So, I just finished this game... twice ... this weekend.

A bit about me: I've become very busy the last few years with my job, and sadly don't have the time to game at the level I used to. My limited time means I usually just pick up the usual triple-A titles for series I know I enjoy, and the occasional arcade game just for some quick fun. I also don't follow gaming news to the extent I used to, and am a bit embarrassed but also completely happy to say that I hadn't even heard of LIS until a few weeks ago when they were marketing the release of the Limited Edition.

So, after enjoying travelling around the Wastelands in FO4 and scaling some Tombs in ROTR over the holidays, I was pretty much done with the games I was looking forward to going into the big release season, but I wasn't really satisfied not having anything to play at the moment. I had seen an advert for LIS, and came across a couple of favorable reviews online though. Having enjoyed playing through Telltale's Walking Dead Season 1 a few years back, I thought that the game my fit up my alley. So I stopped by a local Gamestop Friday night on my way to meet some friends for dinner and drinks and picked up a copy.

After getting home later that night and waiting for the install to complete, I first stepped foot into Arcadia Bay. I immediately dug the game's atmosphere and the rewind mechanic was an interesting gem I couldn't wait to see developed over the course of the game. Sadly I was beat from a long week (not to mention I had a few drinks in me) and decided to hit the hay about half-way through Episode 2. The story was still getting going at that point, and I had no clue what I was in for when I would turn it back on on Saturday.

So, Saturday afternoon I fired up the console and started playing again, and was very quickly suddenly on the roof of Blackwell Academy where I completely failed to save Kate (should have picked up her call :/). I was floored, and suddenly hooked. I would play the game until 5AM Sunday, all the way to completion....

And I'm not ashamed to admit I found myself in my dark living room hugging my dog and bawling my ass off that early in the morning. HO-LY CRAP. The last 12 hours of my life seemed like a blur. From the moment Kate jumped off that roof, through the alternate reality where I assisted Chloe in suicide (I couldn't say no to her) all the way through the Dark Room and to the foot of the lighthouse for the final decision, I was completely hooked, with every episode's ending driving me more and more further into an absolute NEED to see what would happen next.

I fell asleep with a giant hole in my chest. When I woke up Sunday, all I knew was I had to play through this game again, before I got busy with the everyday stuff of this week. So last night I pulled an all-nighter and binged the whole game, start to finish. I made sure I talked to everyone and got every picture, and how much I missed the first time through! From having a sketch drawn of Max to the couple of people I missed saving in the storm. Oh, and I saved Kate this time (not that it matters in the grand scheme of things, but at least I got the hospital scene I missed out on the first time).

I'm still, well, I don't know. Mindfucked would be the most appropriate term really. I feel like this game chewed up my emotions, spit them out on the floor and then poked them with a stick...but in a good way. The last time I really felt gut-checked by something in a game was when I had to make the decision regarding Lee's life in the aforementioned Walking Dead game, and that honestly doesn't hold a candle to how this game made me feel.

I've read around here, it seems like there is a strong contingent of people who sacrificed the town over Chloe, and feel that it was the correct decision. I'll admit that in both playthroughs I sacrificed Chloe. Don't get me wrong, I loved Chloe. I can see why people made the other decision, I can even understand the justification. But what I couldn't do, at least from my perspective, is leave poor Sam living with that guilt. She is just too good of a person, and while she may live with guilt over ultimately not being able to save her best friend, I just think it would pale in comparison to having allowed a whole town's populace to die (or most of it at least) due to her actions (or inaction, depending how you look at it).

Ultimately, I felt that this was where it all led to anyway. I understand that the Chaos Theory portion was never truly confirmed, it was a theory tossed around by Chloe, Warren and Max, with Max eventually beginning to believe it to be true. But I look at the alternate reality....and to me at least that pointed towards the fact that Chloe, for what ever reason, is supposed to die, it is just her destiny. Even if in that reality you choose not to help her with her problem, her body is failing, and eventually, and not too long from the last point we see her in that timeline, she will pass.

It also seemed to point to Chloe's life being some strange tipping point in time itself. If you save her father it still leads to her living a tragic life, and facing death. Death also seems to strangely follow Chloe around...be it her father or Rachel. This is more just sleep-deprived theory I suppose.

In the end, like much great art, this game left me with more questions than answers. Some of the reasoning behind sacrificing the town over Chloe that I've read in here is that Max's first vision comes before the scene in the bathroom, before she ever manipulates time. This is an excellent point, one that I'm not going to argue against. It kind of leads to the old chicken and the egg question. Was Max receiving a veiled warning from the get-go to not use this power she was about to acquire? Or is the Chaos Theory complete bunk? That's one of the things I ultimately liked about this game... it leaves questions like that and others for interpretation.

The character development was great, the atmosphere was well-realized, and while a lot of the music in the game normally isn't my cup of tea, I found it perfectly fit into the feel of the game, and found myself enjoying it all falling deeper in the rabbit hole that is LIS. Sure, there were issues with the facial capturing at points (including the whole conversation with Warren in the diner showing Max talking without moving her lips at all, in both playthroughs) but because the art-style of the game wasn't going for ultra-realistic I didn't find it game breaking. There was also enough small points of humor to keep the game grounded, and to provide small breaks from from the feels train which can be exhausting to go through otherwise.

All in all, of the six or seven titles I've played that were released in 2015, this game blew them out of the water. Yes, it's not as flashy and epic and some, nor as big and character filled as others, but the game struck a real chord with me and with the way I feel now, I know I will be thinking about this game for some time to come. Now if only I can get over my disgust/hatred for Jefferson and my absolute crushed heart due to the ending of this game...

Now that I'm done with my reaction rant, there is some stuff I'm just interested in talking with people about:

The point of Max getting her powers in the first place

We're never given a straight answer on it. And, if you believe in the Chaos Theory, why does Max ever receive the power in the first place? If there is some kind of higher power or just Universal order at work that places this power into her control, why do it? It is natural to believe that if some force or something or other grants a person some kind of supernatural ability, it is to use that ability to prevent or change something they otherwise couldn't do without it. But if you sacrifice Chloe in the end, you find yourself reversing time and rejecting that power in the first place. Was it just to learn some kind of lesson? Or perhaps it was some kind of strange mercy, to give Max one last week with her best friend...to tie up the loose ends that existed from Max's moving to Seattle and breaking contact with Chloe. Again, another question left for us, the audience to answer for ourselves, which I love.

It's pretty clear through the Chloe ending that Max was never required to see all of these events to solve the mystery in the end, as it wraps itself up naturally via Chloe's death. If you recall, when Max uses Warren's photo to go back to the party, she mentions that as soon as she pops back to the "present", as she sees it, the version of herself at the party won't even remember the conversation. That means that after Max's present self leaves the jumpback to the bathroom after allowing Chloe to die, for the whole next week, until it is Friday and she pops back forward in time to the lighthouse, she is completely unaware of any of the events that unfolded during the game. Through Nathan's arrest I assume they were able to connect Mr. Jefferson. Just another example of the unexplained purpose behind Max ever receiving the powers in the first place.

Spirit Animals

Samuel mentions them during one of your conversations with him, mentioning that the doe may be Max's while his is a squirrel. That being said, one way or the other, the doe is a heavily used motif in the game: of course there is the semi-transparent one that visits Max in the visions and at the junkyard, of course the "Snow Doe" as well. But one of the biggest things for me that may lend credit to Samuel's belief is Max's clothing/accessories.

Through the game, many of the shirts (from her own wardrobe) that Max wears feature a doe. Max can also be seen wearing a doe on a necklace for Chloe's funeral, if you go with that ending. Compliment that with Max's nature: shy but very observant, and I'm almost on-board with Samuel's belief. My other theory, especially during my first playthrough, centered around the doe being some kind of representation/manifestation of Rachel's spirit or something. Considering the events of the week you live/relive throughout the game center heavily around Chloe's attempts to unravel the mystery of her disappearance, I didn't think it was too far of a stretch, although I found there to be no real evidence or hints through-out the rest of the story that lent credibility to this theory.

So, for the sake of argument lets assume that the spirit animal theory is true, that made me wonder if there is more to the blue butterfly then just a representation of "the butterfly effect" that it readily comes across as. Namely: Chloe seems to really like the picture (keeps it in her wallet next to picture of Rachel), Chloe sporting blue hair/butterfly is blue, the painting or whatever it was of a blue butterfly in Chloe's old room in the alternate timeline, butterfly landing on Chloe's casket during the funeral. It made me question if while the doe represents Max, the butterfly represents Chloe. A free spirit that goes where it please, strikingly noticeable wherever it shows up, but somewhat distant, ready to fly away at any moment. Well, its just a thought.

I have more I'd love to discuss, but this post has already gotten super long and my brain is currently fried. Thanks for hearing me out, I'm still trying to wrap my head around a lot of the things that went down in this game.

*Edit: Called Rachel Jessica at one point....I need sleep