Chloe's room and the Price's house is a masterpiece of design, there's so many interactable objects that tell the story, revealing the insights and details of these people's lives, the mundane despair of circumstances. I love it. Good environmental storytelling can add so much to the overall story, showing you details rather than awkwardly telling you, prevening the writers from having to shoehorn in stuff like 'The Price's are broke.'
While Chloe gets high, I'm left to explore the house at my leisure, checking each room, ostensibly to get some tools to fix my camera, but really we're just gonna peak into the Price's lives. We learn a fair bit actually. Chloe Price and Rachel Amber were really good friends, Chloe's stepdad is David, the security guard at Blackwell, and David's got a lot of surveillance photographs of Kate Marsh hidden away for some reason. Seems very dodgy.
Even with the tools, the camera's cerealously broken, so Chloe, remembering Max's birthday, gives her her dad's old camera. This after realising that Max was responsible for saving her life earlier that day (Hella Count: 3).
We get to some thrashing, and Max drops her amazing dance moves. Shine on you crazy diamond, shine on.
At least until the step-fuhrer interrupts and finds Chloe's weed. Wanting to prove ourselves a good friend after all this time, we naturally take the blame for it. Which I'm sure won't have any impact on our record at Blackwell Academy. Urgh, David is awful.
It's time to blow this joint. We take a trip up to a great spot Chloe knows. The lighthouse.
I adore the lighting throughout this part of the chapter. Unsurprising for a game so focused on photography, the devs put some real attention into the lighting of each scene, and it really shows, bathing the shots in golden browns and yellows.
We tell Chloe that David's got surveillance cameras throughout the house (Hella Count: 4), and then Chloe drops the bombshell. Nathan drugged her and took her back to his apartment, but luckily Chloe escaped. Like bloody hell, this game is dealing with some stuff. But Chloe remains hopeful despite it all, and with Max back by her side, maybe the two of them can find Rachel and get out of this hell.
Destiny has other plans, it seems, as Max gets hit by the vision of the tornado once again. Chloe tries to reassure her (Hella Count: 5), but we discovered exactly when it'd hit. Friday, 11th October. Four days time. And we finish Episode 1 with an impromptu flurry of snowflakes. In October. In 80 degree heat. Hella normal day.
Episode 1 is a mostly wonderful introduction to the setting, characters and stakes at play. There's some dialogue that's very obviously written by a 30 year old writer, but if I could live with that in Buffy, I can more than live with it in this. The main cast all feel like actual characters, and the locations feel like actual locations people live in, rather than stages to wander around. It's a game that invites introspection, affording you the time to stop and think (the moments of calm are a fantastic addition to the game). Most importantly, it's not letting the sci-fi time travel stuff overshadow the far more grounded concerns of the characters. We'll see how that goes tomorrow with Episode 2: Out of Time.