I’ll keep this review structured around the main points and thoughts that came to me while playing, in order. Initially as I first started I was a bit concerned as it mostly just came across as a more watered down Arcadia Bay compared to lis1, looking a tad goofier (such as the animations) and apparently more corny too, dear oh dear… Chloe was pulling middle fingers at everything in sight from the get go and howling her lungs out mid concert! I also wished the voice actors carried over from lis1 for recurring characters, though Chloe’s VA did a great job. On the plus side though the soundtrack was atmospheric and perfect from the start, with Daughter’s ‘the right way around’ immaculate. It was also, in a way, more grounded without the supernatural side that was so prevalent in lis1, more like an everyday life type story where you just spend time living life in small town Oregon. This was probably the biggest strength for my taste in the whole game. As well as that, I didn’t really relate to or care about Chloe as a character much but I found myself quickly growing fond of and relating to Rachel. Her intuition, her longing to leave her town, her lack of fitting into a certain social box, she resonates with me deeply, even if some elements I can’t relate to (intense popularity, extroverted impulsiveness, and uncontrollable rage apparently, that wildfire was horrific). But on that note… is it bad that I was kind of relieved to see Rachel burn that scary photo of her and her father… it looked like a grown woman’s face plastered onto a child’s body… but I kind of love that the power/ability of this game is just ending people 😭speaking of which Joyce devoured in that parent teacher meeting…
As well as that, the ‘piecing together a little truck from junk’ at the junkyard was so much fun as someone who gets immense amounts of dopamine from customising things and piecing things together. And Frank was also a surprise favourite this time around. Lives in an RV with old armchairs in it, has a puppy, has a peculiar fixation on clouds,, how cute 😭yes he’s a dealer but let’s look past that... And even if I don’t love Chloe as a character I certainly have far more respect for her now that I understand her hardship better, and unfortunately slightly less for Max knowing exactly how cruelly she ghosted Chloe . The conversation with Samuel was so much better in this game too, added so much to his character I loved it. And Nathan deserves better :( now I feel even worse for him than I did during his lis1 voice message… And another moment I loved, when they were bowing during the play I was thinking “aw I wish Rachel would drag Chloe onto the stage to join them, I feel like that would be so her” and then she DID 🥹I knew her so well so fast! And Rachel’s line at feeling like anything is possible at night… oh we are kindred spirits… and unexpectedly hearing youth by daughter at the end of episode two made me tear up knowing how things end for Rachel. Can I also just say I love the way life is strange games tend to show you each character’s current situation while playing beautiful music at the end of each episode? It’s so emotional seeing where everyone’s at and fills me with sonder.
Sera was a fascinating character who reminded me of Karen, Sean’s mum from lis2, yet Sera was even more self destructive and desperate to escape her own life. I saw Rachel in her a lot, her desperation for freedom and escape was certainly inherited… and dare I say her destructiveness, just look at Rachel’s fire. But speaking of Rachel - she’s an individualist on the enneagram just like me, and even has a list of inspirations and quotes like I tend to do… she’s just like me. And I loved the outfit choosing in this game, nice little detail. Oh but those lines about Rachel being stabbed… “thank you Chloe, you saved my world.” “I don’t know what we’d do without her…” “you’re not getting rid of me that easy Chloe” they make me astonishingly sad knowing lis1’s ending, oh I’m ill. Another thing, I almost preferred amberprice over pricefield… Chloe kissing Rachel’s cheek before leaving is exactly what I would have written and I predicted it a moment before it happened. Eliot was a horrible character, a forgettable plot device who only served as an obstacle along the way… he couldn’t handle the soft rejection, so pathetic. And the whole dilemma at the end of whether Rachel should know the awful thing her father did hiring Damon… reminds me of what the two were talking about in the starry room about how stars aren’t real, they’re dead, but they’re beautiful anyway and maybe it doesn’t matter. For now Rachel’s dad is a good dad, unless she finds out the truth. Is it better that she knows, or not? Oh and of course that was the final choice of the game. I ended up keeping the truth from her because not only did she herself say ‘even if the stars aren’t real, they’re still beautiful’ and ignorance truly is bliss, but also she was going to die soonish anyway so it didn’t really matter :( I felt a tiny bit uncomfortable with it and don’t quite know why, so morally complex. Like maybe she should have a right to know the truth before she leaves this world, I don’t know. I loved seeing more hangout scenes between them toward the end but oh that last scene was just emotionally cruel for ♥♥♥♥♥ sake (Rachel’s phone ringing on the floor of the dark room as she gets drugged and photographed by Jefferson).
Well overall this game kind of suprised me, I enjoyed it a bit more than I expected and there were a few things about it I unexpectedly loved as my review gives away, my biggest takeaways were another grounded atmospheric Arcadia bay adventure, Rachel being a new favourite of mine among the lis cast, and the surprising moral depth/complexity of the games ultimate choice about painful truth vs blissful ignorance, I genuinely don’t quite know which is better, I’m scared neither are, or both sacrifice something awful (like any good lis final choice :’D). But for Rachel, I chose to protect her from more suffering knowing the suffering ahead. Much more respect for Chloe now as well, the wider lis1 narrative feels much more deep and complex and sad now. replaying lis1 will never be the same. Rachel deserved the world and I’m absolutely heartbroken that she never got to make the edges of the world a mere prologue with Chloe, but at least before her death she had with Chloe one of the most beautiful intimate romances I’ve seen. One of the best queer love stories I’ve seen so far in media, they supported one another with trauma, became so trusting and close… they dreamed of a better life together and lifted each other up so much… they were both so cool too and such good friends as well as romantics. oh I’m so so jealous of them both and love them, I miss them honestly and only hope I one day have something like what they have with someone else. Heavens above I actually think their romance meant more to me than anything else in this game because it scratched a particular yearning of my own… overall this isn’t a keeper because I’ve already kept lis1 for revisiting Arcadia bay (with my preferred devs / the og devs DONTNOD) and I like max more as a protagonist even if Rachel’s absence hurts, but before the storm is also on the larger size and I have to protect my space and honestly I just didn’t emotionally connect the same, it was a LOVELY return to Arcadia bay that I might even replay one day but not a keeper experience when I’ve got lis1.
“When you meet someone who changes everything, you just know.” -Rose Price
