Photo.00: Synopsis

Life is Strange (2015)

Set in the picturesque coastal town of Arcadia Bay, Oregon, the game follows Max Caulfield, an 18-year-old high school student and aspiring photographer who returns alone to her hometown to attend the prestigious Blackwell Academy. One day, the introverted Max witnesses Nathan Prescott—the unstable heir to the town’s most powerful family—shoot and kill a blue-haired girl in a school bathroom. In that moment of overwhelming shock, Max awakens to a mysterious supernatural ability: the power to rewind time at will.

Using her rewind power to avert the murder, Max discovers that the girl is her childhood best friend, Chloe Price, from whom she had been estranged for five years. Following the tragic death of her beloved father, William, Max’s sudden move to Seattle, and the mysterious disappearance of her emotional anchor, Rachel Amber, Chloe has been spiraling in grief and deep isolation.

Reunited, the two begin investigating Rachel’s vanishing. Along the way, Max confronts the malice and disturbing undercurrents lingering within Blackwell Academy. When classmate Kate Marsh is driven to a suicide attempt off the dormitory roof after a video recorded while she was drugged goes viral, Max temporarily manifests the power to freeze time entirely, allowing her to intervene (whether successfully or not).

As their investigation deepens, Max unlocks an even higher-tier ability: “photo-jumping”—projecting her consciousness directly back into past moments via photographs. Driven to erase the root of Chloe’s anguish, Max alters history to prevent William’s fatal accident. However, in this alternate timeline, while William survives, Chloe is left quadriplegic from a car accident and begs Max for assisted suicide. Facing the brutal unpredictability of altering fate, Max makes the painful decision to restore the original timeline.

Returning to their original reality, the two discover Rachel’s decaying body buried in an abandoned junkyard. Driven by revenge, Chloe and Max pursue the truth, only to uncover the mastermind behind the atrocities: Blackwell’s respected photography instructor, Mark Jefferson. Obsessed with capturing moments of pure innocence, Jefferson is a serial abductor who drugs and kidnaps female students to photograph them in his secret underground bunker, the “Dark Room.” Having manipulated and ultimately killed Nathan, Jefferson executes Chloe and imprisons Max in the Dark Room.

Using remaining photographs to jump back through time repeatedly, Max rewinds history to thwart Jefferson’s crimes and bring him to justice. However, her continuous abuse of time manipulation warps the spacetime continuum itself, manifesting as supernatural, catastrophic weather anomalies. At the story’s climax, as a colossal superstorm threatens to obliterate Arcadia Bay, Max and Chloe head to the coastal lighthouse amidst the raging gale. There, they reach a devastating conclusion: the giant tornado is the direct consequence of the spatial distortion caused when Max saved Chloe’s life in the bathroom.

Max is forced into an absolute, irreversible choice: accept fate by letting Chloe die in the bathroom without using her powers, thereby saving the town and its residents; or reject destiny and remain with Chloe, sacrificing Arcadia Bay to its destruction.

DLC: Life is Strange: Before the Storm (2017)

Set in Arcadia Bay three years prior to the events of the original game, this prequel centers on a 16-year-old Chloe Price. Consumed by powerlessness and isolation following the tragic loss of her father William, Max’s relocation to Seattle, and her resentment toward her mother Joyce’s new partner—ex-soldier David Madsen—Chloe lives a rebellious, self-destructive life. Defending herself with her sharp-witted “Backtalk,” her daily routine changes dramatically when she crosses paths with Rachel Amber, Blackwell Academy’s brilliant, charismatic star student and lead actress.

After Rachel rescues Chloe from a dangerous confrontation at an illegal underground concert in an abandoned sawmill, an unexpected bond forms rapidly between the two girls from vastly different social circles. The following day, while ditching school at a local park, Rachel looks through a viewfinder and spots her revered father, District Attorney James Amber, embracing and kissing an unfamiliar woman. Devastated and enraged by his betrayal, Rachel spirals into a rage at a junkyard; her emotional explosion inadvertently sparks a massive forest fire that threatens the entire town.

By sharing their inner loneliness and uncovering the dark shadows hiding beneath Rachel’s picture-perfect family, the two forge a profound bond and romantic connection. During Blackwell’s production of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, Chloe steps in as a last-minute understudy, a shared performance that cements their emotional closeness. Afterward, Rachel confronts her father about his infidelity. James reveals a shocking truth: the woman in the park was Sera Gearhardt, Rachel’s biological mother, who was cut out of her life as an infant due to severe drug addiction.

Desperate to reunite with her birth mother, Rachel remains unaware that James—under the guise of protecting his daughter—has secretly enlisted Damon Merrick, a dangerous local drug dealer, to forcibly restrain and permanently eliminate Sera. Discovering the truth, Chloe risks everything to save Sera, enlisting drug dealer Frank Bowers to track her to an abandoned mill where Damon has drugged and captive her. After Frank subdues Damon in a violent altercation, a recovering Sera begs Chloe to keep the dark truth hidden from Rachel, fearing that her own broken presence and James’s cruel actions would destroy Rachel’s world.

At the hospital, Chloe faces a final, agonizing choice: tell Rachel the unvarnished, brutal truth about her parents, or lie to protect her happiness and family bond. After depicting brief, tender moments of their shared happiness, the narrative closes with a chilling flash-forward to the Dark Room years later—a vibrating phone accompanied by the ominous sound of a camera shutter, hauntingly foreshadowing Rachel’s impending tragic fate.