Dai
Combat Butler
Life is Strange: Reunion
When something terrible happens to the characters you love in a book or a movie, it hurts because you care about them, but there's also a thin veneer of distance granted by it being a passive experience. A game like the original Life is Strange was different though, because I had to choose which terrible thing happened at the end. It made me complicit, and so I was left with not just the loss, but also the guilt of my part in it. LiS1 is such a powerful story--and Max and Chloe are such memorable characters--that my choice at the end of that first playthrough in 2015 has haunted me for a decade.
In the years since, I've often pondered how I would have written a happy ending for LiS1. To me, the pieces of the puzzle were there, and it felt like the developer might have considered including one only to remove it for dramatic impact. I never got around to writing it, and now I don't need to.
A couple of years ago, LiS: Double Exposure brought Max back (see my review here). It was great to see her again and the first 80% of that story was solid. It did drop the ball towards the end though, due to it setting up plot threads for a potential sequel that looked like it would turn LiS into X-Men. The strengths of LiS are as a suburban mystery series with supernatural powers, centred around sympathetic characters. Trying to switch to a superhero action plot would have been a disaster, and thankfully the developer of Reunion realised this.
Despite being a direct sequel to Double Exposure, Reunion backpedals on that Brotherhood-of-Mutants-esque plot thread, abandoning it completely. Instead we have another classic LiS mystery to unravel, another impending disaster to prevent. Plus we have the true magic of LiS, and something that I never thought would happen: Max and Chloe back together again for another adventure. It's a joy to see them in action. The groundwork for this reunion was set up in Double Exposure and builds on Max's powers from both that story and LiS1. It works surprisingly well, acknowledging both possible outcomes of the first game in a way that fits the overall narrative.
By bringing Chloe back into the story, it also returns that same anxiety I felt towards the end of the original. It's well founded too. Without mentioning any specifics, the climax of Reunion might be the most tense string of decisions I've needed to make since the suicide mission in Mass Effect 2. And as in that game, every decision made during the climax can mean the difference between life or death for a surprising number of characters. It doesn't hold your hand either. Some easily overlooked details can result in people dying, and I was shocked that I ended my first playthrough without finding out the true motivations behind the disaster. I ended up immediately replaying the final couple of hours (thanks to a flexible chapter select feature) to figure out everything I missed and aim for a more positive ending, which worked with my personal headcanon as being part of that original narrative, since Max's whole thing is time travel.
The marketing for Reunion makes it clear that this is Max and Chloe's final story, and implies that it will be the final LiS game too. If that's the case then I have no complaints about this being the capstone to the franchise. It's not only a worthy sequel to Double Exposure, but to LiS1 too. More than that, it healed an emotional wound I've been carrying since 2015. If you have any interest in this series, I highly recommend that you take this opportunity to "press x to sit" with Max and Chloe one last time.
When something terrible happens to the characters you love in a book or a movie, it hurts because you care about them, but there's also a thin veneer of distance granted by it being a passive experience. A game like the original Life is Strange was different though, because I had to choose which terrible thing happened at the end. It made me complicit, and so I was left with not just the loss, but also the guilt of my part in it. LiS1 is such a powerful story--and Max and Chloe are such memorable characters--that my choice at the end of that first playthrough in 2015 has haunted me for a decade.
I started the final episode of LiS1 with no clue of what was ahead and only one thought on my mind: Chloe had to survive, no matter the cost. Then I got to the end and was told that the cost was letting a whole town full of people die, including everyone else I'd met over the course of the story. I spent about fifteen minutes pacing back and forth, trying to decide what to do. What made me decide in the end was that Chloe didn't want to sacrifice her mother to save herself. I thought that Chloe wouldn't recover from that. So I let her go. And I never forgave myself.
In the years since, I've often pondered how I would have written a happy ending for LiS1. To me, the pieces of the puzzle were there, and it felt like the developer might have considered including one only to remove it for dramatic impact. I never got around to writing it, and now I don't need to.
A couple of years ago, LiS: Double Exposure brought Max back (see my review here). It was great to see her again and the first 80% of that story was solid. It did drop the ball towards the end though, due to it setting up plot threads for a potential sequel that looked like it would turn LiS into X-Men. The strengths of LiS are as a suburban mystery series with supernatural powers, centred around sympathetic characters. Trying to switch to a superhero action plot would have been a disaster, and thankfully the developer of Reunion realised this.
Despite being a direct sequel to Double Exposure, Reunion backpedals on that Brotherhood-of-Mutants-esque plot thread, abandoning it completely. Instead we have another classic LiS mystery to unravel, another impending disaster to prevent. Plus we have the true magic of LiS, and something that I never thought would happen: Max and Chloe back together again for another adventure. It's a joy to see them in action. The groundwork for this reunion was set up in Double Exposure and builds on Max's powers from both that story and LiS1. It works surprisingly well, acknowledging both possible outcomes of the first game in a way that fits the overall narrative.
By bringing Chloe back into the story, it also returns that same anxiety I felt towards the end of the original. It's well founded too. Without mentioning any specifics, the climax of Reunion might be the most tense string of decisions I've needed to make since the suicide mission in Mass Effect 2. And as in that game, every decision made during the climax can mean the difference between life or death for a surprising number of characters. It doesn't hold your hand either. Some easily overlooked details can result in people dying, and I was shocked that I ended my first playthrough without finding out the true motivations behind the disaster. I ended up immediately replaying the final couple of hours (thanks to a flexible chapter select feature) to figure out everything I missed and aim for a more positive ending, which worked with my personal headcanon as being part of that original narrative, since Max's whole thing is time travel.
The marketing for Reunion makes it clear that this is Max and Chloe's final story, and implies that it will be the final LiS game too. If that's the case then I have no complaints about this being the capstone to the franchise. It's not only a worthy sequel to Double Exposure, but to LiS1 too. More than that, it healed an emotional wound I've been carrying since 2015. If you have any interest in this series, I highly recommend that you take this opportunity to "press x to sit" with Max and Chloe one last time.