Like most people I bought this prequel entirely because of how much I liked the main game. This one is actually made by a different studio and being a prequel has no Max Caulfield and her time powers in it. Instead here you are put in control of Chloe Price and the story is all about how she gets to know Rachel Amber and become best friends. There’s a new mechanic called Backtalk which is supposed to represent Chloe’s ability to convince others to do things her way by insulting them but in practice, it’s another conversation option.

The events of this game take place some time before those of the main Life is Strange game. Chloe is still grieving from the death of her father and though her grades and attendance record is awful, she is still enrolled in Blackwell Academy. She is also upset that her mother Joyce is dating a new man, the ex-soldier David Madsen. One night she sneaks out to attend a concert held in the woods and runs into trouble with the drug dealers who hang out there. Rachel Amber who happens to be at the concert herself helps Chloe get away and they seem to enjoy partying together afterwards. The next day Rachel persuades Chloe to ditch class and hop a train to get to a park. There they have fun watching various people through a viewfinder until they see a man kissing a woman, which upsets Rachel. She reveals that the man is her father and she suspects that he has been having an affair. Angry and caught up in the feeling that Arcadia Bay is a prison, she plans with Chloe to run away.

There are side characters and their stories as well, including a particularly involved plotlines that includes participating in pen-and-paper RPG sessions with Steph and Mikey. But the heart of the story is all about Chloe and Rachel. Though they should have known each other in passing at school, they only become friends at the concert. The arc here is supposed to involve Chloe latching onto Rachel as a new best friend after her father’s death and Max’s leaving for Seattle while to Rachel Chloe is someone for her to rely on after realizing that her father has been lying to her all her life. Personally I think it strains credibility that the two could become so close after only two or three days and that someone as popular as Rachel doesn’t have any other friends to confide in.

There are plenty of critics who like this game and some have even commented that the writing may be even better than that of the original game. I do love how this game captures Chloe’s grief. As the player you can try to get her to do the right things, like fixing her relationship with her mother or giving David a chance but moment to moment frustrations and anger get in the way in a not unreasonable manner. It reminds me quite a bit of Zoë Quinn’s Depression Quest. However Rachel’s problems seem less serious and her father’s deceit isn’t enough to make up for the fact that she really has had a pretty perfect life so far. It would have been interesting to have the game play this straight as teenage angst that you can sympathize with but that doesn’t justify rule-breaking behavior. Maybe sometimes the adults are right after all. But then the game undermines that theme by showing that Rachel’s father is up to no good after being a respected authority figure. I find that the writing around Rachel’s character is a real mess with not much coherence.

I also dislike how the game balances the relative importance of various scenes. There’s no doubt that the RPG sessions are a fan favorite but they’re not narratively important yet they go on for so long. I do love the theatre scene of The Tempest and stuff like Chloe fixing her car and changing her appearance. Those are the scenes that matter. Then there’s how Chloe does some truly awful things like breaking into places she has no business being in and tampering with police evidence and pretty much gets away with it scot free. That’s positively infuriating. I know that in games like this the player doesn’t really have a choice in how things turn out but there’s not even a plausible illusion of choice here. There are so many moments when both choices that you are given are essentially the same brand of awfulness.

The final choice itself feels unsatisfying. Based on what we know from Life is Strange, Rachel’s home life must have been frustrating enough to make her keep wanting to run away, even going to the extent of sleeping with Frank. This means that only one of the two endings are canon. Overall while this game has its moments, I feel that it is inferior in just about every way to the main game and doesn’t really mesh well with later events. It doesn’t feel like the work of the original team at all and it may be better to just let the original game stand on its own.