Overview
A quick recommended episode order that interweaves episodes of the original Life is Strange with Before the Storm to increase the emotional impact of the games
Quick introduction
I convinced some friends who’d never played the games before to play the games in an order that I felt improved the narrative flaws of the original story. They gave me good feedback, telling me that it flowed very naturally, so I decided to share it. The spoiler-free order is right here, and everything else that follows is a quick justification of the order, WITH spoilers.
- Before the Storm bonus episode: Farewell
- Life is Strange episode 1
- Before the Storm episode 1
- Life is Strange episode 2
- Before the Storm episode 2
- Life is Strange episode 3
- Before the Storm episode 3
- Life is Strange episode 4
- Life is Strange episode 5
As you can see, it’s not complicated at all. Just play Farewell first, then starting with the original game, alternate between LiS and BtS. This order also preserves all consequences between episodes. If you’ve never played before, you can start now. If you have, below is my spoiler-filled justification.
Justification
Final spoiler warning. There are spoilers here!
There are a number of moments in Life is Strange which didn’t ring as true emotionally when I first played them, but by interleaving the episodes like this, we get a number of improvements:
- Playing Farewell first gives the player more context on Max and Chloe’s relationship. It drives home just how close the two were, and how painful the goodbye was, which makes the reunion in LiS e1 more meaningful.
- The decision to take Kate’s call or just continue hanging out with Chloe seems painfully easy–Kate is clearly in a worse place. However, players who check Chloe’s phone throughout BtS will realize what a jerk Max was for ghosting Chloe for all those years. While talking to Kate is still pretty obviously the right call, the decision is a lot more painful because now you know how Chloe must be feeling.
- According to my test audience, just finding out in LiS that Rachel slept with Frank made them feel betrayed. Most first time LiS players don’t really make much of that.
- Time traveling back to the day William died actually feels nostalgic, since you actually lived through that day at the very start of the playthrough.
- Rachel and Chloe’s happy ending in BTS comes just before the episode where Max and Chloe conclusively determine that Rachel is dead. Not only does this make it more heartbreaking, but by placing BtS e3 in the middle of an LiS playthrough, the BtS postcredits scene with the ringing phone now feels more like foreshadowing rather than a mean-spirited downer ending.
- The final decision also has much more gravitas because now the player has the complete context for just how badly Arcadia bay screwed Chloe over.
And just to be fair, here are the few disadvantages I could come up with:
- The game is slower to start. Without the time travel gimmick and initial shooting, it might not grab people as quickly because you spend an hour as kids just goofing around in a house. Not exactly the most gripping story.
- Player has no context for understanding what the butterfly means above the fireplace in Farewell.
- Tonal dissonance with Nathan potentially getting a happyish ending in BtS, followed by learning that he’s even worse than anyone realized.