#"waaaaa its hard to review this” *goes on to complain about everything*

[treeplays]

okayy sooo My feelings about Life Is Strange are complicated and personal and honestly I wasn’t even thinking about Before the Storm in a critical way at all when playing through it, so maybe this is all premature and I really don’t know what I’m talking about but whatever. Here’s some long rambly spoilery thoughts on Before the Storm!

What bothered me before starting was how to reconcile the events of BTS with what we learn from LIS. Tbh not just because Why torture us with seeing Chloe and Rachel happy and together if we know how it all ends? (Do not even get me started on that final “cliffhanger” shot.) But it’s not so much that, bc obviously I agree that what happened between them was important no matter the interpretation, it does matter, but what i dislike is how the plot itself ends up switching the focus away from Rachel and Chloe and onto characters who aren’t important to the overall story of LIS.

And i think one reason why it turned out this way is the constraint of limiting the series to three consecutive days. It feels they’re following the formula of LIS for its own sake by doing one episode = one day. When everything is so consolidated to such a short time frame it feels like it’s thematically not about the relationship between Chloe and Rachel and what they meant to each other in those in between years; instead it’s about how they solved this particular problem in those three days. BTS feels so removed from the events of LIS that you could almost pretend that it takes place in an alternate reality from the main game, except of course for that final shot… (ugggggggghhhh)

So in the end it just kindof ends up feeling cruel of the developers tbh, for the plot to end up abandoning what it really started out with in regard to Chloe and Rachel’s relationship.

Back during LIS my impression of Rachel was pretty accurate to her as the force of nature we see in BTS. In both series Rachel is multifaceted; her character and relationship with Chloe is open to different interpretations and she’s a very real kind of person. We’ve all had our own Rachel’s, basically, a wildfire; beautiful and passionate, both innocent and manipulative, supportive and destructive.

That’s why it’s tough to talk about Life is Strange in terms of reviewing what works and what didn’t; it’s hard to be neutral when so much of these games feels so intensely personal. The thing about the first two episodes of BTS is that it IS intensely personal to the characters too… at first. It was always about Rachel and Chloe, building their relationship and the give and take, trust and dreams and friendship and romance and all the teenage drama, it was Chloe and Rachel versus the world, only for the final episode to devolve into this singular focus on secondary characters who in the larger scheme of LIS S1 don’t even exist.

The dream sequences with William were one of my favorite parts, and just as the first two episodes do, they start off as thematically centering on Rachel and Chloe, but later on it changes into a broader question, the truth vs lies theme of the final choice. Which seems like an odd about-face; the previous episodes were so focused on the worlds of Rachel and Chloe, their hopes and fears and anger and isolation from the world of adults, that the switch to the very grown-up question of lying for the ‘greater good’ vs the truth even if it hurts, feels a little off, especially considering that when we know where Rachel and Chloe end up in the sequel makes it all feel like going backwards. I feel like it would have been more effective to continue the episodes as little slice of life moments like in the first episodes centering on the relationship between Rachel and Chloe, but  but spread throughout the years between.

I wasn’t following the fandom at the time of release but from what I can tell it seems there was a lot of rumors about cut content and leaks regarding Episode 3? And I can definitely see where that impression came from. The final episode seems a lot less cohesive than the rest, a lot of things feel unresolved or out of left field. I also didn’t like the feeling that they were going for another Gotcha climax like in LIS that you -never see coming- or whatever. It was kindof nonsensical and honestly I was just confused. The thing with Elliot was legitimately scary but what gets me about it is, like…

I’m not sure if it’s really clever or missing their own point? When Elliot is the one framing these questions and doubts, what if Rachel really is manipulative and bad for Chloe, it’s just automatic for you to reject the idea. And maybe that’s why that ceases to be the question for the rest of the episode, Chloe is no longer interested in whether or not Rachel is “good for her” or if she should trust her, it’s no longer even a choice.

But the other “twist” part that I just don’t get is with Rachel’s dad and what he was really doing, because honestly, how is hiding the truth even an option after that? The ending sequence with the office was just one “wha” moment after another but the vision/hallucination and the mill confrontation had a great lead-up but then a terrible conclusion. I’m so disappointed Ghost William and Damon didn’t have an epic throw-down. Ok i’m kidding but it would’ve been pretty fun to have the final backtalk sequence be some kind of Vision William and Chloe vs Damon knife/verbal action sequence.

And I legit thought that talking with Sera was another dream sequence and the conversation was actually trying to convince her to not die and see Rachel again, and when it was over we’d wake up and THEN have our epic throw down with Damon. But instead we don’t get to do anything before being knocked out and suddenly all our problems are solved off screen? Then we have a nice calm conversation, it’s so out of place and weird, like were you not just injected with a huge drug dosage ten seconds ago that may or may not have been intended to kill you I still have no idea what Damon was actually trying to pull off here????

It’s just a weird choice that Rachel’s parents situation started out as another bullet point on the list of shared angst that she and Chloe bond over but becomes the entire plot of the final episode while Rachel herself is sidelined out of the picture completely.

This video explains in a really interesting way, the first LIS had a kind of genre bend in the last few episodes, but where it worked there in a very thematic way that even tied in to the final choice (unintentionally or not), in BTS it just feels like things got switched up for no reason. The question of the final choice is a tough one in any other circumstances, but the actual events leading up to it and as the entire reason for this series to exist? Meh.

But you know whatever I cried anyway and didn’t really care if it made sense tbqh!!!!

I didn’t expect answers to any of the supernatural stuff in the first game, to me it’s fine for it to just hint at things, and I kindof wish they kept up with that vibe instead of going into soap-opera territory in the final episode there. The stuff with The Tempest and the wildfire and the symbolism and love at first sight, it was all so dreamy, just hanging out with Rachel & friends and trying to navigate the awkward and the uncomfortable and the space between childhood and adulthood, the unexplainable and the mundane and the magical, that to me is the heart of Life is Strange and what makes Before the Storm beautiful in it’s own way.