Just like last time, I’m 3 years late to play a Life is Strange game. Just like last time, I had doubts I will enjoy it, though this time not due to trying out the first episode and not liking how it starts, rather because I just didn’t expect a side-story/prequel to a very self-contained game could be an interesting story to explore. And… *sigh* just like last time, I’m wrong.
Life Is Strange: Before the Storm is a story-driven adventure that follows a very “Telltale formula”-like elements, yet just like the original game it expands on them in meaningful ways. It’s still linear, but choice-heavy, with choices affecting minor and major events later in the story. It’s still focused on “scenes” that cover a certain event and once that event happened, you move to the next “scene”. And you still spend a lot of the time in dialogues and cutscenes that mix in dialogue choices in them. And it still works wonderfully. In fact, I’d even suggest that it works even better.
The big change is that Chloe, the main character of this prequel, does not have any supernatural abilities like her best friend Max did in the original game. But she does get a unique dialogue-driven ability called “backtalk”, which feels like a cross between a “dialogue battle” concept from Deus Ex: Human Revolution and the good old insult sword fighting from the original Monkey Island. It’s rather underutilized in general, I feel, yet I did love how even choosing the option itself in most cases is a choice of a stance, rather than a “better option”.
In general, though, I felt like the lack of the supernatural freed the developers to make a far more emotional and well put together story than what was in the original. Of course, the fact that a different team worked on the game could’ve been a reason enough as well. But still, I feel like though this still has very obvious Twin Peaks elements of story here, Before the Storm became a more consistent story. Just because they didn’t need to pull out huge twists every time, while also trying not to break the internal logic with all the supernatural elements that they invented.
This time, while there is a mystery, it’s a far simpler and far more relatable tale of teenagers in a smaller town trying to understand themselves and also getting mixed up with things that are far more dangerous than they’ve expected. Perhaps it’s the characters themselves, but I felt far more invested in the stories of the characters and game had a much easier time getting me emotional. And the bonus episode made me like all characters involved in it far more than all of the 5 Episodes of the original game, where I was invested in the story but always felt distant. Here, it was raw and uncomfortably personal. And beautiful.
I suppose, Before the Storm won’t work as well without playing the original Life is Strange, which is a shame, because the original is far more flawed and has an incredibly poor start. But I really enjoyed playing this game and if you’ve tried the original already and didn’t get far, but you feel like this is something you can enjoy – try Before the Storm. Maybe that will get you invested far more and you’ll go and play the original as well. Though, I fear, this will completely bias your final decision in that game, something that LiS in itself doesn’t do. If you loved the original, you’ve probably played this by now. And if you haven’t played the series yet, well, I suppose you should still try the original first. But seriously, Before the Storm is just such a better story.