Life Is Strange Reunion review: so bad it makes Double Exposure look good

If only we could turn back time

So it pains me to say that Life Is Strange: Reunion is the most cowardly conclusion to that relationship for anyone who actually saw its value and complexity. Worse, it comes from one born from a truly staggering overcorrection of things about both the original 2015 game and Deck Nine’s 2024 sequel, Life Is Strange: Double Exposure.

A decade ago, Life Is Strange gave players a choice. As young teen Max Caulfield, players had to decide whether to sacrifice the small Oregon town of Arcadia Bay or to sacrifice Chloe. It's revealed that after Max saved her the first time (and discovered she had the power to rewind time in the process), Chloe's existence inadvertently forced fate to conjure up a storm to fix Max’s meddling with time. No matter which you chose, the ending perfectly paid off a phrase that’s repeatedly brought up throughout the original game: your actions will have consequences.

Even Double Exposure, as maligned as it is for reasons ranging from fans feeling Deck Nine “disrespected” the relationship between Max and Chloe to that weird, mind-boggling merge of universes in the last couple of episodes, attempted to grapple with the choices of the original game. If you sacrificed Chloe, Max’s guilt and loss of her best friend and romantic partner continued to haunt her. If you sacrificed the town, it’s revealed that her relationship with Chloe was bogged down by so much guilt that it was starting to build resentment between the two of them. Sue me, but I think the break-up makes sense — especially as it was so obvious that the love between the two of them was still there — and adds an interesting aspect to Max, Chloe, and their relationship. More importantly, we got to see a more mature Max deal with grief and form relationships with characters like Moses and Safi, as well as several other faculty members at Caledon University. Max without Chloe was always going to be unpopular, but Max's development throughout Double Exposure felt meaningful.

Reunion, however, laughs at the idea of being a true sequel to either game, except in name. While it plays with the set-up of the original, with Max having three days before the university where she works goes up in flames, at the same time as having to contend with the arrival of Chloe Price on the scene, that’s really where the connection ends. Chloe’s arrival, regardless of whether you picked Bae or Bay in the original, is explained by Max’s merging of two different realities in Double Exposure, which occurred after Max refused to live in a world without Safi, her new best friend at Caledon University. Or that’s what Deck Nine’s original intent was — that reason gets retconned entirely in Reunion.

It’s not the only thing that the developers throw away in this new adventure. Instead of engaging with the merged world introduced in Double Exposure in a way that reflects the original game’s theme of consequence, Deck Nine decided to discard that approach entirely. It strings Max and Chloe along like puppets, moving them around to replay the old hits (e.g., callbacks like Chloe saving Max with her truck and other exaggerated references to the original, which do not result in a better, more cohesive game) and hoping to evoke the same feelings.

Spoiler: they do not, and this makes the nostalgia bait in Reunion stand out even more. That is, if the reused assets from Double Exposure, minus interactable buildings and NPC conversations, don’t already make that obvious.

Those who suffer most from Deck Nine’s scrambling to create a game to entice Max and Chloe fans back are everyone else involved in the story, particularly the characters introduced in Double Exposure. Max breaks up with her previously established love interests Vinh and Amanda off-screen, and there’s no real way to talk to them about it again. Next, everyone who Max talked to about her powers — minus her Caledon besties, Safi and Moses — has completely forgotten about them. That whole ending where Diamond’s powers are teased to be significant? She doesn’t even appear in the game. Even Safi, whose will-they-won’t-they relationship with Max was so paramount to Double Exposure, is pushed to the side.

Hell, even Max and Chloe’s relationship isn’t given any real significant choice outside of being romantic or platonic. You start the story by choosing how Life is Strange ended for you, as well as who you dated in Double Exposure and whether you supported Safi in it, but those choices barely change Reunion’s story. In the original, you could challenge Chloe’s attitude and scold her that she wasn’t the only important thing in Max’s life. Now, however, Chloe is Max’s main objective, and damn anyone else who gets in her way. Even if you choose to play as though you saved Chloe, but her and Max broke up, they have a single conversation about why before it’s back to business as usual. There are no hurdles, no real choices to make, which actually signify progress for these characters. Even the reintroduction of Max’s time-rewinding superpower — something which she swore never to do again because of how severe the consequences were last time — isn’t given more of a passing thought. Who cares? Max and Chloe are here, everyone!

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m so glad to be with Max and Chloe again. Hannah Telle and Rihanna DeVries deliver heartfelt performances in this game, evoking deep emotions and taking you back to the simpler beginnings of the original. There, Max and Chloe found refuge and love amidst a time when it truly felt like they were up against the world. Both performances are tender, and I have to admit I teared up a couple of times. Yet even their performances couldn’t prevent my disbelief that this was the game Square Enix specifically marketed as giving Max and Chloe the “ending they deserve”, because sure, but I didn’t think it would (or want it to) come at the cost of Reunion completely undermining everything else (specifically player choice) in the process.

Because the player’s choices in Reunion are very limited, so is the gameplay. In the original, Max’s rewind powers let players solve problems in different ways, like opening a locked safe without Chloe’s stepdad noticing or warning Alyssa about an upcoming accident. While the earlier moments in Life is Strange didn’t significantly advance the plot, they helped us connect more with individual characters. Even if those characters weren’t as central as others, it made a difference to you, the player. The most exciting thing Max can do with her powers in Reunion is rewind repeatedly until she gets the right answer. Groundbreaking. This is supposed to be a ‘your actions have consequences’ franchise, not the ‘the only actions that matter are the ones that make the loudest fans the happiest’ franchise. I’m not naive; I know game development is a business, but the lack of integrity from Deck Nine with Reunion is so incredibly shocking that it would be an insult to call this poor fanfiction.

I should be happy that Max and Chloe even get the option of a happy ending. We’re currently living in an era marked by a rise in anti-queer sentiment and rollback of LGBTQ+ laws. Moreover, even though there are more queer stories being told, we’re not exactly drowning in happy endings. In many ways, Reunion is a win in that regard.

But it’s hard to be ecstatic when Reunion is a pale imitation that’s too cowardly to put forward original ideas and, in fact, directly undermines the sequels it's supposed to respect. If this is the ending fans deserve, then Deck Nine can keep it.

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Life Is Strange: Reunion is out now on PlayStation 5, Windows PC, and Xbox Series X. The game was reviewed on PS5 using a prerelease download code provided by Square Enix. You can find additional information about Polygon’s ethics policy here.