I had a hard time accepting Chloe Price as the protagonist and main focus of Deck Nine’s Life is Strange: Before the Storm during the short demo I recently played. While the first of three episodes is releasing August 31, my hands-on preview only lasted a quick ten minutes. Afterward, I was shown a video showcasing more of what we can come to expect from Life is Strange: Before the Storm. Chloe still acts in a way that breeds contempt, but she still seems like a complex character I can’t help but appreciate the existence of.
The nineteen-year-old Chloe waved high easily recognizable red flags as protagonist Max reconnected with her in the previous game, Dontnod’s Life is Strange, all the while blaming her own bad behavior, self-defeating attitude, and failures, on previous hardships and anyone but herself. Chloe’s selfishness and lack of personal responsibility drove me crazy.
From what we’ve seen so far, 16-year-old Chloe is still just as awful in Life is Strange: Before the Storm, a prequel to the first. Even the mythic Rachel Amber, someone important to Chloe, lays into her, possibly inspiring some much-needed introspection.
“I guess I forgot, it’s always about how you feel, isn’t it? Sad Chloe is [f***ing] sad again. Maybe you should try giving a sh*t about other people for once.”
In the playable demo and most recent gameplay video, there are only two instances where Chloe is even slightly redeemable:
1. She pets a dog.
2. She gets sad about a missing picture on the wall in her family home, and can’t remember what the picture was.
The rest of the experience is littered with her whining, complaining, making threats, refusing to apologize, uncaringly crossing train tracks, and even damaging someone’s car so she can steal a shirt and his earnings. While the damage and theft is optional by the player, she remits zero remorse, instead relishing in the act.
Besides the lack of remorse, Chloe also doesn’t share the time-based abilities previous protagonist Max had. Instead, Chloe will enact “backtalk,” a feature we have yet to see in action.
Later, when Chloe reads an invoice from Blackwell Academy detailing late payments for her tuition, she immediately worries about herself instead of thinking of her mother who’s paying the debts. “Like I need another reason for Principle Wells to get on my case,” Chloe remarks.
Once outside, interacting with her eventual step-father David, she has unsettling thoughts about him dying in overtly, unreasonable ways..
“No Mom, I swear [David] beat himself to death with a tire iron. Repeatedly.”
“I should fill this [fire extinguisher] with gasoline just in case David’s car ever catches on fire,” she quips, for whatever reason.
“Fifty-fifty chance I smash [David] in the face with this [socket wrench]. Sixty-forty. Maybe ninety-ten.”
Chloe exudes nasty attitude no matter how nice David tries to be, which is almost expected from a teenager enduring the introduction of a step-parent, but she takes it a step too far with these unnecessarily violent thoughts. Fans who played the first Life is Strange may assume David deserves everything Chloe dishes to him, but maybe he wasn’t always the angry, impatient man he presents himself as in Life is Strange.
Chloe’s behavior all falls back on her father dying, and her best friend moving away two years prior to Before the Storm. Chloe has suffered hardships, that’s obvious.
“She’s a character who has flaws and that’s okay. It’s okay to have grief, it’s okay to be awkward, it’s okay to be disconnected. It’s alright to need people in your life like Chloe needs people,” Deck Nine lead writer Zak Gariss said.
I agree with him. However, grief is not an excuse to ruin yourself and selfishly take it out on others for years on end. Chloe is dealing with her relatable pain in an undeniably non-admirable way, and it’s something I can’t forgive, but I commend original Life is Strange developer Dontnod for creating a character that is deep and complex enough to ignite such passionate divide in opinions between fans.
“I think Chloe is interesting as a character because she’s polarizing,” said Gariss. “Some people in the first game feel very strongly that she’s awesome, some feel very strongly that she’s too aggressive. I think she’s an acquired taste perhaps.”
I think Chloe is interesting as a character because she’s polarizing.
Though the dialogue can be cheesy and unrealistic at times – something Before the Storm still has issues with – Life is Strange created multifaceted characters with believable motives and reactions. My dislike for Chloe is only so tangible because she, flaws and all, feels real, a difficult feat to achieve in any medium of fiction. Though still terrible, as described, Chloe seems to retain the same depth in Before the Storm that was built in Life is Strange, and Gariss said players will see even more of her inner world.
Gariss also excitedly spoke of a somewhat supernatural sequence that re-explores some of Chloe’s experiences in a surreal way. It’s a core theme Deck Nine didn’t want to abandon on their mission to develop Chloe further in Before the Storm, and it’s a scene I’m looking forward to when I revisit Arcadia Bay.
Despite the fury I’ll likely retain for Chloe, I’m interested in learning more about what really caused her expulsion at Blackwell Academy and her relationship with Rachel Amber. I’m curious to see if Rachel ends up transforming Chloe for the better, at least for only a little while.
I miss the more empathetic Max, but I’ll endure the hurricane that is Chloe to see more of Arcadia Bay in Life is Strange: Before the Storm.
Casey DeFreitas is an Associate Editor at IGN and is firmly in camp bay. Follow her on Twitter.
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