Chronological Sequence of Events (Life is Strange)

Life is Strange

Before the Storm

This chronology describes at which time the events in Life Is Strange occurred, based on the texts, time-stamps, clocks and information gleaned from the timestream montages.

Because the "Farewell" bonus episode made later by Deck Nine Games shares an overlap with DONTNOD's original game, it is also featured on this page but under a separate heading.

The evidence for the time is mentioned between parentheses. The lines in italics are suppositions not backed up by hard evidence.

Chronology

Monday 10/07/13

• 3:49 pm – Max Caulfield wakes up in the art class (clock).
• 3:59 pm – Max has a discussion with Mark Jefferson (clock).
• 4:02 pm – Chloe parks her truck at Blackwell on a disabled parking place (clues for the vehicle TWNPKS)
• 4:02 pm - 4:21 pm – Chloe meets Nathan in the bathroom and is shot to death/saved by Max
• 4:21 pm – Max steps outside Blackwell Academy and enters the main campus (text from Warren Graham).
• 4:45 pm – Max is in the dormitories in her room (text from Max's mom)
• 4:58 pm – Max is in the dormitories and starts going to the parking lot. (text from Warren)
• 5:02 pm – Max is out of the dormitories (text from Victoria Chase)
• 5:36 pm – Max and Chloe arrive at Chloe's house (clues for the vehicle TWNPKS)
• 6:00 pm – Max is in Chloe Price's living room (text from Kate Marsh).
• 6:18 pm – Max and Chloe arrive at the beach where Chloe parks her truck (clues for the vehicle TWNPKS).
• 6:36 pm – Max arrives at the lighthouse with Chloe (text from Warren).
• 7:52 pm – Max has already come back to Blackwell Academy (Chloe's truck is back at Chloe's house)
• 8:12 pm - 12:01 am – Max is presumably in her room, reading books to understand her powers (text from Warren).

Tuesday 10/08/13

• 12:01 am – Max either goes to bed or is completely focused on her time-travel research (text from Chloe left unanswered).
• 7:34 am – Max wakes up (text from Chloe)
• 7:38 am – Max is still in her room. Warren can be seen through the window (text from Chloe/Max's mom)
• 7:56 am – Max took a shower, got dressed and leaves her room after noticing the graffiti on her wall (text from unknown number)
• 7:56 am - 8:08 am – Max talks to Kate and brings back her book (text from Chloe)
• 8:13 am – Max starts talking to Warren in the courtyard (text from unknown number)
• 8:39 am – Max gets off the bus (text from Chloe).
• Between 8:39 am and 9:19 am – Max receives a call from Kate in the diner.
• 9:19 am – Max receives a text from Warren after having found two bottles in the junkyard.
• 9:36 am – Max receives a text from Kate after having found four bottles in the junkyard.
• 9:36 am - 10:50 am – Max and Chloe have a confrontation with Frank Bowers in the junkyard, then they go to the train tracks.
• 10:50 am – Max frees Chloe from the train tracks and then Chloe gives Max a ride to Blackwell (Blackwell clock).
• 10:53 am – Max is talking to David Madsen in Blackwell's corridor (text from Warren).
• 11:00 am – Jefferson's class is starting (Max's school schedule and bell).
• 11:06 am – Max is receiving a text from Chloe, Jefferson's class hasn't yet been interrupted.
• 11:06 am - 6:13 pm – Kate attempts suicide and Max has to answer questions in the Principal's office (text from Chloe).
• 6:13 pm – Max watches the eclipse together with Warren. Chloe is at the lighthouse.
• 7:01 - 9:47 pm – Max is presumably resting in her room (texts from Max's mom, Warren and from a private number; only appears if Max got expelled).
• 11:34 pm – Max is woken by her phone (text from Chloe).
• 11:47 pm – Max steps outside the dormitories.
• 11:47 pm - 11:58 pm – Max is in the courtyard in front of the dormitories (texts from Chloe).

Wednesday 10/09/13

• 12:06 am – Max fails to find the keys to the Principal's office (text from Warren).
• 12:18 am - 12:26 am – Max and Chloe break inside the Principal's office (texts from Warren).
• 12:26 am - 1:30 am — Max and Chloe are inside Blackwell Academy's swimming pool (ABPD website)
• 1:30 am — David and another security guard arrive at the swimming pool (ABPD website)
• 8:07 am – Max is at Chloe's house, the text will appear when she leaves Chloe's room to go downstairs to have breakfast (text from Kate; only appears if she's alive)
• 8:10 am – Max is at Chloe's house, the text will appear when she leaves Chloe's room to go downstairs to have breakfast (text from Richard Marsh; only appears if Kate's dead)
• 8:13 am – Max wakes up in Chloe's room (text from Warren).
• 8:29 am – Max gets into David's laptop on the garage and finds more evidence. (text from Taylor Christensen; only appears if Max is nice to Taylor)
• 9:17 am – Max and Chloe fail to open the RV's door (text from Max's dad)
• 9:21 am – Max enters the diner (text from Warren).
• 9:32 am – Max manages to get the key from Frank and leaves the diner (text from Victoria; only appears if Max blamed Jefferson in the Principal's office)

Alternative timeline starts

• Between 6:40 pm and 7:10 pm – Max and Chloe are taking a stroll by the beach (based on the duration of the golden hour for that day and location).
• 7:39 pm – Max and Chloe are talking in Chloe's garage room (clock in Chloe's room).

Thursday 10/10/13

• 10:43 am – Max wakes up on Chloe's lap (clock in Chloe's room).
• 10:45 am – Max brings morphine for Chloe from the bathroom (clock in Chloe's room).

Alternative timeline ends

• 8:41 am – Max enters Chloe's living room (text from Warren).
• 8:41 am - 10:31 am – Max visits Kate at the hospital and then is in the courtyard in front of the dorms (text from Kate).
• 10:31 am – Max enters the guys' dorms (text from Kate).
• 10:42 am – Max enters Nathan Prescott's room (text from Joyce).
• 11:03 am – Max and Chloe thank Warren for his help in the dorms (Blackwell Academy's clock).
• 11:03 am - 1:22 pm – Max and Chloe pay a visit to Frank Bowers near the beach.
• 1:22 pm – Max investigates the clues in Chloe's room (text from Frank).
• 1:51 pm – Max is still investigating the clues (text from Nathan).
• 3:39 pm – Max and Chloe arrive at the old barn (text from warren).
• 8:00 pm - Max and Chloe arrive at the End of the World party.
• 9:00 pm – Nathan leaves a message on Max's voicemail, announcing that Jefferson is going to kill him soon (Nathan's missed call likely happened when Max was attending the End of the World party so maybe Max's ringtone was drowned out by the noise/music).
• 9:00 pm - 9:42 pm – Nathan is killed by Jefferson.
• 9:42 pm – Max enters the VIP section of the End of the World Party (text from Kate).
• 11:34 pm – Max has already been drugged and Chloe shot by Jefferson (Joyce's message was never received by Max).

Friday 10/11/13

• 12:34 am – Max hasn't yet been brought into the underground bunker. (Max receives Taylor's text and her phone has no reception inside the dark room)

San Francisco timeline starts

• 10:56 am – Max checks her phone (phone screen).

San Francisco timeline ends

• 10:56 am – Max is back in the Dark Room after Jefferson had burned her diary (timestream equivalence).
• 10:56 am - 12:17 pm – Max is a prisoner in the Dark Room
• 12:17 pm – Max realizes her phone has no reception inside the dark room (Max's phone screen)
• 12:19 pm – Max gets out of the bunker and calls Warren (Max's phone screen)

(TBA)

Temporal Inconsistencies

Max's Missed Calls

At 10:56 am on Friday 11, October 2013, Max discovers 6 missed calls from Chloe where only the first three call times are displayed: 3:27 pm, 3:51 pm and 4:01 pm. Due to these saying pm, which had not yet occurred on Friday, the calls could only have been made on Thursday 10/10. But even though she explains she missed them because her phone was in silent mode, "autopilot" Max would have seen them a long time before, since she replied to a 5:14 pm text from Chloe on Thursday 10/10.

A likely explanation would be that the texture artist mistook am for pm: the storm started apparently in the night from Thursday to Friday, which would explain why Chloe desperately called in the early hours.

Chloe and Max Bringing the Board

The timestream indicates that the moment when Max and Chloe bring the wooden board in Chloe's room takes place at the same time as when alternative Chloe and alternative Max are talking in Chloe's (garage) room. An issue is that they are talking at 7:39 pm (it's dark outside) while it is clearly daylight when they bring in the board.

Timestream image of them bringing up the board.

View outside the window in the alternative timeline.

Kate's Text Timestamp

The San Francisco timestream indicates that the ceremony organized to celebrate Max win of the Everyday Heroes Photo contest took place at the same moment when Max and Chloe discovered Rachel's body: some time during the late afternoon on Thursday 10/10. Kate is seen attending the ceremony. However, in this timeline, Kate sent a text at 9:23 pm on the same day to congratulate Max saying she just heard Max had won the contest. She obviously wouldn't send such a text if she had attended the ceremony several hours before.

Clock in alt-Chloe's Room

It is unclear whether this clock should be trusted regarding the morning on Thursday 10/10: Max chooses whether to euthanize Chloe around 11:45 am according to the clock but when she comes back at an equivalent moment in Chloe's room (the regular timeline), it is 8:41 am, according to a text from Warren. If the texts are to be considered as the main temporal reference then it is an oversight and the clock would be wrong.

Farewell Episode Overlap

Confusion exists with the clocks/time of day in the "Farewell" bonus episode by Deck Nine Games in relation to how this episode fits within the original game's canon.

The time on the dining room clock in the original game during the baking scene when Max goes back in time displays 4:30 (with the assumption of this being PM). Deck Nine state that the baking scene from the original game takes place before their Farewell episode begins, but the digital clocks in Chloe and Joyce's rooms display much earlier times. According to Deck Nine, the digital clocks we see in Chloe and Joyce's bedrooms in Farewell are to be considered accurate, whereas the analog dining room clock we see in the original game (and Farewell) is not. Here is the explanation for this from Deck Nine Games' writer Felice Kuan who had received input on this reply from Lead Writer Zak Garriss, Square Enix, and the other writers:

"The clock in [the original game] definitely says 4:30, but we took as canon that it's breakfast and it's supposed to be late morning. We met several times about how to resolve this issue, and ultimately decided on the explanation that the downstairs clock is simply set wrong. The correct amount of time (2 hours) elapses on the downstairs clock, but for the accurate time, only the upstairs clocks are reliable. The timeline for Farewell is as follows: The scene from [the original game] occurs and William departs. The girls go upstairs to clean/play dress-up/mess around, during which time William is killed. While the girls are doing all the time capsule stuff, the police are on the scene, contacting Joyce, etc."

— Felice Kuan, Writer, Deck Nine Games.