The upcoming Life is Strange: Reunion is an attempt, as superficially befits the supernatural franchise, to rewind time. It follows the lead of 2024’s Double Exposure, which brought back the original game’s protagonist, Max Caulfield, for the first time since 2015, evolving her from nervous high school student to intrepid university lecturer. There’s a sense with this new release, though, that the series is eating its own tail for fan service and sales, and that strangeness is being replaced with comfy morality and memories. Reunion sees not just the return of Max but also her former best friend / girlfriend Chloe, a balm to players who have fixated on this relationship for an entire decade. And with the pair’s reunion, perhaps the most important lesson of the original game has been ignored: the uncomfortable – and very anti-shareholder reality – that we cannot, and often should not try to, ever go home again.
The original game, released episodically across 2015, is undoubtedly one of the best-known “modern” adventure games. Treading the same ground as Telltale’s 2012 The Walking Dead, it used an episodic, “interactive television” approach to bring adventure games back into mainstream awareness. Adopting the narrative-branching choices that had become hugely popular in contemporary RPGs like Dragon Age, Life is Strange asked you to make decisions that could have deeply shocking repercussions. Max’s adventure begins as she saves her friend, Chloe, from death using a newly discovered power to rewind time, and from that moment on you’re never made to feel like a bystander. It hands over as much timeline-twisting control as possible at the earliest opportunity.
Despite its supernatural leanings, Life is Strange’s key appeal perhaps came from being something altogether different from the wider market: a rare video game that explores the ritual of coming-of-age while navigating cliques and classes. The high school drama is something well explored in cinema and for good reason, as most people alive have experienced the chaos of being a teenager. It might seem like niche material for a medium that is typically action-driven, but Life is Strange’s approach found fans from a multitude of backgrounds and has been enjoyed by many millions of players.
What is so compelling about that foundational story of Max and Chloe is how explosive it is. The two characters appear as chalk and cheese, the former reserved and the latter destructively rebellious. The use of Max’s ability to rewind time brings destruction, too, with her interventions harming as much as they help. By the end of the game it’s clear that loss is an unavoidable part of her power, reflected in the final decision: will you save her home, Arcadia Bay, or save Chloe from the incoming storm? An objective appraisal seems to suggest that the only really positive choice you can make is to allow Max to save the town, unlocking a path to becoming a photographer and move forward with her life. Of course, many people have been happy to use Max’s powers to save Chloe regardless of the consequences – it’s not a realistic situation, but it nevertheless reflects the muddy, sometimes unsatisfying nature of emotional and moral realities as we age.
As it has evolved, the Life is Strange series has lost its ability to tell compelling, thorny human stories through a supernatural lens. 2019’s Life is Strange 2 was divisive but presented a story with vast reach: a road trip following two brothers trying to escape the ramifications of racism and police brutality. 2021’s True Colors marked a turning point for the series, moving away from such nuance and embracing a direction that’s excessively sedate. At least some of that shifting direction can be attributed to publisher Square Enix passing the franchise’s torch to Deck Nine, creators of prequel Before the Storm and the current custodians of Life is Strange. There are well-meaning messages, ones hard fought for amidst toxic studio culture across True Colors’ development. Sadly, that doesn’t make up for the lack of real bite and narrative risk, and the sense of a game steered towards the broadest audience possible.
True Colors is, on the surface, very similar to the original Life is Strange games developed by Don’t Nod, but it’s undeniable that it leans into the cosy games movement. It’s set in a picture-perfect rural town, and your arrival there is accompanied by the beautiful-but-saccharine tones of Gabrielle Aplin’s “Home”. The log cabins and flower-laden frontages are joined by an extremely close-knit group of characters, with even the gruff older bar owner not curmudgeonly enough to avoid partaking in a wholesome LARP. There is, as per the wider series, a central mystery, supernatural elements, and some betrayal. The limited number of locations and general warm-heartedness, however, makes this feel like a soap opera for teens – with all the emotional catharsis that implies.
True Colors was the first Life is Strange game to release as a complete story, rather than delivered episodically. While it is divided into chapters, there’s a clear difference between its narrative structure and those of the games that preceded it. The original’s TV season-like approach delivers frequent, striking cliffhangers and distinctive differences between episodes, whether parallel timelines or unexpected deaths. It’s a design that, while perhaps crafted to encourage players to return for the next episode drop, creates a particularly incident-laden narrative.
True Colors and Double Exposure, meanwhile, are more focused on the relationships between characters, creating tales that aspire to be more mature rather than focused on maintaining a propulsive, season-selling narrative. The trade of incident-laden tales for closer-told realism, however, means sacrificing the emotional texture that should be central to the series. A coming of age tale, which all Life is Strange games are meant to be, should be as much about big ideas and even bigger emotions as the utter inter-personal whirlwind that change brings.
Many other aspects of the original experience have been muted. Music was always a key part of Life is Strange but, with the disappearing drama, it’s faded into the background. There aren’t moments like Max popping in her headphones for a listen of “To All Of You”, the ode to Americana which perfectly fits the first moments of the game’s high school experience. And the watercolour visuals of Life is Strange, which made its opening imagery of a towering tornado unforgettable, have been brushed aside in favour of the smooth and realistic. Double Exposure has industry-leading facial animations, but they can’t make up for a world that is devoid of wonder. It’s telling that one of True Colors’ most memorable moments, its characters watching lanterns rise into the sky, is simply a mirror of a sequence in Life is Strange 2.
The return of Chloe after so many years looks very likely to tread familiar ground. With another natural disaster threatening Max and her friends, it seems poised to once again ask what we should sacrifice for love. However, Double Exposure already indicates that these themes won’t be satisfyingly revived. Max’s return in 2024 didn’t bring the original spirit of the series back with her. The young, uncertain student was replaced by an adult fully capable of facing new challenges. Grief and doubt thread their way through the narrative but Max feels too emotionally equipped to deal with them, always with Gen Z quips – or measured reassurances – to hand no matter the situation. It’s alienating to be in the shoes of a protagonist who isn’t in much need of an emotional education, and for her to exist in a world where every character feels poisoned by ironic internet language. And if Reunion intends to simply retread the same ground as the original, its characters – now changed by life and experience, their arcs long since completed – are surely unable to successfully echo what made them so compelling and enduring in the first place.
There was the potential for a bolder approach than what’s coming. Double Exposure introduced the power to switch between timelines, which was an interesting concept but brought about simple, almost immediately explained puzzles. A marriage of that idea and the original rewind power might have allowed for some innovative, layered adventuring that could lend some frisson to the now overly-smooth Life is Strange formula. Instead, there doesn’t seem to be much justification for Reunion’s existence. Comic books have already looked at the possibility of Max and Chloe reuniting, and even those great reads are hard to recall in the long run. The further adventures of that doomed duo seems best left to the imagination or less time-consuming side stories.
Despite the success of the arguably already anodyne True Colors, Square Enix appears to have balked at anything that might make Life is Strange unprofitable. The return of Max Caulfield alone was reported as not enough to bring financial success to the franchise’s publisher, and as a factor in an end-of-year downturn. The return of so many elements from the first game – Chloe, the rewind power, and seemingly even narrative and themes – feels like a crass attempt to profit from uninspired fan service. Repetitive doom and chaste romance are especially likely to be the default given Square Enix is well reported as having wanted to avoid the series being known as a “gay game”. It’s a series that seems intent on keeping its queer fans held at arms length, having refused to definitively determine its characters’ sexualities despite the direction of its story.
It’s reasonable that fans do want to see more Max and Chloe. There are always those who want more of any story, of course, but particularly so when the characters’ story originally lacked much in the way of an overt relationship. The problem is that there seems to be no indication of authentic artistic drive behind the series’ current direction. There can be no foundation to a meaningful story in the mixture of a troubled developer, ambivalent publisher, and weak vision for what the franchise means. Any impact of this title, other than being another product in a franchise, doesn’t look to last beyond Square Enix’s financial year.
It feels altogether like the series has reached a dead end with its trend-chasing and, more recently, profit-seeking, which now appear to be Life is Strange’s guiding principles. A brighter picture of what could have been can be found in Don’t Nod’s successor series, Lost Records, which launched with Bloom & Rage last year. Some maudlin melodrama can be found there, yes, but there’s also a level of emotional unpredictability that has been stripped out of Life is Strange’s DNA. This isn’t to say that Reunion is totally star-crossed, and no doubt fans will be clamouring to see the review scores. This is to say, however, that the risk-taking heart of the series feels long gone. Life is Strange: Reunion looks likely to have little to say about life or its strangeness, but damning things about intellectual property.
Ceridwen Millington is a journalist, gamer, and reader who is almost always ready to dive into science fiction.
