The Importance of Reconnecting: A Discussion of ‘Life is Strange: Reunion’
The Life is Strange series has remained dear to my heart despite some questionable releases over the years, and I’ve remained faithful to the franchise since its 2015 debut. While I’ve made no secret of my qualms regarding later entries, I hope I’ve also properly conveyed my love for moments within each sequel that made a significant impact on me. The latest installment, Life is Strange: Reunion, initially made me want to write about how the series has gone downhill. But a specific, intimate moment several hours into Reunion made me change my mind, as it reminded me why I fell in love with these games in the first place.
I’ve been a lesbian for as far back as I have memories, so you can imagine how I played through the various romance options across the Life is Strange series. If you had to ask me “Bae or Bay,” as the intro to Reunion does when plotting out consequences for the narrative you’ll experience, the clear and correct answer is always Bae. It’s almost laughable that the original game, Life is Strange, included a bisexual option with Warren, because as Reunion proves, it has always been about Chloe Price. And readers of Epilogue will be no stranger to the amount of sapphic gushing I’ve written about Steph in True Colors.
Instead of doing the impossible heavy-lifting of writing a story around the binary choice of the first game’s final decision, Life is Strange: Reunion commits the sin of resurrecting past narrative beats that open plot-holes and paradoxes alike. Having confronted, in multiple iterations, the consequences of Max’s ultimate choice in the first Life is Strange game, Reunion kicks sand into the eyes and dares to ask the question: what if Chloe Price and Arcadia Bay survived? What if, no matter what you chose in Life is Strange, you’re still facing the downstream repercussions of the decisions you made years ago?
And thus, knock knock, Chloe arrives at your door. Rather, she skids up, headlights blaring at Max in the dead of night as she flees a condemned building, and rekindles a relationship that seems to have completely fallen apart in the interim between games. As Reunion’s narrative explores, Chloe and Max – at least using the information from the choices I disclosed to have made as the game opens – survived the storm in Arcadia Bay, escaped together, and entered a romantic partnership that, for one reason or another, eventually disintegrated. As a result, the two have been estranged for quite some time. The reuniting of these characters in Reunion is awkward for both parties, as you can see how both Max and Chloe have put undue pressure on themselves imagining what to say if they ever did, in fact, meet again.
I can relate to this dynamic between Chloe and Max, not just in terms of romance, but in terms of friendship. There were many friends throughout college that I drifted apart from, mostly because I was busy taking full-time classes and balancing two-to-three jobs at once. There were friendships that dwindled purely because of distance, as neither one of us could afford to travel miles away to see each other like we used to. And there are of course the casualties that involve simple things like growing up and realizing that the values which used to bring you together with this person no longer suit you.
Of course, I can relate to the romantic dynamic that Chloe and Max share as well. I am lucky enough to say that most of my ex-girlfriends and I are still friends, or at least on speaking terms. There haven’t been many, if any, explosive finales to my relationships. There are still, however, some former partners of mine that stir my heart more than others, which is to say that I regret the way things ended with certain people – or simply never blossomed into their full potential. While we are friends to this day, the idea that I didn’t present my best self, or that circumstances drove us apart instead of some sort of fight, or even that I was too shy to confess my feelings at the time, etc. – those notions bother me more than if things had ended badly. And clearly, within Life is Strange: Reunion, these regrets are true for both Chloe and Max as well.
As aforementioned, my first few hours with Reunion were not the most impressive foray for the series. Sure, it was nice to see some old favorites from Double Exposure, and of course, the queen herself, Chloe Price. But in general, a lot of early gameplay keeps its hands clean from anything supernatural, and often involves environmental exploration more than dialogue, which is predominantly the aspect I enjoy most from the Life is Strange series. About six hours into my playthrough, there was a moment where Chloe finishes investigating in the brewery, reunites with Max, and they steal a mask for a party at the Abraxas house that evening. After frantically rewinding time, Max and Chloe flee the scene and take a canoe out into the gorgeous, sun-kissed lake and bond for a period of time, reminiscing.
This is when my opinion of Life is Strange: Reunion took an about-face. Chloe and Max have, until this point, avoided truly confronting the vulnerability of their feelings about the past – about their shared trauma, their unique experiences with the supernatural, their extraneous relationships, and of course, their still-lingering feelings for each other. Unaddressed, it feels, as the player, that the two characters, though earnestly eager to rekindle their bond, lack the confidence to articulate the depth at which each other’s absence has gnawed at them from the inside over the past year-or-so of disconnection.
Sometimes it takes getting stuck in an elevator to peel away the rough exterior we hold against the abrasive forces of the world. Seeing Max and Chloe become vulnerable at last on this boat in the sunset was a beautiful respite from the tense drama of the main story’s more investigative hybrid of sci-fi and criminal investigation. After a series of dialogue choices, mostly led by Chloe, discussing Max’s former crush, Amanda, and other matters, Max is given a classic ‘this-will-have-consequences’-style choice: Kiss Chloe or hold her hands.
Naturally, I went in to kiss Chloe. I had sacrificed an entire town for her, after all. But bizarrely, when I selected this option, Max and Chloe tumbled out of the boat and into the water before I even had a chance to lean in for a peck. So what is a sapphic to do, you might wonder. Obviously you try again. And fail again. Hilariously, however, you are not permitted to try a third time. Instead, Life is Strange: Reunion anticipates that foolish yearners like myself will attempt a fruitless third rewind, and Chloe takes over in this moment. Max reaches out to hold hands and Chloe calls her out directly, asking whether Max had just tried to kiss her and rewound. Max, of course, bashfully admits that she had. I can only imagine that I would have missed this comedic, flirtatious escapade if I had simply chosen to hold Chloe’s hands.
What follows is a quiet moment on the water, one of those quintessential Life is Strange music montages where about four to six angles of scenic peace wash over you and you just set the controller down to take in the tides of sonic cleansing.
I needed this, I thought, as melancholic reflection allowed me to drift, like Max and Chloe’s boat, back and forth through memory and the present. It was as if years of this series – a decade’s worth of memories – were finally given their roses. At last, even if it was barely a hope, not even a promise, of a better future for these characters, an optimistic world in which Max and Chloe found peace together, I was allowed to wish and to believe that things would all work out in the end.
Sometimes people ask me how I am still friends with most of my ex-girlfriends. To me, it’s relatively obvious, but I receive the inquiry often enough to have reflected on why people might find that continued connection to be surprising. And to be clear, with my most recent breakup, for example, I asked for several months of no-contact once we separated because I recognized that I was still in love with her and wouldn’t be able to have a healthy friendship without time to let those feelings dissipate. But in general, across the board, I am still in regular contact with many of my former partners. I don’t know if it’s because I’m a queer woman, or that I transitioned genders, or that many of my ex-girlfriends came out as lesbians after our breakup – some confluence, I imagine. The point, I think, is that once you shrug off the constraints of cis-heteronormativity, the idea that a breakup should completely end a relationship feels increasingly childish.
Life is Strange: Reunion beautifully captures the complexity of queer love, specifically the notion that you never fully let go of the space you held in your heart for this person, no matter how much time has passed or how many other people you’ve loved. Chloe and Max, despite everything, still love each other, and it doesn’t need to be articulated aloud. You can see it in their interactions, what they’re choosing to share and, more importantly, what they’re avoiding from sharing.
Finding an opportunity to reconnect with someone you still hold love for is beautiful, but it doesn’t mean that it’s easy. There are women in my life that, no matter what, I will always love. Even when I cry with joy at their romantic successes, I still ache internally for what we had and what could have been. And though these feelings have no power over my future, they will always be a part of my past – that’s why I find the rekindling within Reunion so beautiful. It gives me closure for something that I’ll never have the chance to, for better and worse, in my own life. In fiction, I can yearn for (doomed) sapphic love to succeed, and that’s sometimes enough to rejuvenate my own optimism regarding my own romantic prospects.
At the time of writing, I have not hit the credits on Life is Strange: Reunion, but I’m happy to say that this game had the potential to make me think about my own relationships and the ways in which I reconnect with others. There are still many relationships I’d like to repair one day, and many more that prove to me that reaching out and being vulnerable is always worth it. I refuse to be cynical in a world where loneliness is on the rise, where building new relationships is more difficult than ever. Even then, I choose to believe that we create purpose in our lives by sharing it with other people, and that importance is proven through the simple reconnection of Chloe Price and Max Caulfield in Life is Strange: Reunion.
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