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Review: Life is Strange, Ep. 5 – Polarized

Review: Life is Strange, Ep. 5 – Polarized

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[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!]

Oh Jesus, here it is, the ending we’ve all been waiting for. It’s been a wild ride, but all good things come to an end. Be warned though, if you were expecting a happy ending, you haven’t been paying attention! When last we saw our heroine, Maxine Caulfield, she had been drugged by the evil Mark Jefferson (who, again, I TOTALLY CALLED!) and our best friend has been shot without hope of resurrection. Meanwhile, a storm is brewing, threatening to wipe out the entire town and we can’t do a gosh darn thing about it cos we’re trapped in the Dark Room being posed for quite possibly the creepiest photo collection known since the days of Fatal Frame.

Max wakes up, disoriented and hazy, and must use her newly discovered powers of photographic time travel to save herself, Chloe and the entire town of Arcadia Bay. As such, she starts time skipping through the past few hours until finally she finds a way to escape the bunker, sending herself back to the very first episode and putting a stop to Jefferson there. However, just as everything seems like it’s wrapped up there, she realises Arcadia Bay is still being hit with the storm, and she has to go back again, which lands her back in the basement. The rest of the episode carries on as such, where Max tries to go back and fix everything, but fails and must restart. As I said, there’s no hope for a happy ending here, no matter how much we might wish otherwise. The game is basically beating us over the head with that point. No matter how many times you go back, you cannot fix everything, there’s always a price (get it?) you must pay.

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Since the very beginning of the series, there has always been 3 objectives in mind; 1) Find Rachel Amber 2) Stop the Storm and 3) Keep Chloe alive. In literally every episode, there is a point where Max has to rewind to stop Chloe dying, because the bond they share, whether romantic or otherwise, is enough to move Max to literally rewind time to save her. But that has a consequence, all of this playing around with time has caused massive problems in the time/space continuum, resulting in the strange events around Arcadia Bay. There was never going to be any way of both saving Chloe Price and the town, one of them had to be sacrificed in order for the other to live, and it was only a matter of time. Honestly, I’m hitting myself for not realising sooner. Her name is Price, God dammit! Even looking at subtle details like the bluebird constantly being trapped in Chloe’s house should have tipped me off to the fact she’s not going to be safe for long.

As with all story driven choice games, there’s always the worry that your choices won’t change the ending, but I think in this case, our choices were actually extremely well represented. Yes, the ending doesn’t change based on the events previous episodes, but that was a creative point, the end choice always had to be what it was, saving Kate or William or anyone else wouldn’t have changed that. No, what I mean was the build up to the ending. For example, I chose not to kiss Chloe in Episode 3, and instead had Max pursue Warren the entire time, but my friend chose to kiss Chloe and as such, the entire impact of the final episode was shifted. It wasn’t a story about you trying to save your best friend and fix the world, it was a love story where you would fight through all odds to save the woman you love. What’s more, having previously blamed David for the events in Episode 2, I had massive bouts of guilt when he actually ended up being the only one who could save me, and actually the only one innocent in the kidnappings. My story went from panic, to guilt tripping, to a brief romantic moment with Warren, to trippy horror section, and finally the sacrifice of my best friend, and I’m certain that if I’d even changed one of those choices, the story would not have been the same. That is how you give power to the players!

Speaking of trippy horror sections, that actually wound up being my favourite part of probably the entire series. During one final bout of time tripping, Max winds up stuck in a hellish nightmare wherein she has to fight Mark Jefferson and face the consequences of her choices in a terrifying dream land. I have not seen a sequence so well done in this entire series. It borrows elements of P.T. in the hallway section, which makes you play and see through the perspectives of various other characters in the series through one recursive loop. Then it transforms to a horror/stealth/puzzle which hugely reminded me of Alan Wake. You have to sneak past Jefferson along with other characters, all of them doing their best to freak you out and taunt you, moving through sections of the previous episodes including the Junkyard and Locker Rooms. Finally, you have a literal walk through every significant moment with Chloe, followed by a confrontation with everyone in the town screaming a variation of “Please don’t kill me!” at you before you have to face off with yourself… literally, as if the decision ahead of you wasn’t going to be hard enough. In one sequence, they summarised every second of the series, every emotion the player goes through and draws you back to the most important decision you’ll have to make as Max in one fluid motion.

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As I’ve said previously, there was never going to be an ending that didn’t require you to sacrifice Chloe or the town, we were always headed towards that point, but that doesn’t mean the journey wasn’t important. Life Is Strange is a game that I honestly think everyone should play, not because it’s flawless or because every moment is a thrill ride unknown to any other game, but because of how it makes you look at life in general. Throughout the series, the developers have done their best to focus on the little details, whether it’s watering your plant or saving someones life, every action has a consequence. Sometimes you expect it, sometimes you’re hit with a curve ball that you could have never predicted, but regardless, you have to keep playing and accept it, because sometimes no matter how hard you try, there’s no changing the situation. Chloe was the price we’d have to keep paying to see how far we’d go to save the day, and in the end even that wasn’t enough.

Whether DONTNOD continue this series, which I think they will given the fact they keep referring to these first episodes as season one, I really hope they won’t touch Max’s story again. It as wrapped up so completely that to keep poking at it would undo the very point it was trying to make.

Satisfying ending to a poignant, thoughtful series

Life is Strange can be purchased right now on PC, Playstation and Xbox. Feel free to let us know in the comments what you thought about the series and its conclusion, let’s get a discussion going in the comments!

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