Much like the act of tinkering with the space-time continuum, executing a narrative with complex branching choices over an extended period of time is a very challenging process with precise implications. And yet, that’s what Deck Nine has achieved with Life Is Strange: Reunion.
Players love weighty choices in adventure or role-playing games, and we love it when those choices are carried forward into subsequent games in the same series. However, doing so inherently alienates vast swathes of the prior game’s fan base. What’s “canon” for one player is “the road not travelled” for another player. And when these choices are spread across long stretches of time—like the decade between the first episode of Life Is Strange and this latest chapter—the potential to dissatisfy players is compounded.
It’s been a detriment to many classic games that rely heavily on choice. Even all three of BioWare’s great franchises (Mass Effect, Dragon Age, and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic) and Telltale Games‘ longer-running adventures could not navigate the complex strands of narrative without stepping on their own toes somewhat in trying to account for all the various paths.
And so it also went for Square Enix’s narrative adventure. When Life Is Strange: Double Exposure arrived in 2024, bringing back original protagonist Max Caulfield, some fans felt the sting of having their say in Arcadia Bay’s fate reversed. Chloe Price, Max’s childhood friend, partner in crime, and potential romantic interest, was sidelined regardless of the player’s choice from the first game; her fate was still choosable, but whether she lived or died after the events of that fateful week was inconsequential, and she was nowhere to be seen, only alluded to in dialogues.
“While Double Exposure may have felt too disconnected from Max’s old life for some fans, Life Is Strange: Reunion continues that story while also bringing Chloe into the fold in meaningful ways.”
Life Is Strange: Reunion sets this to rights, however, bringing Chloe back in a satisfying way for a big new caper in time—concluding Max’s saga in the process.
This time around, Chloe is once again the partner in crime. Upon starting a new game, the game asks whether she lived or died in Arcadia Bay, and whether she and Max were just friends or more romantically involved. The bigger choice is whether or not she lived, though the romantic element helps dictate the tone of their past. Thankfully, choices from Double Exposure matter also, like if Max courted bartender Amanda, or her big decision regarding her new friend, Safi.
(For context and the record, I chose that Max and Chloe were more than friends, but Max ultimately died, as was the conclusion of my Life Is Strange: Remastered playthrough.)
As much as Life Is Strange: Reunion draws from the core relationship of the original game, it is very much a sequel to Double Exposure. Max is now teaching at Caledon University in the wake of the storm that almost levelled it, and Safi’s absence looms over her head. When Max witnesses a fire consuming the school, she taps back into her lapsed time travel powers to go back and prevent it… which is when Chloe walks back into her life.
Both narrative streams—Max’s old life with Chloe, and the threat to her current life at Caledon—collide and interweave to good effect. While Double Exposure may have felt too disconnected from Max’s old life for some fans, Life Is Strange: Reunion continues that story while also bringing Chloe into the fold in meaningful ways. It’s not done just for shock, or just for the sake of doing it; especially if Max let Chloe die in Arcadia Bay, the events of Double Exposure are pivotal to Reunion, and Chloe’s presence proves pivotal to some of the new people in Max’s orbit.
Furthermore, both women share the playable protagonist role for the first time in Life Is Strange’s history. Max gets a slight edge in playtime and a more compelling mechanic via her time-rewinding power, but Chloe has her own perspective and the Backtalk mechanic, where she verbally spars with NPCs to get information. Exploring familiar locales around Caledon and speaking to characters as Chloe was an interesting twist after Double Exposure, and the game ensures that there are things she can do that her partner can’t.
“Life Is Strange: Reunion gives the player a lot of agency to determine the outcome of the potential tragedy at Caledon, without doing wrong by Max and Chloe.”
Some of the best conversations in the game are between the heroines, where players get to make decisions for both. Whether they’re reuniting after growing apart, or being torn apart by tragedy back in Arcadia Bay, there’s a real sense of reunion, reconciliation, and closure that flows through the game’s events.
Now, a lot of this is achieved through the tried-and-tested Life Is Strange gameplay formula, which drops players in a certain corner of a sandbox and asks them to search for clues, using investigation, logic, and a dose of supernatural power. Most of the gameplay revolves around making dialogue choices. Those choices give new clues and open new branches, the story progresses, and you’re off to the next leg of the investigation. It’s a conversation simulator at heart; the player’s agency is in the dialogue options they choose. And if this series (or even this genre) has never been your cup of tea before, Reunion isn’t going to convert you at last.
Luckily for those who are into it, the mystery is every bit as intriguing as Max’s previous adventures. If anything, it’s a little bit more concise than previous installments. In my case, it clocked in around 8 hours, a few hours less than Double Exposure, and a hair under the remastered original. Without stricter episode distinctions, it almost felt shorter still, but this wasn’t a detriment. Life is Strange: Reunion‘s narrative didn’t overstay its welcome or pad itself out; commendably, it builds a new mystery with some new characters while tying off a lot of dangling narrative threads, and gets home in good time. It’s focused and honed to a point more than ever before in series history.
On that note, there were a couple of elements from Double Exposure that I’d hoped to see addressed in Life Is Strange: Reunion. Gwen is understandably absent, aside from a possible text exchange, and while you get to choose the context of Max’s relationships with Amanda and Vinh, those lingering connections are somewhat left by the wayside. Meanwhile, certain individuals you love to hate, coughLucascough, return in all their insufferable glory…which also means a fresh opportunity to mess with them.
Speaking of issues, there are more graphical flaws than I’d hope to see. The game has great cinematography, so it’s a shame that often, as the camera pans between different angles or closes in on establishing shots, there’s a quick beat where you can see the textures fully loading into place. Sometimes these shots last for only a few seconds, and the first second or two is spent watching the detail draw in. While the series has never been at the absolute visual cutting edge, a lot of the environments are reused from Double Exposure, so this is a technical fly-in-the-ointment I wouldn’t expect to see in a finished game post-launch.
There’s a lot more I could say about the game’s back half and conclusion, though I wouldn’t dream of spoiling it here. To keep it vague, I feel Deck Nine stuck the landing.
Life Is Strange: Reunion gives the player a lot of agency to determine the outcome of the potential tragedy at Caledon, without doing wrong by Max and Chloe. Where so many games struggle to offer the illusion of narrative choice, I think they’ve done a commendable job here. Chloe’s return to the land of the living doesn’t feel phoned in (which it easily could have been); Max’s past and present are given equal weight, and we’re given reason to care about her potential future; and the new mystery itself is a fulfilling arc in its own right.
I will say, I felt compelled to redo the ending, as for the first time ever in this series, I failed a Backtalk challenge…and it was the pivotal, final instance of the mechanic in the story. This skewed events in a major way, such that I had to use the Scene Select to set it right. I think this may have actually improved my opinion of the game’s ending, knowing what could have gone worse and the ramifications of one of the final choices…but that’s a topic for another spoilery day.
As Deck Nine and Square Enix teased when the game was first announced, Life Is Strange: Reunion is the final chapter in the “Max and Chloe Saga.” As its credits rolled, I genuinely felt that their winding paths had reached a well-deserved, well-earned closure. That really is a rare sensation in any narrative medium, especially when later installments try to build upon existing, well-loved foundations. The story in Life Is Strange: Reunion was worth returning to, and I’m grateful these heroines got one last ride together.
