A prequel to a great story, offering a view of the origins from a completely different perspective.

Life is Strange was a great game, with an amazing story and interesting gameplay element (which was rewinding time, for those who don’t know). It enriched the regular “choose your dialogue” a lot, in a game that already created an interesting world (even if it could be described as a normal, teenager life). So what about a second game, where we won’t have any “special powers”? And with another main character?

Turns out that it went fairly well. Obviously, Chloe is totally different than Max, and when we meet her at the start of the game, she is already “rebelious”. And actually, you could say that there is still a “special power” - instead of ability to rewind time, in important conversations you can push your way through in “shit talk battle”. Seriously. When I first saw that, I cringed a little. To resolve some situation, you just need to mouth off someone until they give up? I have to admit, maybe it sounds silly but it really works out (or not, in some situations) and fits Chloe perfectly - maybe she is a punk and don’t care, but she’s still very witty.

One of the things that were unknown before the release were the developers - because the prequel was not developed by Dontnod Entertainment (they are working hard on Vampyr, I suppose). So with new devs, Deck Nine, will it still be the same series? Yes. They absolutely recreated the atmosphere of the game, with amazing music as in the first one, story which touches difficult subjects and portrays the same world we knew from the previous game. They even faced a hard task - how to show development of characters, that we already knew? And this was also done great - apart from Chloe, we finally knew who was Rachel, but we also took a peek on various other characters (and saw Frank’s puppy <3). The only thing that someone might pick on, is that the voice actors changed - it’s not that they were performing badly, but it’s a slight lack of continuity, although a minor one.

I heard people having doubts, if a story about Chloe will fit them - after all, she’s not the sweet Max that we know from the first game. But after that, I also saw the reaction to the story, which keep them playing again, wanting to know what will happen next. I also think that the game is really good, and is a great prequel, definitely worth playing.

Oh, and to not forget - the bonus episode, which was a short story from even earlier: when Max was leaving Arcadia Bay. Damn you Deck Nine, we all knew what will happen, and it still did hurt..

My rating: 9/10
Playtime: 12h
Tags: story rich 
image/svg+xml Life is Strange: Before the Storm on Steam