definite improvement from episode 1. i can actually say that i get more of a clear idea of what story this game is trying to tell and why it matters. rachel feels decidedly less "manic pixie dream girl" here, and even the moments where she is feel at least a little more earned. i said before that LIS is a "moments" type story rather than one of well-written character stories, and i feel this episode really exemplifies that. is the whole "rachel goes offbook with chloe in the play for effectively an in-character proposal scene" corny as hell? yeah. but it was also kinda cute and made me feel like these characters had some type of relationship worth mourning. and the followup scene where they're walking in the street and it starts to snow ash? probably the peak of this entire game, unless episode 3 really wows me.

still, there are problems, and i've pretty much decided that none of the BTS characters are worth any sort of time or attention. even the coolest character, stephanie, feels one-note and overall largely non-germane to the story. then you have characters like samantha, who quite literally has no dialogue or personality trait that isn't associated with nathan in some way. who is she? why should i care that she obviously has affections for nathan? i feel so blase using this logic, but if they're not in LIS, you need to make me care about the BTS characters FAST or else it's just a waste of time. i don't care about samantha, drew, stephanie, skip, etc. because their stories begin and end in a game dedicated to exploring the interactions of preexisting characters. i don't think the game gains anything from having them here outside of a cute moment like the DND game, something completely divorced from the plot and easy to miss. why put these characters here if they're all for nothing?

meanwhile, the LIS characters that aren't amber, chloe, or frank all feel stuck in the future (lol). victoria should be a meek up-and-comer when it comes to the blackwell social dynamics. why is she already acting like a queen bee who threatens chloe at the drop of a hat and spreads rumors of teacherfucking out of spite? she's exactly the same as she was in LIS, for the worse. she feels even more like a cardboard cut-out of the mean girl stereotype, and has less humanity because the opportunity for us to see how she got there was squandered. and nathan? i just could not give less of a shit about him. he defaults to being abrasive and judgmental regardless of how you treat him in these episodes, and he's just as cruel as his bullies (if not moreso; drew 100% deserves to smear the shit out of nathan for that comment about his dad in episode 1). i don't care if we get a scene of his dad being a shitty parent to him. he has no redeeming qualities besides being pathetic. he fails as a character and he feels even less nuanced than he was in LIS, where he was just the guy with Scary and Violent mental illness. yawn.

lastly, BTS seems content to assassinate joyce's character as we see how her integration of david into the family was such an overwhelmingly bad decision for her to commit to as a parent. even if you ignore the misgivings about david being casually misogynist and extremely uptight to a fault, chloe's dialogue with joyce pretty clearly communicates how unsafe she'd feel at home with him there. i never once got the feeling from joyce in LIS that she was picking david over chloe and instead got the idea that things only got really bad once he moved in. but here it's like outrageously clear that joyce is prioritizing her desire for david over providing chloe with what she needs. in LIS you could argue david was trying to provide that, but here it's very difficult to confidently say the same imo. assassinating one character to uplift another isn't the worst writing decision, but it's executed so questionably here that i can't help but hate it.

i think now that i'm 2/3s the way done with this game, i can broadly say that this game desperately needed a better sense of scope. either two more episodes to let things cook for longer, or making each episode a slice of time (i.e. episode 1 could be the meetcute, episode 2 could be a year into the relationship, episode 3 could be shortly before the dark room). something to give a better sense of time. the in-universe time from the beginning of episode 1 has been like what. . . 2 days? there's not enough meat on the bone here. i think this shows especially when you have characters like rachel's parents on screen, who are devoid of personality or identity. could this be a commentary on how rachel's parents trying to emulate the "ideal" american family/lifestyle has made them as hollow as the dream itself? sure, but this game hasn't shown me that it's smart enough to be going for that, and i can only give so much extra credit here. i know this game had a troubled development, and i can imagine that 3 episodes wasn't the endgoal; still, it's ultimately what the final product ended up being, so it's fair game for me to say that this needed more. you've got the entire 3 years before rachel goes missing and the events of LIS starts to show how these characters meet, interact, and grow from each other, and you're only going to show me the VERY beginning of that process? it's a missed opportunity for major/minor characters and the universe as a whole. a prequel is supposed to give more life to an established universe, not less.

as typical with a 3.0/5.0 review of mine, i've ended up being fairly harsh despite having an overall positive opinion of this episode. this episode gave me a lot more to think and talk about, which is almost universally a compliment to give any given piece of media. i've gotten a glimpse of what this game could've done more of, so, in some ways, this episode being good is more disappointing than if it had just held the trend that episode 1 set. you've sold me on rachel and chloe having a relationship worth showing, how much more can you give me in episode 3 to think this was all worth it though?