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.
You said it. It was a major disappointment, clearly they didn't have anything explained when they threw stuff around for the first two awesome seasons.
Episode 5 of Life is Strange also had its share of filler.
We'll definitely discuss this further if I find out that the final episode of Before the Storm didn't add anything new to the series. I'm getting ready to rage :)
There's room for filler content in my book, to flesh out characters or give background and whatnot. But it should be sparse, and imo, Ep5 was pretty much all filler. I liked the rest of the series, but that last one ... it was just like bad anime. 80% of the episode was recounting what happened before, and what was left was a shallow choice that felt in another universe.
I don't have the second season, but I've seen let's plays, and it's just too cringey for me. Hopefully you enjoy it :)