A Zarya Main's House of Pain

Hell Is Empty has it’s flaws. I am not blind. The pacing was a bit off and there are still some story threads without closure. But was the episode garbage? In my opinion, no. There were alot of good things that came out of it too. There are very cute moments between Chloe and Rachel sprinkled throughout and all of them felt right. I wish there was more but I did enjoy what we got.

I particularly like the scene between Chloe and William as she asked about lies. This episode was just as much about Rachel’s family as it was about Chloe coming to terms with her father’s death.

The final choice was so believable and the ramifications of either telling her everything or hiding the truth are so grounded in reality that I still cant decide which is better.

If you tell her everything, Rachel will never be able to love her father again. Her family life will fall apart. But her relationship with Chloe would be much stronger and they would trust each other 100%.

If you protect her from the truth, she continues to have a loving family. However, this could eventually drive a wedge between Chloe and Rachel. Chloe is a bad liar. And Rachel totally knew she was lieing. Its shown that Chloe is riddled with guilt and that is a lot of weight to carry.

Its not hard to imagine how either choice leads to the events of Rachel’s downfall. It is inevitable that she goes to Frank. Its inevitable that she gets involved with drugs. Its inevitable that she is killed.

I applaud Deck9 for taking on a complex choice like that and making sure it remains true to LiS1.

Despite what alot of the posts in the LIS tags say, not everyone hates the episode. Haters, speak for yourself, hate on it all you want, but dont think for a second that the hate is unanimous across the fandom.

For those who haven’t seen, Eurogamer did an amazing LP with the lead writer of Life is Strange: Before The Storm. He gives out alot of cool details and development backstory.