Life is Strange: Before the Storm is fan service at its finest

Life is Strange didn’t need a prequel. Dontnod Entertainment’s time-traveling teen

drama was a breakout hit when it launched in 2015, but the developer has been clear that it did not want to return to the story of Max Caulfield and Chloe Price. And so, Life is Strange: Before the Storm — a three-episode arc focusing on a younger Chloe — felt unnecessary. But Colorado-based developer Deck Nine’s take on Dontnod’s world is anything but disingenuous. It’s not a return to form for the series, either. Instead, it’s a celebration of the fandom Life is Strange has inspired. Before the Storm is set three years prior to the events of Life is Strange. Max Caulfield — the time-rewinding heroine of the first game — is an absent figure in Chloe’s life. She appears only in texts and unsent letters. Chloe, still grieving the death of her father, is as uncouth and rebellious as ever. She sneaks into concerts and mouths off to authority figures, eventually befriending a popular classmate by the name of Rachel Amber. Episode 1 of Before the Storm, “Awake,” treats burgeoning relationship between these two as its focal point. It lays the tracks for the foundational mystery that drives Life is Strange — a story in which Rachel has gone missing with no clues to her whereabouts.                                                                                                    https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/1/16236754/life-is-strange-before-the-storm-review-deck-nine