A few hours into Life is Strange: Reunion, protagonist Max Caulfield comes across a sign that reads: “Caledon University: Time to Look Forward.” In the context of the story, it’s a message from the school’s new president about his ambitious plans, but in the context of the wider Life is Strange series, it’s a message that Reunion itself utterly fails to take heed of.
As the name suggests, the game focuses on the grand reunion between Max and her best friend Chloe Price. Their sincere but ultimately tragic relationship was the beating heart of the original Life is Strange, and it was hugely impactful for countless people, especially those who are queer. And even as a straight player, I saw much of myself in Max as a rather aimless and painfully introverted university student, and, like so many others, I quickly fell in love with that original game. Now, over a decade and many Chloe-less games later, publisher Square Enix is promising that Reunion will finally give the fan-favourite characters “the ending they deserve.”
But even ignoring the questionable notion that fictional characters “deserve” anything, this blatant attempt to base a game entirely on fan service proves to be incredibly problematic. Indeed, after finishing Reunion, I’m honestly reminded, in a lot of ways, of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, a creatively bankrupt movie that, in the wake of criticism towards The Last Jedi, desperately attempted to placate fans with soulless “nostalgia slop” that pretty much everyone ended up hating. Life is Strange: Reunion does something similarly cheap with its own series’ history.
As you’ll recall, Developer Don’t Nod’s original 2015 coming-of-age adventure game famously featured two drastically different endings. After reconnecting with Chloe and solving a Twin Peaks-style small town murder mystery, Max is forced to make an impossible choice. Does she sacrifice her best friend, whom she finally got back, or their home of Arcadia Bay? Interestingly, the in-game choice tracker revealed that the split between the “Save Bay” and “Save Bae” endings was almost 50/50, with just a slight edge given to the former.
This naturally presented a challenge for 2024’s Double Exposure, the first game in the series to continue Max’s story. How, then, do you honour both choices? Well, as it turns out, developer Deck Nine didn’t — not really. Even if you saved Chloe, you find out in DE that she and Max eventually went their separate ways over the latter’s trauma over sacrificing everyone else’s lives.
While that’s certainly an all-too plausible outcome, players were still understandably upset that their choices fundamentally had no bearing on Double Exposure. Regardless of your preferred ending, the game pressed on with its focus on an older Max who, as a photographer-in-residence at Caledon University, must investigate the death of her best friend Safi. That led many fans — primarily of the Max and Chloe “Pricefield” shipper variety — to flat-out condemn the game entirely, while others had more legitimate and nuanced grievances, particularly when it came to the central mystery, supporting characters and lack of choices.
Now, I normally wouldn’t dedicate so much time in a review to summarizing the previous games, but that context is key because Reunion is such a clumsy and unwieldy “Frankenstein’s monster” assemblage of what came before it, and that all comes down to its premise. At the end of Double Exposure (which I have to spoil since that entire game is so essential to Reunion), Max uses her new timeline shifting abilities (which are themselves a since-retired evolution of her time rewind powers) to merge the realities where Safi is alive and dead. In the process, she inadvertently creates a Schrödinger’s Cat version of Chloe who has memories of being both alive and dead.
It’s a comically convoluted attempt to cater to all Life is Strange players, whether you saved Bae or Bay. Compounding this feeling is the fact that Reunion is still very much built on the divisive bones of Double Exposure. Beyond reusing many of the same assets, Reunion is also set at Caledon and has Max trying to save the school and its many returning faces from a mysterious arsonist. In this way, Chloe’s presence feels awkwardly inserted into this story, especially as she has no real personal connection to anything beyond Max herself.
And honestly, it often feels like Max’s own ties to the central conflict are flimsy. As you play, you’ll learn more about Abraxas, a secret Caledon society from Double Exposure that’s at the centre of the mystery. This amorphous, faceless organization that long predates Max only creates a sense of detachment from the narrative, particularly as it leads to increasingly outlandish sequences, like Max getting trapped in a creepy basement of an Abraxas house that’s about to explode, or Chloe later exploring said clandestine dungeon and unlocking a brick wall to find a crypt full of secrets as if you’re playing Tomb Raider.
I realized just how little I cared about any of this later on during a scene in which Max, Chloe and Max’s scientist friend Moses from DE are reviewing the clues so far. They’re all laid out on an assembly of whiteboards containing evidence and suspects, and I’m told to pore over everything and take a stab at guessing the culprit. Beyond struggling to feel any which way about this ever-tangled web of clues about Abraxas and forgettable DE faces, I found myself surprised that, regardless of which dialogue option I chose, Moses basically just explained everything for me, anyway, only for Chloe to then butt in, and the scene’s focus shifts to her. It’s the perfect encapsulation of Reunion‘s core issues — a lack of meaningful choices, the shallow and uninteresting central mystery, and Chloe’s disconnected presence in the whole thing.
It also just had me recalling a similar and far superior scene from the original Life is Strange, which I’d replayed right before. In Chloe’s bedroom, the girls anxiously try to piece together all of the evidence, and the player is tasked with studying images and documents to link related key facts. Beyond this already being more mechanically involved than much of Reunion‘s on-rails investigation, I felt engaged because of how deeply personal this quest was to Chloe and Max. The former was relentlessly searching for her missing friend Rachel, while the latter was there both for support and to bring the person who had been hurting her friends and schoolmates to justice. Nothing like that is present in Reunion.
And because the game presents this looming threat of the devastating fire, Max and Chloe’s relationship itself frequently has to take a backseat. That’s because Reunion‘s structure, once Chloe fully enters the fray a few hours in, ostensibly boils down to the two sharing one scene together, breaking off to conduct their own investigations, regrouping for a bit, and then repeating that all over again a handful of times. Even when it comes to the titular reunion, Max and Chloe really aren’t together that often, which is funny considering the game seemingly only exists to do just that to appease a contingent of aggrieved fans. Alas, it’s easy to imagine many of them being unhappy that there’s “too much of Double Exposure and not enough of Pricefield.”
But what’s most frustrating about Reunion is that it’s not even trying to do anything worthwhile with them beneath the fan service. It’s not even like, say, Toy Story 4, a certainly “unnecessary sequel” after the perfect ending of the threequel that nonetheless at least found new existential dimensions to explore with Woody.
Reunion, though, has nothing of the sort to offer. Seeing Max and Chloe together again has no real meaning beyond pandering. We gain no greater insight into them as characters by seeing them reunited. They aren’t even challenged in a remotely interesting way because the whole thematic conceit of a reunion was literally what the original Life is Strange was all about. But in that original game, that premise had weight thanks to the coming-of-age lens, with that harrowing final choice representing the harsh reality of growing up and leaving things left behind, be that Bae or Bay. It was about cherishing what you have, learning from what you’ve lost and accepting that life goes on.
Even Double Exposure, for all of its faults, at least understood this, however effective it arguably was in actually depicting it. I’m one of the few people who actually liked that game, warts and all, in how it attempted to grow Max as a character. Having seen much of myself in her, especially in 2015, I appreciated how DE served as a coda to that original game, illustrating how she’s processing her trauma, be it caused by the sacrifice of Chloe or Arcadia Bay, and ultimately discovering how to not be defined by it. Reunion, however, doesn’t even gesture at any such character arc. It’s simply intended to dangle the Pricefield keys, thus reminding you of a better time when these two were together.
And it’s a real shame, because there are sporadic bits of solid material underneath the rest of the disjointed mess. For one, returning actresses Hannah Telle and Rhianna DeVries are excellent in their respective roles of Max and Chloe, fighting hard to make you feel something in their tender moments, even when they’re just woefully derivative of that original game. DeVries, in particular, does a stellar job of channelling the rebellious, flirtatious spirit of original Chloe actress Ashly Burch (whom DeVries replaced in 2017’s Beyond the Storm amid an actors’ strike) while still making the role feel her own.
And Deck Nine, to their credit, do find some satisfying character moments for the pair. With Max, there’s a lovely beat about fully embracing her sense of place at Caledon and trying to be a better teacher for her students than she ever got thanks to Mr. Jefferson, the terrifying photographer serial killer. In one standout scene, she even helps a student sort out grad school plans and, after receiving a heap of praise, finds herself moved and on the verge of tears. It’s genuinely touching to see the once terribly isolated Max find a new sense of community and channel her pain into making an impact on the next generation.
Chloe, meanwhile, benefits from being over a decade older than when we last saw her. As a result, she feels like she’s truly grown as a person. Where she was once (understandably) abrasive and quick to cast blame at everyone but herself, she’s since become more introspective and compassionate. She still has a rebellious edge, especially in moments of tension, but there’s a warmer, softer side to her now, and it’s easy to see how Max has rubbed off on her.
And Max and Chloe’s respective rewind and Backtalk mechanics (both returning from previous games) add some mechanical depth. The former was always one of the most innovative parts of the original game, a brilliant way to enhance the choice-driven narrative by allowing you to play around with time to recontextualize dialogue and better inform your decisions. Admittedly, it functions exactly the same here as it did in the original game, but considering we haven’t had it ever since, it’s just nice to see it back, especially when Max is admirably using it to support her students.
Backtalk, meanwhile, is a smart way to add stakes since Chloe doesn’t have a rewind ability. In certain scenes, you’ll only have a few chances to use Chloe’s barbed tongue to either provoke someone into giving you answers or weasel out of a sticky situation. Truthfully, this verbal tug of war system is underused in the game, but it works well in the moment, like when you’re trying to convince a Caledon security guard or compel an arson suspect to implicate themself.
Ultimately, though, these positive narrative and mechanical elements are fleeting and, more damningly, just a disappointing illustration of what could have been. Instead of telling a wholly new Life is Strange story using these more inspired character beats, they’re wasted on something that’s so desperately trying to invoke the past. But because Reunion tries so hard to be a sequel to both Double Exposure and the original game, it fails as a satisfying follow-up to either of them.
And so, Reunion doesn’t really feel like it’s for anybody. If you clamoured for more Max and Chloe, you’ll likely find their latest adventure both repetitive and slight, while those who’d hoped to see Max continue to evolve as a character will find this to be a regression. And that saddens me to write, honestly. Max, as a character, has always meant a lot to me, which is why I appreciated DE‘s efforts, however flawed, to progress her. I’ve also loved most of the Life is Strange series, including Deck Nine’s own Beyond the Storm and True Colors. This team has done great work.
But alas, Reunion is just a sloppy, cynical mess, failing to do right by anything that came before it. If these characters do indeed “deserve” anything, surely, it’s got to be something much, much better than this. Time for all of us to look forward.
Life is Strange Reunion is now available on PS5, Xbox Series X/S and PC.
Image credit: Square Enix
