We will never get a game quite like 2015’s Life is Strange ever again. Ready for the mosh pit, shaka brah? Go fuck yourselfie? I was eating those beans, are you fucking insane? I was eating… those BEANS!? Iconic. Equally as cringe a decade ago as they are now, but it just worked. A small, relatively unknown French studio doing its best to hella capture the essence of American high school life.
At the core of it all was the game’s two main characters: Max Caulfield and Chloe Price. Specifically, their relationship (as sapphic or platonic as you well wish) and the ravelling and unravelling of a single week together as Max’s newly-unlocked rewind power danced along the timeline of their lives. All of this culminates in the choice for Max to either save their hometown at the expense of Chloe’s life, or defy fate forever and see Arcadia Bay destroyed.
Life is Strange is a game that, despite its shortcomings, was an incredibly earnest and heartwrenching tale of teenagehood, tragedy, and consequence. A perfect storm.
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One which Deck Nine—who has developed all but one Life is Strange game since Don’t Nod’s initial debut—has spent the last two years trying to recreate. First with Double Exposure, which brought Max back with new friends, romance options, and time-adjacent powers to explore.
We will never get a game quite like 2015’s Life is Strange ever again.
It was a tough job narratively, one I personally found serviceable enough as a staunch Bay over Bae chooser. But it was one which upset many of Pricefield’s fans, who felt their decision to save Chloe over Arcadia Bay was minimised. Reduced to a relationship that had drifted apart over a decade, nary a text or occasional hookup to be seen. Something that, to me, feels rather realistic, especially as someone who has journeyed through these games the same age as these two women. But this is also a videogame with magical rewind powers, we can loosen up a little.
And now we’re here with Life is Strange: Reunion, the first game to feature Max and Chloe side-by-side since that very first outing 11 years ago. A game that is so clearly Deck Nine’s desperate attempt to claw back any good grace with the Pricefield enjoyers that it comes at the expense of every narrative beat set up at the end of Double Exposure, and reduces almost every supporting character to a prop in service of setting up and moving along moments between my two OGs.
Reunited and it feels… okay
This is coming from a fellow Pricefield enjoyer, mind. Did I foolishly direct my romantic interests towards Warren in my very first playthrough of Life is Strange all those years ago? Sure, but I’ve long seen the light.
I’m also someone who has never wavered in my decision to sacrifice Chloe. Not all stories have a happy ending. It gives the original game so much more emotional weight, and makes Max’s reunion with her in this one far more interesting. A person that she’s spent a decade grieving, carving a space out in her heart for, suddenly standing in front of her. It’s an incredibly poignant moment—and I admittedly welled up a little when Foals’ Spanish Sahara started playing, a reminder of the choice both myself and Max made all those years ago.
The scene gave me high hopes for what Reunion was going to deliver. I’d anticipated fan service and manufactured cutesy Pricefield moments, sure. And they’re certainly there. But in pursuit of them, Deck Nine forgot about everything else.
Reunion feels like two stories. The one Deck Nine originally wanted to tell, and the one it felt it had to. The foundations laid with Double Exposure’s ending have been demolished. Where I expected Safi’s quest to find other people with powers like herself and Max, she instead stropped around campus, hiding her real self in favour of shapeshifting as students and faculty. She toes the line of being interesting—criticising Max’s reckless power usage, blind to her love for Chloe to see any external damage she’s causing. To Safi included.
Instead it’s a bunch of passive-aggressive comments (I rejected her plea for support at the end of Double Exposure, my bad I guess!) that lead nowhere, before the end of the game ties everything up in an incredibly sloppy bow and has her back to her old self.
Where Diamond’s nosebleed had hinted towards further cool power-related character development, she’s actually entirely absent from Reunion. Relegated to a single (optional) phone call at the very end of the game.
It’s all shafted in favour of a mysterious fire that sees the demise of Max’s nouveau bestie Moses. And, once again, Chloe. It’s admittedly another interesting premise, but one that goes nowhere in Reunion. The eventual climax to who is responsible is awful and nonsensical. A culprit given diabolically little screentime and character development, which makes the reveal a total nothing burger.
But hey! Chloe and Max get to go out on the lake in a little boat at sunset and wax lyrical about their time together as teens. And break into stuff just like they used to. And hold hands. And finally share a little reunion smooch.
They’re important moments, don’t get me wrong. Ones I loved. But I couldn’t help but feel like Deck Nine was carefully tip-toeing towards me to present them. Pricefield kisses in one hand, a white flag waving back and forth in the other.
For me, Reunion’s most interesting narrative moments don’t even involve Max. Chloe and Moses, and their interactions, are the star of the game. For starters, Moses is perhaps the only Double Exposure character who doesn’t feel completely gutted—probably because he fits nice and neatly into Reunion’s story—but his dynamic with Chloe is where I got to see the biggest indication of her character growth. Where I get the biggest sense of the kind of woman she’s become over on the “alive Chloe” timeline.
And then I’m taken back to a poorly woven story. Attempts to intertwine Safi and Chloe’s shared situation. Haphazardly slotting together a fire that has nothing to do with either of them, while also exploring and bringing a critical lens to Max’s rewinding, and simultaneously figuring out how to bring it all back to the two who started it all.
Unfortunately, I’m not sold on it. I will always love Max and Chloe, but the characters Deck Nine crafted for Double Exposure deserved better. It’s not entirely the developer’s fault—the studio is far smaller than it was for the previous game, and I would bet there was a whole lot of narrative pivoting that took place before Reunion’s release which has led to a sloppy final product. I just wish Pricefield’s farewell had been given the time and care it deserved.
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