Life is Strange: Before the Storm - Episode 1: Awake

A quietly compelling return to Oregon, which substitutes sci-fi gimmickry for an earnest look at growing up.

Though it doesn’t feel quite as “high stakes” as its predecessor, Life is Strange: Before The Storm - Episode 1: Awake is a very promising start to Deck Nine’s new prequel miniseries.

The first episode of Life is Strange: Before the Storm tells a decent but ordinary story without any real intrigue.

Dontnod's first season of Life is Strange is a wonderful work, and one of the finest episodic adventure games of its kind. That's a lot to live up to, but Deck Nine does a top job recreating what fans love about the series while setting up a new story to be told about a pair of young women bound by new, exciting feelings and a shared distrust of the world around them.

Episode One: Awake of Before the Storm is a surprisingly promising entry for the short three-episode series. There's the right amount of callbacks to the series that made so many fans fall in love with Chloe and Max in the first place. While I still wish the dialogue wasn't as teenager cringe-y in a not-realistic way, there's far more of it this time around that plain isn't. Hell, even Chloe's eventual over-usage of "hell" is explained in a tongue-in-cheek nod to the future. For everyone who was worried about Before the Storm's authenticity under the reigns of a new developer: don't be.

It feels great to be back in Arcadia Bay. Deck Nine hasn't lost the magic of Life is Strange and this first chapter of the prequel lets us imagine a touching story with great characters and probably counting decisions.

It’s not unusual for a new series to have a slow start, and while this is borne from something else I’m going to grant it the leniency that a new series deserves. What we have here is a pilot episode that’s obviously building to something. There are missteps, but I’m hopeful that these will be either eradicated or negligible in the forthcoming episodes.

No empathy and no rhythm are just two of the issues that prevent Before the Storm to reach our hearts in the same way Life is Strange did, two years ago. Let's wait for Episode 2 and let's hope for a deeper friendship between Rachel and Chloe, disconnected from sexual logic only.

Life Is Strange: Before the Storm's Episode 1: Awake focus on themes of depression, loss, and the inability to fit in, which it does an excellent job at presenting throughout this first episode. Sadly, the episode's main focus on Chloe and Rachel's friendship can feel a little forced early on, but inevitably lands on plausible after learning about the mental state of each of the characters.

The writing in this first episode is nowhere near as good as the one in the original game. Thus what we get is a rather bland introduction to the prequel that just creates a hope for a better narrative in the future.

Life Is Strange: Before The Storm gets off to a moderately good start. Its characters are interesting, but the plot is entirely unclear right now, and is moving in a direction I'm not all that invested in.