Life is Strange: Reunion's Max and Chloe say the sequel 'deepens' the original

Life is Strange: Reunion answers a decades-old question

Ten years ago, Life is Strange developer Dontnod Entertainment asked its players to make a choice that’s still hotly debated a decade later. As Max Caulfield, players had to choose who they would save at the end of Life is Strange: the residents of Arcadia Bay, or Max’s childhood best friend (and possible girlfriend), the crass but charismatic punk, Chloe Price.

No matter which choice players made, the repercussions are duly felt in Deck Nine’s 2024 sequel, Life is Strange: Double Exposure. If they picked Arcadia Bay, Max has to wrestle with the guilt of dooming the person she loves. If they picked Chloe, players discover that Max and Chloe are estranged, and the events of the original game are a huge weight that their relationship couldn’t handle. Personally, I liked the idea of these two troubled teens realizing that what happened was really messed up, so they ran away from each other to cope. However, for some fans, the absence of Chloe in Double Exposure felt like a betrayal of a relationship that, whether romantic or not, was the heart of the original game.

Deck Nine seems set to ‘correct’ that misdirection with Life is Strange: Reunion, bringing back Max and Chloe for a brand new adventure that’s been marketed as giving the two characters an “ending they deserve.” That’s quite the loaded statement, especially when considering the original game’s polarizing ending.

Speaking to Polygon via Zoom, we asked the actors who portray them, Hannah Telle (Max Caulfield) and Rihanna DeVries (Chloe Price), what kind of ending they believe Chloe and Max deserve.

“I'm biased, but I think they deserve the world,” DeVries explained. “I think they deserve the best. I think they deserve love, laughter, light, and peace. Yeah, completely biased, but that's what I think they deserve.”

Telle added that the ending for Max and Chloe in Reunion “goes beyond what they deserve” and is more about the cultural impact of their relationship.

“That relationship has been so seminal and explosive in so many people's lives that it's inspired a whole group of community, fans, and people who are making more games, people who are making music based on the music in the original game, people who are making fan art, fan fiction. I think that these two characters are going to go down in history, and people are going to come back to these characters over and over and over again.”

The original Life is Strange came out in 2015, a monumental year for gay rights in the USA. In June of that year, the Supreme Court legalized gay marriage nationwide, with several other important milestones established throughout the year, such as more protection for LGBTQ+ employees in the workplace. Life is Strange was originally released in an episodic format, with players having to wait between episodes. Its third, “Chaos Theory”, debuted on May 19 — weeks before that all-important legalization of gay marriage — and gave players the option, as Max Caulfield, to kiss Chloe. While Life is Strange was certainly not the first game to include queer romance, its timing felt like a victory for young, queer gamers (myself included) at a time when representation in video games still had a long way to go compared to TV and film.

Reunion comes a decade later, when LGBTQ+ representation in video games has largely improved. That doesn’t mean it’s perfect — far from it — but the cultural landscape surrounding Reunion is vastly different from 2015. Censorship still remains an issue, and it would be naive to ignore the rollbacks of LGBTQ+ legislation and the rise of anti-queer sentiment sweeping across the world. Deck Nine, the team behind Reunion, was accused of having a toxic workplace culture where racism and homophobia thrived back in 2024.

Some fans may be concerned that giving Max and Chloe a happy ending would lessen the significance of the original games' endings (since tragedy in stories, queer or not, is not necessarily a moral failure). Other players see hope in the premise of a happier conclusion amid the current political climate.

As for Telle and DeVries, both actors feel confident that Reunion will leave players satisfied, regardless of whether they chose Bay or Bae.

“If anything, it deepens your experience of either choice at the end of Life is Strange,” DeVries said. “I don't think it deviates at all from what the original intention was. It just adds more context. It adds more opportunity to engage with these characters in a new way. I think it's done really diligently and lovingly. I think people are going to love it.”

Telle added that she and DeVries worked hard to honor each aspect of the story's choices. “It was hard to keep up with which dialogue branch we would be on, based on what choice we were illustrating the outcome of. And we were very meticulous in making sure everything is exactly continuous and aligned with what would make sense for that choice.”

Reunion is positioned as the answer to a decade-old question, one we don’t yet know was worth asking or not. Either way, Telle and DeVries see it as a privilege that they even got to add more to the tale at all.

“As bittersweet and poignant and heartbreaking as that is, this is the end,” Telle confirmed. “I had my identity shaped by this game, and it means everything to me for people to have a good time, and to get to have more time with characters that made a big impact on them.”