So I want to talk about the Ending of "Life is Strange" [MAJOR SPOILERS!!!!]

[Zhukov]

Friends, I disagree. Mostly.

The circumstances surrounding the Tornado/Eclipse/Dead Animals/Etc and Max's use of her powers seemed pretty obvious, and reasonably well "explained" by the story (we never get much of an exposition dump, but fuck exposition dumps, they're lazy storytelling). Chloe was never meant to be saved. Every time the universe tried to course-correct by killing Chloe and Max intervened, things started to fray more and more aggressively.

Yeeaahh... I found myself wanting a little more to go on than that. The story already expected me to just accept the spontaneous manifestation of Max's timelord-shutterbug shenanigans. If your story leans heavily on an impending disaster then I'd like that disaster to have a bit more explanation than waving a butterfly in my face every so often.

Allow me to borrow your comparison with Bioshock Infinite. Do you think that story would have been improved if it had just handed us a girl with the ability to tear holes in time and space while omitting the details of Elizabeth's severed finger and Lutece's mention of the universe not liking "its peas mixed with its porridge"?

Does that explanation make perfect sense? No. But it doesn't really need to. (Like you, I have little patience for the folks mewling that quantum whatsits doesn't work that way.) It makes about as much sense as it needs to for the story to work. I realize this is a muddy and subjective judgment, but I don't think Life is Strange quite cleared that bar.

But Max didn't just have those powers to save Chloe, and saving Chloe is not the only thing Max did. I hate to reference another highly contentious time travel/alternate realities game, but I'm reminded of Infinite's "Constants and Variables". Chloe dying is a constant, and Max learns this (to her dismay) over the course of the game, while doing a lot of other really good and important stuff. Most prominently stopping a budding serial killer in his tracks. While the story re-centers itself on the relationship between Max and Chloe for the end, the relationship between Max and Chloe wasn't the only thing the game was about. Max has a character arc to complete, and Chloe is part of that, but it's not "Max and Chloe, the game".

While I have no intention of dying on this particular hill, it felt an awful lot like Max and Chloe The Game to me.

It is also perhaps worth noting that much of that good an important stuff is undone by the ending. (Although it could presumably be redone. We can safely assume Max ended up having a long talk with the sad Christian kid for example.)

Honestly, time travel is one of those things I wish writers would collectively get over. It always just makes a mess.