I love how the game constantly refers to Chloe as ex girlfriend even if you choose Bay in Reunion
I think it really show what route Reunion team had in mind when they wrote this game and which route they wrote first - Bae ending. Max and Chloe in this game were very much written as exes who get back together, but all those lines doesn't make sense for Bay ending and context behind it , but they they perfectly make sense for Bae and context behind it (Max being aware about break up AND Chloe feeling gulty for it, nence she think that Max move on and that she's not worthy to her anymore)
There also shared diary entries that make sense only for Bae and context behind it - like Max questioning if Chloe beelive in US (in their relationship) which make sense for bae because of break up and Chloe writting how they are going to live on road again as it always meant to be.
Even the game ends in very bae style ha ha - with both of them leaving the town to hit the road and then ending montage showed only bae cutscenes (with them holding hands and watching storm) even on bay, and made parallel ot events in reunion (they hold hands while watching campus burning)
On my last run i enjoyed Bae route so much and i think this is the best and most natural route for this game because we have two characters who actually have a shared history (which represented in a lot of exclusive Bae dialogues!) , who know each other, who missed each other and still loved each other even after break up (and the game made it clear a few times!) and who get back together and it ends with full circle back to lis1!
Bae route in Reunion also could very much well work even without the whole merge stuff because key element (Chloe being alive) was always here. While to make Bay work, Reunion team had to retcon DE ending and merge Bay with Bae by slapping Bae!Chloe on Bay. No Chloe - no Reunion story - no Bay route working!
I love how they made Bay Max jealous of Bae Max's adventures with Chloe in this scene
Many say "Reunion" made Bay ending even better, but I think otherwise. These lines make me sad for Bay Max - and Bay route overall.
Think about it. Bay Max lived 11 years without Chloe and didn't experience these memories. But Bae Max did—she and Chloe both remember it, not just Chloe on Bay route. This is isn't the only example where Bae Max talk back about her experience everytime where Chloe brought up "we did this, we did that", while Bay Max says "I don't remember it"
Assuming that in both Bay and Bae they stay together forever (because I don't think the new D9 team made a major pivot to force them apart again), Bay Max will always miss the nine lost years with Chloe that she will never make up for. Even when Chloe tells her everything, it's not the same as experiencing it firsthand. These memories will only exist for Chloe in Bay.
But at the same time, Bae Max will have all these memories, and by the end of her life, she'll always be at the point where she spent far more time with Chloe than the other Max thanks to these 9 years.
Yes, Bay Max didn't have to experience the pain of a breakup. But she did have to experience the pain of Chloe's death and also know that she lost a lot of good time with Chloe that she'll never be able to recapture, while Bae Max did—and even after the breakup, the good memories will still be there and will be complemented by new ones she'll do with Chloe after "Reunion."
So, for me, it's worth to choose Bae in Reunion because I'm not going to deprive Max of all the good memories she had with Chloe just to get a more "dramatic" story about second chances.
IMO, It all comes down to Bae being the more natural route for "Reunion" and i'll die on that hill that this game was written with Bae in mind —Chloe doesn't suddenly appear in Max's life from the dead. Here they simply continue their relationship from where they left off and they will always be on the same page in sharing their memories AND there is no wall between them in the form of Max not remembering her life with Chloe for last 9 years.
A lot of people are complaining that Reunion undoes their choice to kill Chloe and save Arcadia Bay, that it undoes every choice we made in the original game. And... I agree. It does undo that choice, because it isn't left with one. Reunion did not undo the choices of LiS, DE did.
DE dragged Max out of the game graveyard.
DE broke her and Chloe up.
DE invalidated the majority's choice of saving Chloe.
DE shat on Michel and Don't Nod's original intention for that ending, which was that no matter how hard living got? Max and Chloe had one another. And that was what was important. It wouldn't be easy, but they loved each other enough to make it work.
Reunion was made to pick up the pieces because believe it or not a majority of Life is Strange fans who cared about Max's story and were still invested in it ten years later are the Pricefield fans. I see the term "Pricefield cult" being thrown around and it makes me want to scream. Ten fucking years later and people still don't understand that the original game is ABOUT MAX AND CHLOE'S RELATIONSHIP.
The main fucking leitmotif of the game is called Max & Chloe for fuck's sake. Reunion did what it had to do to sell. It had to undo all of the bad will that the DE team made with their bizarre writing choices such as: hornyposting Max, shitty break up out of nowhere, and Avengers Endgame-ass ending.
If you're mad that Reunion undoes DE? Then maybe the writers should have left well enough alone and not make a shitty game starring Max. DE is the game that ruined the original LiS. Reunion is the one left fixing it, even if it meant having to step on the original game's ending because people who killed Chloe would throw a fit if "their ending" wasn't respected. Y'all were certainly giddy when DE punished Pricefielders for saving Chloe by breaking them up. Well now... I guess it's Pricefielders turn to be giddy about our ending being respected. I mean isn't it great? No one died this time. Unless... it was less about saving the town and more about being misogynistic and killing a traumatized abuse victim with mental health problems.
Well said but
"I guess it's Pricefielders turn to be giddy about our ending being respected. I mean isn't it great" - they disrespected Bae and doubled down on the DE'S bs "oh they were toxic and argued all the times in Bae" . And then they just made Bay pricefield scenes better. So no, Pricefield/Bae was not respected, not in the way as it should be.
Life is Strange: Double Exposure - Thoughts on Max's Return and the Handling of Chloe
It is...such a struggle to get through Life is Strange: Double Exposure, which is a shame because it's actually got a decently intriguing mystery (even if it does start to go off the rails near the end), beautiful visuals, stellar voice acting, and a memorable new cast of characters. If this had been a LiS game featuring a new protagonist, as every LiS game has before, it would have been another solid entry in the LiS universe, but because they decided to go the nostalgia route and bait everyone by having Max return as the main character, it's not.
The problem with Double Exposure isn't so much that Max returned, but in how her past and the events of the first Life is Strange game are handled. What happened in Arcadia Bay traumatized Max, that much is clear, as she admits to Moses that she stopped using her powers and trying to tap into her original abilities is like using an "atrophied muscle", but aside from this reference, a single jump into a photo, a couple of pictures, a few eerie voice-only flashbacks, The Door and The Chair, that's all the callbacks we get in five full-length episodes.
Despite the lessons she supposedly learned in the first game, Max immediately starts abusing her new set of powers--the ability to shift between two timelines and "pulse"--without hesitation while trying to figure out the murder of her new best friend in one timeline and prevent it from happening in another, even though doing something similar with Chloe is what led to a massive storm threatening to wipe Arcadia Bay off the map, and she was forced to choose between her best friend/love interest or a town full of (mostly innocent) people.
Because of this blatant disregard of her past actions while simultaneously insisting that they traumatized her to the point that she can't even rewind time anymore, it makes no sense why they brought back Max as the main character again and didn't just give her new powers to a new main character. They obviously took some inspiration from the Life is Strange comics because they wanted to give her her timeline-jumping abilities, but they could have just tweaked them and made them a bit more original so it would have made sense for a fresh protagonist to have them. It honestly irks me that they wanted Max back with her comic powers while also completely ignoring the lessons Max learned in both her debut game and the comics her new powers manifested in.
And then there's Chloe.
Oh, Chloe.
At every given opportunity, Deck Nine bashes the Bae Ending and grossly mischaracterizes and misunderstands who Chloe Price is. My gripes with Deck Nine picking and choosing what they want from the comics aside, they didn't have to do Chloe that dirty. Like, if they REALLY wanted to split up Max and Chloe (which they obviously really wanted to because they did it by COMPLETELY assassinating Chloe's character), there were a gazillion other, better ways they could have made it happen that didn't involve Chloe growing frustrated with Max's struggle with her trauma over the events of the first game (which, again, she apparently didn't learn any lessons from).
Chloe would never abandon someone, let alone the woman that sacrificed an entire town for her, the woman that she might be DATING, over struggles with trauma. Chloe is probably the best person to help with such things--she lost her dad and her best friend all in the same day, for God's sake, and later on the woman that brought light and love back into her life. She knows what it's like to feel hurt, to feel guilt, to feel...alone. And she'd never leave someone--a friend, a lover --to face these things by themselves. That's not who Chloe Price. Chloe Price is selfish and reckless, sure, but she's also loyal, passionate, and stubborn as hell. Chloe Price is NOT a coward, not a turncoat, not someone that gives up (ever; she kept pursuing Rachel until it quite literally killed her), not someone that turns her back on those she loves. Death is the only thing that can stop the force of nature that is Chloe Price, and you can't convince me that she'd dump Max over the ghosts that haunt her.
Honestly, one of the worst mistakes an author can make is to simply have the main couple break up, dying is fine, but breaking up? Especially for the dumbest reason of all, After four or five development books??? Simply because you don't like them anymore. This is very disrespectful to the fans.
We have some exceptions like Max and Chloe from Life is Strange. With two endings where Chloe dies as a heroine or survives at the expense of thousands of people, this ending honestly doesn't make sense to me, Chloe begs Max to save her mother, Did people really think they would live happily ever after after all this? Chloe could never forgive her own mother for her father's death, and she knows it wasn't her fault, now imagine having to live with Max knowing that she refused to save her, it makes a lot of sense that she left her, love isn't enough.
Now we have Jacob and Emma from Peculiar Children and Jason and Piper from Heroes of Olympus. Of course Emma wasn't over her ex but it was okay because she and Jacob got 3 books for a discount, I definitely loved them so much, the breakup was repetitive and meaningless, especially with Jacob quickly not caring about her anymore and falling in love with Noor, I liked them but I always hoped that Jacob would go back to Emma in the end.
Jason and Piper literally got a glimpse of their future life together, how can Rick break them up? Especially with us not even seeing it happening, they also had so much development in 5 books and it was all thrown in the trash.He then put the final nail in the coffin by making Jason die and Piper get with a random girl. I will never forgive.
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