Life is Strange: Before the Storm Episode 1 is a slow, monotonous, slog of a game which not only fails to live up to games within its own genre, but also to its predecessor, which despite the dialogue had a few emotional moments in which Life is Strange: Before the Storm fails to deliver either because of the dialogue, because of the obnoxiousness of the symbolism, or because of theLife is Strange: Before the Storm Episode 1 is a slow, monotonous, slog of a game which not only fails to live up to games within its own genre, but also to its predecessor, which despite the dialogue had a few emotional moments in which Life is Strange: Before the Storm fails to deliver either because of the dialogue, because of the obnoxiousness of the symbolism, or because of the illusion of reality being broken. The game opens with a concert, introducing the player to the general gameplay of Life is Strange: Before the Storm. Similar to a point-and-click adventure game, in every area Chloe can walk around and interact with random objects, most of them with very little significance until she interacts with the right object and the story progresses. The issue with this comes with the fact that there is no flow to any of the conversations, and can lead to extreme examples of ludo-narrative dissonance while in a supposedly tense conversation, there can be five minute pauses where the player thinks of what to say. The pacing of the story is too easily disrupted without the player doing anything in order to disrupt it. The illusion of reality is too easily shattered, and the player doesn't even have to do anything to break it. The backtalk challenges fix this by adding a timer, however, even by fixing the unnatural pacing of the conversations, the game reveals another flaw: the dialogue. The performances are passable, for example I think Chloe's voice actor despite not having a lot to work with did a decent job of capturing the voice of a the apathetic, unhappy, shallow character Chloe is. Which leads to the flaw that Chloe and her interactions with the other characters lack emotional weight and any sort of reliability, because all the characters and relationships are all very surface-level. While understanding that Chloe is not necessarily meant to be likable, the way she interacts with the different objects in the world certainly reinforce her bitterness and her frame of mind, they never expand upon her character beyond reiterating that she is unhappy. The player never learns how her mind works, or how she approaches situations other than that she approaches them from a cynical point of view, and that is it. It's not fun to play as this character because it is impossible to understand how she thinks, and therefore getting engaged with her plight is borderline impossible. For example, the player does not learn anything by clicking on the objects in David's garage. Chloe simply restates that she hates David until the player decides to progress the story. She has no emotional connection with any character besides Rachel and to an extent David, so it isn't just Chloe who feels shallow, it's the world around her, and almost every character in the game. The dialogue, like the first game, is out of touch and unnecessarily forced. The reason the slang in Life is Strange feels so unnatural is because even to the people this game is aimed towards, it ages very quickly. Now especially, things become outdated faster than ever, and by putting references to internet culture into their game, Dontnod is ensuring that the older this game gets, the worse its biggest flaw will be. Before the end of this review, I want to note that the symbolism between this game and the Tempest is an interesting touch. For as much as I dislike this episode, it does have its appeal. I understand why people enjoy watching Chloe and Rachel's relationship evolve while it is still fresh, and I feel as though this is the best the game gets in terms of visuals. So I'm going to give Life is Strange: Before the Storm Episode 1 a 4 out of 10.… Expand
Life is Strange: Before the Storm - Episode 1: AwakeYour Score0 out of 10User Score
