Sunday 11 June 2017

RowGames: BEFORE THE STORM AKA MORE LIFE IS STRANGE HELLA YAH!



Disclaimer: source of the game information via Square-Enix EU blog

Hello people of the interwebs!!!! Its a good day to wake up to as there was announcements at E3 that square enix is making not one but TWO NEW LIFE IS STRANGE GAMES! TIME TO RETURN TO ARCHADIA GAY i meant ARCHADIA BAY



We already know that the guys at DONTNOT announced in conjunction with the game hitting 3 million unique sales back in May that they are in the works of a new LIS game that we will not get any news till sometime next year BUT a couple of weeks ago there were leaks of Square-Enix making another LIS game, this time a prequel (yessss! this totally makes sense) to the ever so popular game which is being developed by a Deck Nine Games which, interesting... its not DONTNOD making the game but either ways if Square-Enix is willing to trust them with this beloved game franchise I don't mind it.

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The most important thing (for me) about this game is that Ashly Burch aka Chloe's VA is back and while she's not reprising her voice (a little bit sad about this but I their judgements and hey new younger Chloe sounds similar) for this game, she does have a role in the writing process where she's the dialog writer for Chloe. This is kinda epic as Ashly is pretty much the perfect person to write the dialogs for Chloe given her performance in the original game. 

So from the looks of it were playing from Chloe's POV for this three episode prequel which this is gonna be refreshing as Square-Enix blog clearly gives a heads up :

"Chloe has no rewind power, so we highly recommend you think before you speak..! Chloe’s sharp tongue will require her to live with whatever she says and as before, every single action and choice will have a direct consequence in the short, mid and long term."

So ... no rewind memory remix powers here. No butterfly effect. Good luck handling super angst 16-year-old Chloe peeps looool xD But in all seriousness I'm excited to see how the game will go without the rewind mechanics as the choices in this game are so unpredictable! 

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From the looks of the trailer, I'm assuming this event takes place sometime after Chloe's dad passed away and her mum remarries cause from the looks of the trailer the girl is in deep shit. There was a scene of her in a truck with her dad and her dad got hit, I'm gonna assume its a nightmare scene. Also since she's still 16 she's still in school, pre-blue hair tattoo days I supposed. Its weird seeing her without blue hair xD. I'm gonna say this game is gonna follow how she meet Rachel and how that helped her coped with all the shit she's going through in life as Chloe mentioned in the original game that Rachel was 'her angle' and the one who saved her. Really interested to see her interactions and their friendship.

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Speaking which we finally get a chance to see and interact with Rachel! OMGASDFJKL; FINALFREAKINGLY WE GET TO like 'meet' her as I don't know about you but while we never see her in the original game I feel like we already know her well! Anyways looking forward to seeing if all those fan theories about Rachel are true. 

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And lastly I didn't think they'll talk about this but we will actually have a chance to meet Max!

"We know that many of you would love to see more from Max. Due to the way in which the first game ended, we didn’t want to canonize one group of players’ choices over the other – a sentiment echoed strongly by our community. That being said, we will still be giving you one final chance to play as Max through the self-contained bonus “Farewell” episode, which takes place long before the events of Before the Storm. This stand-alone bonus episode, will release after episode 3, and is only available as part of the Deluxe Edition of Life is Strange: Before the Storm. Rest assured, anyone purchasing the complete season of Before the Storm will get the full story. Max’s ‘Farewell’ episode really is just a bonus episode for those who would like to play as her one final time."

GOSH! This i seriously didn't expect as I thought its gonna only focus on Chloe and Rachel as given how the original game ended, the cannon of the story of how Max is at that time in Seattle and the fact that for some players this might actually be their first time picking up LIS. Either ways, I'm excited for this! I'm excited to play as Max one more time even. Its gonna be bittersweet since I know where the story goes but I'm excited. 

OVERALL

If you guys stuck around this blog since 2015 you'll know this game is hands down one of THE BEST GAME I've played and that Chloe is one of my favorite characters in fiction and gaming.

From the looks of the trailer we're gonna follow Chloe as she be friends with Rachel and also cope with all the things happening in her life from the fact that she's having a hard time moving on from her dad's passing, her mum remarrying and so on. While we already know about this from the original game we only learn about this from Max's POV so its interesting to see this from Chloe's perspective. 

As I mentioned this is gonna be bittersweet given how the original game ended and from what we learned.

If you have not played Life is Strange I highly recommend picking it up as its a beautiful game with an intriguing story. Its one of those chill games that you can an episode at a time though by the time you reach episode three I promise you you'll be hooked. You can check out my review on the first episode (here) and I have covered every single episode and even did a rundown on my walkthrough on every episode I've played (here).

Also from the looks of it while it is possible to play Before the Storm before the original game since its not gonna affect the original cannon, I do recommend if you're a newbee to the LIS  franchise at least playing at least the first episode (its free off steam) to understand Chloe, her situation and personality first before jumping to the prequel.

Disclaimer: I'm gonna get a little personal about how much the game help me so if you don't want to hear my personal rambles you can X out. Thanks for reading ~ ROW xD 
 
Not only that but this game has a special place in my heart as its not only beautiful and unique for its time but it really helped me when I needed an outlet to escape the hell of reality

Do you guys remember the time where I opened up on ROWLIFE about being bullied at uni. Well its around that time when I was in deep shit in my life, harassed and bullied in my own dorm room, bullied online, struggling with my studies and not feeling safe in my own dorm room. 

Youtube lets plays was what turn to when I need a breather, an escape in from reality at the time as I also was in a read slump and the last thing I wanted to do was read a freaking book after reading a telephone book of law legislation. 

Anyways I stumbled upon Life is Strange on my favorite lets player GhostRobo and I marathon both episodes. Its watching episode 2 that gave me the push to open up first to my best friend who happen to live in the same dorm as me, second to my parents for advice, third to my dorm mate in another college who is also an RA who helped me so much to find the right people to talk to at uni and of cause the warden and resident office for help to stop this. 

Watching the game lets play (of cause later on playing the game) gave me the courage to open up when something is bothering me. This really helps as talking to someone I trust lift that burden. 

But not only that, one of the themes of this game is knowing how to let go and move on. Not gonna lie, moving on from what happen back at uni was though hence why I blogged about that in order to move on. 

Its been two years since that incident which also means two years since I discovered Life is Strange. This game really help me at the time I had no idea what to do with myself. It helped me with cope with the situation i was in but it also help me move on. It also bring a new sense of joy to my life, as I count the days till a new episode drops and spend a whole night binge playing an episode, discuss with my friends on the theories of the game at dinner, scroll through tumblr for all the awesome fan arts, head cannons, fan fiction, crackships etc. Heck I RAN (or took a bus) to EB GAMES on the day they released the special edition box set of the physical copy as i was THAT EXCITED!

To the developers making this games, thank you so much for the world of Arcadia Bay! As I say this game brings me so much joy and helped me when needed an outlet to escape! 
 



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