Eating and Having (Gaming)

by Cody Miller , Music of the Spheres - Never Forgot, Thursday, April 02, 2026, 10:07 (2 hours, 24 minutes ago) @ Cody Miller

One of the things I found most interesting about the Dontnod Life is Strange games was their commitment to every choice having an upside and a downside. There was no 'best' outcome. No choice where everyone was happy. Even the endings were tradeoffs. One has to go, Chloe or Arcadia Bay. Sean and Daniel cannot run away happily ever after no matter what you do. This always played into the burden of the time rewind power since having seen all the outcomes you have to settle on one imperfect decision and be responsible for someone having a bad time.

Turns out that in the end, you can actually have it all.

Chloe and Arcadia Bay can both exist. Everyone can live in this "Life or Death Finale" to Max and Chloe's story (in fact, everyone lived for me on the first try. So much for that I guess.) The storm never has to be a threat. It feels a bit like a betrayal and a fantasy.

In the end, the fate of a photograph is left to Chloe. Give it to Max, or burn it so she can never jump back? But when Max's powers can leave no downside, when fate can be foiled at will, when you don't actually HAVE to always be saddled with regret, what choice is this?

The game wrestles with the rather uninteresting notion of what happens to 'this' Chloe when you rewind. The powers were interesting as a metaphor for regret and indecision, not as an exercise in the reality of the many worlds interpretation.

As surprising as it is, the story is perhaps the best since the original game. I think it appropriately addresses how people change, how they grow apart, and how what was once home becomes abroad, and how the whirlwind week of the original game is not the standard set for a life and relationship when it's finished.

That being said, the time rewind powers are less interesting than in the first game. The first game had you using them to do many things, without hints or prompts. Have a conversation, and should you choose to rewind a new dialogue option may appear. In Reunion, a popup proclaims this in clear terms. The sense of creativity and discovery is greatly diminished this time around with fewer opportunities to go outside the box so to speak. This is rather disappointing for a game that's basically a whodunnit, where you need to look for and find clues.

At the finale, I was expecting to have to heavily use my rewind powers to gather information, teleport around, grab objects I otherwise couldn't, and be pushed to the limit. But no. I saved everyone without having to rewind once. There was a stunning lack of creative design here.

The lack of interesting game design and abandonment of one of the core themes hurt this game. But otherwise, it felt surprisingly thoughtful and realistic in the continuation of Max and Chloe's relationship.

But will Square Enix burn the picture so to speak and never return to Max and Chloe again?