Note: This article contains slight spoilers for both Life is Strange: Before the Storm and Night in the Woods.
Anyone who read my reviews for Life is Strange: Before the Storm will know that I quite enjoyed Deck Nine Games’ take on Arcadia Bay. While I was hesitant at first, what quickly won me over was the quality of writing, and how genuine the relationship between Chloe and Rachel felt. The developer showed a knack for nailing the small moments, and the fact that tiny conversations could mean so much to the people participating in them. This type of nuanced writing made both characters feel truly human.
My love for both of the characters is exactly why it was a sizable disappointment (although not enough to actually ruin my total enjoyment) when the final episode of Before the Storm decided to focus on dramatic life-or-death scenarios rather than their relationship. There was already enough drama going on between Chloe and Rachel coming to grips with their romantic relationship to fulfill a three episode arc without any of episode three’s more ridiculous story beats. I’m not going to say that the new storylines were bad (they weren’t amazing, but they had plenty of strong points), but the series threw away what I had liked the most in order to make room for them.
In fact, the main draw of the series, Rachel, was barely in the final episode in order to make way for a complicated plot-thread that involves corruption, assassinations, and drugs. I...