Life is Strange: Before the Storm is a waste of potential
July 18, 2024
I Don't - Koda
sometimes write on walls. I even drew a bird like that, though smaller,
in an abandoned pizza place. I kind of miss my youth.
I was 17 when the first episode of Life is Strange: Before the Storm came out. Given that I had the bonus outfits, I must've pre-ordered it. If so, then that means I played the episodes one at a time. Still, I was really young, and at the time, I really loved the game.
As an adult, I will say it now, I found it worse than the first one, and to be a waste of potential. I will not touch on the Farewell extra episode now, as I didn't play it even back then (and may not play it at all), but will remain solely focused on the game itself. Might do collector mode as to get the remaining graffiti, but that's it.
I remember that just like in the first game, I was fantasizing about the romance, and this is most likely what blinded me the most, along with my lack of maturity. I just loved vicariously experiencing something I was desperate to happen in real life.
At the time of the first episode, I was about to pass the second session of my high school exams. I had almost enough to pass, but lacked a small amount of points (think, 60 or something) to get my degree. At the second, I had got my degree, got into my Japanese studies in college, and already getting my heart broken. I was starting to move onto someone else. At the third, I had been living in my dorm room for a couple weeks, and that same person had rejected me indirectly, but still in a shitty way (not respecting my time), and realized my friend group weren't really good friends. It feels odd remembering that. I was truly in a weird place back then... and I feel like I was just so young and naive. It's so odd because nothing much of note has happened since the summer of 2018, but I feel so much older still.
I haven't looked at the choices I made back in the day, but I romanced Rachel and let Drew get his ass beaten up by Damon then. This time, I romanced Rachel again (because despite the red flags, it canonically makes sense, and I still, well, enjoy these scenes) but I intervened when Damon came for Drew, and Mikey got injured. Still, I didn't manage to make Rachel meet her mother on either playthrough. I don't know how the one in 4 people who did it, did. What's your secret?
Not everything is bad about the game, as much as I can criticize it. The assets are still as beautiful as in the first game. I don't know if Deck Nine took the existing ones (for characters and places that have already appeared) or if they remodeled everything, but it looked pretty good. It was just as pretty as the first opus. I liked the soundtrack of this game better than the first one's. No hipster shit, or not as much. While I'm no big punk (though I had such a phase after playing Gone Home back when I was 19), I still do enjoy some punk rock here and there. Those games may not have the best story, but they sure always nail it with soundtracks. This time, it's not Jonathan Morali, but the English band Daughter that composed the soundtrack. It's not something I'd usually listen to, but it gives the perfect vibe for the game and story. Nothing to say on it. It got it right.
There were some moments that were genuinely nice, though very unfortunately, they didn't come until the second half of Episode 2. The play and its improvisation by Chloe and Rachel, the kissing scene that came shortly after (which, despite everything, I still find really beautiful and romantic in its totality), and later on, in the first minutes of the third, lighting up Rachel's star lamp to comfort her. The song that plays during this, which is the mood of this post, is beautiful.
I also very much liked how the drug addiction and the dangerous nature of drug dealing environments is portrayed. James Amber says it well, drug addiction is a disease that affects everyone involved, not just the addict. I haven't lived through such a situation, though I had relatives who dabbled in drugs (even if just weed), but I've read enough stories about actual drug addicts to know how fucked up this shit is.
I really enjoyed the sequence (sort of minigame) when we fix the truck in the junkyard in Episode 3. Man, do I want to find an old dingy 80s car and fix the hell out of it to get myself a more or less free car. I'd give it a new coat of paint and new upholstery, though, not leave it all grungy. A new life overall. A new birth. That's what I had planned to do with the boat if I could save her from this fate of being left to rot. Sorry Spirit, my old friend. I've done everything I could.
(Also, well, despite not being too keen on her character, Rachel is a girl I wouldn't quite mind kissing, heh. I'm not even into blondes, and I know she'd be too young for me as I am now, but I do understand why Chloe, Frank and Jefferson had a thing for her, haha. Still a girl with such a personality would be a no-go IRL.)
But the goddamn game was so boring two thirds of the time. The plot was really just sub-par. The first episode was a drag. The second as well, until the little job involving Drew's money, then the play, came into the picture. My sweet goodness. I was checking out during the playtime because every scene felt like a huge drag. The episodes were longer than in the first opus, about three hours long, but that may have been because there were only three of them rather than five.
The animations were... odd. Especially how the characters walked. It just looked weird, either wobbly (NPCs) or stiff (Chloe) The voice acting wasn't really all that great either. I had glitches on more than one occasion where a line wasn't said yet I saw the subtitles (also happened with the first game, but even moreso with the second).
The characterization felt quite stereotypical and predictable, like who would've guessed the District Attorney was a lying, cheating, and scheming dickhead who would actually work with a drug dealer he's after to murder the biological mother of his daughter? Or that said drug dealer would be a complete psycho and nearly kill Rachel? That Mr. Nice Guy would turn out to be a massive creep who goes as far as to stalk Chloe while she's investigating? The ultimate flat character award goes to Rose Amber though... she could almost be a synth given how robotic she is. I swear this lady either has no personality at all or she's a robot.
The relationship between Rachel and Chloe is so fast-moving that it's a huge red flag. Going from "you're in my class but I've never really spoken to you" to "best friends/pretty much girlfriends" and putting yourself in potentially mortal danger for this same person in about three days? What the hell? Why weren't there timeskips? There should've had been to let their relationship develop a bit. You don't know someone in three days, much less plan to run away with them. It's like calling someone your best friend after a month, or asking you if you want to be friends when you have hardly spoken to each other: it's just... weird.
At 17, of course, to me it wasn't a red flag one bit: it was perfectly normal to rush stuff like that, in fact, it should be this way. That's how they do it in the media, and people are just supposed to fall in love at first sight and get to know their cherished person as they go, right? Except that... no. It's not normal nor healthy. I must've known in some way, though: already back in high school, when I would fall head over heels for girls I hardly knew, I had a feeling people found this really abnormal. No one else I knew showed this kind of behaviour either, and I felt a weird kind of dissonance, as if... "wait a minute, am I the one who is weird here?" Won't go into a tangent about the fact I was neither told nor modeled how to properly go after someone/what a healthy relationship is, but at this age, I knew even less than I do now.
At 24, though, it gives me serious red flags, especially given how Rachel acts after she sees her dad and this mysterious woman in the viewfinder. The way her mood suddenly changed and how she just wouldn't tell Chloe triggered memories in me. I had someone do that to me, suddenly becoming shadowy, angry, resentful, for no apparent reason, refusing to tell me why, and it was straight up jarring. I would get stressed and agonize over why she was so weird, why it felt like she was resenting me, and what I had done, and it would come just randomly, without any explanation nor warning. The worst part was when Rachel threw the wine bottle during the fight scene at the end of Episode 1 and it shattered: it genuinely made me jump. Rachel never hits Chloe, but I know that breaking things is often a precursor to physical abuse. Had I been in Chloe's position, I would've got the hell outta there. When someone does that, you can be sure the next step is throwing things at you.
That Eliot dude was completely unhinged, also. At 17, I thought that he genuinely cared for Chloe, but I would've probably unfortunately done the same as him. Not going as far as preventing someone from leaving a place by locking her up, nor stalking (maybe hanging around in the same area), but still, I would've at least thought the same kind of things that he spewed (knowing that saying them would potentially grant me a well-deserved punishment) because I just didn't know any better. I thought this was normal, and in hindsight, it was absolutely not, and I hate that I even ever thought like this, though I have compassion for this starving young girl who was trying to psychologically survive her pain. Doesn't excuse a thing, and we don't know much about Eliot other than that he's obsessed with Chloe long after they hooked up for a while, but still. Maybe that could show that his character was also abused in the same way and thus had an example. Or that he's just an entitled creep. You choose, I guess.
The dream sequences with William were... kind of meh. I'm not fond of these scenes full of obvious symbolism, like Rachel catching on fire, the raven, the recurring car accident... It makes them feel a bit tacky. I was fond of writing them when I was a teenager, but I'm quite obviously not one anymore. While it's a nice addition to show that most likely, the spirit of William still watches over Chloe (or at least, she's imagining that he does), those scenes often felt extra. The one I liked the best, though, and that was really fitting, was the last one that wasn't quite a dream, but when Chloe almost got rammed by a large truck and stopped by the side of the road to gather her thoughts. Now that's one such sequence done right. t doesn't involve her passing out nor does it involve some stupidly obvious symbolism, but it was a dialogue with her late dad right as she was going to potentially endanger her life by going to the burned mill.
In all... it's just a shame that most of the actually nice stuff in this game came so late. A prequel to Life is Strange with Rachel in it, knowing what happens to her in the original game, was unneeded, but still could have been an interesting thing, if done right. Except I think it was just handled poorly. It was a whole bunch of filler for the most part, and I had to suffer through an episode and three quarters of abysmal boredom just to get to some nice parts. Yeah, no, not for me. I see it with better eyes now and while I wouldn't say it's straight up trash, it's just sub-par and worse than the first.
Now, I will say... I don't know whether Rachel loved Chloe for real: I'm tempted to say yes, as she did appear to love her in the game, but at the same time, didn't she see an easy catch and manipulate her to have somebody to run away from Arcadia Bay with? Was she just bored? Did she indeed genuinely like her at first, but just like her biological mother who'd do so by injecting herself with drugs, would not remain satisfied and instead chase the next high, this time with a Frank, then with Jefferson? I guess that crosses into game theory territory. It's all moot no matter the answer anyway, because both she and Chloe died three years later, never having made it to their grand escape from Arcadia Bay.