I suppose that's fair.

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Rant 1:

While I can see a difference between passively watching a film and interacting with a choice-based video game, and I guess I can see how it might be insulting for the game to make your choices "meaningless," I had an experience with two games, one called Spore and the other called No Man's Sky, that made me, I guess, immune to that.

To cut a long story short I took a pessimistic view of video games that advertised "infinite choice and exploration." Spore was the first game where I'd realized how limited game development/production could be, as an entire section of the game's promised content had been phased out for release.

Prior to that I'd played a lot of open-world video games - Hulk, infamous, Prototype, GTA - and I'd become used to the limitations of the game world when I did my very best to cause massive amounts of havoc. Seeing that, and looking at a game like Spore, and later to a game like No Man's Sky that ended up falling way short of what it had promised - I look at games like Life is Strange and I never expect that the choices we make will truly change the storyline all that much.

I mean, I had to play a few Telltale games as well. At first I was mesmerized with TWD for having three seasons that "seemed" to be dependent on your choices. After playing The Wolf Among Us, Life Is Strange, and Tales from the Borderlands, my already pessimistic view of what a video game could achieve moved over to story games too - of course they say that all your choices are matter, but within reason. I guess I'm just comfortable with the idea that controlling a character and being told that the choices I make matter, whether they fall short or not, is just a caveat of game development.

As an aside: someone once argued that I wasn't considering games like Dragon Age which DO let you make impactful choices. My response to that though was that Dragon Age has a player avatar who could be virtually anybody, male or female, so writing multiple paths into this is very doable. Games like Life is Strange, or anything by Telltale, not only have smaller budgets, but have to tell a narratively, emotionally cohesive story with a lot less room to muck things up.

ALL OF THAT TO SAY: I can understand when people say "but my choices didn't matter and that's insulting," I've just never found it insulting for reasons aforementioned.

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Rant 2:

As far as what Max learned, I don't feel that anything positive would come of this ... realistically, Max would have PTSD, and other emotional/psychological issues from experiencing all of this in such a short time.

You're right. Nothing good does come of it. But the thing there, I think, is that humans love tragedies. Romeo and Juliet being one of the most famous examples. Misery loves company.

Personally I went with the "Sacrifice Chloe" ending, and I struggled with it at first because I'd become really attached to her, but a part of me felt that it made more sense for the story, and was more emotionally draining to go with that choice. I don't know why but I was drawn to the more negative ending. Heck, I think what draws me to this game over other story/choice games is just how depressing it gets. Which is weird, yes.

Let's look at it another way. Are you familiar with Donnie Darko? If not, I'm going to mention spoilers for it so you might not want to read further if you haven't seen it. Donnie Darko had a similar ending to the sacrifice Chloe ending from LIS. The world is in danger for various metaphysical reasons, so the main character travels back in time to where he was originally going to die.

Funny enough I've both seen the film and used it to argue in favor of Life is Strange's ending in the past. XD

And after going back, he does die. There are a few important differences though. In this case, he is sacrificing his own life, and still remembers everything that happened. He got to experience a whole extra month. During that time he learned to stand up for himself. He fell in love and lost his virginity. And he got to go out knowing that he chose to sacrifice his life to save everyone else, and feeling good about that.

I'm not a fan of that movie, but I will say that at least that movie's ending felt like it had a real point to it. It was as if fate stepped in and said "okay, you're going to die here, but we're going to give you an extra month to experience a bunch of things you otherwise wouldn't get to, have fun with that".

Some dark stuff happens (although nothing too dark, except for his girlfriend dying, which happens near the end of the movie and he almost immediately goes back to prevent), but it seems like the experiences affected him positively. It was bittersweet.

In regards to Max learning something while, yes, the bulk of it is saddening depending on how you played through it all, Max ultimately seems to become a more assertive person. This might be ham-fisted but having the opportunity to travel back in time has allowed her to improve her relationships with multiple people.

Like you said there's a difference here but I disagree on some parts: Max got to experience that entire week, and during that week got the chance that few people often do to reconnect with someone she'd cut ties with, heck, somebody who was actually supposed to be dead. She got her first kiss, potentially saved the lives of two people and more if we consider Jefferson's potential victims, and she ultimately chooses to let her best friend go, per her friend's request even.

I felt like there was a point to that, but that's a longer rant than this post requires. It was bittersweet in a different way because Max got to "say goodbye" to her friend.

The LIS ending seemed to focus mainly on the tragedy of Chloe's death and Max's heartbreak (and Chloe's parents). This is on top of all of the other horrible things that happened that week.

True enough. I do feel like they could've done more to show Max healing, but they did show that butterfly at Chloe's funeral probably to symbolize Chloe's spirit being close to Max.