An Absolute Shakabrah Redemption Ride

It was the summer of 2017 when the entire season of Life is Strange went up as a free title on the PS Plus monthly tier. And while this was just a typical auto-download for me, as I always do with every other prior PS Plus freebie, I never realized how this game/series would shape my entire adolescence. Especially with a character that I grew so personally attached to, Chloe Elizabeth Price.

See, I’ve been here every step of the way, from Sean and Daniel’s harrowing road trip in Life is Strange 2, Chloe’s prequel rollercoaster ride in Before the Storm, the peculiar yet oddly cathartic tale of Alex Chen in True Colors. Heck, I even became infatuated with the original creators (Dontnod) to the point where I obsessively played Lost Records: Bloom & Rage just last year.

Best Games with Short but Powerful Narrative Image Collage with Images from Before Your Eyes, Landlord of the Woods, Purrgatory, To the Moon, and SEASON - A Letter to the Future

10 Best Games With Short But Powerful Narratives

Make sure you have some tissues handy.

Needless to say, would DeckNine pull me back in the saddle with Double Exposure? They sure did, even if half of my review for that entry (admittedly) had grace marks written all over it because of my rose-tinted nostalgia goggles for an adult Max Caulfield. Look, we don’t talk about that game, or even its half-baked ending. I’m sure every other Pricefield stan would agree in a heartbeat, more or less.

But with the unveiling of Life is Strange: Reunion, my expectations were at a more cautious state than ever, and my inner teenage self was scared out of his wits about how they were going to handle Chloe here.

And with the credits rolling just a few hours ago on my screen, I can’t believe I’m going to say it with confidence to you all: DeckNine actually managed to hit a full-blown victory lap here that faithfully concludes this beloved duo’s adventure. Just how did they pull that off, you ask? Well, you’re going to have to jump in the mosh pit with me here to find out.

This review will not contain or showcase spoilers related to the major story events of Life is Strange: Reunion. However, opinions on certain character developments and revelations will still be discussed to an extent.

Starring Mad Max and Her Ravenous Partner in Time

Dual Protagonists, yup, they finally went ahead and did it. You play as both Max and Chloe in this (heavily implied) last iteration of their saga, and there is no better way to close out their final chapter than to steer both their fates together. You finally get the chance to undo the damage to Chloe from Double Exposure by being able to shape her character motives yourself. Well, most of them.

But does that automatically erase the ending or implications of that game? Well, there’s a bit of technicality here via the starting options, which let you choose the obvious Bay or Bae canon, being friends or having romanced Double Exposure’s romantic interests, as well as whether you supported Safi’s actions. It’s pretty self-explanatory, but more on that in a bit here. Life is Strange: Reunion kicks off soon after the fallout from Double Exposure. After impossibly combining two different realities in an ex machina attempt to save both Safi and Caledon University, Max gets roped into another heated turmoil, literally.

A distressing text from Moses makes her rush back to campus from her road trip, only to find everything set ablaze and in disarray. In a desperate attempt to save everyone and possibly find out what happened, she uses a Polaroid photo of herself to rewind time enough to give her a few days to track down the mystery back at Caledon in Lakeport, instead of going on her gallery trip.

As Max and Moses begin to unravel this ticking-bomb arson mystery, we shift to everyone’s favorite (former blue-haired) wildcard punk gal, Chloe Price, who’s unfortunately going through her own ordeals as a Music Band Manager. Simultaneously, Chloe’s having an existential crisis with strange, nightmarish visions involving her, Max, and Safi. Obviously, who better to help her resolve them or find out their cause than her ex, whom she broke up with over a darn letter of all things and hasn’t been in contact with for several years?

Dual Protagonists, yup, they finally went ahead and did it.

The game is officially set afoot when Chloe rushes from the Snapping Turtle Bar to rescue Max from her disastrous sneak-in mission at the Abraxas House – Which I hope the rest of the DE players still remember, since it is one of the central plot elements of this game, with a whole cultist backdrop, not to mention the other disastrous arson attack on the campus itself.

Reunion has a relatively strong foundation here for this gameplay loop of making you switch between its two main characters. The game isn’t episodic this time, so it’s a one-way long shot where you swap periodically between both Max and Chloe as they try to accomplish their goals and motives to pull the curtain down on this crazy conundrum surrounding Caledon. Both of these characters have their own way of doing things, some better or worse depending on how you look at them.

Take a Shot Every Time You Use Rewind or When Chloe Uses Her Sharp Tongue

We all know it wouldn’t be a Life is Strange entry without you running into the consequences of your actions, or rather, some of the choices that your morbid curiosity bites into along the way. And with how you control and handle two characters this time, what on earth could possibly go wrong with a quasi-famous photographer with time-warping abilities and her Partner in Time, who’s constantly haunted by the ghosts in her past? Well, non-spoiler alert; it hits the fan harder than you’d imagine, especially after the subpar quality from Double Exposure.

Firstly, the thing that stood out to me about this game right away was how grounded and laser-focused the narrative felt. A fair bit of the plot elements, like the whole Avengers-esque ending or everyone in Caledon knowing about Max’s powers, were retconned with a simple explanation: Moses called it “Storm Amnesia.” A very bold move, but not surprising given the (carefully) high expectations from longtime fans for this game after the previous iteration’s travesty.

collage of 3 games; mgs2, last of us 2 and life is strange

10 Best Games Where The Good Guys Lose

Nice guys finish last.

There’s still a lot of ground to cover, but I wanted to quickly point out the gameplay presentation here. After she merged realities, this also caused Max to regain her OG Time Rewind ability, and to my surprise, they handled its inclusion extremely well. I really mean that, even if I prefer Dontnod’s design philosophy more. You have segments where you consecutively use Rewind to squeeze a different answer out of someone, perform an action in a different manner, or use it as a last line of defense; I won’t spoil that one, but it’s fantastic.

On the other hand, for all my Before the Storm enjoyers, Chloe’s backtalk segments are back, and they’re just as cool as you would’ve remembered them. However, I apologize if you get too overzealous with my statement there, because there’s quite literally only three total Backtalk encounters. When the completion trophy for all of them popped up, I sat there like Patchy the Pirate, saying, “That’s it?”

Thankfully, a smidgen of that disappointment is offset by Chloe’s overall rebellious and eccentric demeanor.

Either that or just going through the briefly updated journals and the back-and-forth text messages in this game are an absolute delight, and almost kind of help break the ice between some intense or rather heated exchanges between the game’s main plot intricacies.

Collectibles make their obvious return with Polaroid Snapshots once again being the main focus for Max, while Chloe can doodle up some sketches from key points of interest. And if you’re wondering about any puzzles, negative on that as well. Most, if not all, are pretty self-explanatory to complete, and they just end up feeling like minor setbacks to our two characters – Especially since most of these are your typical find X item or interaction spot in the environment quests.

Firstly, the thing that stood out to me about this game right away was how grounded and laser-focused the narrative felt.

Also, speaking of setbacks, the slightly rushed production quality was so noticeable here because there were a number of occasions when the character’s face rig glitched out, almost creating an uncanny effect of them creepily smiling mid-sentence or just their model being uncharacteristic. That, and the lighting would sometimes break in some chapters or transitions, requiring full checkpoint resets or game restarts. This was very annoying to deal with, but then again, something I got familiar with in Double Exposure on a similar scale.

Bound By Time, Trauma, Existential Dread, and the Illusion of Choice

At the core of the game, you must remember that it still carries the golden torch that made the first game special. Max and Chloe still have their signature cringey, cheesy one-liners and quips they throw out in environmental interactions. In one interaction, Max will probably play out a heartfelt conjecture, but if you interact with the same thing as Chloe, you’ll get an entirely opposite outcome — throwing out her usual dose of snarky attitude without giving a care if it’s a little more than someone could chew. Either that, or she’ll make her occasional witty remarks on other points of interest; just your average Chloe Pricefield in her natural state.

The entire narrative and mystery elements of Reunion are genuinely well-written, from start to finish. This isn’t Double Exposure, where it all came plummeting down midway and felt like a massive trainwreck by the end of it. Actual care went into making this spider-webbed mystery tale feel like a proper front-end detective case, even more so when you realize the game outright tells you to look and search everywhere for clues or potentially hidden deets about the cases.

Like, seriously, there’s a hidden trophy/achievement for finding all the optional evidence, and half the playerbase that I interacted with online couldn’t find it all on their initial playthrough. The secrets and hidden divergences here can almost certainly throw you into a state of skepticism over anything you might’ve missed in the game because, believe me, choosing the true culprits behind your cases can directly impact a few of the sequential moments in the finale.

However, as much as I could ramble on about how they introduced these unexpected stakes or the attention to detail to some of the slow-burning mystery aspects of the game, it just unfortunately feels too held back by shoestrings. Again, trying to avoid making any comparisons, but just can’t help but feel as if the repercussions and overall ramifications are non-existent in this game. It has been a recurring case for me since LiS: True Colors, because even in LiS: 2, I knew Sean and Daniel had so much to lose at every step of their journey, especially with the brilliantly designed moral scale for Daniel that could tip the ending’s balance in different ways.

Even saying it outright makes me feel like I’m acting too hypocritical about this whole thing, but darn it, I’m standing by it; it almost felt akin to the Illusion of Choice effect, where my options or even consequences barely felt multifaceted. And I think part of that may stem from how I didn’t care for half of the characters in this game, even if they’re unintentionally treated like an afterthought.

Max and Chloe still have their signature cringey, cheesy one-liners and quips they throw out in environmental interactions.

Loretta, Reggie, and Vinh? I was actually surprised to see them show up for the game’s ending. Moses? He’s probably the MVP of this game, especially with how he acts as the big-brained intellectual yet extremely caring big bear to both Max and Chloe. Safi? We’ll go over to her in a bit. Amanda’s an absolute darling. I 10/10 would get Princess Leia buns done just to twin with her. As for the rest, like Yasmin, Owen, and even Lucas? They generally just become fixated on the overarching plot as recurring yet integral characters.

I didn’t feel the slightest attached to most of them, no matter how hard I tried. The spotlight is rightfully on Max and Chloe, but that still doesn’t make me want to sweep this flawed direction under the rug. They could easily improve it if they wanted to. Properly incentivize me to take risks, and if they don’t pay off, let me face huge or otherwise fatal outcomes; don’t just save them for the end, especially for characters I literally didn’t think or care about in the previous game/entry. But hey, maybe that’s even more of an indication of Double Exposure’s writing quality.

Rewinding the Past, Redeeming the Present, and Finding Reunion for the Future

To have loved someone is to have lived. Heartbreaks truly hurt the most when you’re infatuated with your past, yearning for the same affection as that once significant other gave you that no one else could provide thereafter. Max and Chloe’s relationship, depending on which end of the spectrum you’re on here, was the straw that broke the camel’s back for many. Both the Bay and Bae canons are notoriously mishandled in DE. And going into Reunion, I was downright terrified of what they were going to do with not just that, but Chloe Price herself, because it almost seemed like Deck Nine had a personal vendetta against her existence prior to this game.

God of War, Marvel's Spider Man 2, The Witcher 3

8 Best Games With A Three-Act Narrative

And, scene.

I legitimately can’t believe I’m saying this, but Life is Strange: Reunion felt like the most endearing form of relationship reconciliation in video games thus far. Even when the game is on-rails, with the whole race-against-time to save Caledon, there are a handful of treasured moments of respite between Max and Chloe, where they individually try to harmonize their fractured pasts. It especially adds weight to that one scene from Double Exposure in which Max is confessing her past with Chloe to Safi.

It’s further amplified by the fact that you can control both characters’ dialogue in major scenarios when they’re together. It can feel jarring at first, but I can assure you it adds so many variables to their mutual redemption; to how they couldn’t open up, speak about their compressed feelings or regrets about one another, or just yearn while maintaining eye contact. Despite my adoration for Ashly Burch and my wanting her to return as Chloe, both Hannah Telle and Rhianna DaVies did a phenomenal job reprising their roles, rightfully deserving their flowers.

I legitimately can’t believe I’m saying this, but Life is Strange: Reunion felt like the most endearing form of relationship reconciliation in video games thus far.

Even with these two stealing the spotlight at every turn and signal, a part of me felt at ease knowing we also received a proper sendoff for Safi as well, considering whatever they had planned for her previously must’ve been revamped. There’s a very specific scene with her and Chloe towards the end that I won’t spoil, but I can promise you, as someone who’s been avoidant, self-destructive, and decomposing for a majority of his life, it hit me like a freight train. And that’s excluding others, where, again, I can’t even tell what happens in them, but let’s just say that the game self-consciously mocks one of the intimate moments between Max and Chloe; it’s so darn beautiful and playful.

I’ll completely agree with anyone any day of the week that LiS 1’s magical feeling and emotional resonance can’t be outmatched, but what I can confidently say with every ounce of my fibre is how Reunion celebrates these two characters in a way you wouldn’t expect at all. It actively rewards your patience for sitting through their slow, awkward moments at the beginning by repaying in full interest, with a closure that satisfies fans like me who grew up with them, enough to bid them farewell whilst holding back the tears.

Life is Strange: Reunion feels like something I wasn’t sure we’d ever actually get—a sincere, tender, and heartfelt goodbye to Max and Chloe that understands why people fell in love with them in the first place. It’s far from perfect, with its technical hiccups, underdeveloped side cast, and that lingering illusion of choice holding it back from true greatness. But where it truly matters, it delivers. The mystery narrative holds its ground with a slew of twists and red herrings thrown at you. Most importantly, the emotional depth (finally) lands with a kind of honesty the series has been chasing for a few years. This isn’t about surpassing the original; it’s about making peace with its past. And somehow, against all the stacked odds, Deck Nine manages to pull that off in a redeeming fashion. If you’ve been on this journey since the beginning, it feels like closure, the kind that quietly sticks with you long after the credits roll as you’re waving goodbye.