REVIEW – This is new: I’m writing about something without being told to do so. And it feels good now – roughly two hours after finishing the shorter than usual episode, the emotions, which cracked me up especially at the end, are gone…

 

And I’m going to be spoiling here. Yes, I can talk freely about this episode because we already knew what it’s going to cover (and thus, the end was bound to happen), and I also would have been in a desperate situation even accurately to describe what I feel in a non-spoiler approach. That wouldn’t work.

Cleaning up

The episode starts with the 13-year-old Max and Chloe cleaning up in the latter’s room – the day, which is set two years before Before the Storm, starts with removing the junk, and Max would like to tell her best friend that in three days, she is going to leave Arcadia Bay, as her family is moving to Seattle. They found an old pirate book, which lacks a page. We find the map, which kicks the discovery gameplay into a higher gear for three-fourths of the episode. The attic has the amulet, which is followed by finding the treasure in the backyard. It will be slightly more than the girls hid five years ago. The time capsule fun is followed by the scene where Max would tell Chloe that she has to go, but she already knew – she just tried to make the day spent with fun and entertainment instead of being worried and depressed.

The door opens, Joyce enters with tears in her eyes, and a cop is behind her (probably he helped Chloe’s mom home). Boom – if you don’t get sad at this point, you merely lack emotion. And the background song… well, it’s not in this version that I embedded below, I’m listening to it, and I have the shivers. It’s brutally painful.

So, this last ten-minute scene is purely painful even to watch. Our best friend suddenly hears that she lost her father. Cut to the funeral (which is a nod to one of the endings of Life is Strange where we sacrifice Chloe for Arcadia Bay…), then cut to Max looking at us as she is driven away in her family’s car. Leaving on the funeral’s day… it’s a different feeling.

Then, there’s a message on the tape player, and Chloe is crying on the floor. It’s outstanding – look this scene up on YouTube if you haven’t played Before the Storm and you don’t want to play it. It will catch you even if you lack emotion, and I’m willing to admit that I can be quite an unemotional prick for most of the time.

Retcon

The episode introduces Bill’s death differently. In the original game, we saw Chloe’s dad’s final scene alive in a flashback scene, where we tried to change the future (which ultimately resulted in Chloe getting paraplegic) – however, NOTHING happened like that in Farewell. It’s an exciting change, and I had to point it out.

And the usage of the cassette tape player with the saving/loading icons – well, Deck Nine, it was a beautifully clever idea all the time. It hinted at this scene throughout all the episodes. I should be talking about the graphics and the audio, so I’ll quickly get over these aspects: the graphics are the usual, but I saw a shadow bug in the backyard, and the voice acting is something THAT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE. Chloe got her old voice actor back, and Max reprised her role – they both did an outstanding job on this 80-85 minute trip.

Farewell…

I believe Farewell managed to be better than all three Before the Storm episodes. It’s a short but dense soul mining adventure – it plays with your emotions in an undescribable way. The third episode, if I remember correctly, got an 80. Well, I give Farewell 85 then. It closes the adventures of the two teenagers perfectly, and I hope that Dontnod will make the sequel just as good as they did with the first Life is Strange.

Life IS strange. If you bought Before the Storm‘s Deluxe Edition, you don’t have to pay for it. If you don’t own the game and like Life is Strange (which was also a PS Plus title I think), what are you waiting for?

-V-

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Publisher: Square Enix

Developer: Deck Nine Games

Genre: episodic, adventure

Release date: March 6, 2018