There are tons of small and large decisions

[sandywang5230]

How does she best support her classmate and is it even that important? Of course, it is. Everything in Arcadia Bay is connected and we find it difficult to play a careless Max who doesn't look out for her friends (even her enemies at times).It's seems Chloe is essentially won over. At times it is as if the last five years when the two friends were out of touch never happened. It's something that's easy to relate to. We all have childhood friends that we effortlessly chat with ten years after seeing them last as if no time at all had passed. We take a bus from our dorms and away from Kate's problems to see her. The bus ride offers the first real technical issues we've had with the game as the cinematic stutters and there's even some texture pop-in. Here we're also introduced to a rewind puzzle that isn't very enjoyable, and we have to do two variations of it back to back. Basically it involves committing details to memory and then retelling them to Chloe in order to prove our Runescape Gold powers. Kate shares some disturbing news. As you'd assume Chloe's reaction to Max having these powers is that she wants to have some fun with it. Thankfully her first thought (to sleep with someone and then just rewind time) doesn't come to fruition, instead we go to Chloe's refuge - the scrapyard. This is a rather beautifully rendered area and it offers a bit of exploration and side content (as those the outside of the diner). Exploration is something that Life is Strange does really well. There's a lot of detail to take in.The scrapyard also properly introduces Frank - a seemingly shady character - who has been foreshadowed plenty in the preceding 3-4 hours of gameplay. Once again we're forced into a choice without really knowing where it will lead as he pulls a knife on Chloe to threaten her. We have a gun - do we shoot or cower and surrender it? It's likely to have a major impact on later chapters. But at this point we can only really take the short-term into account.What happens next in the episode is something that really illustrates what Life is Strange is capable of. Kate isn't doing well. Not at all. And it all boils down to a scene on the roof of the dorms. There are tons of small and large decisions that feed into the conversations we have with Kate. It's not just what we say, but also what we've done leading up to this event. At this point Max has used up her powers and so the conversation isn't something that can be replayed (well, you can of course restart the chapter and try again, but that's cheating). In some ways it irks us to have this mechanic removed for the sake of the narrative, but on the other hand it makes it all the more meaningful and immerses us in that moment. This time things matter and we cannot go back. It's a powerful moment, and even if Kate felt like a very insignificant side character at first, we actually cared for her by the time we got to this point. The homages to Twin Peaks are kind of in your face.