I am not saying that I didn’t spend A LOT of time in these communities, I am just saying that I am disappointed in myself for not spending enough time in the Pricefield community for it to show up on my top 3 (and I am also surprised to see that it didn’t given the time I have spend in this community this year😞)

Okay hear me out, could you hypothetically:

-go back into the photo taken in jeffersons class

-go into the bathroom and close the bathroom window (not letting the blue butterfly in, that I presume is the cause of max's powers) to sacrifice the time rewind power in cause and effect

-activate the fire alarm

and therefore save chloe from getting shot because that event never occured, therefore there would be no reason to use the time rewind to save chloe and therefore no need for the storm to appear?

Could you save arcadia bay and chloe with this? What are your thoughts?

And would you lose your memories of the time you had the powers or would you know everything and continue on normally from monday forward, not returning to the time you chose to go back into the photo? (because lost power)

Working on my next post about DE, the Storm, and what it may be leading to in DE 2, but I could use more biased fan data for the write up after that.

If you can, leave a comment that explains your reasoning. With, as always, that, as always, said, as always:

How many times has Max canonically died?

View Poll

On to Double Exposure next! And of course I went with the Bae ending. 🙂

I havnt played BTS since It came out. But I recently started playing through all the LIS games again in release order. I’m not as keen on the D9 stuff but that episode broke me. It really adds so much extra depth to why Chloe is the way she is in LIS 1. I love their relationship as kids. But when that Ben Howard song comes on and Joyce walks though the door with the police, I felt so much emotion and sadness on such a deep level. And Max’s tape at the end gaaaaaaah 😭😭 Did this hit anyone else really hard too? Need to see more of this kind of stuff D9.. but please let them be together forever 🥲

Yes, it's bad and with plot holes. But which is worse?

What I asked for:

"Write me a sequel to the video game Life is Strange. Max is still the main character and a decade has passed. The first game ended with Chloe being saved which means the town was sacrificed."

Answer:

Title: Life is Strange: Reverberations

Setting:
A decade has passed since Max Caulfield made the life-altering choice to save Chloe Price, thereby sacrificing Arcadia Bay to the violent storm. Now 28 years old, Max has found herself in Portland, Oregon, a city far from the ghosts of her past. Despite the peaceful facade of her life as a photography professor, the remnants of her choices still echo through the years, haunting her in unexpected ways.

Max still possesses her time-bending powers, but they have grown unpredictable and more difficult to control. She struggles with the lingering sense of guilt for the town she let perish, knowing the ripple effects of her decision have affected not just her but countless others. The echoes of Arcadia Bay—the people, the memories—are still alive within her, and a new mystery brings Max face-to-face with her past once again.

Plot Summary:

Prologue: A World Without Arcadia Bay

Max’s life in Portland is marked by quiet solitude and small moments of happiness. She’s respected as a teacher at a local college, her passion for photography still as strong as ever. However, she carries an invisible burden. The death of Arcadia Bay haunts her, and despite her best efforts, she’s never been able to truly move on. Chloe’s memory is ever-present, as is the absence of all the lives that were lost that day. Max's guilt is compounded by her own feelings of isolation. Her powers have made her a stranger to the world—she’s learned to keep her abilities hidden, fearful of what could happen if they got out of control again.

Max receives an unexpected visit from Warren Graham, now a successful scientist. After years of radio silence, he reaches out, concerned about the strange fluctuations in time he’s been studying. Warren explains that he’s noticed a pattern—a ripple effect caused by the storm Max stopped. He believes that the sacrifice of Arcadia Bay didn’t fully close the rift in time, and that reality itself has been slowly warping ever since.

Act 1: “Fractured Time”

Max reluctantly agrees to help Warren investigate, although she fears what will happen if she delves too deep into the mess she’s already caused. Together, they discover that time is slowly deteriorating, with glitches manifesting across the world. People experience memories from alternate timelines, history seems to have shifted in subtle ways, and strange temporal anomalies start occurring.

One night, Max experiences a powerful and disorienting flashback—she sees Chloe alive, just like before the storm, but it doesn’t make sense. Chloe should be gone. Max realizes that her actions have caused a paradox, and now someone—or something—is trying to undo the damage. Time itself is fighting back, and Max is at the center of it all.

Act 2: “The Echoes of Arcadia Bay”

Max is once again confronted with memories of Arcadia Bay—snippets of her time there, mixed with confusing new visions. She begins seeing versions of people who shouldn’t exist. Rachel Amber appears in one of Max’s dreams, claiming to be an "echo" from a parallel timeline. Rachel tells Max that the storm was not a natural event but a result of something more insidious—someone had been manipulating time long before Max discovered her powers.

The more Max delves into this mystery, the more she realizes that her saving of Chloe created a ripple effect, opening the door to other, darker realities. These realities are now threatening to merge with the present, and it’s up to Max to restore the balance before everything she’s known collapses.

Max also encounters Kate Marsh, now a counselor working with young people who have suffered from trauma. Kate, who also witnessed the storm’s devastation, has started to experience strange occurrences as well. Kate’s dreams are full of visions of an alternate life, where things didn’t end so tragically for everyone.

Through their conversations, Max learns that she’s not the only one affected by the fractures in reality. Many people connected to Arcadia Bay are experiencing similar glitches, often remembering lives that never happened or people they’ve lost. Max realizes that the storm, while destroying the town, also triggered a series of temporal shifts that have affected those with a deep connection to the town—Rachel, Kate, Warren, even herself.

Act 3: “The Chronicler”

Max and Warren uncover the existence of The Chronicler, a shadowy figure manipulating time on a larger scale. The Chronicler has been using the power of the time storm to rewrite history, erasing crucial moments to reshape the world as they see fit. It becomes clear that The Chronicler’s ultimate goal is to undo Max’s choice to save Chloe, effectively erasing the timelines and realities that were born from her decision.

Max, torn between her love for Chloe and the moral responsibility she feels for the chaos she’s unleashed, must confront The Chronicler and their twisted vision for the world. The Chronicler, it is revealed, is another time traveler, someone who has been manipulating events behind the scenes, trying to fix the "mistake" Max made by saving Chloe. They believe that Arcadia Bay was never meant to survive, and that Max’s intervention fractured the flow of time irreparably.

Max now faces a final decision:

1. Undo her sacrifice and restore the timeline to its original state, erasing the memory of Chloe, Arcadia Bay, and everything she’s experienced in the alternate reality.
2. Embrace the fractured timelines, risking the collapse of all realities but allowing the world Max now knows—her relationship with Chloe, her friendships, and the life she’s built—to continue.
3. Allow the timeline to reset, letting the past take its natural course, but with the possibility that Chloe’s life—and her own—will be lost forever.

Max also discovers that The Chronicler has been using her powers against her all along, and the only way to truly fix the timeline is for Max to accept the consequences of her choice—she must learn to live with the knowledge that no matter what, time can’t always be fixed.

Ending:

The ending of the game varies depending on the player’s choices, but all outcomes are bittersweet:

1. The Sacrifice Restored: Max chooses to undo the effects of saving Chloe, accepting that some decisions are irreversible. She watches as Chloe’s life is erased from her memory, the timeline seemingly restored. However, Max is left with a deep sense of loss, as the world continues on without the echo of Arcadia Bay. In the final scene, Max stands in her Portland apartment, looking at a photograph of herself with Chloe—one that exists only in her mind.
2. A Fractured Future: Max decides to merge the realities, risking the destruction of both timelines. In this version, the world is forever changed—Max and Chloe live, but reality is unstable, and the ripple effects of their love and sacrifice continue to reshape the world. The game ends with Max and Chloe walking down a foggy road together, uncertain of the future but willing to face it, side by side.
3. The Quiet Reset: Max allows the world to reset, accepting the idea that the flow of time will play out as it always should have. In this ending, Max never meets Chloe, and Arcadia Bay remains a tragic memory. Max, now older, reflects on the choice she made as she walks through the streets of Portland, carrying the weight of her memories alone. The final shot shows her looking at a photo of Arcadia Bay—perhaps for the last time.

Themes:

• Time and Consequence: Max’s struggle to control time and face the consequences of her choices is central to the narrative, as she wrestles with whether it’s possible to fix the past or if the future must simply unfold on its own.
• Guilt and Redemption: Max grapples with the guilt of choosing one person over an entire town, and the game explores whether redemption is possible, or if certain decisions are too great to undo.
• Love and Loss: Chloe remains a central figure in Max’s life, whether she is physically present or not, and their love story resonates throughout the game, as Max faces the painful reality of letting go.
• Identity and Sacrifice: Max must come to terms with her identity as someone with the power to change reality, but also with the responsibility that comes with those choices. Her journey is about accepting that some sacrifices cannot be undone.

End Credits: The camera pans over the quiet remnants of Arcadia Bay as the credits roll. A haunting melody plays in the background, and the sound of waves crashing against the cliffs mixes with a faint voice: Max’s voice, whispering, “We’re all just echoes of time…”

I finally convinced my roommate to play LIS and they responded with these texts, ik we gotta k*ll him /j but I'm just wondering how I should do it

Honestly just asking out of curiosity more than anything.

Most people I’ve seen have had an experience somewhere along the lines of “I heard about the game and was like “WOW HOLY SHIT”, got so excited, then I started to get skeptical from the marketing, and was crushed when the early release news started coming out”

For me it was “I got an alert on my phone for the trailer, the day it dropped, didn’t even watch it immediately because I had a massive panic attack because I saw the writing on the wall. Then I watched the trailer a few hours later. Then many, many more panic attacks in the days that followed.”

Mainly because of the aperture leak. (That was a way better title tbh). But not just that, either.

No one familiar was in the trailer. Max felt weird.

And “bouncing between universes to try to save someone” felt like maybe, just fucking maybe, a story that would have made more goddamn sense with the split universe the game has already fucking established?? Ya know, the one people were so invested in that they stayed committed to this franchise for a decade?

Imagine a sequel that started in whichever universe you chose in the LiS 1, but bounces back and forth between, and builds a complex story around the universe already established.

From the first trailer it felt like a cheap ripoff of the original story.

I felt crazy when everyone online seemed excited, and almost no one seemed to feel the dread I was feeling.

When the game fully released, I was almost relieved that the fan base was so rabid about it. Catharsis. Validation that those months made sense I guess. But also just deep, deep sorrow in the tiny part of me that so badly wanted to be wrong about the whole thing.

Chloe is my favorite character of all time. She is so important to me.

I didn’t really expect to spend six months of this year gutted by fiction. I feel continually silly over how deeply this impacted me. It’s still impacting me, so much.

I think I just wanted to vent, honestly. To see if anyone else felt dread from the very beginning. To see if anyone else has been on this misery journey for six months, rather than 1-2 months.

It feels like half my year got ate by this

I'll say upfront that I don't think Chloe is necessarily out of character in the game, but it's only possible to realize that if you start a Platonic Bae playthrough. And honestly, considering how brain-dead and loathsome Max comes off in that path, I can understand why so few could even stomach that, let alone play it.

There's stupid, then there's this!!

I still maintain that the Platonic/Romantic split was added late into production, probably before Hannah left Denver (that or she flew back out to Mocap it), but regardless here is what I THINK is what they were originally going for, and even then the writing could have gone through a couple more passes. The White Background texts come from Romantic, while the Black comes from Platonic.

HIRE AN EDITOR DECK NINE!!!!

When put together like this, you can see Chloe becoming more and more worried about Max and how she's abusing her powers. The Valentines incident? Chloe's over the moon until Max admits she didn't realize what day it was (and Chloe is so goopey that Valentines would be a huge deal for her). Then after she makes a simple mistake, Max offers to REWIND TIME AND SPACE just so Chloe could get the tickets in time.

Let's break this down:

1. Max is stagnating and forgetting dates, even when said dates are SUPER important to them.
2. Max is still using her powers, and is abusing them to the point that she'll cast a rewind for the simplest inconveniences if it's for Chloe's benefit.
3. In the past, Chloe has blamed herself for every last problem in her life, and thanks to David's, Blackwell's, and even Joyce's acts of abuse, that mentality has basically become ingrained in her sense of self.

I relate to Chloe so much in this scene.

4. Chloe is in desperate love with Max (the letter is even the same in Platonic) and has a self sacrificial streak a mile wide.

Goddess this scene still hurts...

And what happens when you combine everything above (coupled with someone manipulating the both of them)?

You get Chloe ripping out her own heart to try and save the one woman she has always loved.

Her Best Friend.

Her Partner in Time.

The Love of her life.

Her Max.

TOO BAD DECK NINE FUCKED THIS UP!!!!!

Seriously, how do you take such a tragic (AND IT BETTER BE A BRIEF) act of self sacrifice and FUCK IT UP THIS BADLY!?!?!?

Fuck it. Deck Nine, I know either you or Square are watching me given what happened shortly after I pointed to the Rhianna DeVries webpage. You want me to stop? DM me through one of your known people, and I'll send my resume over LinkedIn. You need an editor, and I'm willing to freelance AND sign every NDA known to humanity.

The work I've done here isn't meant to be professional, nor is it meant to be what I'm fully capable of. Even if I don't get a DM, please have a Megafan in place to look over what your making! I want you to succeed here, come on!!

Here's mine:

1. When Max and Chloe eventually get married, Max wears a price tag on her wedding veil (Chloe went with a suit). When asked why later on, Max explains it was in honor of William and his terrible puns (Max took Chloe's last name since she wanted Chloe to always have a part of her dad with her).

2. Max's chef skills are best described as 'Lethal'. When her and Chloe first started traveling, Max's insomnia was terrible and she was trying anything she could to fix it. Eventually, she read online how warm milk can help you sleep, and since she was hungry anyway she poured milk and cereal into a pot to heat up. Chloe woke up to Max using a fire extinguisher, and has never let Max live it down since.

3. They name their first child Dawn, though Chloe calls her 'cherub'.

4. Max and Chloe ultimately settle back down in Arcadia Bay. While the town caused them a great amount of heartache and pain, it also gave them each other and everyone they came to love in life. And with Max eventually managing to merge the two timelines, they both feel it's their obligation to help lead the town to a brighter tomorrow. Side Note - Max ends up teaching at Blackwell while Chloe goes from Science and Art teacher, to Principle in the span of 5 years. Even she doesn't know how it happened.

5. After their last kid heads to college, Max and Chloe decide to travel for a short while again. When they come across a young kid with powers and nowhere to live, the two work to adopt him. In total, they wind up raising 3 kids during their lives.

Edit: Why did Reddit delete my last two?

I understand that my writings here regarding some of my background investigations can be a bit muddlesome, especially given the constantly shifting development timeline we've all been trying to work through. As such, I'm going to summarize my current findings to try and clarify things while also giving my current theories regarding DE 2.

This is still all speculation and evidence interpretation. I will link my posts for more in-depth reasoning, but here is what I currently believe fits the evidence.

With that, as always, said-

After the success of Life is Strange, Square Enix asked for a follow-up from Don't Nod, which would eventually become Life Is Strange 2. Around the same time said follow-up was ordered, Square approached Deck Nine and ordered a prequel to be made. It would seem that by this point Square had either decided on a time frame for new releases, or was going off an estimate by Don't Nod regarding LiS 2, but regardless, Square asked that the new game be released by 2017, resulting in Before the Storm and its three episode length.

When BtS proved successful enough to justify the series to continue, Square either approached Don't Nod or Deck Nine to create True Colors, giving it a four year development cycle similar to LiS 2. In the end, Deck Nine took up the True Colors project, LiS 2 was released to lukewarm reception, and Don't Nod withdrew from the franchise entirely, handing the key's to Square Enix and Deck Nine.

Following the same pattern, in 2019 Square came to Deck Nine and pitched three or four projects for Deck Nine to work on over the next few years. The first being the Remasters, second being Wavelengths, and the third and possibly fourth wound up being Double Exposure and its sequel. I say possibly fourth due to DE 2's development period being up in the air right now. We know at least that the first three listed began development around that time, but we don't know much if any of what was said behind closed doors. As such, I'll have to break down the next part into 3 divergent possibilities.

1. The first possibility is that DE 2 was pitched in 2019, but was scheduled to begin development sometime in 2021. True Colors was out by then, Double Exposure would be cooking in the background, and Deck Nine could divert those who had more or less finished with DE into DE 2. If this is the case, it would indicate that the Rhianna DeVries deal was signed late into development of the Remasters and Wavelengths, and would give more credence to the idea that Chloe's removal had been intended when Double Exposure was pitched, but sometime late 2020, early 2021 someone at Square Enix or Deck Nine had managed to convey the damage this would do to the series. This would mean, however, that they couldn't course correct in time for Double Exposure given it had already been in development for roughly two years, but would mean that they'd be able to lay down the groundwork to fix the Pricefield split, as seen in game. I find this possibility to be the most likely.
2. The second possibility is that DE 2 was pitched in late 2020 as an addition to Deck Nines work load. This pitch would have occurred around the time Deck Nine was courting Telltale and would have been made with the idea that the Covid Era swell in Video Game development would allow for Deck Nine to expand their workforce, which does line up with what we know. This would also indicate that the management fuck ups happened around the peak of the Pandemic, which does track given how greedy Publishers and Developers became at that point. This is probably the next most likely scenerio.
3. Finally, we have the possibility that DE 2 was pitched in 2021 following the usual pattern. However, I find this option to be the most dubious especially given how Rhianna's Deal was made early enough for her to do the facial mocap for the Remasters and for her to record her cameo in Wavelengths. Given that Wavelengths had an apparent Chloe cameo scheduled before the games scale was cut back, the fact that Ashly took place in the Remasters Promo on May 18, 2021, and the fact that Rhianna's upcoming page had no reference to upcoming Video Game roles as late as October 31st, 2020, I feel it's safe to conclude that Rhianna's deal was signed sometime between November 2020 - May 2021, with the 2020 side being more likely given her need to Mocap Chloe. And given this would have all had to have gone up the corporate latter and through several rounds of negotiations with Rhianna and her Agent, I'd say that DE 2 was pitched far earlier than 2021.

Given all of this, I think it is safe to interpret the following:

1. The Pricefield split was decided early on, but was pivoted away from being permanent due to some unknown hero at Deck Nine. The split still had to happen thanks to the pivot being too late in production to fix, but the repair work began early enough to justify Max and Chloe getting back together in DE's sequel.
2. Double Exposure was originally intended to come out in 2023, but a plague, shortsightedness, and a company civil war delayed it to 2024.
3. And finally, with the information given above, DE 2 is/was intended to come out in 2025 to coincide with the anniversary, and is either still on that same path with the entire Deck Nine team currently focused on it, or it's been delayed for release to 2026/7/or early '28. And given everything, I'd place money on 2025 given the marketing potential.

Still, I could be wrong. Until then, stick to the guide, and I hope this helps put things together for everyone.

And vote for Hannah Telle in the VGA's!! Even if Square bought her the award so they could tease DE 2 and Chloe, she still deserves it!!!!

For me i would go to lis 1, if i could i would hang out with Max and Chloe, and try to prevent some thinghs from happening.

Sad as it is, any songs that made you think "that's their breakup song."?

In my case, I happened to be listening to Patty Griffin's Rain. I associated it with their breakup almost at once. It has "storm" energy. I would imagine a break up would be a storm in Max's life.

Then I heard this and thought reconciliation. It's Sara Jarosz's cover of I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For. Think Max driving in her car away from Caledon, hoping to reconcile with Chloe at the end of the trip. She's realizing that there's a Chloe-shaped hole missing from her life.

how's it goin sluts its me back with another replacement for DE bringing you game recommendations with the similar vibes of og Lis that are 10x better than the shit square gave us todays recommendation is a little indie game by the name of STRAY GODS: a musical role playing game

the art is amazing 10/10

the story is iffy 6/10

and the music is incredible 10/10