How to Get Rachel to Meet Her Mother and Why It Works
This article contains spoilers for Life is Strange: Before the Storm
If you’re here just because you want help with the game, I’ll post the answer right here:
1. In episode 2, instead of asking Rachel for a kiss or for her to get a tattoo, as for her bracelet.
2. While talking to Rachel’s mom, give her the bracelet when the option appears.
3. Tell Rachel the truth.
Now, here’s my analysis as to why I think this works. I don’t think that the developers at Decknine just chose these choices arbitrarily. I think that there is a reason why these choices work, and it has to do with psychology.
I can explain why the bracelet is an important factor through a concept used in sales. My first job was selling Cutco through Vector marketing. In case you’ve never had a former high school classmate message you asking to sell you expensive kitchen knives, Cutco is an organization that hires mostly young people, teaches them a few basic sales skills and has them sell their products.
One thing I learned through Cutco was how to plant seeds, here’s the example my mentor used to explain it to me:
A car salesman tries to sell a customer the most expensive car. The customer refuses, so the car salesman goes to the second most expensive car. So on and so on until the customer just doesn’t get a car. The salesman makes a final offer: a simple keychain with the logo of the car company on it. The customer agrees and spends maybe a dollar or two on the keychain, and then they go on their way.
But the sale doesn’t stop there, the customer takes that keychain home, maybe attaches it to their own keys, and every time they see that keychain they are reminded of the car they initially wanted. Every time their old car has a problem, they’ll see that keychain and think of it.
The same can be applied to kitchen knives. We are taught to offer the most expensive set first, a whole, matching kitchen knife set that comes with every knife you would use in your kitchen, priced at around $1,000 if I remember correctly. When you try selling to your high school friend’s parent, they might say no to that initial offer. So then you go down to the one priced at $900, then $800 and so on until they agree on buying a single basic kitchen knife. Then, hopefully, they’ll use it while they cook, and every time they use it they’ll notice how much better it is than their other knives, and every time they use one of their old knives they’ll remember how much better the Cutco knives are. Then, they’ll call you again and they’ll buy the full $1,000 set.
Might sound far fetched, but believe it or not this is a very common sales technique and it tends to work.
Now, I think that this can also apply to giving the bracelet to Rachel’s mom. She takes it back, wears it, and every time she sees it she will be reminded of Rachel. She’ll remember her conversation with Chloe at the end of the game. Every time she feels alone, every time she has to deal with her addiction, every time she feels whatever it was that pushed her to quit to meet Rachel in the first place, that bracelet will be there to remind her. We see her mom during the montage at the end of the game, and we don’t really know how much time that montage encompasses. It could be days, weeks, months, maybe even a whole year. That’s a long time to have that physical reminder in your view and to always have that thought lingering in your mind.
Now, what about the last part? How does telling the truth influence Rachel being able to meet her mom? Is it just that we can’t have a Life is Strange game end with everyone being happy? Possibly, but I think the reason really supports Rachel and Chloe’s relationship.
Now, how would Rachel’s mom know to go up to the lighthouse to meet her? It doesn’t seem like she was surprised that Rachel was there.
I think that Rachel will continue to search for her mom if Chloe tells her the truth. It’s important to remember how passionate Rachel is, and finding out that her father did something so terrible to her mom, and learning that her mom is different than the person her dad described, will probably make her try to find her mom even more.
So now we have two characters, who have both decided to look for each other in the small town of Arcadia Bay, they likely kept asking around to multiple people in the town, and eventually Rachel’s mom would hear through other people that they were heading to the lighthouse. With both of them searching in such a small town, it would only be a matter of time before they would find each other.
But wouldn’t Rachel look for her mom either way? After all, she is a very passionate person, wouldn’t she keep going to try to find her?
I think not, and I think it’s because of how much she believes in Chloe. The scene in Rachel’s room is important. Rachel tells Chloe that she’s the only one in the world she can trust. Rachel also asks Chloe about two things, and Chloe reassures on both: that she’ll get them a ride and that she knows someone who can tell them where her mom is.
That’s two statements, and the very next morning Chloe proves to Rachel that she can follow through on what she says. She says she can fix up the truck in the junkyard, and then she does exactly that. And Rachel sees this.
And it’s not just this, Chloe has done plenty of things throughout episodes 1 and 2 that shows Rachel that she’s capable of many things. These things may include, depending on your choices in the game, fighting two creeps at The Mill, standing up to a bully, jumping from a train, creatively getting a quarter out of a broken machine, successfully distracted a couple so Rachel could steal their wine, and acted your part well in a play with zero reversal or acting experience. Even if you didn’t do all of those things during your playthrough, Rachel still really believes in Chloe in this narrative. Not to mention that Chloe was able to save Rachel’s life by fixing that car so she could drive her to the hospital.
Rachel isn’t just passionate about finding her mom, she’s also passionate in the ways she sees the people around her. She believes in Chloe with that passion, and she truly believes that, if it was in any way possible to find her mom, that Chloe would be able to do it.
And that’s why, when Chloe tells Rachel that she simply couldn’t find her mom, Rachel thinks that there must have not been any possible way for her mom to still be in Arcadia Bay, and she became less inclined to keep looking. This would then lower the chances of them finding each other.
I would like to think that Decknine put in this amount of thought into why certain decisions lead to different things. I really enjoyed going deeper into this game and feel free to leave any of your thoughts in the comments below.
