Review: Life is Strange Reunion
In 2015, developer Don’t Nod released the first episode of Life is Strange (back then, episodic adventure games were all the rage). Over the course of that five-episode first season, players would grow to love photographer protagonist Max Caulfield and her anarchist friend Chloe Price. The game was filled with teen drama, magic powers, and queer subtext that turned into unambiguous text towards the end of the game, if you made choices that led the two characters in that direction. The game ended with a moral quandary for players, too – Max, who discovers she has the ability to rewind time during the game, must choose between two horrible outcomes, whether she will fight the fate of the girl she loves (platonically or otherwise) at a terrible cost.
Life is Strange Reunion is the sixth and possibly final (if it underperforms) game in the Life is Strange series. The franchise has shifted development teams and formats – it was once an anthology, but the the last two entries have looped back around to Max and Chloe, with Reunion, in particular, looking to square off their story with a new potential end point – no matter what decisions you made in previous Life is Strange games, this one has found a way to smoosh all potential timelines and outcomes together. Now, there’s a way to have a true happy ending – and undo some older unhappy ones.
This approach somewhat undermines what the series has been up to this point. Retroactively deciding that your choices didn’t really matter could be interesting if done well, but there’s a whiff of desperation to the way this game reunites Chloe and Max. This series has always excelled when there’s real consequences for messing with fate, but Reunion plows through those consequences in favour of fan service. It still has some weighty ideas and sequences, but the experience feels watered down.
Life is Strange has become less “edgy” with each new entry since the surprisingly good 2017 Chloe-focused prequel Before the Storm, but the characters in this one really feel worn down to their most base attributes. Max, in particular, has been written with little-to-no personality, and the devotion she receives from several other figures within the story feels entirely unearned. Chloe fares better, and is by far the game’s most well-written character, but having her back at all feels like a betrayal of the series’ broader mission of making your choices feel consequential. Every plot beat and choice from the previous game, Double Exposure, is also brushed aside haphazardly, which makes Reunion feel like a game that is desperate to win back fans who didn’t enjoy that title.
The gameplay elements feel pared back, too. The overarching mystery of the game is unexciting: Max knows, thanks to her time manipulation powers, that the university she works at is going to catch on fire in two days and she needs to learn how to prevent it. The larger goal is to identify the culprits, but the answers are unsatisfying and the bigger cover-up underneath it all weightless – Caledon University has been a terrible setting for Max’s story, and the drama has the weight and propulsion of the fourth season of a bad Netflix YA series. There are few interesting decisions, and Max’s time manipulation ability is used to interesting effect exactly once in the whole game.
Reunion was very clearly developed on a strict deadline with a limited budget, too. Most of the game is set within Caledon University, Max’s workplace from the previous game, and the vast majority of environments are reused from that title. The university seems all but abandoned most of the time; for all the talk of a thriving culture, and later concerns about a huge protest, there are few crowd shots and characters. It’s very difficult to care about a university that does not feel, even remotely, like a functioning school.
Regrettably, Life is Strange: Reunion is far and away the worst game in the series, bordering on a disaster. But if you have not played a Life is Strange game before, this should not dissuade you from checking out the rest of the series. The original game remains an insightful, quirky delight; Life is Strange 2, which pivots in an entirely different direction, is complex and wonderful; True Colors and Double Exposure drop off a little bit, but are still heartfelt and engaging. These are great games for queer representation, telling stories about people who are rarely the protagonists of big games. Life is Strange: Reunion is not a fitting end for a series like this, but that does not devalue those earlier entries.
Life is Strange Reunion is available on PC, Xbox Series X/S, and PlayStation 5. A review copy was provided by the publisher.
James O’Connor has been writing about games since 2008. He is the author of Untitled Goose Game for Boss Fight Books.
