tgrfawcett Life is Strange: Reunion Review

Though created by unique teams with little crossover in the writing department, Life is Strange: Double Exposure and Life is Strange: Reunion form two very distinct halves of a single story. Double Exposure offers a chance to see what Max has become after ten years of grief and self-doubt. She doesn't know how to trust herself, or her abilities, and when a tragedy hits the Caledon University campus she is still going through it. Through stories of grief and loss she encounters at Caledon, Max has to actually deal with her past and powers after seemingly running away from them for ten years. Then comes Reunion, where the story becomes how in order to be our strongest, to heal, we need people by our side. Max had Moses, and now she has Chloe again to see her through another tragedy. With Chloe, Max seems to realize that she can be happy, that she can be better. With Max, Chloe completes the arc she started in Before the Storm realizing that there is more to herself than just chaos and death. There are critiques to be made of these games. After all, Reunion comes as a sort of panic button finale responding to fan backlash that arguably centered on Chloe's absence in Double Exposure over the merits of the game itself. With that negative reception and faltering sales, Deck Nine is now at the edge of shutting down and it is doubtful that Reunion will be enough to save it or Life is Strange as a series for the foreseeable future. Reunion was made in just seventeen months and reflects a shoestring budget that has seen it docked points across reviews. Understanding it within that context makes what the team at Deck Nine were able to achieve here all the more impressive. Reunion is pared back in certain areas, cutting time short on side characters and the poorly received threads of Double Exposure with reasonable enough explanations. Still, through a well-constructed mystery, Reunion ends us being, despite a melancholic tone, something of a triumph in compassion. The entire thrust of its core mystery is centered on stopping this fire that kills and hurts so many allows the game to focus its energy on remembering the core idea of the series displaying characters just trying to do their best in extraordinary circumstances. Max and Chloe's reunion is cathartic, not just because it comes ten years after a famously contentious ending, but because these two characters really care about each other. There is heart in the writing, performances, and animation, bringing their arc to a close. The fire at Caledon and the paradox of the "Overlight" act as ways to demonstrate how they have changed as people since we first met them in 2015. They have grown up, adopting select traits from the other to create more dynamic, self-assured people capable of facing difficult situations and accepting that perfect should not be the enemy of good (at least in the ending I got). Chloe's final conversation with Safi in the "Overlight," in particular, highlights how much she has grown since Before the Storm. For all her bravado then, she was afraid of the world and didn't feel she belonged in it bringing her to the finale of Life is Strange as someone who wanted to be let go. Now, she finds her way to belonging in the world through her connections to Max, her band, Moses, and even Safi. Where the "Overlight" acts as a metaphor for depression and suicide, Chloe offers a counter that while reality is difficult, we can keep going because we have others in our lives that care about us. Acceptance of the past, of our circumstances, becomes a major theme then for Max as well. Her ability to go back in time fuels her self-doubt. The damage she can cause and the lives she can help both share a space in her mind constantly. In Double Exposure, that self-doubt dominated her every action until she rejected it and fused the timelines. Now, she is more confident and comfortable, but failure is still a sticking point. Even without losing anyone, the fire will haunt her, but she's found people in her life to give her the confidence to keep going. Now, she can let the past happen in a way that she hadn't had before. In keeping with that idea of support, Chloe's choice to burn the photo is her allowing Max the peace to keep living. Through four games, Deck Nine has done an admirable job bringing complex characters to life and I hope against reason they are able to do so again in the future. In the meantime, I'll miss Life is Strange. For years it was a series that any entry could be someone's favorite and they'd be totally justified. Double Exposure's messy ending created a time that wasn't the case, and I suppose still isn't, but with Reunion completing the arc it offers a compelling final story in the franchise. There is really no other game series like it and there likely won't be as the games industry contracts in fear of a full on crash. But dadgum if we don't need games that tell us that despite the world being difficult and overwhelming that we'll be hella okay.