What you playing PS4 / PS5 Style

I definitely treated him very differently. He's still a crazy dude but his heart is in the right place. Episode 4/5 still upset me. It's Chloe's story as much as Max's, and by the end of the game I feel closer to Chloe than any other video game character. Girl's been through a lot of shit without any semblance of stability since she was a child. My personal cannon is still rooted around my original choices, but it was interesting to see things play out differently. I maintain that both endings are valid, even though I'd still personally choose to sacrifice Chloe and hold onto those words she speaks just before the choice - that our time together was real and can't be taken away. I couldn't handle the guilt trip all the residents put on Max just before she comes out of her nightmare, and I don't know that Chloe could either even though she trusts in Max's final decision. It was cool to see the other ending play out this time anyway, and reminded me of what an incredible game this really is.

Read a crazy theory that Rachel is an alternate timeline Max, which is interesting to think about - Max's entire life before coming back to the bay is largely blurred out and she has the same body type as Rachel, to the point of fooling Joyce, Nathan, and Frank. The idea is that Max's reality hopping eventually allowed her and Rachel to exist, such that Max could have her life in Seattle and an alternate Max lived on with Chloe. I don't like to think that theory is true, it's a bit messy, but still interesting to speculate on. Read another that Max is a mutant - of the X-Men kind - which made me piss myself  

Also read (some) of a long rant about the game's ending by an unhappy customer. I agree with part of his main point, that this story is about Max growing into a more self-assured person. I disagree with his big waa point though, that the game was too deterministic and neutered Max's character development. Chloe literally dies in every episode (except 3, but she dies a lot in episode 4 and 5). The game is constantly telling us that Chloe will die/is dead. Chloe was the anomaly. By saving her countless times, the (blue) butterfly effect created the perfect storm. Without Chloe, Max has no powers, or at least they never manifested themselves in the past (unless she's Rachel, I guess), so while all the other decisions in the game matter to the extent of shaping Max as a character (for both herself and the player), the game (or Max's powers) is fundamentally about that moment with the blue haired girl in the bathroom.