“Because you’re going away. People always go away to forget.”
At some point in your life, it seemed as if you played with your friends for the last time in your childhood. You didn’t know it at that point, but the next day, something changed. Be it a new living situation, you fell out, you had school to focus on; everything went without a fanfare. It’s depressing, albeit inevitable, which is why the bonus episode of Life is Strange: Before The Storm was absolutely miserable to play through.
Part of me feels like explaining what Life is Strange actually is, but if you haven’t heard of it at this point, then welcome to Earth, how can I help you? A quick capsule of information, however: This is the bonus episode that players would get if they bought the Deluxe Edition of Life is Strange: Before The Storm (You can buy it on its own as well, but shh, Square Enix might be mad), which in turn, is the episodic spin-off from Deck Nine Games.
The bonus episode plot isn’t necessarily a whirlwind of events and plot twists like Before The Storm and the main game, it simply focuses on one day. Mainly, the day that Chloe Price’s father, William, passed away in a car accident, with 13-year old versions of Max Caulfield and Chloe Price having the time of their lives beforehand. Before that gutting news, however, Max is unsure of how to tell Chloe that in a few days, she will be leaving behind Arcadia Bay in favor of Seattle.
You could say it was the calm BEFORE THE STORM! Haha… ha. I’m sorry.
If you’d like a quick review of the main story of Before The Storm, then you can either read our more thorough review of it or heed the words that echo the review. Before The Storm was easily one of the best games of 2017, with fantastic writing, heart-wrenching moments, and Deck Nine performing the impossible task of making Chloe Price a likable character.
Anyone who knows me knows that I find the characters of Max Caufield and Chloe Price (In the original 2015 release, at least), to be both underwritten and pathetically childish. Max herself was a character that would probably blame herself for the Hindenberg disaster, given the chance. Whereas Chloe is an unbelievably selfish baby who we’re supposed to have sudden emotions for, just because she changed her outlook on life in the last 5 minutes of Episode 5.
What’s funny is that the 13-year old iterations of Max and Chloe are practically carbon copies of their later versions. Max is still the soft-spoken, shy and socially unadjusted little girl that squeaked her way through Arcadia Bay, and Chloe is still outlandish, brash, and the easy-going gal that *RETCH* we all know and love. What changes here is that the way they are here, fits more into these ages, than they do at the later stages of their life.
There’s no real gameplay, and yeah, you could argue that for every Life is Strange title, but I mean there’s nothing that fits the usual bill. There’s no unraveling conspiracies or anything, you’re merely experiencing the last day that these two characters would have fun, or at least, what Max believes to be the last day. The most complicated thing you have to do in the hour-long runtime is move a set of boxes so you can grab a childhood item from the pair’s “Pirate Phase”.
It’s clear that Deck Nine gets kids, and not in a creepy way. This is how we acted at one point, we weren’t necessarily subscribing to every trend just to fit into the imaginary crowd of losers we were apparently supposed to appeal to. Nostalgia drove us to what we are, not teen magazines and saying “Hella” every 40 seconds. Yeah, you could say that the DnD session that Chloe takes part in, on Episode 2 was subscribing to a trend, but Pathfinder sessions and shit like that have been a thing for decades, and the characters of Before The Storm look and feel like the kind of people to engage in such actions.
What I’m trying to say is that the entirety of Before The Storm, and its bonus episode, is genuine. Every action, every moment, and every line that the characters utter is genuine, and even though Deck Nine took some liberties with story elements from the 2015 release, the way they’ve executed them is superb. I can forgive bastardizations of the story if it’s done better.
Nevertheless, it’s clear that tugging your heart-strings is the objective behind “Farewell”, and it works well. From Max’s torn feelings on how to tell Chloe that she’s gotta bounce to Seattle for 5 years, to Chloe’s unease upon being accepted to a new school, facing judgment from others, it’s all fine and dandy. Admittedly, Deck Nine do go a bit overboard with just how hard they’re trying to make you weep, especially in the last 10 minutes, and beware of minor spoilers ahead? It’s up in the air about whether or not it’s a spoiler, but regardless, here we go.
So, after Chloe gets the news that her father met a truck head-on, it cuts to the funeral, with the only people left to watch over the coffin being Max, Chloe, and Chloe’s mother Joyce. Max is the last non-family member to leave, and the camera pans to the car that Max’s parents own, with everything inside! I’m not kidding, Max has apparently got 5 minutes or so to grieve before she’s on the road again, making music with her friends.
One could say that because the death was sudden, and Max’s parents had no time to re-schedule, but oh my god, seeing a station wagon filled with random crap, right next to a heart-broken family made me chuckle a bit. The chuckling abruptly stops, however, with the final 2 minutes, with a gut-wrenching monologue from Max saying things that some people simply don’t get the chance to. That supposed final goodbye, the last promise of being “BFFL’s”, unaware of just how hard it’d be to maintain contact with someone so far away. Well… before we all lived in the internet, that is, and we could simply use Facebook.
Anyway, “Farewell” is a superb final show of strength from Deck Nine, and what follows next is the baton being passed to DontNod, for Life is Strange 2. It’s depressing to think about really, and it makes you think about what demographic DontNod will appeal to. Max and Chloe’s stories have passed now, so the question is: What cringe fest will be introduced this time? An 18-year old Brony with 10 fidget spinners? A math teacher that speaks only in Spongebob memes?
