Board 8 > Life is Strange: Before the Storm Episode 3 discussion *spoilers*

(+) Yeah! (+)

Welp. Attempt one at convincing her mother to stay failed. Time to reset this conversation til i have tried everything i guess
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okay i caved and looked up some videos.

The "meeting her mother" is a no-dialogue, 45 second scene added to The ending montage. And while i dont think theres footage of how to get there yet, the comments mentioned giving her mom rachels bracelet. Which means you have to not choose the kissing option.

Color me all sorts of disappointed. Episode 3 just lost a lot of points in my book
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I'm not sure but im assuming if you don't ask her to kiss you, they don't ever become romantic? Just friends. Not that episode 3 hardly acknowledges the romance anyway. But damn. What a bad way to handle that
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pxlated posted...

the comments mentioned giving her mom rachels bracelet.

That feels like such an arbitrary consequence of that choice. Ah well maybe the dialogue in the scene itself would make up for it.

Anyway, I've been thinking a bit and I'm not sure how I feel about Chloe freezing up at the junkyard. When Damon dropped the knife I was expecting a choice. They even framed it like there would be a choice, and then there just... wasn't one.

I'm not saying Chloe needed to pull some epic move where she snatches the knife and saves the day, she's only a teenager. They also tried to justify it afterwards with her feeling bad for freezing up. My problem is that I don't think freezing up is something Chloe would ever do. She's always been the type to act without really thinking first.

Like, I've considered comparable situations in other episodes. In LiS Ep4 when Nathan showed up at the dorm, Chloe and Max both backed away for a second... but then he approached Max. Chloe then stepped up to try and shove him back, despite knowing he likely has a gun and that he'd previously used it on her in another timeline. That was one of my favorite subtle Chloe moments because it showed she wasn't the type to just freeze up when Max is in danger. She was also pretty quick to pull a gun when Frank pulled his knife at the RV later on, she didn't freeze there either.

I dunno, Chloe standing still while Rachel is in danger just doesn't feel like Chloe to me. That was the only moment in the entire prequel that truly felt out of character.
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Turning it on...probably won't look at the topic anymore 'til I beat it.
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Okay nevermind, I must say I laughed much harder than I expected at "Boooooooooooo!"
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I think I've determined my episode ranking

4 > B2 > B1 > 3 > 2 > 1 > B3 > 5

B3 is closer to 1 than 5 but still on the lower end of the ranking. LiS can't seem to manage endings!
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I mean, i guess the bracelet makes sense. But i wish it didn't mean you forgo the romance to get it

And yeah her freezing up felt way out of character too. Kind of a bummer.
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Quitting for the night at the DA's office.

Pretty much all of the previous scene/location was killing me with how slow everybody's voice actors decided to speak.
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So, we never really do find out why the DA never seems to be involved in the search for his missing daughter, do we?
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_SecretSquirrel posted...

So, we never really do find out why the DA never seems to be involved in the search for his missing daughter, do we?

Life is Strange and Before the Storm spoilers

They never address this explicitly, but I've actually had a theory about this since Life is Strange. Her parents don't seem to care as much in the main timeline, but when Max hops to the alternate timeline there's a newspaper article about how they're taking Rachel's disappearance seriously. The primary difference between those two timelines is Rachel's friendship with Chloe. After three years of her hanging out with the local rebel, likely getting into all sorts of trouble, I'm guessing her parents figured she just did something irresponsible and ran off (if you want to bring new info from BtS into this, they might've even assumed she ran off to find Sera in the main timeline. Without Chloe in the alternate timeline she might've never found out about Sera).

Basically, Chloe's influence in timeline A made Rachel seem like the kind of girl who could conceivably run off so they were less concerned about finding her. Without Chloe in timeline B they actually do seem quite worried, at least based off that one newspaper article. That's my theory, anyway.
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Is there an issue with installing this? When I launch the game it tells me it wants me to install/purchase episode 3, then when I click to go to the PS Store it says the Ep. 2&3 bundle is already installed.
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Nevermind, had to manually go into the store and find addons for episode 1 to download episode 3.

Dumb.
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Didn't tell Rachel the truth

Soda'd the plant
Took Dave's photograph
Didn't start with Drew's money
Visited the Norths (missed tabletop-action?!)
No firefighter donation
Ratted out Sheldon (didn't know how to discover Gerald was Thunder)
Rachel didn't meet her mother (I had her bracelet, too -- chose not to give it to her because I had already decided not to tell Rachel what happened, and I didn't want that to reveal my lie)
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Gerald isn't thunder. He's the vendor.

Unless i massively misread on my second playthrough. And you can only get the second dnd if Mikey got hurt instead of drew.

And augh this choice feels somehow harder than the first games choice. I knew immediately that I wanted chloe, even though I had a moral debate after deciding. This time....i still dont know if i made the right choice for me.

It's a shame that the endings don't do a great job of like...differentiating them or giving you much feeling one way or the other about how you chose
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I'm torn because I think this is my favorite chapter of BtS, but the voice-acting was so breath'y and slow that it was driving me up the walls here. Regardless, I wonder if I forgive LiS's endings and surreal nightmare-moments more than ya'll. BtS3 >= 1 > 2, LiS > BtS, and BtS's still cool.

This episode felt a lot like the way LiS ends though. Is Chloe/Rachel really your friend or are you really being used? Are you keeping Chloe/James or not? Surreal memories with black backgrounds returned too. I think the end of LiS4 had detective-work so I'm edging that toward my list too.

Returning to the dance-shed was great. It felt like it was time for a boss battle.

That final choice was much easier than Chloe VS The Bay. I'm not convinced this trilogy was as completely dedicated to the build-up of that final choice as the five episodes of LiS was, but this episode as a stand-alone episode made it a clear focus so that was good.

Having Chloe's first streak of blue mirror Rachel's feather was a great detail. I particularly liked Chloe's conversations with her dad this episode too, even though their commentary on the arts is cringey (accurate with the yes-and bit, sure, but it sounds so forced).

And yay, my tree's back to normal on the main screen. Now give us Max again.
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Man that final choice was *not* easier.

But this is a difference of personality and opinion so I'm not going to bother arguing
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I will argue about this choice being losing or keeping rachel. You're still friends with her regardless.

The choice is do you shatter her world or do you lie and cover up the fucked up lengths her dad went to in order to protect her from someone she might not need protecting from anymore.

He fucking paid a criminal to drug a recovering addict just so she stays away from his daughter. A gambit that wasn't even guaranteed to work!
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Okay, so about that point: was it explicit James wanted Damon to get Sera drugged and addicted again? I took that as Damon's own doing -- not arguing about the other fucked-up things happening there like destroying the glove or ignoring she hasn't cashed his checks in awhile. Was James "in" that Damon was going to put the needle in Sera?
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Well, there's nothing that explicitly states that. But what else was James going to have him do?

Like, what other, less fucked up things are you going to have a drug dealing criminal do in this situation?
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And it probably wasn't about getting her addicted again so much as it was failing a drug test so her legal advances don't proceed
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I had the understanding that Sera was Damon's client and perhaps friend based on James's commentary about the people she runs around with and the board in his house.

With that seed planted, for me I thought the expectation of Damon was to talk her out of pursuing Rachel anymore rather than make her fail a drug test.
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Damon didn't know Rachel was her daughter.

So...in my opinion that kind of rules out that theory
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Best case scenario you get is James payed Damon to "scare sera out of town"

Which is only marginally less fucked up.

And If you pay attention to the way Damon talks, it's pretty clear he didnt really know sera personally. She was Frank's client/friend, not his. He says "I heard you were clean for a year" not "you said you were clean for a year" or whatever. Among other things he says.

And even if all James said was "scare her off", he is still at fault for what Damon ended up doing. He cant pretend like he didnt know it was possible he would do something supremely fucked up. He is a supremely fucked up person and James knew that
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Damon recognized the name Rachel, then pieced it together that she was James's daughter. I took that as knowing Rachel was James's daughter but not knowing what she looked like.

Fair point about Frank and the responsibility of asking Damon to even "just" scare her off.
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Right but he didnt know Rachel was *Sera's* daughter
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Oh, right...hmmmmm.

Shit.
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It's a tough choice!

But the ending fails to capitalize on it which sucks. Silent montages! What a bad way to do that.

Still love this story but man...it barely worked in the first game. Its even worse here!
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Finished. I thought this ending choice was a lot tougher than LiS. Went with not telling her, but I think I'll check out and see how the other way would have turned out.
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Just finished
-You can play tabletop? HOW?! It was all set up in his room and everything but didn't give it as an option, and stats show 0% actually did it. Is it possible to not have Drew get injured so Mikey just shows up out of the blue?
-Lied to Rachel, and only because I know what happens in Life is Strange. I knew she didn't have much time left and didn't want to her to have to spend it unhappy and hateful toward her parents.
-Why would her mother go through all that effort to see her and when she finally has the chance she just calls it off? What a weird sudden character change
-So I guess no followthrough on Episode 1's suggested supernatural powers? That's a bit of a letdown
-The decisions actually seem to have more of an overall effect here. What you do with money really carries over episode to episode especially.
-3rd episode was probably the weakest of the three, but it's still not bad. Just not as satisfying as I'd hoped.
-no seriously how do you play tabletop why would they tease that option
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Just looked it up. Apparently Mikey can get hurt instead of Drew? Don't feel like retracing all the way back there to play it, even though I really want to
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I never saw any hint of super power
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They never outright said anything but it was pretty obvious that Rachel was connected to the fire, and it was more than just the wind seemingly being summoned by her scream in Episode One. Those two firemen in the hospital talked about how strange the wildfire was, and how it just randomly extinguished itself (conveniently right around the time Rachel admitted to Chloe that she still loved her father). I think the implication is that Rachel's fury had some sort of supernatural connection to the elements but they kept it mostly in the background.

I liked that element of Before the Storm a lot, actually. It supported my fan theory that Rachel's spirit caused the tornado in LiS instead of Warren's dumb time explanation.
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I did play some tabletop in the hospital, but it counted towards "Visiting the Norths." I guess I would need Drew to be hospitalized instead for it to count.
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_SecretSquirrel posted...

I did play some tabletop in the hospital, but it counted towards "Visiting the Norths." I guess I would need Drew to be hospitalized instead for it to count.

It might be broken if it still says 0%
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_SecretSquirrel posted...

I did play some tabletop in the hospital, but it counted towards "Visiting the Norths." I guess I would need Drew to be hospitalized instead for it to count.

No, when Drew's hospitalized it doesn't even give you the option to play
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Of course she was connected to the fire...she knocked over the trash fire and started it

I just took all that stuff as heavy handed symbolism
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Couple other things -

I was kinda confused about the timeline of events that happened at the end there. Chloe goes to the barn, gets knocked out by Damon, Frank comes in, Chloe talks to Sera and then just ends up back at the hospital? That whole segment felt a little disjointed.

I also didn't really need the stinger at the very end. Anyone playing this game already knows what happens, and it felt a little too *wink wink nudge nudge*.
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Yeah the ending was bad. What happened to damon???

At best you can infer from Frank's scene in the montage that Frank killed him? But like...come on

Of all the things to leave open ended I dont see why that was one of them

Also if Rachel's spirit caused the storm, why does sacrificing chloe put it out?
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pxlated posted...

Also if Rachel's spirit caused the storm, why does sacrificing chloe put it out?

I guess the implication there is that Chloe is with Rachel now so she's passified?

I dunno, I don't buy that anyway.
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Yeah, that's reaching. The first game does...nothing to imply that instead we see real consequences of max messing with time repeatedly (nose bleeds, dead animals)

So at best this second game recommend that, and meh. It's a cute theory but doesn't really work imo
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Also Warren looks like a saint now compared to Eliot.
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Fuck eliot
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I was on the #fuckeliot train from the very first text message in Episode 1!
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Same. Repeatedly turning him down was one of the highlights of this game
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It's weird because I actually didn't really have a problem with Warren, even though the two generally started out as similar characters. (Obviously Eliot swerved infinitely harder than Warren ever did by the end.)
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I almost feel like Elliot was made in defense of Warren

I remember people thinking Warren was creepy in the first game (and I don't think he was intended to come across that way) so I feel like they're thought process was "Ok, we'll show them what creepy ACTUALLY looks like"
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And to this day I still don't get what people didn't like about Warren. Like sure, he had an obvious crush on Max, but it seemed pretty innocent, and he never made any attempt to interfered with her life being just inviting her to see a movie with him
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He wasn't intended to be creepy except for the scene where he is seen spying through max's window

And his general theme of "but I've been such a good friend to you! Why dont you like me???"
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It's been a while since i played the first game so i dont remember specifics but there were a lot of moments where i was like "this dude is a creep" and where it felt like he was one of those "I've been really nice to you so you should sleep with me" kinds of guys
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