Theory time. Topic: Life is Strange
I have always wondered how Max Caulfield ever got her powers in the first place. Yeah, it’s a video game and there can be magical elements sometimes, but this is different. This is a game that, if you strip away those magical elements, is about a relationship that is built off of hardships and trust.
When I was playing Before the Storm, I opened up Chloe’s journal and found this image:
Now, originally, I thought it was meant to symbolize how Max had abandoned Chloe (with the date on the tree crossed out) and how Max was therefore “dead” to Chloe. However, I think it is deeper than that.
In this picture, Max is not the Max that Chloe remembers. She is the Max Caulfield from the previous game with the same shirt, hair, and camera. How would Chloe have any idea of these events? The dream is supposed to be in the present, 3 years before the events of the first game.
I think it is supposed to mean that Max killed herself. In real life.
My way of seeing it is that Max did return to Arcadia Bay for school. She did attend Jefferson’s class. However, she never had time travel powers. Picture Max doing the same routine from the first scene of the game: she is walking to the bathroom. She goes into a stall, but there is no butterfly. She uses the restroom, then what? A boy and a girl walk in. The girl gets shot. Max runs to help.
Max feels crushed. She hasn’t tried to contact Chloe the entire time she had been in Arcadia Bay. She thinks, “Maybe if I had reached out to her, I could have saved her”.
Chloe and her were inseparable, and I think she may have killed herself after she saw her best friend murdered in a school bathroom.
This starts the adventures of the first game. She wakes up and is in Jefferson’s class, goes to the bathroom, but this time she has time travel powers.
This is her path, if you will, to the afterlife. The whole first game is an elaborate journey to close off the demons that bothered both Max and Chloe.
Here are the goals of the two characters:
Max - To save or help Chloe in anyway possible to ease her guilt and make up for lost time
Chloe - To find the truth about Rachel as well as rediscover her own self-worth and know that she was, and always has been, loved by those that were closest to her.
The first game tackles both of these, allowing both characters to die peacefully. Max is able to save Chloe, multiple times, thereby destroying the guilt she felt before about not doing so. Chloe is able to get closure on Rachel because now she has something and someone to blame for the loss of her love.
I have more to back this up. If you go into the text messages in the journal during the dream sequence, you will see these images:
Max sends “Don’t Worry. I’m going to see you real soon. When you’re dead”. When I first read this, it seemed like it was condescending. Just Chloe’s mind playing tricks on her. However, if you look closely, the times on the messages are backwards. They were sent in reverse.
The message actually reads: “When you’re dead, I’m going to see you real soon. Don’t worry”.
This theory not only answers a bunch of plot holes, but also a lot of questions. I had one regarding the Ghost Deer when they find Rachel’s body.
This deer appears, and Max can see her. Wouldn’t that freak her out? But it didn’t. Instead, it led her to the place where Rachel was buried.
If Max’s destiny in this journey was to help Chloe discover what happened, then it was fulfilled. The Ghost Deer disappears after they find Rachel, after Max’s duty is fulfilled. Max has always worn the deer outfit and has always been the shy character. The disappearance of the deer is meant to symbolize Max telling herself that her mission has ended, that she has fulfilled her one true wish of helping Chloe.
And my other question involves Rachel herself.
I loved Rachel in Before the Storm. I loved her so much that I ignored all of the flaws she had in the first game. And then I remembered, what were her flaws?
One of which was that she betrayed Chloe and started to develop a relationship with Frank, Chloe’s drug dealer. After playing Before the Storm, this was so odd to me. I kept on wondering why Rachel, someone who was absolutely devoted to Chloe, would ever betray her in such a way.
Then this theory came along. If all the events in the first game was just a journey to the afterlife, it would also come with all of the character’s fears. Chloe’s greatest weakness is that she doesn’t think she is enough. She always questions whether people love her.
The relationship between Rachel and Frank was discovered during the first game, not before. It is a symbol of Chloe’s subconscious fears that Rachel never did love her and that she was just using her, like Eliot had said.
This theory literally hit me like a rock. As soon as I thought of it as a possibility, everything started falling into place. I’m not sure if this was the intention (because again, it’s just a theory), but I thought it was very interesting and a little too convenient.
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