Well before the moment Deck 9 nods at so shockingly and painfully in the post-credits scene, Rachel Amber has proved she wasn’t going anywhere with Chloe: she had dumped Chloe and moved on to Frank, the local dealer, and then beyond him as well – just as she dumped and moved on from the friends she had before she latched onto Chloe as the newest and most interesting thing of the moment. One way or another Rachel reassures Chloe, but for veterans of Life is Strange this moment is heartbreaking, because we know full well Rachel Amber is all talk – and not just because she ends up in a shallow grave in the junkyard. Chloe asks Rachel if she really means it, if she really cares, or if she’s just all talk. (If this is you, go to therapy! Behavioural patterns are not a life sentence.) One of the most real moments in Before the Storm is after the play in Episode 2, with Rachel and Chloe under the streetlights, when Chloe calls Rachel on her bullshit. One of the ways that manifests is as a kind of emotional manipulation and inability to connect for extended periods of time once the novelty wears off and they’ve got what they want. Look, I love Rachel Amber – I fell in love with her right alongside Chloe, and who the hell can blame us? – but she’s messed up in a way a lot of high achieving, highly strung, creative kids of that kind of parent are. The other is that Rachel, even to Chloe, is a user. One is that Chloe, my poor angel, has nobody and nothing else, and clings to Rachel like a life preserver, and - more tragically - like a ticket to a new life. That Chloe is in a relationship that is going to either explode, or to splutter away untended, or to be so mundane as to be meaningless.īut on reflection, I feel it is possible for Rachel to continue to grow into the central source of warmth and light in Chloe’s life that we know her to become even with the lie between them - for two reasons. The lying Chloe whose face drains of happiness when Rachel looks away from her, who sits at the Ambers’ dinner table telegraphing suffering with every expression and posture, is not the Chloe who goes on to forge the kind of relationship – romantic or platonic – that we know exists sometime before the events of Life is Strange. The shadow of the lie undercuts Rachel and Chloe’s fledgling relationship, which is the beating heart of Before the Storm and central to the events of Life is Strange. My first reading of Before the Storm’s “good” ending was that it was complete and total bullshit. In both cases the player has been engaged with a clear central thesis throughout the game so far – Chloe Must Live and Lying Is Wrong – and is suddenly faced with a last minute reversal that not only contradicts this long-standing premise but also threatens the core relationship of the game. The parallel between this choice and that at the end of Life is Strange is rather beautiful. The conversation drags on and on, until even the most tenacious player is worn down, and a heartwarming family scene – the kind of scene Chloe feels is beyond her, forever – hammers home a message already pounded into the player's brain by the preceding conversation: you must lie. In a scene so surreal I expected it to go full David Lynch and live up to the franchise’s Twin Peaks inspirations (who killed Rachel Amber?), Rachel’s mother sits across a table from Chloe in a burned-out barn, face wet with mascara tears, calmly smoking a cigarette with which she gestures to punctuate her sudden, total reversal of motivation to date. The decision to lie to Rachel, to “protect” her from the truth of her father’s monstrosity so she retains one parental figure to cling to, is presented to the player as the “good” option with all the subtlety of a blue whale to the face. The final episode of Life is Strange: Before the Storm arrived just as I was clocking off for the year, but that just means I’ve had plenty of time to get really angry about the final choice and ending – and then to circle back round to a more reflective appreciation of one of the best executed prequels I have ever experienced.īefore the Storm ends with players given the choice of telling Rachel Amber that her mother is nowhere to be found, or informing her that her own father has lied, over and over again, and even hired a cartoonishly villainous and violent criminal to take Rachel’s mother out of the picture. Spoilers for both Life is Strange games ahead. Have you played Life is Strange: Before the Storm? Let’s talk about that ending.
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