Life is Strange's
final episode is titled Polarized, which is the most accurate way to
describe my feelings after reaching the series' conclusion. Developer
Dontnod's first episodic series tackles themes and explores emotional
spaces few games have: the difficulties of being a teenager struggling
for acceptance, the complicated push-and-pull of friendship between
young women, the delicate balance between fear and bravery when dealing
with other volatile young people. It's a story about kids--or kids on
the brink of becoming adults--becoming people they never thought they'd
be and learning things about one another that change their perspectives
on each other, and life itself. I loved becoming Max Caulfield, using
her time-rewinding powers to keep a promise no matter what the cost. But
the series' finale ultimately stumbles and falls over its own conceits,
sabotaging its most powerful moments with goofy dialogue and--at its
more egregious--a tedious stealth sequence.
Polarized opens with Max in the dark room from the previous episode,
desperate to escape and make things right. Her method of escape and the
consequences stemming from this decision are predictable. In the first
half of the episode, Max learns what happens when she gets everything
she wants, or at least thinks she's getting everything. It all comes at a
price, one that the series has been hamfistedly hinting at since Episode One.
I don't mind the obviousness so much as the complete detachment of this
episodes' choices from the rest of the series. Nothing you've done
matters by the time you get to Polarized, with the only tweaks made by
your past decisions reflected in short bits of dialogue.
This
episode does an excellent job showing Max the horrors her time
traveling escapades have wrought on the people around her, but some of
these more serious moments are completely undermined by silly
presentation, a critique that also extends to some of the acting. A
serious sequence at the start of the episode, meant to be horrifying no
doubt, ends up being straight-up goofy due to dialogue and the way it's
delivered. Max has to watch a certain character be killed over and over
again, and after each rewind the killer spouts the same line of
enthusiastic, comically insulting dialogue. The sequence is set up so
that you're meant to explore three or four different options and keep
rewinding before you find the right one that will save a life, but
hearing this same dialogue over and over again was laughable. It became
funny instead of serious, draining the urgency out of an otherwise tense
scene.
There
are, however, moments that make you feel genuinely uncomfortable, and
it's in these that you and Max start to question her supposed altruism.
Max isn't the selfless time warrior she seems to be, and in this final
episode some of her dialogue options are downright vitriolic. She's
become hard and a little cruel, almost ruthless in her relentlessness to
keep Chloe alive and save Arcadia Bay from the impending storm.
Watching Max lash out, reflect, and then crumble is the best part of
this episode.
There is some great psychological
spelunking going on in this episode, but it's hard to enjoy the
unsettling atmosphere when you're forced to wade through it in a
poorly-designed stealth sequence. This sequence, which is quite long,
forces you to sneak through a labyrinthine environment with a least two
flashlight-wielding characters trying to catch you at the same time.
This sequence forces you do the same thing over and over to determine
the guards position and find an exit--take a few steps, rewind, take a
few more, rewind. It's repetitive and a cheap way of shoehorning in a
puzzle using Max's time powers and it completely pulled me out of the
mood. It also doesn't help that at the start the setting is very dark,
with no clear direction on how to get through. So it's up to trial and
error and rewinding to figure out which way to go.
The
episode also spends a hefty amount of time rehashing old events,
reminding Max of conversations and interactions from previous episodes
in the form of audio playing over her endless wandering. She retreads
familiar places and learns nothing new, although it does provide a very
chilling look inside her mind. She's worn out, scared, and utterly
broken. It's clear she feels she's failed everyone, and with the
apocalyptic tornado waiting just offshore of the sleepy Northwestern
town, she's pressured to move fast through a sequence of events that
looks and functions almost exactly like the final baffling, surrealist
episode of David Lynch's Twin Peaks.
While
all of this is going on, the storm Max created with the butterfly
effect of her powers--Max says she created the storm but we never learn
exactly how her decisions affect it--closes in on the town. The wind
howls and rain drenches Max as she picks her way through the wreckage of
buildings along the ocean--and yet there is no urgency. The people she
encounters are calm. The sea level is rising and no one is even
attempting to leave the shoreline. The tornado of the century is
happening feet away and no one's hair moves. I had a hard time buying
the "everyone is going to die" thing because Polarized fails to sell its
apocalyptic stakes in any meaningful way.
All
of this wraps up with a final choice, that--should you choose to go back
and see both--is unbalanced. One possible ending is short and somewhat
shallow, while the other rolls the most crushing scene in the series and
then sends you on a sprawling visual journey in which Max appears to
have learned something about how life works. It genuinely feels like one
ending is an afterthought. But this choice is so divorced from
everything you've done so far, the logical leaps characters make to come
to this decision are curve balls. It's a heartbreaking climax handled
clumsily.
Life is Strange paints an excellent, vivid
picture of a young woman's struggle for acceptance and justice, but
trips itself up by trying to make things gamey. The series is at its
best when it's just letting you explore; in the beginning you're roaming
the world around you, picking through pieces of other's lives, and by
the end you're treading Max's subconscious. The story of Max and Chloe
is a beautiful tale, but it's marred by bizarre logical leaps and
leftover plot holes. Aggravating out-of-place fetch quests and stealth
sequences crack the somber atmosphere and very hamfistedly remind you
that you're playing a game. It's unfortunate, because I do love Life is
Strange's story. I just wish the ending wasn't so mismanaged.
