Life is Strange: Before the Storm is a narrative adventure game developed by Deck Nine and published by Square Enix, the first episode of which was released on August 31, 2017.
I warn now, there will be spoils of episode 1 of Before the Storm, but I will also talk a little about Life is Strange first of the name!
So begins this chapter
Before the Storm takes place before the events of Life Is Strange, more precisely, 3 years before. The game puts us in the shoes of Chloe Price, a teenager completely picking it up after the death of her father, the departure of her best friend and the arrival of a new man in her mother's life.
The game begins when Chloe has gone to a concert in a notorious place. It is then that she finds herself struggling with two shady guys and not in a good mood and that she is saved from trouble by Rachel Amber, the last person she expected to see here.
This is how the game begins. It will be based primarily on the emerging relationship between Chloe and Rachel, a relationship which, as we know, will be extremely strong when at first glance, everything opposes them.
Chloe is a young rebel, who has lost her father, who is abandoned by her friends and finds herself alone, whom few people like or want to spend time with, who touches alcohol and drugs and who completely drop out in school.
Rachel, meanwhile, is the perfect girl every parent dreams of, with a perfect family every child dreams of. Beautiful, intelligent, model student, participating in lots of extracurricular activities, very popular, loved by everyone, happy and quiet. At least, in appearance.
And yet, these two diametrically opposed lives are going to telescope and will then be born, between the two, a solid friendship.
Thus, we will follow the adventures of Chloe who gets to know and discover Rachel, while she struggles for her own survival and tries to position herself in her family which has completely gone to shreds following the death of her father two years earlier. , death that still haunts her.
Knowing the future without knowing the past
Already knowing the main lines of the history of the Chloe / Rachel friendship and the life of Chloe, I was afraid of being a little bored, or even learning nothing new and yet, this is not the case .
Indeed, this first episode reveals to us what Chloe experienced with her own eyes. So, for those who made Life is Strange and who were exacerbated by Chloe's behavior, Before the Storm should put things in context.
We thus discover the daily life of Chloe before she became the one we know. The fact that she feels betrayed by her mother who starts a new relationship with David, the fact that the latter tries to help her, but, being rejected each time by Chloe, ends up being very annoyed and tries to 'using the' hard way ', the desperate attempts to keep in touch with her best friend Max, who seems to have nothing to do with Chloe since she moved to Seattle, the start of her dropping out of school, her few remaining friends who abandoned her, because they did not know how to react in the presence of "the strange girl who lost her father", etc.
In LiS, I liked Chloe, but I often found that she was very abusive. I remember, for example, the scene in the cafe when Max receives a call from Kate, which she answers and immediately runs to her help, which puts Chloe in a mess and gets angry with Max. Knowing now how Max totally ignored Chloe when the latter needed her makes us better understand his reaction when she sees that she is running for someone else.
This first episode is also very moving, we discover a Chloe who, despite her rebellious airs not afraid of anything or anyone, is a very sad teenager, who hides behind this mask so as not to show her sadness and pain. . The scene taking place in the junkyard is literally heartbreaking. The little "daddy?" »Pronounced Chloe seeing the wreckage of the car in which he died, then its explosion of anger and pain going to tears, enough to melt the frozen heart of the Snow Queen!
On the side of the choices and the impacts, there are a few, minor, which are already noticeable, but given that this is the first episode, we will have to wait for the others to see the big impacts of our choices.
Small gameplay elements
Life Is Strange stood out for the fact that the main character could go back in time and take pictures. In Before The Storm, these two elements are not present. Instead, we have the "insolence challenge", which allows you to trigger special dialogues in which you will have to succeed in "defeating" (or convincing, depending on the dialogues) his interlocutor. With most being optional, it will be up to the player to choose whether they want to use the no, as was the case with time travel with Max. If you want to be sure to pass them, you can consult our guide which gives you all the answers!
As far as the “replacement” of the photos is concerned, we have artistic actions that suit Chloe perfectly: the tags. These will be, like the photos of LIS, to find and realize throughout the adventure. Each tag will allow you to put your stamp on it and, moreover, you will have the possibility to choose between several texts / drawings to achieve. For the first episode, there are 10, of which you can find the locations and access methods on our guide.
Conclusion
For me, it's a great surprise. I admit I was scared during the announcement of a prequel, although I was also delighted. But the fact that it was developed by another studio scared me in the sense that I imagined that there would be problems, in particular with the script and the writing. I am therefore particularly happy that this is absolutely not the case.
The episode is done in 3-4 hrs following whether you explore everything or not, which is a very decent lifespan for an episode and a game like this.
If you liked Life Is Strange, you won't be disappointed with Before The Storm at all!
