Spoiler warning: If you have not played the game, or at the very least read my previous reviews, steer clear of this review until after you have done so. You have been warned!
Here we are again, folks! It’s time to bring back that sense of déja vu once more with the fourth episode of Life Is Strange – Dark Room. Dark Room begins about an hour after where we left off in Chaos Theory with Max and Chloe walking (er… rolling?) along the beach in the alternate timeline that was created when Max saved Williams life. Max, much to my annoyance, seems to want to blend in with this reality as much as possible, leaving me behind the keyboard screaming “Ask her about this! Ask her about that!” for an infuriating few minutes before you finally get some answers. Not only is Chloe in a wheelchair now, but her father is alive and her mother had never remarried. What’s more, once you arrive back at Chloe’s house, we find out the family is swimming in debt, so much so that they’re about to lose their house. Plus, to top it all off, Chloe’s condition is worsening. She can no longer control anything in her body, and her lungs are getting weaker indicating that she will very soon die a very slow and painful death by suffocation. After a night of movies and bonding, you wake up, get Chloe’s morphine injector for her and then decide if you want to put her out of her misery.
It was at this point that I literally had to stop and say “Nope, not doing it. Not playing any more!” This isn’t the first time we’ve had the life of a character in our hands, having to prevent Kate’s suicide 2 episodes previously. But Kate wasn’t a choice so much as an obligation. You felt you needed to save her because that’s what was right, but how do you decide what’s right when your best friend is literally asking you to help them OD on morphine, and your refusal could mean an even more painful death down the line? It’s not simple, or easy or even fair, but it’s the very first choice of this episode, and I tried thinking of everything I could to avoid having to make it. In the end I chose not to help her, as I was praying I would get the option to look at her birthday photos and say “Hey, maybe wait on that first test drive, huh?” But that was impossible, since Max wasn’t there, and instead we’re forced to go back in time and end William’s life in a car crash instead.
This action returns us to our original timeline, wherein Chloe and Max are still on the hunt for any clues linking Nathan Prescott to Kate’s drugging and Rachel Amber’s disappearance. This starts off with a visit to Kate Marsh, assuming you saved her, and shows her as alive and well on the road to recovery. It’s a brief pause in the mystery just to let you know that you did good, kid. Something that was much needed in light of the absolutely awful decisions you were just forced to make. After that pit stop, you’re sent back to the campus dorms to break into Nathan’s room and search for clues. Nathan’s room may as well be the American Psycho: High School Years setting. It’s not only incredibly dark and disturbing, but it’s loaded to the nines with expensive stuff. If that doesn’t tell you where the rest of this story is going, then I won’t spoil it. Suffice to say there’s a bunker filled with photography equipment and pictures of kidnapped girls, and Mark Jefferson is most definitely evil.
As you can probably tell from my review of the previous episode, the ending left a lot of unanswered questions for everyone who played it, such as: What’s going on with Kate? Why did Williams death affect my popularity? And how the ever loving fuck did it land Chloe in a wheelchair?! What’s happening?! What year is it!? And so on. But rest assured, dear readers, for the good folks over at DONTNOD are more than happy to answer… almost none of those. We do find out that William bought Chloe a car for her birthday, resulting in an accident that left her paralysed, but a lot of the other stuff is still a big bright question mark taunting my curiosity and making me wish I’d had just a little more time to explore the alternate reality I’d created. I wanted to find out why I was in the popular group, what information could I get being in the in
crowd, and why was I suddenly dressing as if I’d had access to a Swiss bank account? None of these questions got answered, which is slightly disappointing.
Though in fairness, my curiosity and the lack of answers in this game is what keeps me coming back. The entire thing is a big fat mystery that just drags you deeper and deeper until everything is so dark you can’t even see where you started. And believe me, this story does get dark very, very fast. Over the course of the series we’ve dealt with issues such as teen angst, bullying, suicide and disability. No one ever said this was the happy fun time game full of sunshine and rainbows. When I opened the bunker I may as well have walked into an episode of Dexter. I’ll say it right now, we all knew something awful was happening with those binders, and as far as Jefferson being evil, all I have to say is I FUCKING CALLED IT! But seriously, how are we getting out of this next one? We’re drugged, probably bound, in the middle of goddamn nowhere, probably about to be raped and murdered while a tornado is on the way to wipe out anyone who could have possibly saved us. It’s not exactly filling me with hope here.
Speaking of things that I totally called, you may have noticed yourself how much foreshadowing has gone on this episode. For example, did you catch how many times Max has said “Don’t count on my rewind”? It’s a lot, in case you didn’t know. In fact, the series so far has gone above and beyond to make sure we know how fallible Max’s powers really are. Despite everyone around you saying how great you are, be it for saving Kate or simply using your power for anything involving Chloe, Max is anything but a super hero the majority of the time. Her powers have failed on numerous occasions, and caused more trouble in Chaos Theory than they helped solve. The game has been conditioning you for four episodes not to trust your powers, and setting up a perfect fall in terms of Chloe’s final moments. Now, that’s not to say that it won’t come back for a daring rescue, probably at the cost of Max’s wellbeing, but for the moment let’s assume that Chloe is as dead as she would be in the alternate timeline.
Flawed but exciting pen-ultimate episode.
So that more or less sums it up, folks. I won’t tell you to buy the game or not, ’cause let’s face it, if you opted into the first 3 episodes, you’ve already played this, developed your own theories on what happens next and are simply looking for a place to spill them all over the place. Lucky for you, we have a comments section! Enjoy!
