The original Life is Strange came out in 2015 and became the sleeper hit of the year. Combined with the re-release of Grim Fandango and Telltale’s excellent Tales From The Borderlands, it felt as though the adventure genre never left us (even though it did).
In the original, you played as a living rewind button, Max Caufield, as she navigated very mundane problems in a small Oregon town that feels like a mash-up of Twin Peaks and Gone Home. It was a slow-paced ride from one emotional trauma to another that hit hard, in spite of its iffy animations. It featured a unique take on adventure game puzzling and narrative decision making, by way of the limited rewinds, and the final episode is one of the best I’ve seen since The Walking Dead Season 1’s iconic finale.
Life is Strange: Before the Storm, however, is a unique proposition in its own right. It’s a prequel set two years before the original game in which you play as Chloe Price, the sidekick from the original game — whose first appearance is her death in a bathroom — albeit without the original developers or Chloe’s original voice actor.
Before the Storm centers around Price's relationship with Rachel Amber, the original game’s living MacGuffin. If that feels like a shaky foundation on which to write a story, that’s because it is.
Despite all that’s different, much of what you’re doing is the same as last time. You walk around environments or watch scenes, soak in the atmosphere or the soundtrack, look at stuff, do art for collectibles, make obviously telegraphed decisions and generally push the plot along.
The single major mechanical change is a brief word puzzle game — in place of time travel — called Backtalk, where Chloe can use her unpleasantness powers to get her way. That loops into one major problem I have with the overall narrative conceit.
Chloe Price is an incredibly unlikable character in places — even in the original Life is Strange — due to her assortment of personal baggage, like loneliness and grief over her father’s death. Now, this makes her a fine foil to Max Caufield, the doe-eyed wallflower slowly growing a spine over the course of a self-contained narrative. However, knowing Chloe doesn’t grow to be more empathetic with her mom and stepfather by the end of this narrative makes her varied antics much harder to swallow here.
It’s probably only a problem if you’ve played the original, and much of what happens here — with the exception of at least one big reveal right at the end — was either told straight to Max there, or can be inferred without much trouble here. Granted, it’s only the first episode out of three, and my dislikes came and went on a scene-by-scene basis. It looks pretty good, the atmosphere is still spot-on, and the story does contain a few legitimate high points.
My only other major gripe is the Deluxe Edition, which includes a very useless mixtape mode, some costumes and a very necessary looking narrative episode set to be released after the series is over. Why not have that included in the full season? I thought those things were supposed to be stupid cosmetics or progression-skipping methods. Why, Square Enix? Why must you torment us?
Logan Graham is a senior studying media arts with a focus in games and animation at Ohio University. Please note that the views and opinions of the columnists do not reflect those of The Post. How do you feel about the new Life is Strange? Let Logan know by emailing him at lg261813@ohio.edu.
