You're not wrong. Our conversation made me think about some aspects that I wasn't really going to touch upon, particularly the rich/bad vs poor/good guys. It's not all like that, but overall it rings true. But the game still deserves praise because it kept me guessing, we were being led to believe the villain was this dude and it turned out to be the other, unexpected one.
I don't think the game went supernatural, it was supernatural from the beginning :) The looking at photos thing (which I guess is what you meant), in fact seemed like an easy cop out from some tough situations, and the final chapter abused this.
Flawed, sometimes idiotic and cringe-worthy, but in the end I loved the experience, as it still had a lot more courage than other similar games.
What I meant was the whole tornado thing. Honestly, I was expecting some weird conspiracy of how the town is under some corporation's thumb or something, not a natural disaster that somehow is stopped in the last 2 minutes of the game if you choose your friend over the town.
And yeah, the whole looking at photos / time travel was also a cop out, but it was implemented well enough throughout the game to explore concequences. But yeah, the last chapter abused all the mechanics that were great in moderation, but just awful the way they were implemented.
Yes, again, I don't think it's a bad game by any means. I enjoyed it, for the most part. Maybe that's why I hate some shit it did. If it was completely awful, I probably wouldn't care at all.
I think the tornado was related to Max's powers somehow. Going even further, (spoilers to anyone who didn't play Before the Storm) I'm hoping it is related to Rachel Amber in some way - Before the Storm is hinting at some weird wind thing when she gets angry. Maybe her death could have triggered the whole tornado thing and Max's powers, so that she could find Rachel.
It's weird, but I prefer something like this instead of some Lost kind of "oh, it happened because we said so" thing.
A corporation could also be an explanation, but that would take the plot into conspiracy territory and it still wouldn't explain Max's ability.
As for the ending, my reading is that the tornado didn't stop, it destroyed the town (killed many?) and moved on to other, greener pastures. Or I could be wrong :)
Well, conspiracy theory could've involved the killing of her dad or Rachel. The game did kind of hint at that anyway (at least for Rachel). And maybe some X-Men kinda thing. Still supernatural, but slightly more grounded. Either way, the tornado existing and not, makes no sense, not even in the game world, which is mostly normal, with an allure of powerful people doing shit under the table.
The tornado makes as much sense as the smoke monster in Lost xD
You have a point with the killing of Chloe's dad and Rachel missing, it could go that way, more of an X-Files kind of thing.
Yeah, some weird conspiracy with shady goings-on would've been cooler in my opinion. This is the same issue I had with Fahrenheit. Could've been so cool, aaand it goes all coo-coo. Oh, well...
PS: In a way, the smoke monster in Lost makes slightly more sense, considering that world is purgatory or something :p
Hey, "purgatory", "dream" and "he/she was in a coma" are the worst excuses ever made for not bothering to finish a movie or series in a proper way. xD
Just imagine if after all these seasons of Game of Thrones they decided to go with a "they were all dead, it's purgatory" kind of ending.
I guess they could have used something like that for Life is Strange (the dream or coma example). It's not all bad then :)
Oh, don't get me wrong, that Lost ending was atrocious. I'm just saying that it gives some sense to weird monsters. It's another case where I would've liked it explained by whatever that community was experimenting or whatever, led to. The last few episodes were total trash, if you ask me.