Life Is Strange: Before The Storm (No Spoilers... Yet.) (Gaming)

by Ragashingo , Official DBO Cryptarch, Thursday, August 31, 2017, 22:37 (2641 days ago)

First episode was interesting. No spoilers here, just impressions of the game overall. Spoilers will come later.

- Took a while to get used to Chloe being voiced by a different person. Was a bit like whoever it was who voiced the Genie in Aladdin 2... Close but obviously not the same.
- There’s no time travel in this one (well that what they’ve said, at least) so the big feature outside of normal branching conversations is this thing called Backtalk. You basically have a limited amount of time to come up with a response and have to sorta keep responding correctly to keep intimidating / bluffing / charming / whatevering your way through a conversation. It should have felt tense but I don’t think I failed any of the checks so it didn’t feel like much more than choosing the next bit of dialogue quickly. There’s a little timer. Not sure what happens if it runs out.

- Early on it was kinda hard for me to play it. Walking around and looking at every little thing and musing about every flower and poster and person felt to me like Max’s thing so much. Doing it as Chloe felt... wrong. I was much more inclined to not care or walk past stuff because that what she would do.

Also a bit hard, because Chloe is so angry and negative at everything. For good reasons, sure, like dealing with the dead of her dad, but it’s hard for me to play so negative a character.

- Things picked up once Rachel Amber came into the scene proper. Pretty quickly it’s just Chloe and Rachel which I think worked a lot better than wandering Chloe around inspecting things as if she were Max. Chloe’s internal thought process felt much better when she was thinking through her immediate situation, or how to respond to conversation with Rachel, or to the other stuff that happened.

- The animation and look of the game was really good. It still has that Life Is Strange painting / low budget look to everything but it seemed more deliberate and more detailed than the first game. It had better models and better environments. One of the game’s real strengths so far has been animation, which seems crazy since one of Life Is Strange’s weaknesses was its animation.

There is a lot of good, non-motion-capture-jittered, custom animation for Chloe and Rachel. Lots of good subtle touches in the body animation. Like one of them doing one or two extra loop/twirls with their hand as they playfully hand something over to the other one. Quick, complicated, somewhat unnecessary animation that shows someone really cared.

Facial animation is also greatly improved. With Life Is Strange, you almost had to imagine what the characters were doing or feeling or how they were moving by extrapolating out from the somewhat limited animation of their bodies and the almost non-existent facial animation. In Before The Storm there were subtle smiles and raised eyebrows and smirks and gasps and shock and anger displayed on faces. Even with the Life Is Strange art style, a decent bit more character came through in the animation and models than before.

- Despite Chloe’s different voice actor, voice acting was pretty good across the board. The conversations and range of emotion and tone in all the characters’ voices was well above average. Timing on things like back and forth dialogue was very good as well. It always seems like these voice actors aren’t in the same room as each other when they are recording, but dialogue and conversations were snappy and it felt like the characters were really responding to each other and playing off each other.

There were a few not quite right pauses when choosing the next dialogue option a few times. Like as if the game had to load in the sound file so the characters stare at each other for a split second too long. But it wasn’t anything too major and nothing you haven’t experienced if you’ve played pretty much anything with choosable dialogue. I just wish these things were completely perfect, because they are getting so close now.

- Overall, this felt like a Life Is Strange game. The movement. The hand drawn UI that appears when you get close to things. The way you auto turn around if you try and leave the playable space. It all felt right when compared to the first game. I’m gong to hold off giving an official score for the moment so I can play it again, but right now I’d say it safe to buy and will provide a decent, story drive, dialogue heavy time, if that’s what you’re looking for. I’m gonna play the story again before I affix a letter or number grade to the Episode 1, though. It’s certainly has a B already, but it might move up from there.