It's the problem with games that have multiple endings. How do you justify not going with the end where the most people are happy?

Compound that with the fact that you can just reload and see what the other ending is like.

It's hard to look at it from the perspective of the characters themselves in that situation, and even then, you can never really put yourself 100% in Max's shoes. What if you were there, and it was your closest friend, your sibling, your parent, your spouse, etc, in Chloe's place? What would your choice be? I honestly couldn't say. I couldn't say until I was put in that situation, and either way I don't know how I'd live with myself.

For Max, I chose Chloe. For one, in my game, their friendship was blossoming into something more. For another, Max had just gone through hell to get Chloe back.

And for another, despite how cut and dry the game was about it, how do you know it's going to work? Throughout the game, when you use the photo power, it almost always fucks things up even more. Realistically, Max has NO way of knowing what happens if Chloe dies. For all she knows, it would just mean her best friend is dead. She doesn't KNOW for sure that Jefferson will be caught. She might be put into a situation where she ends up in the dark room, where she's dead because of it, or where the storm is coming, and she won't have Chloe there to help.

Besides, from Max's perspective, she got the vision of the storm before she even learned she had the power to reverse time, or before she met Chloe again. For all she knows, the storm is going to happen no matter what. Why risk it?

I think the game made it a little too clear that Chloe dying = no storm. There should have been a lot more doubt about it. A lot more risk involved.