus because it would give the school a prison like feel. You can agree with or debate with the teacher on the pros and cons of surveillance, which I thought brought a nice change from the white hipster liberal vibe of the story overall.

Surveillance is usually framed as the state conducting surveillance on it’s citizens, and the citizens have to decide just how much privacy they are willing to give up for the sake of security. Post 9/11 the public was clamoring for more security no matter the cost. It has been more recent that the public has begun to question just how much access to information the government should really have on all of us. But now with smartphones, surveillance has been flipped around where the citizens can now monitor the state. The Black Lives Matter movement has resulted from the citizens casting surveillance on the police and their brutality against black citizens. Basically, the debate on surveillance can be left open ended because it really does depend on how it is being used.

Right before class begins Max witnesses Mr. Jefferson and Kate having a serious discussion and Kate walked away upset. Mr. Jefferson’s tone is somewhat accusatory and unlike his usual self. Victoria and Nathan both act like bitches and give Max a warning to not rock the status quo of the privileged. Like I said in the previous post, there is no escaping the bitchiness part of Victoria, even if she acts nicer after you give her a moment. But once Mr. Jefferson starts his lecture it gets interrupted with the announcement of Kate being on the dorm rooftop about to jump to her death.

GaLm experiencing the episode climax.

This climactic moment is one of the best that I have experienced in a game. Many action oriented games try to create the feeling of an epic moment through music, explosions, cheesy dialogue and constantly changing camera angles. This moment was climactic in the simple fact that Max has basically drained her rewind power, and whatever decisions you make cannot be taken back. A mechanic that is the core part of the game is removed from the player, and it is up to the player’s skill and memory to talk this young girl.

There are two outcomes: say all the right things and she comes down on her own, or say one wrong thing and she jumps to her death. In my first playthrough, I said all the right things except for one thing at the end because I couldn’t remember if she had all brothers or all sisters (it had been two weeks since I had played the first half of the episode so I drew a blank on that detail). I stuck with that mistake because I didn’t want to take away the impact of not being able to rewind in that moment. But, I will say that it was not a smooth experience because she was sounding so hopeful throughout the whole interaction but kept dramatically refusing to come down until the third or fourth dialogue choice. The second playthrough I remembered and talked her down, and got to see what changed in the story afterwards.

The funny thing is I failed to talk Kate down even though that is my current profession. I work at a crisis mental health center. It is literally my job to keep people from suicide (and I’m happy to say my track record is much better than with Kate). Since it is my profession, I can talk quite a bit on the matter but I will try to keep it short.

There’s a saying out there that is cliché but also very true; suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem. What drives people to it is people feel that their raison d’etre, their ikigai, their reason for existing in this world, has been taken away from them. For Kate, her reason for being was living her life according to her morality of being a chaste girl and being able to represent her family honorably. The slutty act of making out with random guys and the shame of having it all on video meant she had no more reasons to live. When a person thinks they have lost their purpose their, loss becomes their reason to die; but on the flip side, if they were to somehow be able to gain it back it also becomes their reason to live. Usually it just takes time, some effort, and maybe a new perspective, but they can regain what it is they felt they have lost, even if it’s not exactly the same as it was before. Suicide is a difficult subject to broach with someone, so if you know of anyone who needs help you can call the National Suicide Prevention line at 1-800-273-8255.

Before the episode ends, you make one more decision when the principal drags everyone involved in the incident with Kate into his office. He is basically searching for someone to blame, and leaves it up to Max to decide between Mr. Jefferson, Nathan, and David who is head of security. Nathan is obviously an asshole, David is a paranoid and had confronted Kate about something in episode 1, and Mr. Jefferson had that shady moment right before she went to the roof. Nathan was the obvious choice I went for in round 1, but I chose Mr. Jefferson for round 2 for reasons you will learn by the end of episode 4. Basically whoever you chose is kicked out of Blackwell Academy, but you don’t really spend any time in class afterwards so it is not that impactful plot-wise.

The episode ends with Max and Warren witnessing an unscheduled solar eclipse. The eclipse is used to show that all of Max’s messing with time is having a cosmic impact on time itself, even if it isn’t all that clear how. The butterfly is flapping it’s wings and it’s tearing the whole world apart. I think at this point Max has also spotted dead birds all over Arcadia Bay, which is another sign the universe is getting really messed up. Those events segue into the next episode title of Chaos Theory, which basically is a mathematical interpretation of the butterfly effect.

In conclusion, the title of the episode fit really well, once again. Max runs out of time to rewind due to messing with her powers too much. Kate almost (or if you mess up) runs out of time in her own way. I really liked how the game took on these heavy issues that are sadly all too common in adolescent life. I also liked how they came up with a reason for not being able to rewind take back whatever outcome happens with Kate. It didn’t feel like it was a bullshit reason that Max’s powers stopped working and I was immersed in the experience. I probably really like this game because it gets darker and darker as it progresses, because usually it makes for a really interesting story. While there is a lot of heavy stuff in this post, I will ask you something lighter. What was the most epic moment you ever experienced in a videogame? Let me know in the comments!