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Max Caulfield's time-manipulation abilities are a key 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 girl" get shot by Nathan Prescott in the girls' bathroom at Blackwell Academy, Max discovers her powers for the very first time in Episode 1 after she turns back time and reappears in Mark Jefferson's classroom. Throughout the game, Max’s ability to manipulate time is showcased in various ways.

Temporal Rewind[]

Main article: Rewind

Max's most frequently 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 conscious in a fixed position while time flows backwards around her. Any item(s) on her person before time traveling are also kept with her after the fact. She retains all recollection of events prior to rewinding, enabling her to act with knowledge she did not previously have. Conversation options she unlocks using her rewind are represented by a speech bubble icon with a rewind symbol.

As a focus for her powers, Max normally extends her hand out to rewind time, but apparently does not need to always do this; in Episode 5, she can use her power while both of her hands are restrained. It is unknown if this short-burst method of time travel entails any paradoxes as even her small changes may contribute to a butterfly effect.

“Teleporting”[]

Max can also use her rewind ability to erase the physical and spatial position of her old self by walking to a new location, rewinding, and then resuming time. To bystanders, it would appear that Max has disappeared or appeared suddenly. She often uses this aspect of her power in places where no one is present or vigilant enough to notice, such as teleporting behind the principal's office door when she knows nobody would be inside, or pushing an obstacle out of her way at the Blackwell pool party and appearing on the other side, where any surprise from those present could reasonably be passed off as a drunken hallucination.

Spontaneous Time Jumps[]

Despite Max’s spatial position normally being impervious to the effects of her rewind, her first use of her power instead has her “jump” backward in time to Mr. Jefferson’s classroom several minutes earlier, where she suddenly awakens once again at her desk. Had this worked the same way as subsequent uses of her power, she would have remained in the bathroom as time reversed around her. In the Director's Commentary, Michel Koch admitted that the developers don't have a good explanation for this inconsistency. However, it could be a deeper manifestation of her rewind ability that requires a lot of energy — energy that Max was only able to muster in such a dramatic and stressful situation.

Future Vision[]

Main article: Max's Visions

Max can see the future to some extent. Through lucid visions, Max was able to witness Arcadia Bay being destroyed by an oncoming storm. During these visions, Max seems to be experiencing the future event first-hand; thus it's possible that they aren't just visions but rather 'time jumps'. Her experiencing these specific visions may stem from having saved Chloe from dying and in turn causing a butterfly effect.

Temporal Freezing[]

Max has the power to freeze time while also being able to move normally.[1] She discovers this ability during her attempt to save Kate Marsh from committing suicide, but the amount of concentration to maintain it is extremely harsh on her body. Once she reaches the roof, she is rendered too weak to use her rewind power and suffers a nosebleed. Similar to when she is reversing time, Max holds her hand out while time is frozen.

Pause[]

Max can also pause time without being able to move. This ability comes in handy when she faces a difficult decision, mainly in dialogues. It is also essential during more serious situations, such as when she attempts to prevent something bad from happening; it assures she will not pass the time frame of her rewind ability or have to witness the consequence of her (in)action. It is unknown whether Max's nose bleeds are the result of an accumulative use of pausing or whether a pause can be sustained indefinitely.[note 1]

Chronoskimming[]

PolaDrawing

By focusing on a photograph, Max can transfer her consciousness back to the time period when the photo was taken in order to change the past and subsequently the future. However, once there, she is unable to pass the 'photographic bounds' (i.e. the location the photo was originally taken in) while the ability is in use. The ability also appears to be limited to photographs in which Max herself is visibly present, whether as a reflection in her own photography[2] or a subject of someone else's. Max is also confined to exist within the physical form she was in when the photo was taken (i.e. going back in time using a five-year-old photo put her 18-year-old mind inside her 13-year-old body), so if she were to use a photo of when she was two, 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 Three - "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 house and dying in a car crash.

Episode Four - "Dark Room"[]

  • Max focuses on the same photo of her and Chloe again to undo 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 take a different series of photos.
  • Max focuses on a different photo of herself and finds her diary during the focus.
  • Max uses her winning selfie in the Zeitgeist Gallery to return to the day it was taken and tears it up, preventing herself from winning the contest.
  • She focuses on a photo of her and Warren Graham taken in the parking lot to prevent Chloe from going to the End of the World Party and subsequently dying.

Photo Time-Jump Mechanism[]

The mechanism involved with the time jumps through pictures involves Max's mind moving back and forth in time while her body doesn't.

"Autopilot" Max[]

Note: The "autopilot" process brings out some confusing points: After the original 13-year-old Max was possessed by her 18-year-old self, how is she going to remember these few minutes when she hid the car keys when Max jumps her mind back to the body she left in the future?

Three 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. Not likely, as it would affect the timeline too much.
  • Her brain will fill in the gaps with fake memories: 13-year-old Max will think she acted from her own will when she hid the keys, maybe thinking it was some kind of prank she doesn't clearly remember.

When the present Max (inhabiting the body of her past self) travels back in time to warn Chloe in the parking lot, she says to Chloe that she wouldn't remember anything from this time jump once her present consciousness left ("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 first theory is perhaps correct: all autopilot Maxes experience some amnesia and/or blackouts.

Chloe has witnessed Max's 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 2, and when she passed out on the beach to experience a nightmare. However, no time-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's visions that lead her to points in the future count as time jumping and result in the same side effects.

Life is Strange is basically the player following the journey of one iteration of Max's mind through time.

Side note: It is interesting to note that the first example of autopilot Max is the only one who doesn't use her powers: this Max never saved Chloe in the bathroom and thus never learned about her powers. This (combined with her retaining the use of her powers even while controlling a version of herself who is not aware of them, such as her counterpart in the alternative timeline) points to the idea that Max’s abilities are not genetic, but linked to her consciousness.

Consequences[]

Using her power too often causes Max to experience headaches or a physical breakdown, as seen in Episode 2 when Chloe forces her to rewind multiple times. When Max uses her photo jump ability, she often gets nose bleeding inside the photo boundaries or afterwards in the new timeline. However, player-triggered rewinds, regardless of how often, do not seem to have any significant impact on her.

Ethics[]

It can be debated whether or not it is ethical that 18 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 Club. Even though the original 18 year-old Max is the one who created this new timeline, is it right for her to interrupt the life of another Max, especially when she has no memory of the years in between? This question is posed in a statement from the “ghost” Max in her nightmare sequence, who introduces herself as "one of many Maxes [she] left behind" and tells Max that she's "left a trail of death (and suffering)" behind her. While this could be an expression of Max’s subconscious fears, it also could be interpreted as a statement about all of the autopilot Maxes' lives "our" Max interrupted. It is likely, however, that Max interrupting the lives of the autopilot Maxes, particularly her alternative self, is not something she can exert control over; when she travels to a point in the past and performs the desired changes, her consciousness is then sent forward in time to her body in the now-altered present. Since “our” Max did not experience the altered past and her consciousness is not affected by alterations to the timeline, she only retains memory of the timeline(s) she has personally experienced.

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, a weird effect seems to define impassable boundaries around her referred to as "photo boundaries". The effect is called "Film Burn Particle" in the game files.
  • When Max tears up her winning photo in her room, the photo boundaries don't look like burning walls (as in other cases) but instead resemble a burning sphere.
  • Illustrator Florent Auguy refers to the timestream montages as "tunnel".[5]

Videos[]

What_Are_The_Consequences_Of_Time_Travel?_Life_Is_Strange_Science_Deconstructed

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 be sustained for as long as the player sustains it as a game mechanic.

References[]

  1. Although freezing time was implemented as a game mechanic to give the player time to get Max into the dormitory building before Kate jumped, it is still 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 time stamp. A visual cue that Max is using her power is her constantly extended right hand that remains in front 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 Profile

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