Reactive: A Retrospective on Life is Strange: Episode Two

As before, what I write here is not meant to cover every event in this episode, nor is it meant to be a full review of the game, this is just a look at the parts of the episode I think are most thought-provoking. This blog is written in a way that those who haven’t played the game can still follow along, but I’d strongly recommend you experience it for yourself before reading. I also want to warn people that this blog contains discussion of mental health issues and specifically suicide. If those are sensitive topics for you, you might want to sit this one out.

While Life is Strange: Episode One had a strong focus on bullies, Episode Two focuses more on the fallout of that bullying. The plot brings us back to Kate Marsh, humiliated by the spread of a viral video of her making out with a number of people at a Vortex Club party. I feel slightly uncomfortable as even the people defending Kate seem solely interested in insisting that she didn’t do it under normal circumstances, rather than considering that it might be okay even if she did. Not that Kate’s immediate personality matches that of someone who would be all over people at a party, but the way the topic is approached by the characters is tinged in slut shaming. It feels true-to-life that these otherwise good people can still internalise these misogynistic ideas, especially at this age. The decision of whether to report Kate’s abuse to the police was the one I’ve hesitated longest over so far. For as much as I’d sided with talking to an authority figure about violence against a student in Episode One, too many police departments and academic institutions have a poor track record of dealing with abuse and I find it hard to believe Blackwell is one of the good ones. This had the potential to be a gruelling process for Kate that led nowhere and so I decided to hold off on telling an adult. Still, I feel like Max could have been a bit more sensitive to her situation. She has an understandable lack of experience with the topic and it shows. It’s one of the reasons why I was so eager to take the opportunity to offer Kate some words of comfort later on.

An easily forgotten but rather precious moment in here is the chance to speak to Samuel, the caretaker. With his unusual speech patterns and oversized, unfashionable glasses Samuel comes across as a little creepy, but stopping and thinking about it I realised there was no reason to assume Samuel was in any way a bad person, and I was at risk of displaying the kind of prejudice the other students can. Samuel’s attachments suggest someone who has turned towards animals because he doesn’t have many human beings around. He seems lonely, which might not be the reality of the situation, but either way he’s a gentle person with a love for living things and I wanted to provide him some moments of company. It was the chance to spend some simple, quiet time with an easily glossed-over character. I also didn’t expect that apology from David. It wasn’t enough to make me change my mind about him as a character, but it was a warm moment, and even if I very much like Chloe and don’t like David, it did feel like Chloe’s theft of his handgun crossed a line.

It’s ironic but appropriate that the gun proves not to provide Max and Chloe any protection when they get into trouble, but instead only puts them in more danger. At best the gun serves as a fun toy and a symbol of power without any of the actual force behind it. When Frank shows up demanding money from Chloe, attempting to shoot him only makes him poke threats at Max, and not shooting him leads to him taking the gun from her. Chloe is most likely right that he’s more talk than action, but she may not realise that doesn’t assuage the fears of anyone not used to seeing a knife waved at their friends. Any risk of Frank hurting someone, even a small one, is unsettling. The puzzle leading on from this in which Chloe gets her leg stuck in the tracks as a train approaches is equally as tense as this encounter, if not more so, which is impressive given that you effectively have the power to reset as many times as you want. It’s also a smart way for the game to have you expend your time-travelling ability before the penultimate scene of the episode. It feels like less of a cheat when the game takes that power away from you later on because you can see how your voluntary actions led to it.

Before you can get to that scene however the game needs a buffer between the dramas; the brief opportunity to visit Blackwell’s science lab presents this. As I explored the classroom I couldn’t help but repeat Oingo Boingo’s “Weird Science” in my head. When I found Max’s nerdy friend Warren there he asked me whether he should add potassium or sodium to his concoction. I initially misinterpreted the puzzle, giving him the less reactive metal so he didn’t do himself an injury. The results were less than spectacular. I rewound and gave him the other answer. As Warren watched the potassium pop away in the flask he excitedly exclaimed “Weird Science”. After I left the lab and returned to the girls’ dorms I saw Kate Marsh up on the roof, ready to jump.

Taking away your time manipulation power was really the only way the game could conduct the suicide scene with an air of realism. If you’re talking someone down from a ledge (literal or otherwise) there’s a very immediate threat of consequence for the things you say and if the game let you break the natural chain of cause and effect that would disappear. The scene is an exercise in empathy: Getting inside the mindset of Kate and knowing what will help her and what won’t. This means one part understanding the headspace of any person who is suicidal and one part understanding Kate specifically. For me this manifested by being able to uplift her and de-escalate the situation until the conversation turned to the topics of the Bible and other students at Blackwell. Suddenly she was standing at the edge and my dialogue menu gave me the options of telling her suicide is a sin or quoting one of two Bible verses.

Lecturing on the “sinful” nature of suicide seemed like an obviously poor decision. A person about to jump off of a roof does not need to be pressured and told they’re a bad person. That’s the kind of thing her parents would have done. So it was down to the verses. I had not memorised either of them and looking them up online seemed like a cheap way out, but things got more interesting when I realised I could use a physical Bible. Suddenly the game had put something tangible in my hands, but it meant little in terms of trying to save Kate. Both verses at my disposal had a grim element to them and as it turned out Proverbs 21:15 did not stop her from jumping. I feel regret over not having been able to steer the conversation another way, but I also know that to view it as me or Max having not prevented her suicide would be in various ways inaccurate. The very large majority of the damage that was done to Kate was done before she got up on that roof, not in anything Max said to her, and it should never have been down to a fellow student to try and talk her off that building to begin with. There were people who had a far greater responsibility in making sure that an eighteen year old girl did not take her own life and they failed at their job. As Max I was at least able to do more for her than anyone else had. Sadly Kate’s scenario feels remarkably similar to many real world cases where teens and young adults often notice and support friends struggling with mental illness far better than the adults in charge whose job it is to try and pay attention to those things.

The choice at the start of the next scene is so far the only one in the game I’ve been disappointed by. With Max in the Principal’s Office you’re forced into pinning the blame for Kate’s suicide onto David, Nathan, or photography teacher Mr. Jefferson. Jefferson had shown disinterest in and even opposition to Kate when Max tried to speak about her as a victim, David was hassling her but we don’t know exactly why, and Nathan is Nathan but there’s no evidence to present the principal with of any wrongdoing on his part. Many of the details are not filled in and despite the way the designers try to break it down, even among the people in the room the blame obviously rests on more than one person, then there are all the possible factors elsewhere in Kate’s life. Kate’s parents were obviously a damaging presence, Kate was bullied by other students, she may have had other mental complications we don’t know about, and there’s no sign of particularly strong mental health support within the school. The game had up to this point handled Kate’s issues admirably, but here it feels in over its head. It asks you to take a complex, multifaceted mental health problem and blame it on a single one of three people. It’s the exact kind of tone-deaf mentality which causes so many institutions to mishandle cases of mental illness to begin with. You could try to excuse the game’s limited tools of expression here as attempting to be simulatory of Max’s mindset, but Max is a bright girl and I don’t think she believes it’s as clear cut as the game tries to paint it. The best fit for the blame was Nathan so I chose him. At least it resulted in some observable discipline.

The subject matter at this point is disturbing enough that I’m considering reloading the save and replaying the section to save Kate, and that is the kind of thing I never do in games, the greater likelihood however is that I’ll press on ahead anyway. I am to some extent placing my trust in the developers and their writing abilities because if the game can emerge from the murky darkness of the suicide scene and still deliver something full of hope and happiness it’s going to be very special.

A couple of points I couldn’t fit anywhere else:

• It’s minorly jarring that the game doesn’t seem to incorporate any choices you’ve made into the “Previously on Life is Strange” montage.
• The recurring vision of the tornado and the clifftop lighthouse reminds me of “Alan Wake” in a good way.