Why Cant Max Just Save Chloe and Not Rewind Again

Max Caulfield'due south time-manipulation abilities are a key chemical element of Life is Strange, and her discovery of these set off the events of the game. Likely triggered by the shocking experience of seeing a "blue-haired daughter" go shot in the girls' bathroom at Blackwell University, Max's power manifests for the very showtime time in Episode ane every bit she jumps back to a moment in Marker Jefferson'southward classroom where she then discovers she can rewind time. Throughout the game'south events, her powers manifest in various ways which are listed below.

Contents

• 1 Rewind
  • ane.i Teleporting
  • 1.2 Spontaneous Time Jumps
• 2 Futurity Vision
• three Freeze
  • 3.1 Suspension
• four Focus
  • 4.one Episode Three - "Chaos Theory"
  • 4.two Episode Four - "Nighttime Room"
  • 4.3 Episode Five - "Polarized"
  • four.4 Photo Time-Jump Machinery
  • iv.5 "Autopilot" Max
• 5 Consequences
  • 5.i Ethics
• 6 Trivia
• 7 Videos
• 8 Notes
• nine References

Rewind

Main article: Rewind

Max's near oft used power is the ability to reverse the flow of time; she can comfortably rewind time several seconds to a few minutes. Max herself is unaffected by the time alteration, remaining in a fixed position while time flows backwards effectually her, and she retains all recollection of what happened afterwards. As a side effect of this, Max may seem to suddenly disappear and/or appear out of nowhere to those under the effects of her powers (i.e. by moving to a unlike location and then rewinding fourth dimension, this allows her to be in a different location than where she was continuing originally). Whatsoever detail(s) on her person before time traveling are too kept with her afterwards the fact. As a focus for her powers, Max normally extends her hand out to rewind fourth dimension. It is unknown if this short-burst method of time travel entails any paradoxes every bit even her minor changes may contribute to a butterfly effect.

Teleporting

Max tin use also use her rewind power to erase the physical position of her old self by walking to a new location, rewinding, and then resuming time. To bystanders, it would probably seem that Max has teleported unless it is done cleverly with nobody around or vigilant enough, such as when Max teleports to backside the primary's office door when she knows nobody would exist inside, or when she can push an obstacle out of her way at the Blackwell pool party and appear on the other side, and whatever surprise from those present could perhaps be passed off equally a drunken hallucination.

Spontaneous Time Jumps

While her rewind usually enables Max to reverse time without moving her body, she discovers her rewind ability the first fourth dimension with a "jump" back in the Blackwell bath during the endeavor of saving Chloe so suddenly finds herself dorsum in the classroom. In the Director's Commentary, Michel Koch said that they honestly don't take a good explanation for information technology. It could exist a deeper manifestation of her rewind ability that requires a lot of energy — energy she was simply able to muster in such a dramatic and stressful situation.

Future Vision

Main article: Max'due south Visions

Max can see the time to come to some extent. Through lucid visions, Max was able to witness Arcadia Bay beingness destroyed past an oncoming tempest. During these visions, Max seemed to be experiencing the future event first-hand; thus it's possible that they aren't only visions simply rather 'fourth dimension jumps'. Her experiencing these specific visions may stem from having saved Chloe from dying and in turn causing a butterfly effect.

Freeze

Max has the ability to freeze time while also existence able to motility normally.^[i] Max discovered this ability during her attempt to save Kate Marsh from committing suicide, but the corporeality of concentration to maintain information technology was extremely harsh on her torso, as seen by her being rendered besides weak to utilise her rewind power later she made it up to the roof (her nose also bleeds a little). Similar to when she is reversing time, Max held her manus out during the duration of time being frozen.

Intermission

Max tin also pause time without being able to movement. This ability comes in handy when she faces a hard decision, mainly in dialogues. Information technology is also essential during more than serious situations, such as when she attempts to foreclose something bad from happening; it assures she will not pass the time frame of her rewind ability or have to witness the event of her (in)activeness. It is unknown whether Max'due south olfactory organ bleeds are the result of an accumulative employ of pausing or whether a pause can exist sustained indefinitely.^{[note 1]}

Focus

By focusing on a photo, Max can transfer her consciousness dorsum to the fourth dimension period when the photo was taken in order to modify the past. However, once in that location, she is unable to pass the 'photographic premises' (i.e. the areas of her surroundings that seem "out of focus") while the ability is in utilise. The power also appears to be limited to photographs in which Max herself is visibly present, whether as a reflection in her ain photography^[2] or a subject of someone else's. Max is too bars to exist within the physical grade she was in when the photo was taken (i.east. going dorsum in time using a v-year-old photo put her 18-year-old heed inside her xiii-year-old body), so if she were to use a photo of when she was 2, her mind would be placed in her two-year-old body. This ability is used several times throughout the game when Max needs to go to distant past moments.

Episode 3 - "Chaos Theory"

• Max discovers the ability for the first time. She focuses on a photo of her and Chloe from 2008 and prevents William Price from leaving the firm and dying in a car crash.

Episode Four - "Dark Room"

• Max focuses on the aforementioned photo of her and Chloe once again to disengage her actions and return to the original timeline.

Episode Five - "Polarized"

• In an effort to escape from the Dark Room, Max focuses on a monochrome photo taken by Jefferson. She manages to kick a trolley, forcing Jefferson to accept a different serial of photos.
• Max focuses on a different photo of herself and finds her diary during the focus.
  • She focuses on the selfie taken in Jefferson's class in "Chrysalis", warns David Madsen almost Jefferson and hands in her photo for the Everyday Heroes Photo Contest.
• Max uses her winning selfie in the Zeitgeist Gallery to render to the mean solar day it was taken and tears it up, preventing herself from winning the contest.
• She focuses on a photograph of her and Warren Graham taken in the parking lot to prevent Chloe from going to the End of the World Political party and subsequently dying.

Photo Time-Leap Mechanism

The machinery involved with the fourth dimension jumps through pictures involves Max's heed moving back and forth in fourth dimension while her body doesn't.

"Autopilot" Max

Chart explaining the time travel through pictures.^[3]

Nautical chart showing the timelines.^[4]

Note: The "autopilot" process brings out some confusing points: Subsequently the original 13-year-sometime Max was possessed by her eighteen-year-old self, how is she going to remember these few minutes when she hid the machine keys when Max jumps her mind back to the torso she left in the futurity?

3 possibilities:

• Max won't remember these few minutes and will go on living normally.
• Max knows she was possessed and knows about her future time travel powers. Non likely, as it would affect the timeline also much.
• Her encephalon will fill in the gaps with simulated memories: 13-year-sometime Max will think she acted from her own will when she hid the keys, maybe thinking information technology was some kind of prank she doesn't clearly remember.

When a possessed Max warned Chloe on the parking lot, she said to Chloe that she wouldn't remember anything from this fourth dimension jump ("In a few minutes, I won't know any of this happened... nothing.") Our Max couldn't have any way to know that for sure, but it would imply the commencement theory is mayhap correct: all autopilot Maxes experience some amnesia and/or blackouts.

Chloe has witnessed Max'south blackouts on a few occasions: when she tells Max she "totally blacked out" by the lighthouse in Episode 1, when Max collapsed and passed out in the junkyard in Episode ii, and when she passed out on the beach to experience a nightmare. However, no fourth dimension-jumping is believed to be occurring on these occasions as they are only linked to Max experiencing visions and a nightmare. But this raises the question as to whether Max'due south visions that lead her to points in the future count as time jumping and issue in the same side furnishings.

Life is Foreign is basically the role player following the journey of one iteration of Max'southward mind through time.

Side note: Information technology is interesting to annotation that the first example of autopilot Max is the simply 1 who doesn't have time-travel powers: this Max never saved Chloe in the bath. It confirms Max got her powers, or at to the lowest degree simply trigger them, by saving Chloe in the bathroom.

Consequences

Using her ability too oftentimes causes Max to experience headaches or a concrete breakdown, as seen in Episode 2 when Chloe forces her to rewind multiple times. When Max uses her photo spring ability, she oft gets nose bleeding inside the photo boundaries or afterwards in the new timeline. Notwithstanding, player-triggered rewinds, regardless of how oft, do not seem to take whatsoever pregnant impact on her.

Ethics

Information technology can be debated whether or not it is ethical that eighteen year-old Max jumped into a version of herself in an alternative timeline where her life was completely different and she was a member of the Vortex Gild. Even though the original 18 yr-one-time Max is the one who created this new timeline, is it correct for her to interrupt the life of some other Max? It probably bothered Max a lot since, in the nightmare sequence, the Max ghost introduced herself equally "1 of many Maxes [she] left behind" and told Max she'southward "left a trail of death (and suffering)" behind her. This could exist interpreted equally a statement about all of the autopilot Maxes' lives "our" Max interrupted. Whether what the dream Max said is truthful or not is unknown as it could but be Max's own fear or theory talking.

Trivia

• The game files indicate that the moment when Max focuses on a picture and travels back into that moment is called "Polarewind" (short for Polaroid rewind).
• When Max is "inside" a picture show, a weird effect seems to define impassable boundaries around her referred to as "photo boundaries". The consequence is called "Film Burn Particle" in the game files.
• The moment when Max is in her room and tears up her winning photo is the only time when the boundaries don't look like burning walls but similar a burning sphere instead.
• At a given time Max can utilize her laptop for research about her ability, later opening a page near Wormhole, she will annotate on how that theory makes sense. If taken into account how her power works during the rewind Max may actually exist right. She may indeed open a wormhole in the fabric of time, (not space), assuasive her to go back in time and not to take moved at all in infinite. This would also explain why pause rewind is harder for Max to perform, in Kate's rescue, under this theory when she pauses fourth dimension, she actually has to open up a wormhole in the fabric infinite/time equally she needs to move herself besides. Further, supporting this theory, is the fact that the rewind position in the timeline is indicated past a "swirl meter" that resembles a crude drawing of a wormhole in the corner of the screen.
• Illustrator Florent Auguy refers to the timestream montages as "tunnel".^[5]

Videos

What Are The Consequences Of Time Travel? Life Is Strange Science Deconstructed

Play Noggin explains time travel and chaos theory in Life is Strange

Notes

1. ↑ The pausing of time and rewinds can exist sustained for equally long as the player sustains it equally a game mechanic.

References

1. ↑ Although freezing time was implemented as a game mechanic to requite the player time to get Max into the dormitory edifice before Kate jumped, information technology is even so a power that Max has, as stated by Raoul Barbet in this video from the Game Developers Conference (GDC) in 2016 - from the 22:02 fourth dimension postage stamp. A visual cue that Max is using her power is her constantly extended correct hand that remains in front end of her as she walks slowly towards the building.
2. ↑ Max is seen reflected on a metal surface of a bucket in her blue butterfly photograph.
3. ↑ Chart by User:Magiccarot.
4. ↑ Reddit post by /u/AwesomeDewey
5. ↑ Florent Auguy's ArtStation Contour

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Source: https://life-is-strange.fandom.com/wiki/Max%27s_Abilities

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