The developers behind the Life is Strange remaster, spin-offs Before the Storm and True Colors, and The Expanse: A Telltale Series, Deck Nine, have laid off 20% of the studio’s staff due to “the game industry’s worsening market conditions”. The latest job losses are the second wave of layoffs at the company in the last 12 months.
]]>There's no two ways about it: I'm a big old card-carrying Life Is Strange nerd. Seriously, I own some geeky merch to demonstrate my love for this series; up to and including, yes, the official Life Is Strange deck of playing cards. In other words, I am exactly the sort of fan the Life Is Strange: Remastered Collection is geared towards; so you may be surprised when I say that I'm not planning on picking it up anytime soon.
I'll be honest, I've been wary of the remasters of the first Life Is Strange title and its prequel Before The Storm ever since the first stills were released. "Look how much emotion their faces show now!" was the boast, splashed across side-by-side images of Rachel frowning in the original vs Rachel smiling in the remaster, Chloe frowning in the original vs Chloe smiling in the remaster, Max smiling slightly in the original vs Max grinning widely in the remaster... perhaps you begin to see my issue.
]]>Life is going to be slightly less strange this September, it turns out. Real life will stay weird, I have no doubt, but Deck Nine's adventure dramas are getting a bit spread out. While Life Is Strange: True Colors will still be launching in September, the Remastered Collection planned for the end of the month is now being delayed to avoid putting too much pressure on the development team. We can now expect the remastered bits to come in early 2022. Another trailer for True Colors will land tomorrow as well.
]]>Brendan: Hello, Alice. I’ve just been dandering along a quiet highway in Life Is Strange 2. There’s no time-travelling gal pals in this one (at least, none so far) but there is a sad psychic pre-teen and his hoody-wearing brother. I don’t know why I’m telling you all this, you just played through it too, and we’re gonna have a chat about each episode as it comes along - what we liked, what we thought was dumb, who we think is secretly a murderer - rather than wait until the whole game is out to review it. I guess I’m explaining all this for our stinking readers. Hey readers. SPOILERS AHEAD.
]]>Spoiler warning: This article includes spoilers for the entirety of both Life Is Strange and Life Is Strange: Before The Storm.
Life Is Strange: Before The Storm is, in its own right, a very good game. But it can’t avoid the fact that it’s a Life Is Strange game, specifically a prequel to the original. And in the original, one of its central characters is dead.
]]>It's time to say goodbye to Chloe and Max again, at least for a while. They've had their ups and down over the course of episodic adventure Life Is Strange and its prequel, and today they're getting a final send-off in one extra episode, out now for owners of the Deluxe edition of Before The Storm.
Expect heartstrings to be tugged on with great gusto. While the stakes may be low this time around, heartbreak seems inevitable as the two childhood friends take one last adorably dorky walk down memory lane before they have to go their separate ways, as Max's family moves away from Arcadia Bay.
]]>Life Is Strange: Before the Storm's third and final chapter arrived in December, bringing the teen trauma prequel full circle, but that isn't quite the end. Still to come is a "bonus" episode set even earlier than Before the Storm, visiting teensy Chloe and teensy Max before they were pulled apart. Square Enix today announced that the bonus ep, named Farewell, will launch on March 6th. It will only be available in the game's various deluxe editions, which is a bummer. New deluxe editions are coming, mind, including one with the soundtrack on vinyl for those who enjoy forcing squished dinosaurs to do karaoke.
]]>We've already seen which games sold best on Steam last year, but a perhaps more meaningful insight into movin' and a-shakin' in PC-land is the games that people feel warmest and snuggliest about. To that end, Valve have announced the winners of the 2017 Steam Awards, a fully community-voted affair which names the most-loved games across categories including best post-launch support, most player agency, exceeding pre-release expectations and most head-messing-with. Vintage cartoon-themed reflex-tester Cuphead leads the charge with two gongs, but ol' Plunkbat and The Witcher series also do rather well - as do a host of other games from 2017's great and good.
Full winners and runners-up below, with links to our previous coverage of each game if you're so-minded. Plus: I reveal which game I'd have gone for in each category.
]]>Welcome back, gentle human bean, to another year of PC gaming thrills, spills and ambient anxiety about the correct deployment of the term 'roguelite' here on Rock, Paper, Shotgun. As our beleaguered forms struggle to cope with the sudden shift away from Chocolate Oranges for breakfast, now is the time for our time-lost minds to reflect upon how we occupied ourselves over the past ten days.
To wit: what videogames did we play, when time, relatives, bloating and demanding pets allowed?
]]>Tragic teen tale Life Is Strange: Before The Storm has concluded with the launch of its third episode last night. Before The Storm is the prequel to 2015's wonderful third-person coming-of-ager, doing away with the time-travel powers as it focuses on wild rebel Chloe and her gal pal Rachel Amber. It's a story whose final ending was already known, but I'm told life is about the journey not the destination. A bonus episode is still to come, reuniting Max and Chloe and their original voice actors for a prequel to this prequel, but that's separate from Before The Storm's story - and only for Deluxe Edition owners. For now, let's see what Chloe and Rachel are up to in episode 3:
]]>The voice actor behind spunky punky teen rebel Chloe in the original Life Is Strange, Ashly Burch, will reprise her role in the bonus episode of prequel series Life Is Strange: Before the Storm. While Chloe is the main character in Before the Storm, Burch couldn't play her because of the voice actor strike so publishers Square Enix replaced her with another actor, Rhianna DeVries. Oh dear oh dear. But the strike is over now and Burch will voice Chloe once more in 'Farewell'. Life is strange but business is stranger.
]]>Teen 'em up prequel Life Is Strange: Before the Storm is a story with an ending we already know but hell, isn't life? It's all about the journey, maaan. And the journey continues a little more today with the launch of the series's second episode (of three). In it, aw heck, you know how it goes: teens hang out, teens get into trouble, and grown-ups just don't understand.
]]>The misadventures of Chloe and Rachel will continue in Life Is Strange: Before The Storm [official site] next week. Publishers Square Enix today announced that episode 2 of the teen 'em up prequel will launch on Thursday, October 19th, and showed a little of what'll happen. Watch:
]]>The video game voice actor strike has been suspended after Screen Actors Guild and American Foundation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) reached a tentative agreement with the companies they were striking against. The strike started in October 2016, seeking better working conditions as well as better pay and more awareness of roles they were accepting. Perhaps the most visible consequence of the strike has been Life Is Strange's prequel Before The Storm switching voice actor for its protagonist, but the strike has affected eleven companies and many more games.
]]>Come one, come all, but not all at once or you'll break our caching, and see the Steam Charts in all their glory! Which game will have reached the coveted #2 position this week?!
]]>Who owns those odd voices? It's the RPS podcast, the Electronic Wireless Show and guess what - we're all in the same room, with our actual bodies. Unprecedented. And there's a special guest this week too. Chris Bratt of Eurogamer joins us to talk about the alien-murdering of XCOM 2: War of the Chosen. It's a Brattcast! While Pip has been playing teen angst drama-llama Life Is Strange: Before the Storm and I'm still trying to discover an impossibly powerful attack in Absolver. Come listen.
]]>Life is Strange: Before the Storm [official site] is the episodic narrative adventure Life is Strange prequel which shines a light on grieving rebel Chloe’s sudden and intense friendship with school queen bee, Rachel Amber. Rather than this being a Dontnod game the story has been entrusted to third party devs at Deck Nine, although Deck Nine have kept the look and feel of the original episodic teen tale intact, rooting a lot of the action in familiar locations and involving familiar faces. It struggles with characterisation and motivation at times, BUT it also made me laugh out loud and furnished me with an unexpected weepy moment. Here’s Wot I Think:
]]>Zack Garriss wants you to feel guilty when bad things happen to good people. The lead writer of Life is Strange prequel Before the Storm is as passionate as any writer I’ve ever met on the subject of interactive storytelling and he has some strong opinions about the future of the medium. Guilt and grief might be the main course, but there’s a side order of emotional highs and the occasional bout of expletive-laden insult swordfighting, minus the swords.
]]>As someone who loved Life if Strange and will probably play Life is Strange: Before the Storm [official site] immediately I have been avoiding pretty much all news and spoilers regarding the latter. To the point where I will a) not be watching this 9-minute video at all and b) don't actually know what the game involves other than being set before the first game.
That puts me in rather a bind when it comes to this being a news story about a 9-minute video for Life is Strange: Before the Storm so here's the thing: I'm going to embed the video after the jump in case you want to watch it and then just write a load of words I like so that there is #content BUT if Graham asks you could tell him it was a great and relevant news story full of insights and also perhaps that I deserve a payrise?
]]>There's an obvious metaphor in the subtitle of the Life is Strange [official site] prequel. Before the Storm refers to a meteorological incident in the original game, but this is a coming of age story. Growing up can be as violent, euphoric, frightening and cleansing as a storm.
What I've seen of the prequel makes youth seem like the precursor to tragedy. We're going to play through the origin story of teen rebel Chloe and we're going to see the buds of a romance that moves through awkwardness to realisation and eventually gets lost in the horrors of a missing person case. In one of the scenes shown to the press at E3, Chloe can choose to describe her relationship with Rachel as a friendship or “something more”, but however she chooses to see it, and however she can't help but feel it, we know the end is loss.
]]>Oh my lord, somebody needs to defeat this notorious E3 war machine once and for all. The RPS podcast, the Electronic Wireless Show, have gathered their forces to take on the monster. We'll be tackling all the big news: Beyond Good and Evil 2, Wolfenstein 2, Sea of Thieves, Anthem, Life Is Strange: Before the Storm and lots more. We've so much news to talk about that we've recruited news editor Alice O'Connor to come help us. We've also sent Adam behind enemy lines to Los Angeles, but have only been able to recover a handful of his communiques.
This week's special extra-long episode also features some chat about Alice's murderous efficiency in PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, Pip's floundering in Football Manager 2017 and my doomed piloting in Everspace. We also discuss the origin of the name "E3" and discover a patchwork quilt of possible etymologies.
]]>Each year E3 rolls around like a giant evil worm, crushing all that's good and pure. BUT that worm also announces lots of exciting gaming news as it wreaks its carnage upon the Earth. Here we have gathered every announcement, reveal, and exciting new trailer that emerged from the barrage of screamed press conferences over the last few days. And lots of it looks rather spiffy.
A rather enormous 47 PC games were either announced, revealed, or updated upon, with new trailers, information, and released dates that will all be missed by at least three months. We've collected the lot, with trailers, in alphabetical order, into one neat place, just for you.
]]>Gameplay snippets from Life Is Strange: Before The Storm [official site], a miniseries prequel focused on the wonderful teen melodrama's gal pal co-star Chloe, have oozed out of E3 and- hey wait, that's not Chloe! Turns out, she has been replaced. While Chloe's original voice actor, Ashly Burch, is consulting on the prequel, she isn't actually playing Chloe this time. This wasn't a creative decision, but rather down to the ongoing voice actor union strike. You can hear Chloe's new voice in this gameplay video:
]]>Heartbreaking teen melodrama Life Is Strange will return on August 31st with a three-episode prequel starring Chloe, named Life Is Strange: Before The Storm [official site]. Set three years before the first game, it'll tell how Chloe's doomed relationship with gal pal Rachel Amber began. Life Is Strange makes clear how that all ends so sure, go on, twist the knife, you monsters.
Unexpectedly, this is in addition to the new Life Is Strange game that creators Dontnod Entertainment recently announced. Yup, a different team is making it, so two new Lives Are Strange are coming. Here, check out the announcement trailer:
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