So anyone else on here played the first episode yet? I thought it was really well done as a prequel to the original thus far, and I was happy to find that whilst we have a new voice actress for Chloe in place of the legendary Ashly Burch, she actually does a REALLY good job of emulating Chloe’s voice in a way which feels fine as a younger version of the character, and all the mannerisms are still there. Plus both the classic characters and the new additions are great too! Won’t spoil anything in case you haven’t tried it but if you loved the original game you HAVE to give this one a try.
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I have, I preordered it. I was conflicted about even playing it, but the moment I did I was glad. I read the journal before starting to really play and that had me crying, all I could think is shit, she’s just like me at that age 
That connection has made my original plan of not romancing Rachel…challenging, I know I would have fallen in love with Rachel in her place and she isn’t aware her soulmate will be back for her. My own Max (@anon57826008) isn’t thrilled with this at all 
The music is amazing like the first game (I have been obsessively listening to No Below since I first heard it!), the voice acting is killing me a bit, Chloe is ok, but David…urgh! The story so far is amazing, I expect that in the end I’ll probably like this one more than the first since I feel more of a connection with playing as Chloe than as Max.
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At first I felt Chloe was overdramatic about Max going away (and moody) but I have to say, after seeing things from Chloe perspective, Max was so cold towards her. I look forward to more moments like these where we can glean more insight from her point of view now.
So after getting to play episode 2 I have to say while I feel that it’s more of a movie with a few choices scattered in I’m still enjoying the story. I thought the campfire scene with William was really amazing, talking about the fire which was clearly meant to represent Rachel and how the light was taken (Rachel vanishing) but that it can give way to something even more beautiful (which I took to mean Max). My big concern while I wait to see how this wraps up is that Rachel and Chloe are planning on leaving the night that this episode wraps up on, but it’s another 2 1/2 year until Rachel goes missing…obviously we know they never actually leave, but does that mean they spend the next 2 1/2 years saying “we should leave”? Just feels right now like the plot should have taken place over a couple years instead of a couple days 
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Just finished the second episode, and I have so many feelings. I really liked the original Life is Strange, but I think Before the Storm is even better with more human stories, and less magic.
I don’t mean that as a dig against the first game. I loved Max’s story. I played it…so many times. I annoyed all my friends by endlessly talking about it. I was obsessed. But, I think I like BtS even more.
Playing as “bad girl” Chloe gives me permission to be bad, and that’s more fun than I ever would have guessed. Playing as a teenage girl who’s not just angsty, but actually angry is exciting. She’s brave and witty, but somehow still awkward, and even vulnerable at times. I seriously broke down in tears the first time through. Not like “playing with tears in my eyes.” Like, “put my controller down to sob.” crying. (I admit I cry easily though)
I have a feeling though…it’s going to get so much sadder. Reading Chloe’s journal/unsent letters to Max and so many unanswered text messages killed me. It actually changed the way I felt about Max. I mean, I knew Chloe lost her father and Max in close succession, but experiencing that from her perspective was so much more meaningful. What’s worse is knowing that I’m/she’s going to go through it all again with Rachael is killing me. Artistically it would be crap, but every time I think about it I hope that the writers just throw continuity out the window and let Chloe and Rachael have a happily ever after. Of course, I know they wont. Chloe is the girl who get’s left behind. Left, by her father, by Max, and then when she finally opened herself up again, by Rachael. I’m crying again as I write this (told you I cried easily), but the ending that feels honest knowing what I know about Chloe right now is her dying in that Blackwell bathroom before she ever even know’s Max came back.
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I really loved the first one, couldn’t help but half marathon through it. They’re really aren’t enough of these kind of games!
That said, I’m really uncertain about playing the prequel, the premise just doesn’t seem interesting to me. We already know the story/canon end game, so what can the prequel add except another perspective? I also think the rewind mechanic was a core trait of the first, and without it, well… I’m just not sure. Can anyone convince me to hand over the cash for prequel, or should I hold out for the sequel?
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Sorry to say I absolutely despise this game, lord knows I tried my best to be open to it, but I just could not get into the characters and that absolutely ruined the rest for me.
Happpy to see so many people get into the game, but I really gatta ask, how? I just hated everyone.
Chloe Price is my favorite Character.
@CJW I love the prequel so far. It has a more human/realistic feel since there’s no time travel to serve as a crutch. I don’t want to say much about it but I’ll say that the relationship between Chloe and Rachel really imitates Chloe and Max’s in some ways, while also being quite different from it. Also, it really added a lot of emotion to the original game simply because you understand Chloe’s relationship with Rachel a lot more (and how much Max actually dodged Chloe). I’d say it’s worth $17 for three episodes, not sure if the $8 for the bonus episode will be worth it or not, but we’ll see.
@yagamikuuno thats interesting to me because the characters are what I love about it. To be clear, 95% of the town are complete scumbags and I couldn’t care less about what happened to most of them, but it’s really the relationship between Max and Chloe that I think makes the game (that being said I’ve met people who absolutely hate Chloe, which I don’t get. I think they don’t really understand her as a character). Also, how far did you play? Because I think the story REALLY picks up in the third/fourth episodes.
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See this. This I hate. This idea that if people dint like the character or the narrative, we dint “get” it. Look I get it. In fact I’m pretty sure I’ve been closer to Chloe’s position than most, if not worse. And maybe that’s why I hated her.
I get that her fathers passing, Max leaving and Racheal going all Carmen Sandiego on her ass is hard but all I could see during the game was how much better her life was than mine. She had a father in law desperately trying to do right by her mother, OH! BUT! He’s an old fashioned sexist! Bohoo I’ve seen worse.
“But this is my house!” she cries, as she proceeds to not work, leech of her mother, bring drugs into her house, purposefully disobey her and then berate her mother for choosing to side with a man that loves her and tries to help pay the bills to the best of his abilities. Because he’s the “stepdouche” , you know what, fine whatever, that’s annoying but I could live with it.
But the absolute (and I HATE this word) privilege she has to just mill around, leech of everyone she knows, while she just plans to skip out of town with a girl, while she has to do no school work or get an actual job, was maddening. I wanted to slam my computer screen every time she brought up how everything is out to get her when she’s the kind of person who’s is willing and ready to steal from a school fund to push her own desires, but if Max want to talk to her suicidal friend on the phone she acts like Max is packing up her bags to leave. This isint cute, its manipulation.
It’s sickening to me that writers thought this character was okay. Ready to represent a group of people that go through trauma and yet compleatly ignore the part where she had a parent willing to listen, a friend trying to be there for her again and all of which I guarantee would fight tooth and nail for her to seek professional help.
Don’t get me wrong, I guarantee there are people exactly like her, and I’m happy if people see themselves in her and realize their own problems. But I’m so unbelievably tired of seeing these Upper Middle class white kids go through trauma and hear about how groundbreaking a character is rather that focusing on people in much worse positions who would legitimately kill to be them. With bank accounts resembling winter coat sales in the summer and health insurance waved in front of their face mockingly, unable to find a job because of a lack of education. Not only because they can’t get a loan but because the nearest school is hundreds of miles away.
But I dunno, maybe I’m bitter or letting my jealousy cloud my judgement, but every character reeks of these petty problems (aside from the actual murders and suicides,DUH) that when it came down to it, I couldn’t bring myself to care about anyone, I just wanted them all to stop being over the top evil villains and just chill out. And if the universe wanted Chloe, I wasn’t ganna mourn her.
I feel like the reason I hate Chloe is the same reason I don’t want a game with a possible RO being racist. It’s a disgusting, sickening idea to think I’d ever wish to be near someone so horrible because they seem “realistic”, congrats! It is! But I never want it to be the norm or looked at like it’s groundbreaking. It’s horrible and flawed and if you don’t know how to demonstrate to your audience that this behavior is unacceptable , I want nothing to do with it.
But yes I did play through it all, only because my friend told me the ending was garbage and hoooooobooooy don’t get me started.
Feel free to tldr I know I wrote a lot 
I don’t know why bad behavior is considered, by some at least, to be an excusable response to a hard life. I understand Chloe Price, but I definitely don’t admire her for it or think she’s a good person.
Why does depicting a racist character, even as a protagonist, mean the author supports racism? If one should only enjoy works where MC’s and their SO’s are complete good guys with no bad qualities, that’s severely limiting, isn’t it? Unforgiven is my favorite movie, doesn’t mean I support William Munny or murder. Some of the best, thought-provoking works have been about detestable people, doesn’t mean the author agrees with them.
Please correct me if I’ve misinterpreted you, or better yet, reply if you wish by PM so we don’t go off-topic.
I’ll be quick, I never said this, hell my favorite character Gutts from Berserrk has murdered kids, but the narrative never frames him as vindicated, or in anyway okay with his actions, it showed the absolute disgusting effect it has on him and others perception of him.
The narrative never goes “Oh woe is he, this poor boy was raped as a child! So that excuses and and all damage he does to people not involved in his traumatic past!” All of his actions lead him into horrible places where he admits his own faults and lives with the guilt of the damage he caused.
Chloe is a manic manipulator but the game never calls her out or showed her actions for what they are, no character that acknowledges her behavior stops her or forces her to see this disgusting pattern, they take it like it’s okay.
I think characters can do horrible things with the author clearly not agreeing with it. But the fact that Chloe never gets the realistic response to her behavior is a terrifying testament to what the author thinks is acceptable.
Yeah I see your point. Personally, I found Chloe to be a pretty annoying character, a person who constantly complains and feels sorry for herself over her hard life, without actually trying to improve it and do something with herself. The often cringeworthy dialogue doesn’t help.
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See and what I was trying to say with my original comment was that the prequel adds a lot of depth to Chloe. That’s what I mean. I didn’t mean to assert @yagamikuuno that you misunderstand her and everyone who doesn’t like who doesn’t understand her, just a lot probably don’t. I don’t speak in generalizations because they’re never usually accurate. As for all the comments on Chloe, surely you see how she changed as a character, right? At the very end she specifically says to go with the town ending, that’s self-sacrifice, something episode 1 Chloe would have never done. But you’re right on most accounts, she is manipulative and privileged and can’t just accept her stepdad and lazy and etc. etc. That’s all. Most people relate to Chloe in a lot of ways, she’s just broken and young and dumb and doesn’t really know what to do about anything, so she essentially does nothing. A lot of people do similar. My main point was that what I personally like about the series, and what I think most people like about it, is the relationship between the two main characters (whether it’s Max and Chloe or Chloe and Rachel), not that people will like Chloe. I understand she’s not a conventionally likable character, but I think she’s a pretty “real” character (especially once you get the context of the prequel, it really adds a lot of understanding, at least it did for me). But again, whether she is or not isn’t what I think makes the game good, it’s the relationship between her and Max.
I honestly never have played Life is Strange or the prequel. I only been watching people playing it and my opinion on Chloe… is rather neutral as of right now. Honestly, the only character I feel bad for, is probably Nathan Prescott.
There are a lot of decisions where you seem to have two choices: either be a complete immoral douche, or upset Chloe (she’s so whiney). She is something of an impossible character to please, and it does make her far from endearing. I wouldn’t go as far to say as I hated her, I want to keep this as spoiler free as possible, but there is one section of the game where you get a glimpse of a much less angsty Chloe. Tl;Dr, I do actually get what you mean and agree to an extent. I’m not sure if she was meant to be likeable, and certainly could have been more so. I think the game holds its own regardless though!
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Personally i like Chloe, many people overlook how her personality was influanced by her father’s death (trauma can affect our personality greatl, in some cases it is devastating, and in others, makes as stronger, we can guess which way it was for her). After all in alternative reality in which William lives she is aside from key parts of her personality a diffrent person. Many people also find her annoying in LiS but for me her actions were understandable, she is all or nothing kind of person, when she is hanging out with you her entire focus is on you and you only. Because of that she has very few loved ones/friends but it also makes her very loyal to them (this is why she was able to rather quickly get over Max not keeping in touch with her after moving to Sattle)
Is she manipulative? No, not really, not more than most people, the only diffrence is that she is good at it (she would make hell of a salesperson thats for sure), in LiS i can’t recall any moment in which she manipulated someone, she does keep bringing up Max abonding her but that’s mostly because it’s still hurts her and she want’s Max to realize that so she would stop texting/talking with other people while she is with her (not suprising, after all Max was in Blackwell for over 2 months and still didnt contaced chloe in any way).
She deals with her problems in a ways that we may or may not approve and she may or may not exaggerate them but you know what?
We are not able to be anybody but ourselves so we should not judge people for the ways in which they are dealing with their problems
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Chloe doesn’t really deal with her problems, all she does is wallow in self-pity. She doesn’t go to school, she doesn’t have a job, she spends her days slacking off and getting high, completely dependent on her mother and stepfather. I’ll take the “don’t judge how people are living their life”, if she was actually in charge of it. The whole angsty teenage rebel thing is really only cool when you’re 15; after a certain point, you gotta grow up.
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I agree that since Chloe decided to drop school she should get a job but maybe she was going to do that in near future (LiS is taking place in span of only a few days after all) or even tried to do that but wasn’t accepted anywhere (Arcadia Bay is a small town and I guess Chloe might have a reputation around it)
But I disagree about her not dealing with her problems, she just happened to stumble upon one big problem (William’s death) before LiS: BtS and then another (Rachel goes missing) before LiS, so it looks like she is walking in circles when we are happening to be looking (when we are playing LiS:BtS and LiS).
After her father’s passing and max shutting her down she does what most teenagers do, she rebels, at the beginning of BtS we can see that she is slowly getting out of it but for better or worse she meets Rachel who encourages her behavior and since her relation with her mother is strained at the moment she chooses as most teenagers wrongly to listen to her new friend. Also i don’t think that David was in any way good influence for her, he had way to much baggage of his own to deal with and aside from that his beliefs are too different from Chloe’s for them to form any kind of connection.
Next, we are revisiting Chloe just a few months after her new best friend/girlfriend goes missing (the only person she feels close to at the moment since max is absent and she refuses to confide in her mother because of David which I partly understand). Since she is 19 i agree that she should knew better, I’m 19 and i can say that late adolescence is just as much confusing as early one, but yeah… In her defense i can say once again that LiS is taking place within a short period of time so we don’t know how she acts at this age when not mixed in the middle of some drama.
So, we never get to see how she is acting while not in some sort of trauma, we are only told that before everything happened she was charismatic girl who was on top of her class
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I feel like a lot of people misdirect the hatred Chloe gets as her being a bad character. She isn’t, her actions are bad, the characters reactions to her actions are terrible. She is not in anyway justified in the emotional and financial turmoil she send the people who love her in.
But aside from all that, I think the biggest gripe people have with her character is this: why would I want to play a game where this type of character is paraded around as the norm? Hey are you and emotionally disturbed person going through constant trauma? Never, ever seek help or talk your issues out, and never admit to your own faults/manipulations!"
I mean if you put any of that on the box I doubt most people would be into it. I guess I walked into a game thinking about how cool my superpowers were (that frankly made no sense later on) that I missed the section about maintaining a self deprecating, self destructive moron on my watch list while I actually try to help a much more empathetic character not commit suicide.
Also can we stop this weird lie that most teens are these little monsters waiting with middle fingers up to their parents for telling them to clean their room. The hole stereotype of a rebellious teen comes from so many definitions and outside influences that the stereotype is practiclly a non word.
Yeah and I’m a purple unicorn that can’t read or write.
Don’t believe me? Does every action I take poke holes in that statement? Yeah, that’s how I feel about that passive aggressive way the writers tried to make her popular with the “angsty teens” today.
Not with actual help but with misplaced relatability for a group of people in desperate for answers to the pain they feel on the daily.
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