Life is Strange: Reunion Preview: Very familiar but a welcome return all the same

So here we are, the end of the road. After years of becoming increasingly acquainted with Max Caulfield and Chloe Price, it's time to wrap up the story of this charismatic pair in what is being described as the end of their saga in the Life is Strange series by Square Enix. Life is Strange: Reunion, despite only being announced a few weeks ago, is set to make its grand arrival in late March and with that day edging ever closer, I've had the luxury to go hands-on with the game and play just shy of two hours. While I'll get into the finer details in a moment, let me just begin by saying that while there are a lot of similarities between Reunion and 2024's Double Exposure, this does come across as a worthy evolution that will keep fans engaged throughout.

Anyway, let's talk about that blue-haired elephant in the room: Chloe Price. One of the most famous and beloved video game characters of the 2010s has returned and while it might seem like utter nonsense from an outside perspective, the nature of the return actually works rather well in Reunion. Essentially, after the events of Double Exposure, and Max's roles in tying together two splintered timelines, she also invertedly stitched together a timeline where Chloe survived the events of Arcadia Bay with the one where she perished. So, we have a Max that has spent the last decade mourning Chloe combining with a Chloe that comes from a timeline where nothing really went wrong, with Arcadia Bay and her mother remaining alive and well.

From what I can infer, the portion of the game that I played was the opening phase of the game, a period where we get to learn about the other key storyline at play in Reunion. You see, not only does Max have to understand and figure out how Chloe has returned, she's also racing against the clock to get to the bottom of a mystery that concludes with Caledon University going up in flames and claiming the lives of many of her close friends. As you would expect, Max has her hands full, which is perhaps why its lucky that the player can divide and conquer and progress through Reunion as not just Max but also Chloe, in a Life is Strange series first.

Yep, after waddling around the Snapping Turtle and using Max's Rewind ability to trick a particularly nasty heckler into thinking his Mercedes is rolling into the local lake all so that Amanda's stand-up comedy set went as planned, we soon get to slip into Chloe's shoes as she searches for Max. However, this proves to be harder than expected, as the two protagonists find themselves passing like ships in the night, as Max continues to unravel her fiery mystery and skips out of the local bar to visit the headquarters of the Abraxas fraternity for answers. If you witnessed the recent reveal livestream, you will be familiar with what comes next. Max finds herself trapped in a basement with demolition charges about to detonate and cut her investigation very short, a challenge she simply overcomes by using Rewind to cut the detonation wires in the correct way, before escaping the basement. This is all happening while Chloe cruises around the Snapping Turtle, asking around for Max and using her Backtalk ability to talk her way out of a sticky situation with the local campus security guard Noelle. Unlike Rewind, which simply allows you to go back a few seconds and retry a task or conversation as you require, Backtalk is more of a strategic game where you have to give smart and well-thought-out responses to questions to convince someone of your intentions. Hence, after a brief chat with Noelle, the security guard now believes Chloe to be a prospective law graduate from a distant university. That won't come back to bite her at all... It's right after the cusp of this conversation that Chloe finds out that Max is about to be blown to high-heaven, leaving her to race to the scene just as the familiar protagonist exits the basement leading to one heck of an overdue reunion.

I figured I'd walk you through this portion of the gameplay in depth as it serves as a comprehensive look at how developer Deck Nine is going about structuring Life is Strange: Reunion in a gameplay manner. There are two protagonists but it doesn't seem like you get to freely swap between them or even play through the story mainly as one instead of the other. This is still an intricately sculpted narrative where you are somewhat of a passenger that gets to lead the direction of travel a tad with each answer you provide. There are times where you have to play both sides, if you will, moments where you're locked in a conversation between Max and Chloe and have to answer on Max's behalf for one question and then as Chloe a little later, and while this could seem messy, in practice it feels very natural.

Otherwise, as I mentioned at the start of this preview, there is much of Reunion that feels familiar to that of Double Exposure because of it using the same setting of Caledon University. You can wander around the science building, through the halls where the Dean's office is located, around Max's luxurious log cabin home, and as referenced a moment ago, take a load off at the Snapping Turtle. You could argue that this makes for a game that lacks a little in originality but as each area now has a bit more depth and has new elements and features since we last traipsed around, it comes across as a bit of a welcome, well... reunion. The familiar locations are also inhabited by familiar faces, and if you have played Double Exposure, you'll be better equipped with how to navigate and communicate with these individuals, be that Lucas, Moses, Amanda, Vinh, Loretta, the list goes on. You do meet a few fresh faces, but much is as you'd expected for a game set in the same location a few months later.

One thing I did notice is that the gameplay itself seems to flow better than Double Exposure, spending less time setting the scene and delivering exposition. Again, it's all very familiar so it doesn't need to. It's because of this that within the opening portions of the story we find ourselves following more impactful and engaging narrative threads and less time admiring the surroundings and delicately talking to characters we have literally never met before. It feels as though Reunion is more respectful of your time, giving you better reasons to stick around by spending less time on rather menial and meaningless dialogue interactions. Plus, this stretches into the 'abilities' of Max and Chloe, which come across as better integrated into the gameplay and less like an afterthought as they were in Double Exposure. You can now use Max's Rewind when you like (within reasonable amounts, of course), while Chloe's Backtalk is used more like Rewind was in Double Exposure, at key moments in the wider narrative.

To me, the whole end product of Reunion just feels better realised than Double Exposure, but that's not a knock against its predecessor as it wouldn't reach where it is today without what the 2024 game realised. It's simply that Deck Nine seems to have a clearer vision of what they wanted to achieve with this chapter, making for a game that in the two-hours or so that I played, felt more gripping, better paced, and less slow and sluggish. That said, it's still Life is Strange, so don't expect the narrative to move along like a bullet train, but it does progress quicker than the gentle walk that was Double Exposure a lot of the time.

So, if that all piques your interest, you'll likely be quite happy when Life is Strange: Reunion makes its arrival on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S on March 26.