Life Is Strange: Episode 3 - Chaos Theory

In the previous episodes,Life Is Strange builds up the world as a whole and Max's role in it. You as a player can determine who Max talks to and who she gets along with. All of these decisions start to come to a head Life Is Strange: Episode 3 - Chaos Theory. It takes place directly after the events of the previous episode, and you'll find that little things you did, such as watering your plant too much or not watering it at all, have consequences. In this episode you try to unearth what happened to Rachel Amber, the missing girl, and just what is going on at Blackwell Academy with your partner in crime, Chloe.

This episode primarily focuses not only on your decisions from the past episodes, but your relationship that you've established with Chloe. Most of your decisions revolve around Chloe and what you two do together. The story still has that overarching plot of finding out what's going on, but the scope is slightly narrower in this episode, unless you go out of your way to investigate different parts of the town. This is always encouraged in case those small factors in the game come back to benefit or bite you. Chloe would have died in the first episode if not for you, and she appears to be one of the catalysts throughout the series. The way that it's built up, Arcadia Bay is slowly falling apart, birds are dying everywhere, people are acting strangely, and the web of lies that trapped the place is starting to unravel.

At the very beginning you investigate Blackwell Academy in the principal's office, and from there you see some shocking truth's about the goings on at Blackwell, and a lot of them have something to do with you and the other students that are being investigated for not following along with the norms. There are cover-ups for students who are wealthier and everyone seems to be in on it. It's just a matter of you figuring everything out by using your time travel abilities to solve small but simple puzzles.

Later on, you have to use your time travel and stealth abilities to sneak out of the school when you're about to be caught by the security guards. The gameplay is the same as the previous episodes with the decisions being rewindable for the most part. Max's powers are still explored in this episode, but at this point the game hopes you have gotten the hang of them and actually gives you some pretty tense moments. You can rewind a lot of things, but the choices this time around make things feel a lot more dangerous and you may find yourself making decisions you wouldn't normally make for the sake of what happened in previous episodes, rather than what you think at the moment.

A good way to sum up the various characters in Life Is Strange, particularly this episode at this point in the story, is “everyone is a suspect.” While you investigate things, you can gain clues, other than the clues you already get from playing the story normally. It is far more rewarding to explore everything around you and talk to people, rather than just focus entirely on the story ahead of you. For those who don't, they may get a bit less out of the world of Arcadia Bay, but will still be rewarded none the less by the rich narrative the story provides. 

Not only do we find out more about Arcadia Bay, but we find out more about Chloe herself, who's been a constant in the series. Her existence has weight and it's starting to change Max. Our heroine is still riddled with guilt from not contacting Chloe when she moved away, and we as the players get to pick how she reacts to Chloe's outbursts. It's obvious the two want to be close again, for things to be back the way they were, but we as the players and them as the characters know it won't be. Max's current relationship to Chloe was built up by us and your actions with her come to a startling conclusion by the episode's end.

There's a lot more introspective moments in this episode than there have been in any of the others. A lot more quiet moments that try to keep Max in the present, rather than keeping her gong back in the past. Both Max and Chloe are riddled with guilt that can be increased or decreased by the player actions, and a lot of that has to do with the past. It makes both of them wonder whether or not they'd be able to go back, or if they'd even want to with Max's abilities and you as the player are thrown into the moments and have to act on both yours and Max's instincts. The episode has a lot of emotional turmoil and covers all the key points that were addressed involving, guilt, anger, sadness and even depression. Without giving too much away, by the time the episode ends you'll never see the effects that you had on this world coming.

Life Is Strange: Episode 3 - Chaos Theory is an amazing entry into the series, taking everything from the previous episodes and upping the emotional weight of each. It's a little quieter and your decisions seem to be smaller, but by episodes end, everything starts to be made clear of just how much impact you have on the world.

Angelina Bonilla, NoobFeed (@Twitter)