*SPOILERS*
Publisher: Square Enix
Developer: Deck Nine
Sequel to Life is Strange
Developer: Deck Nine
Sequel to Life is Strange
PS4 Review
It's finally here, the last installation of Life is Strange Before the Storm (not including Max's episode) I'm so sad about it as I have gone on a journey with Chloe all over again. I'm very grateful the creators decided to make these 3 episodes to show us how things got so bad within the first life is strange with max, for me even though these episodes didn't focus around Max it still felt like a worthwhile game. I have come to understand and want to reach out to Chloe with all that she has gone through, yes she was rebellious but she was a very misunderstood young lady whose life was rocked with so much pain and loss. Before I could play the game there was a 1.9 GB update which I probably should have done whilst my PS4 was in rest mode because it took an age to download, once it was downloaded I had a lot of issues trying to play episode 3, apparently, there were 2 updates but the second one wasn't working. in the end, I looked on twitter for some advice and people said to search for episode 3 and go to the top option, turns out episode 3 was disguised as episode 1 and we needed to go to the option to download the second update. If you don't want to know what happens in the last episode I suggest you stop reading now as I'm going to go in on what happened from this point, you were warned! At the end of episode 2 we learn that Rachel's mum is someone else, she is a junkie and it pretty much cut off there but episode 3 continues on to tell the story of who Rachels mum is and why she no longer is part of Rachels life. She reacted pretty badly to hear that her mum cared more for drugs than she did for her own daughter, anyone would, to be honest, it's such a big blow and how does someone only just experiencing adult life process information like that? Even though Chloe has known Rachel a short while she took on the role as her best friend to try and help her through her sorrow and we see the side to Chloe that is willing to put her feelings aside and whatever she is going through to help someone else.
There is a lot more going on in this episode, Rachel decides she wants to find and meet her mum and Chloe agrees to help her, this actually leads to drastic consequences where Rachel is stabbed by the man who attacked by Franks drug dealer friend, a few hours before this Chloe contacts Frank to get information from him as to where Rachel's mum is as she had seen him coming out of Frank's RV not long ago. Frank tells her to wait and the junkyard for him. Whilst doing so Chloe lets Rachel know so they both can get the information they need on Sera (Rachel's mum) this leads to a disaster and Frank's friend Damon ends up stabbing Rachel so Chloe rushes her to the hospital in the truck she had finally got working. Rachel and Chloe's relationship takes a huge backseat in this episode and focuses more on Rachel and her family, this isn't a bad thing but they could have at least progressed a little more on the feelings they clearly have for one another.
Rachel still want's Chloe to go ahead and find her mum even though she had been stabbed Damon who wasn't too happy about Rachel asking questions about Sera, I first thought that this was because she was a drug user and he was a dealer but I come to learn that this wasn't the case at all it was a lot more sinister than that. Rachel tells Chloe to go to her house and explains where the house key is and the code for the alarm, this actually really annoyed me, you would think that because Rachels dad works for the DA he wouldn't keep his key in such an easy place to hide and wouldn't make the alarm code his daughters date of birth which anyone could have got hold of. Once Chloe got to the house she found a locked drawer with a phone and file inside, it turns out the phone was to contact Damon who Rachels dad had hired to kill Sera because he didn't want her to be part of Rachels life, bit drastic right? The agreement between Damon and Rachel's father was that he would destroy the evidence he had on Damon if Damon killed Sara, which is really twisted.
In order for Chloe to find out exactly where Sera was being held by Damon she used the phone and pretended to be Rachel's father, she showed him the evidence which was destroyed and made a guess at who was the one that snitched on Damon. Damon assumed that the person texting was rachels father and took a picture of Sera, Chloe made the right guess as to where she was and went after her to try and save her life, but before all this took place a guy named Eliot from Chloe's school turns up at Rachel's house to confess his feelings for Chloe and it becomes very full on until Chloe opens the window near where the evidnce is burning in a bin and sets off the smoke alarm, at the same time she had been on the phone to the police who had heard everything and knew where the call was coming from, Chloe spooks Eliot by telling him the police are on their way and we see them both running out of Rachel's home. To me this shows how Chloe is oblivious to those around her and how they truly feel towards her, she only ever normally concentrates on herself until Rachel comes along.
Sera
Chloe soon gets to the to where Damon is keeping Sera (the oldmill) and finds Franks RV, she tries to get his attention but has no luck so makes her way inside to find Sera tied up and Damon read to inject her, this was obviously to make it look like she had taken an overdose. Chloe tries to stop him but in the process gets hit and we see Frank come along and starts fighting Damon but when Chloe comes around both Frank and Damon have disappeared but Sera is still there. I liked this bit, Chloe can finally sit down and get some answers from Sera rather than hearing one side of things, Sera confirmed everything Rachel's father had told them and begged Chloe not to tell Rachel she ever found her, she didn't want Rachel to hate her dad as he has been there for her whole life. At this point, I had two choices I could either tell Rachel that I found her mum or say I didn't I decided to not tell her and ended up with an ending where Rachel and Chloe are seen making memories together. I wasn't pleased with the ending as it left yet more plot holes and showed us a quick shot of Rachel's phone ringing inside a photography studio, you can all probably guess that this was when Mark Jefferson and he had got hold of Rachel, I personally think there will be more episodes to come which I would love as 3 episodes didn't seem like enough to let us in on Chloe, I would say these episodes were more about Rachel than anything.
I'm glad that drug abuse and how it affects people is being brought to light in a game like this, not only are adults playing this game but so are young impressionable teens who think drugs are extremely cool, but Life is Strange touches on how drug abuse can destroy a family and shows us how hard it can be to go back to everything a drug abuser once left behind and that speaks volumes. I liked how we finally see Chloe expressing herself with her blue hair in this episode even if it's a tiny bit, overall this was the most exciting episode out of them all and it's pretty easy to get all the trophies for the game (which I've done) so I give this:
As an extra I will be doing a post all about Max's stand-alone episode which was a bonus to Life is Strange Before the Storm.
Elle May
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