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I think Arcadia Bay is one of the very few fictional places that I've actually missed. I missed its gauzy, autumnal sunsets, the diner, the lighthouse, even the junkyard, and most of all, the particular nostalgia it all evokes for teenage bedrooms. Those strange, musky sanctums where every dirty dish, stained beer mat and smudged scribble is a badge of honour for a late night of tattered, misspent youth. Junk will never be so important to you again. But as much as I missed those corners of Arcadia Bay, the time I had spent there had reached a natural, if tragic, conclusion. There was nothing more to be said, nothing more to be gained from poking around its halls. Everything had been neatly wrapped up, so what good could it do to overstay our welcome? I suspect that was a common reaction when a prequel was forecast, and that maelstrom only worsened when it was announced development had been handed over by publisher Square Enix from creators Dontnod to an entirely new team at Deck Nine.
In Life is Strange: Before The Storm, you play as former protagonist Max's divisive best friend Chloe Price, three years before the events of the first game. It's also just two years after the death of Chloe's father. Max has moved away to Seattle and stopped returning Chloe's calls, and Chloe's mother has started seeing someone new. Chloe attends Max's school, Blackwell, but her experiences there are markedly different from those of the quiet, studious, and comparatively popular Max. In fact, it's when Before the Storm's first episode, Awake, takes us to Blackwell that things really start getting interesting. Experiencing how this cliquey community treats grieving rebel Chloe, you begin to understand where her animosity for everything Blackwell comes from. This episode also shows us Max and Chloe's relationship from an entirely different perspective. I remember rolling my eyes when Chloe just couldn't seem to let go of the fact that Max had been made to move away in the first game. Here you see the casually cruel behaviour that accompanied that abandonment in a whole new light, and it makes Chloe's resulting bitterness feel entirely justified.
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