Part 4: Is LiS 1 a work that validates femicide, misogyny, sexism, and homophobia?
What truly stands out when comparing Life is Strange to Life is Strange: Before the Storm is how much more human Chloe Price and Rachel Amber seem in Before the Storm.
In BTS, Rachel isn't just a mystery or a projection—she's present. She's contradictory, impulsive, vulnerable, angry, affectionate. You see her making choices, not just being mentioned. You see her as a person, not as a narrative device.
And Chloe? She's still confused and emotional, but she's not reduced to instability or illusion. Her feelings are grounded. Her connection with Rachel is tangible, mutual, and real—not something constantly undermined by the narrative.
That difference matters.
Because in LIS1, Rachel is constructed primarily through the perspective of other people—many of them unreliable or harmful. And Chloe's version of her is treated as something questionable, something that needs to be "corrected" by external information. In BTS, that imbalance disappears. The girls come to exist in their own story.
So, Michel complains after 9 years of BtS, because in this game Chloe and Rachel were better written and more memorable than the original characters he created. Regardless of the mistakes in BtS, it was a game that truly brought Chloe and Max and Chloe's childhood to life.
Saying all the things he said after 11 years doesn't seem like an addition of depth—it seems like a regression to a more superficial and cynical reading.
And that's where the frustration comes from.
Because BtS proves that these characters can be written with empathy, complexity, and autonomy—especially Rachel, to whom this was denied for so long. It shows that her story doesn't need to be based solely on ambiguity to be engaging. She can be imperfect and human at the same time.
When this version is ignored or discarded in favor of a more reductionist interpretation, it doesn't sound bold or "realistic." It gives the impression that we're returning to a narrative where female characters—especially young and queer ones—are easier to question than to understand.
And honestly, this is nothing new.
It's something we've seen before, repeatedly. But the fandom insists on idolizing dontnod, michel, and others, without realizing these serious mistakes they made.