Life is Strange: Before the Storm

Excellent action & adventure , and drama game.

amazing 10/10

(Spoiler free review) Overall: 3/5* After playing LiS 1 way back close to release, it took me a surprisingly long time to come back and get into BtS. When I did, it did not immediately hook me. I consequently left the game on ice - barely started - for many years. There was definitely scope for a prequel to LiS 1, given the complex back-stories at play. At a high-level, the story explores the character of Rachel Amber and her relationship with Chloe - an important plot device in LiS 1. It also delves into Chloe's character, her formative experiences and relationships more broadly, helping to contextualise the way she behaves in LiS 1. In theory, this is a strong premise with a lot of potential. At the execution level however... the story is not particularly strong. It very much feels like a setup for LiS 1, using many of the same settings - this is to some degree inevitable: it is a prequel! - however, it does feel at times that the determination to set up as much as possible of LiS 1 squeezes out scope to tell anything fresh. The actual main storyline, centred on Rachel, tends to the melodramatic, and feels like it lacks real stakes - the classic, and therefore entirely foreseeable, false jeopardy problem: we already know from LiS 1 the fates of both main characters, and even most of the side-characters. The narrative climax is also underwhelming - abruptly pushing the action offscreen in order to shift the thematic focus is a very strange narrative decision: it is jarring and perhaps not fully thought through. Time and effort were wasted in the final episode building out low-value side-plots, instead of building tension and finessing the climax of the main storyline. The character motivations - even when they are credible (which is not always) - are sometimes overstressed in dialogue (were the writers trying to persuade themselves it makes sense?). Rachel Amber at times feels credible - and at others like an archetype; or worse, [i]still[/i] more of a plot device rather than a fully developed character (in a story that was written to explore her). Unexpectedly, the best written character is probably Frank - although even here, opportunities were missed to tell a much more challenging story about the established nature of his relationships with both protagonists. Overall, BtS is worth a playthrough or two if you want to understand the canonical back stories of the characters from the original story. Particularly for the current price, it's really not bad. However, it is hard to imagine that the story would be of much interest to a new player who is not an established fan of LiS1.