Life is Strange: Reunion, a direct follow-up to Deck Nine’s Double Exposure, is a return to the franchise’s roots, but perhaps not in a way that players expected.
After experimenting with a prequel adventure, as well as several major spin-offs, the franchise has now landed back at what made it so unique and compelling to begin with: the interplay between protagonist Max and her best friend (and potential romantic partner) Chloe.
Life is Strange Reunion preview – quick links
Dealing with the original game’s dual endings
It was Max and Chloe’s chemistry that elevated the original story, as well as the impact of their ending. At the conclusion of Life is Strange, players were given a difficult choice: to save the town of Arcadia Bay by allowing Chloe to be killed, or to save Chloe, thereby allowing the town to be destroyed.
Each player has their own unique connection to this complex ending. Some players chose to save Chloe, devastating Arcadia Bay and creating a worse future. Others recognised the need for sacrifice, to save a greater amount of lives.
Life is Strange: Reunion, as a follow-on from this story, attempts to please both groups, by presenting a dual timeline, with various alternative pathways. In dialogue, you can determine how Chloe reacts to Max, and thereby what future you defined in the original game.
It’s handled fairly well in dialogue, based on my recent preview. While there’s some quippy, Marvel-style shock as Max encounters Chloe once more, the writing is fairly well-balanced and realistic, with room for both Chloe and Max to discuss their unique circumstances and puzzle through Chloe’s sudden and seemingly impossible return.
In my particular playthrough, I chose to cement the following events: Chloe was sacrificed to save Arcadia Bay, and Chloe and Max had a romantic relationship in the past. You can also choose to cement a timeline where Chloe survived, and was friends with Max, although they do seemingly become estranged in this plot.
Dialogue well-reflected my choices, particularly as Max attempts to reckon with Chloe’s appearance. Believability is always key to genre stories like this, and it’s only with solid, responsive dialogue and a strong performance that the tension and surprise works here.
Hannah Telle is particularly brilliant as Max, all breathy shock and confused puzzlement as she works through occasionally wordy explanations of multiverses and magical powers. Rhianna DeVries also fares well as the trying-to-be-cool, sarcastic Chloe, although she was given a lesser, more reactive role in these preview scenes.
A strange, deeply interesting mystery
Beyond the meeting of Chloe and Max, which is treated with a deft hand, my preview of Life is Strange: Reunion also teased the game’s overarching mystery, which concerns a fire at Caledon University, where Max teaches.
In a brief snippet, the game revealed that Max will re-harness her time-rewinding abilities in this adventure, thanks to some multiverse shenanigans and a semi-breakage of the universe in Double Exposure.
When the central fire breaks out, Max is at a loss. She sees her friend Moses on top of a building with a body in his hands – which is eventually revealed to be Chloe.
Panicked and fearful, Max manages to wind back time, leaving her just a few days to figure out how the fire occurred, and how she can stop it from happening. Of course, it’s not as simple as that – as Chloe soon arrives on her doorstep, presenting a multi-layered mystery about alternative universes, and what exactly happened at the end of Double Exposure.
While the twists and turns presented in my preview lean more towards the fantasy and superhero genres, which is part of what off-sided some Double Exposure players, the direction excites me personally. Life is Strange: Reunion goes down a rabbit hole, with plenty of new threads to explore about the underlying lore of Max and Chloe’s world, and how magic plays a role in a more realistic setting.
There are many threads left to untangle, but I’m keen to see where the path may lead. In this early preview, Life is Strange: Reunion has certainly earned my attention, and there’s not long to go before these threads can be pulled clean.
