Being Chloe Price

Just last week Steam featured a sale on Square Enix titles (some of them are still on sale) and I decided to take advantage of the sweet, low prices.  One of those games that I snatched up was the prologue to the 2015 episodic game Life is Strange; Life is Strange:  Before the Storm.  I enjoyed playing Life is Strange, it had some really great moments and themes, but it also had some flaws.  My general opinion about episodic story games is that they are best when purchased for under $10.  It's not that they don't have something to offer, it's just that what they have to offer is really only good for 2 and possibly 3 playthroughs before you've seen everything there is to see.

Chloe hasn't quite reached the blue hair phase in "Before the Storm."

Life is Strange:  Before the Storm tells the story of Chloe Price before the return of her childhood best friend, Max Caulfield.  In Life is Strange, players were introduced the the blue-haired teenage rebel, and she was one of my favorite characters.  I am relishing the chance to learn more about Chloe, but I'm finding that her personality is so completely different and rebellious that it feels really weird.

I suppose that part of the problem comes from the way that players choose to play a character in a game that is based on player choice.  Do you play the character based on how you would want them to act?  Or do you play the character based on how you think they would act?  I tend to lean more toward the first option and it's causing me more mental grief than I've had in almost any other game that I've ever played.

Chloe has a very brash, "f*^% off" kind of attitude toward life.  She's going to do what she wants to do and damn the consequences.  There's something to be admired in that stance, but it's also off-putting for someone like me who likes to follow the rules.  I've only played through the first episode and there have been several interactions that have made me uncomfortable.  Chloe and her mom struggle to get along, but I can't bring myself to tell poor Joyce to just back off.  I couldn't bring myself to have Chloe enter into the verbal sparring mini-game with her principal--it just felt so wrong.

Much of the first episode attempts to explain how Chloe and Rachel Amber's relationship started.  There are parts of this aspect that also bothered me.  It doesn't bother me from the perspective of them having a relationship, but in a way that other video game relationships sometimes bother me.  Chloe and Rachel basically JUST meet and all of a sudden they are at a stage where they are almost declaring their undying love for each other.  It feels so forced, and when given the choice for Chloe to declare how she feels about Rachel, I had her opt for the friend zone.  It's pretty obvious that it's meant to be more, but it just feels weird to happen so suddenly.

I feel like I'm doing a disservice to the character that Chloe price is supposed to be.  My moral compass is making her into the law abiding, good kid who I want her to be and it just feels wrong.  Maybe in the next playthrough I will play Chloe how I think she would really act.

Besides my difficulty staying true to Chloe's attitude, I am enjoying learning more about Chloe as a character.  The loss of her dad in a car accident has completely shaken her and really torn her family apart.  Her mom has started dating again and Chloe is none too happy about having David in the picture.  It was really sad to search through Chloe's house and see that her mom had started to take down the old pictures that had Chloe's dad in them.  Joyce is trying to move on and Chloe just isn't ready to accept it.  They both struggle to communicate and it's easy to understand why Chloe is so rebellious and torn up--she lost her dad and then she lost her best friend when Max moved away.  To cope with those major changes, she has turned to drugs and alcohol to numb the pain.

In real life I am a teacher and sometimes it's hard to understand exactly what makes kids act out.  Rarely do I know much about what goes on in their lives outside of school.  Oddly, I've felt like playing as Chloe Price has given me a unique insight into behavior.  It makes me want to be more patient and try to understand all the challenges and struggles that students go through on a daily basis.