Three years before Max Caulfield returns to Arcadia Bay, Chloe Price is falling apart. Her father is dead, her best friend abandoned her, and her mother is dating a man Chloe can’t stand. She’s angry, grieving, and directionless. Then she meets Rachel Amber, the most popular girl at Blackwell Academy, and everything changes. Before the Storm tells the story of how Chloe and Rachel became inseparable, and knowing how Rachel’s story ends in the original game gives every moment of their growing connection a weight that’s almost unbearable.
Deck Nine took over development from Dontnod for this prequel, and the community’s response acknowledged both the achievement and the challenge. Building a prequel to a game whose emotional impact depended on mystery and discovery is inherently risky, and Before the Storm navigates that risk with more grace than many expected. The mobile version includes all three episodes plus the bonus farewell episode.
Chloe Without Powers, Without Filters
The Backtalk mechanic replaces Max’s time rewind with something more grounded. Chloe doesn’t have supernatural abilities. Instead, she has a sharp tongue and the recklessness of someone with nothing left to lose. Backtalk challenges are essentially verbal confrontations where you choose increasingly pointed responses to manipulate or intimidate others. The mechanic fits Chloe’s character perfectly and creates a distinctly different flavor of player agency.
The Chloe-Rachel relationship is the prequel’s emotional core and its greatest success. The game captures the intoxicating intensity of a teenage friendship that feels like the entire world. Rachel sees Chloe as more than the angry dropout everyone else sees, and Chloe sees Rachel as more than the perfect facade she presents to others. Their dynamic builds with a believable intensity that makes their connection feel earned rather than narratively convenient.
The writing for Chloe’s internal voice is the game’s strongest element. Her journal entries, her observations about the world, and her unspoken thoughts reveal a character far more complex than her exterior toughness suggests. The game humanizes Chloe’s anger by showing what’s underneath it, grief, abandonment, and a desperate need for someone to stay.
The tabletop RPG sequence, where Chloe plays a fantasy game with her friends, is a standout creative choice that reveals character through an unexpected format. The sequence is funny, warm, and illuminating, providing insight into who Chloe is when she lets her guard down. It’s the kind of narrative risk that pays off completely.
Living in the Shadow of the Original
The dramatic irony that gives the game its emotional power also limits it. Knowing Rachel Amber’s fate means knowing that the relationship you’re building is doomed. For some players, this knowledge deepens every scene. For others, it makes the emotional investment feel futile. The game can’t escape the gravity of the original’s story, and that gravity restricts where the narrative can go.
The three-episode structure means the story is shorter than the original, and the pacing feels compressed as a result. Chloe and Rachel’s relationship develops quickly enough that the emotional beats occasionally feel accelerated rather than earned. The prequel needed more time to let the relationship breathe between its dramatic peaks.
The absence of the time rewind mechanic makes gameplay choices feel less unique than in the original. Without the ability to preview consequences, the choice-driven gameplay resembles other narrative adventure games more closely. The Backtalk system provides some distinctiveness, but the core dialogue tree experience is less mechanically innovative than what came before.
The final episode’s handling of certain character revelations has divided the community. Some plot developments feel rushed, and the resolution of Rachel’s family storyline introduces melodrama that the earlier episodes’ more grounded tone didn’t prepare for. The tonal shift in the final act weakens what the first two episodes carefully built.
Prequel as Elegy
Before the Storm is most powerful when understood as an elegy written in advance. Every happy moment between Chloe and Rachel is shadowed by the knowledge of what comes next, and the game is smart enough to let that shadow do its work without constantly acknowledging it. The best scenes don’t reference the future at all. They simply show two people finding each other at their lowest points, and the tragedy is supplied entirely by the player’s knowledge. That collaborative grief, where the game provides the warmth and you provide the sorrow, is something only a prequel can achieve.
Should You Play Life is Strange: Before the Storm on Mobile?
Players who loved Chloe in the original and want to understand her better should prioritize this. The character writing is the prequel’s strongest contribution. Those who haven’t played the original should play it first, as Before the Storm’s emotional impact depends on foreknowledge. Players who found the original’s dialogue awkward should know the writing here is generally more consistent. The shorter runtime makes it well-suited to mobile play sessions.
The Verdict on Before the Storm
Life is Strange: Before the Storm is a prequel that earns its existence through the quality of its character writing. Chloe Price, fully realized as a protagonist rather than a supporting character, becomes one of gaming’s most compelling teenagers, and her relationship with Rachel Amber builds with an intensity that the dramatic irony only sharpens. The compressed runtime, tonal inconsistency in the final episode, and reduced mechanical innovation prevent it from reaching the original’s heights. But as a portrait of grief, anger, and the reckless hope of finding someone who makes the world feel survivable, it adds something genuine to the Life is Strange story. Chloe deserved her own game, and this one does her justice.