u/Quick-Ad9335

The showrunners have claimed they want more than one season. If that's the case Pricefield will give them all the same problems SE, Don't Nod, and Deck 9 had in trying to come up with more LiS content without Max and Chloe.

Don't Nod originally wanted to make one-off, episodic entries, hence why LiS 2 did not feature Max and Chloe. That lead to bitter complaints and, among other reasons, was what lead to the failure of LiS 2. True Colors failed to make much of an impact and we don't need to rehash what happened to DE.

So if the showrunners want a second season-- how will they go about it? If they follow the game, they have to decide whether Chloe lives or dies. Odds are better than even they'll choose to kill her. I personally think choosing Bae for a wide-release TV show would invite no end of unpleasant controversy. Killing off a whole town for the sake of a queer relationship? That's going to piss a lot of vocal and unpleasant people off, even those who won't watch the show. But choosing Bay makes for picturesque TV-- tragedy always does. Imagine the ending scene where Max is looking at Chloe's grave or coffin and sees a blue butterfly landing on it and then flying away.

Problem is I doubt people would care any more for a future season without Pricefield than the players did for future games-- especially if they go for the romance angle. Which I suspect they will, since that makes for better TV. Also, I strongly suspect the main audience of this TV show will probably be queer or prefer Pricefield. Not unless they want accusations of queer baiting.

Killing Chloe will have about the same disastrous effects for the show's numbers as did the death of Joel in the Last of Us TV show.

Of course one way to make Chloe's death palatable is to make her unlikable. But if they do that, the show will fail. Given that the stronger actor was picked as Chloe, I'm pretty sure that's not where they're going.

To be frank, Pricefield has had a tendency to suck all the oxygen out of the room, limiting the future options of any LiS media. Kill Chloe and Pricefield and a lot of the more dedicated fans will lose interest. But keep Pricefield and they have to keep making media with Max and Chloe.

So what are they going to do? I'm fairly curious. Let's see if they do a better job than SE.

I've played Reunion twice and I figure I'd share my thoughts. Those are worth at least 1 cent, maybe even 2. So me giving my thoughts for free is quite a deal right? ^(probably not)

TL;DR-- I liked Reunion. I liked it as an LiS game and I loved it as a Pricefield game. I had a very good experience playing it. The game made me happy and, in the end, that's all I really ask of a game. There, that's it. Thank you, you've been a great crowd and don't forget to tip your servers.

[ETA: I want to add more pictures when I find appropriate ones from my playthrough]

If you still care about the long version, read on.

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The Goodly Bits

With Reunion, Deck 9 and SE gave up trying to broaden LiS's appeal. The game will not make much sense or have much emotional resonance to people new to the series. More specifically, the game is an unabashed apology to Pricefield stans. I was the target demographic! Except for extra security screenings by TSA, I'm almost never the target demographic.

I went into Reunion treating it as a game of specific goals. I wasn't expecting a sweeping epic, or a sprawling multi-layered rumination of choice and consequence like LiS 1. Because of my expectations, I ended up really liking it. At times I loved it. I liked the intimate atmosphere-- it's the quintessential cozy game. I was surprised by how much I liked the characters. I thought the investigative element was reasonably engaging. I thought the ruminations on the effects of Max's powers on other people were quite interesting. I loved the interactions between Max and Chloe. To my great surprise, I liked the relationships Safi formed with Chloe and Max.

The visuals were good up close, although not so much at a distance. Maybe they should ask Beethoven & Dinosaur if they can exchange some of Mixtape's pixels for some of Life is Strange's charisma. I liked the game's red, yellow, and orange color palette. It exuded warmth when at peace, emphasizing the emotions being explored by Max and Chloe. When there was a fire, the reds became the color of dynamism and destruction, reflecting the turning points that could burn Max's life.

I thought the character models were very good. The acting and animations were great, being smooth and naturalistic. There was a tendency for the female characters to have Keira Knightley mouth, but it wasn't distracting. Indeed, it was kind of endearing-- as it is on Miss Knightley. As an aside, I griped about Chloe's character model before release and I'm very gratified to be wrong-- I thought they did a good job with her.

The music was great, it suited the game's intimate mood. The gentle strum at the opening screen, with the view of the lounge chair looking out at the lake, suits the game's theme of contemplative retrospection. The game also introduced me to Tessa Rose Jackson and she's right up my alley. Like someone told me, my preferred genre is Whiny White Women ala Sarahs McLachlan or Jarosz.

The game ran smoothly and was bug-free on my set-up.

The Badly Bits

The negatives of the game are easy to summarize: a lot of it was underdeveloped and it had the handicap of being a sequel to Double Exposure (boo, hiss, spits). And of course, the game was too short.

The compressed time frame of the development cycle meant there were ideas or game mechanics that could have used far more depth. This is too bad because these underdeveloped parts were quite interesting. As an example, Reunion is the first time we see from Chloe's point of view just how exactly she is affected by Max's powers. What is even more fascinating is that she shares this experience with Safi. If Deck 9 had been able to spend more time on this they would have added a lot to LiS's philosophy. These underdeveloped parts would have greatly elevated the game.

The second point is fairly self-explanatory. The development team had to work around the terms set by DE. For a Pricefielder, the most obvious is that they had to work around the circumstances of the break up. There are other issues, but I don't need to go into detail with the problems of DE.

Be Vewy Vewy Quiet, I'm Hunting Awsonists

The game's A Plot is an investigation into a series of fires about to destroy Lakeport and Caledon. Continuing the theme from DE, Caledon is just lousy with secrets, plots, and shady characters. Indeed, that university has so many damned secrets that the astronomy building should have been named Setec Astronomy. Clues for Max and Chloe to discover are scattered all around the university like the acne on Norah Malakian's face.

IIRC, the A Plot was the holdover from "DE 2." I wonder if this was the direction that SE and D9 wanted to take the series-- episodic mysteries, with each game essentially being standalone. Perhaps the loose connecting thread would have been Diamond's quest to find more "special people." The latter would have been involved in these investigations and their powers would have been key to solving these mysteries. Who knows? This is pure speculation.

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How can Chloe, with her lack of powers, participate in the investigation? Deck 9's solution was quite brilliant: the "Back Talk" mechanic. Chloe can use the different aspects of her personality to get an NPC to divulge information. She gathers clues and then uses these in conversation. This mechanic is very reminiscent of the interrogation mechanic in LA Noire.

This works because Chloe can use her humor (I liked her complaining about online dating) or her sarcasm or her street smarts when interacting with NPCs. She was capable of talking to the townies in a way Max could not.

The problem was that this mechanic was woefully underdeveloped. There were very few instances of it and there should have been more dialogue options. More Back Talk opportunities could have have added a lot more depth and fun to the investigative parts of the game. It would have been fun to see Chloe act like Archie to Max's Nero Wolfe, the street-smart, wise-cracking legsman who can talk to people or do things Max cannot. Chloe as PI, ala Sam Spade. She certainly has the swagger for it, and like Sam Spade she smokes and likes dames.

Love, Actually

The B Plot of the game was the relationship between Chloe and Max. The various iterations this can take are Bay Chloe Romanced or Not Romanced and Bae Chloe likewise. To their credit, the dev team tried to explore all of these to the best of their abilities. The title "Reunion" becomes very apt no matter which iteration-- it's either Bae Chloe reconnecting with her friend or ex, or a newly resurrected Chloe reentering Max's life. I only played Bae Chloe, but the other options are interesting enough that I'll probably try them out at some point.

As an aside, whether or not Max romanced somebody in DE barely matters at all. It seems these romances were so ephemeral that they have almost no influence on Reunion's plot. This is especially jarring if you romanced Vinh, given his role in Reunion's mystery. I'm now wondering if the DE dev team felt compelled to add these relationships just because a romance angle has always been a part of LiS. Either way, they now come across as rebounds. I kind of feel bad for Amanda-- she deserves better.

We Were On A Break

The big question a Pricefielder would have is: how did Reunion deal with the Big Damn Break-Up? Really well, given what the Reunion dev team had to work with.

I don't need to go into too much detail about what issues DE saddled the dev team with. In broad strokes: the inconsistent characterization of Chloe and Max and how the two of them threw away a relationship of years so peremptorily. We all know the fundamental problem-- the DE development team just wanted Chloe gone and didn't care how it was done, as long as it was done as definitively as possible. The break up was ultimately an artifact of DE originally being set in a Bay ending. Combine this with DE's poor planning and mismanagement and you saw the result.

It seems the Reunion team basically leaned into the idea that the reasons for the break up were just not very good. In the Snapping Turtle, Chloe ruefully admits her breakup letter was unclear and that she doesn't even have a clear memory of what she actually wrote. Max brings up the breakup letter, and she emphasizes that she'd read it so often she'd memorized it but still couldn't understand Chloe's reasoning. Max asks Chloe why exactly it happened and Chloe's answer is vaguely about "shared trauma" and wanting different things in life. It doesn't seem like either of them can pin down exactly why it happened.

And you know what? I buy it. Neither party knew exactly why the break up happened. Chloe's comment on wanting different things in life seems to be the most telling. Max's burgeoning photography career and Chloe's band were increasingly pulling them apart. More proof of this being a key, if not the key, reason for the break up are sprinkled throughout the game. Max comments that Moses and Tony seem to make their relationship work and is puzzled by how they do it. Chloe constantly wonders whether there would be room for her in Max's new life.

To put it simply, Max and Chloe failed to communicate, they failed to articulate to each other what was important to them and failed to discuss how to deal with these new circumstances in their lives. Maybe the two were still too immature to talk it through. After all, they had not had a chance to really grow up in any kind of normal way after the events LiS 1. Sometimes break ups just happen due to miscommunication, misunderstandings, and just from being in weird places in people's lives.

This "relationships don't work out" was the excuse given by the DE glazers and Pricefield haters. What Reunion did was to "fix" it by having Max and Chloe reunite and actually talk to each other. They didn't understand what went wrong, but now they want to, and they now realize they're happier together than apart. They decided to deal with their relationship problems like adults. Just deciding "welp, we're done here" and throwing away decades of friendship and love is incredibly immature too.

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Ultimately, Reunion decided not to focus on the breakup and concentrated on, well, their reunion. And if the problem was a lack of communication, then Reunion would focus on the two of them learning to communicate with each other. In order to "fix" the lack of communication between Max and Chloe Reunion introduced a rather elegant gameplay mechanic-- during some conversations you switch between the two in order to shape their relationship. The gameplay is literally a form of communication.

I love this mechanic. It really adds emotion to the give and take of this reconciliation.

This mechanic only works because Hannah Telle and Rhianna DeVries have amazing chemistry. Their voice acting is laden with emotion, and their tones match each other perfectly. The two VAs convey just how much depths of feeling Max and Chloe have for each other. Given they were not in the same room during recording, most of the credit has to go to the performance director. Whoever they are, they did a great job.

This was probably the best mechanic Reunion added to LiS. I wish this had been expanded a little bit more, but at least it's not as underdeveloped as the Back Talk mechanic. I'll discuss more of this conversation switching later.

Amanda said it best when it came to Max and Chloe's relationship. In a conversation with Chloe, she said that if the two had something special, then it was also worth doing what they had to, to make the relationship work. What they had to do was talk, to reconnect to each other, and figure things out.

"You're Max's Blue-Haired Girl"

I admit to a feeling of relief when I first saw Chloe at the start the game-- she brings so much dynamism to LiS. She's a larger than life character and does a lot to give life to Caledon. She also adds literal color-- the majority of characters in Caledon are dark-haired and often wear muted outfits. Chloe just physically stands out. Don't Nod knew what they were doing when they came up with Chloe's design.

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Reunion did a great job with Chloe-- her characterization was on point. She was a good take on what an older and better-adjusted Chloe would be like.

LiS 1 Chloe was an angry, damaged teenager who covered up her vulnerability with a veneer of swagger and toughness. Ashly Burch's voice acting was iconic, she gave Chloe a brashness underlaid with deep pain and angst.

Older Chloe's swagger and hard-as-nails personality is more "settled", so to speak. Don't get me wrong, her conversation with Moses about her possible death shows she still has a deep well of sadness. But her difficult life has become a source of strength. She has a toughness and self-confidence that you see in the very first scene. She uses the strength of her personality to negotiate with an unpleasant venue owner and to force her band members into line. And as I stated earlier, combine her tough-guy personality with her streets marts and she's able to deal with different people than Max.

Making Chloe the manager of a riot grrrl band was an excellent decision. A job that combines her taste in music, lets her travel, and works best with her personality? It suits her to a T. From what little I saw, I liked Drugstore Makeup. Their chat interactions were fun and despite Chloe having to boss them around, they're obviously all friends. Who doesn't like the shenanigans of a punk rock band? I'm looking forward to the upcoming book.

Reunion still shows Chloe's soft side. She deals with Amanda with a lot of friendliness, notable given that two are potential romantic rivals. And as I'll explain later, she deals with Safi with surprising empathy. However, the person she makes friends with the fastest was Moses. The two take to each other quite quickly and I especially like their shared nerd interests. But then again, Moses is pretty easy to like.

Is it just that Chloe doesn't deal well with straight men? The people she butts heads with the most are cishet men...

I thought Rhianna DeVries did a fantastic job with Chloe. Her Chloe is reminiscent of Ashly Burch's, but also sounds more confident. The Chloe Swagger was well animated: LiS 1 Chloe was lanky and awkward while Reunion Chloe moves with self-assurance.

Partners in Time

The (new) centerpiece of Reunion is the relationship between Max and Chloe. *takes a deep breath* ALL HAIL PRICEFIELD. P to R to the ICE to the F-I-E-L-D.

With that out of the way, I thought the relationship was excellently done. Call it fanservice and call me easily pandered to, whatever. Actually, don't tell me that, I'll cry. I'm very sensitive.

There were complaints that Max simped for Chloe too quickly, but I don't agree. From a story perspective, her reactions make sense. Chloe is one of the most important people in her life, and she thought she'd lost Chloe forever. Of course a reunion would affect Max deeply. I thought Amanda's description of her as glowing and asking if Chloe had knocked her up was cute.

Now kith

Reunion was the first LiS game to finally give us openly Pricefield moments, most of which were handled in a tastefully low-key way. Max may have "simped" for Chloe, but there was no instant coming together and immediate declarations of love. Like I mentioned previously, the story of their reunion is one of communication. They slowly feel their way back to a relationship, and once again the back-and-forth dialogue mechanic works brilliantly. Being able to choose how these conversations go is an amazing way to let the player experience this reconciliation, not just watch it. It adds tremendous emotionality to the gameplay.

The game also gave us tangible descriptions of Max and Chloe's life was like on the road. At one point Max tells Moses that the road was "her safe space." It enabled her to leave the trauma behind and make new experiences. This runs absolutely counter to DE's "Max wanted to settle down and Chloe didn't." Max apparently liked being on the road. They had adventures together: they went to that Italian director's film festival even if it bored Chloe stupid. One particular line I liked is when Max sees an astronomy poster in the observatory and says "when we were on the road, Chloe loved pointing out Venus and Mars to me in the night sky." It conjures up an image of the two of them on the bed of Chloe's truck, looking up at the stars. It was probably only towards the end that their lives began to pull apart.

Then there was the boat scene, where you see the typical fandom image of Chloe as the initiator is turned on its head. Max is the one who tries to make the first move, and if she doesn't, she lets her (startling) freak flag fly. Indeed, there's something quite nice about Chloe wanting to wait before kissing Max. She doesn't want to rush into it impulsively and she definitely doesn't want to do it while Max is intoxicated. Chloe isn't usually shown to be the romantic one, but here she clearly wants the culmination of their reunion to be tender and impactful. It's a nice counter to the idea that Chloe is just a callous prick (cunt?). Despite her tough exterior, Chloe really has a deep well of sensitivity.

Chloe's gift is a great moment, one that I'll leave to the player to experience.

Reunion also showed Chloe's tremendous loyalty to Max. She came to Caledon for answers, but when she found out there was trouble she immediately decided to help Max. This despite the fact that she has no connection to Caledon. She griped a little ("there's always fucking something") but she then dove into the task with great dedication. She did a lot of legwork and later even risked her life. Max said it in LiS 1: that's what kind of friend Chloe is.

I thought this kind of a sweet moment. Also, those are some pretty stacked shoes, Chloe.

Ultimately, Max and Chloe realize they are better together than apart. When Max is tripping balls her panic attack is about losing Chloe again. The two have literal decades of friendship and romance at this point. Chloe knows Max so well she could tell when Safi was disguised as her. This is simply not a relationship you throw away without a fight. Reunion shows the two fighting for this shared life again.

You, Her, and Me Make We Three

What surprised me the most was how well Chloe and Safi got along. But a little bit of thinking made me realize Chloe and Safi "bonding" wasn't unexpected at all. Chloe and Safi are very similar and have crucial shared experiences.

This similarity seems to be a product of DE wanting to replace Chloe with Safi. Putting them together in Reunion kind of highlights just how much of a Chloe clone Safi was. Both are tall, slender women who have more gregarious and abrasive personalities than Max. Neither have father figures. Both have strained relationships with their mothers. Both are motivated by the death of a close female friend. Both have profound feelings of anger and alienation. Both are deeply affected by Max's power and are the objects of Max's quests. Both are at risk of death, and Max choosing their lives risks a storm that will destroy Caledon/Arcadia Bay. Both even have the same goddamned birthdays.

And of course, both of them have strong feelings towards Max. Both are potentially in love with Max.

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The Reunion dev team leaned into these similarities hard. The first time you see Chloe in the Overlight she sees what appears to be her dead teen body. But to her surprise, it turns out to be Safi. Chloe literally turns into Safi. It's practically beating you on the head with it.

Okay, I admit I had the same reaction

The scenes in the Overlight have Safi and Chloe talking to the various iterations of each other-- living and dead. These conversations were quite fascinating. They became explorations of how Max's powers actually affected human beings. Did Chloe and Safi actually deserve to be alive? Did Max ask them if they wanted to be alive? Neither fundamentally did want to be alive-- Chloe tells Moses that she told Max to sacrifice her for Arcadia Bay and Safi is cynically nihilistic throughout Reunion. These four Safis and Chloes also debate identity-- who are they exactly?

The two women ultimately come to very different conclusions. Moses tells Chloe that she deserves to live and after some reflection, Chloe comes to agree with him. Chloe doesn't want to leave Max, her mother, her band, her life. Safi is more bitter, possibly lonelier, and wants to die.

Either way, their connection means their interactions are not at all as hostile as you would expect. She tries to stop Safi from killing herself and does so with heartfelt sincerity. She literally risks her life trying to save what amounts to a stranger. In the last scene in the Snapping Turtle, Safi and Chloe even have a very cordial conversation where it is made clear that Chloe knows about Safi's issues with her mother. The two understand each other and Chloe empathizes with Safi.

In fact Max, Chloe, and Safi end up giving strong throuple vibes. At one point Safi asks both Max and Chloe to just run away with her. Both Max and Chloe turn her down, but not angrily or dismissively. It makes me wonder if they weren't entirely against the idea. In the epilogue, we find out that Chloe has told Safi she and Max are going to be in her area and that they have to meet. IIRC, the wording of this message indicates this is something they do frequently.

Max is the third angle of this triad-- she has relationships with both of the women and they would never have met without her. Yet it has to be noted that Chloe and Safi connect through more than just their separate relationships with Max. All three have different and unique ways of relating to each other. I'd even say that Chloe and Safi would have been drawn to each other without Max. Safi expresses jealousy at Max choosing Chloe during the "merge" scene from DE (an amazing retcon) but gets over this remarkably quickly. She builds her own relationship to Chloe without Max's involvement at all.

It's funny, but the DE dev team's ham-handed attempt to replace Chloe with Safi ended up giving menage-a-trois vibes instead. I can actually see these three women having a functioning relationship. Or a three-way co-dependent one. Fanfic authors can explore this ship to their hearts' content. Fayyadpricefield? I still don't know what this ship is called.

This rumination on Max's powers and its "victims" was the game's biggest lost opportunity. There should have been much, much more of it. There was so much more for the two to discuss. Chloe and Safi could have talked about their respective traumas more. They could have asked themselves what would have happened if Max had chosen differently. There could have been a lot more to their debates in the Overlight, with Chloe's dialogue choices affecting how Safi reacts at the turning point at the end. Once again Reunion is hobbled by being underdeveloped.

Amor Vincit Omnia

At the end of the game, Max and Chloe's relationship--romantic or otherwise-- is shown stronger than ever. Chloe shows her absolute trust in Max during her trust fall, where she does not panic and watches with remarkable calm as Max blips towards her. It was pretty cool scene.

So Max and Chloe have had their reunion. They've reconnected. They both worry how they might not be able to fit into each other's new lives but this concern is shown to be groundless. Chloe smoothly integrates herself into Max's Caledon circle. She befriends Moses and he becomes a confidante. She gets along with Amanda through their shared musical tastes and they even agree to have Drugstore Makeup perform in the Snapping Turtle. Max becomes Drugstore Makeup's (possibly temporary) photographer and finds renewed joy in life on the road. She left behind yet another town irrevocably changed by her powers and goes back to her safe space.

Max and Chloe then visit Arcadia Bay and finally, finally come to terms with what happened in Life is Strange 1.

There is one last truly crucial moment in the game: Moses gives Chloe a photograph and asks Chloe to choose between letting Max jump back in time and essentially undo their reunion or to destroy the picture and prevent Max from doing things all over again. This is a very well-done dilemma. Max and Chloe had just found each other again, and you've spent a whole game becoming very emotionally invested in the rebuilding of their relationship. Do you undo that knowing that Max's hero complex will compel her to go back in time to stop the fire--even if you saved every person you could?

Moses tells Chloe that she needs to save Max from herself. Max has to stop messing with time because nobody fully understands the consequences of her actions. Max is shaken by her inability to stop the astronomy building fire-- it happens whatever she does. What does this mean about her ability to tamper with fate? Safi basically says that Max is overstepping herself in choosing for other people. Maybe Chloe should just destroy the photograph and get Max to stop using her powers? But if Chloe destroys this picture, she will then be hiding something from Max. This is a difficult choice in a game where you are made to realize the importance of communication. Will this hang over their heads forever, a secret that could destroy all trust if Max finds out what Chloe did?

I don't know. I'd like to think that as their relationship continues its interrupted growth they will one day be able to discuss this honestly. I leave it up to the player to decide what to do and what their reasoning is.

But however it goes, Pricefield is together again and D9's "gift" to us is that the future of these two is wide open. You can imagine them as continuing their lives on the road. Drugstore Makeup goes on hiatus-- possibly periodically-- and that gives Max the opportunity to go back to a rebuilt Caledon and continue her career. Or maybe they do something else entirely, anything is possible. The two end the game at peace, possibly in love, and realizing they are willing to do whatever it takes to make this relationship work.

And in Conclusion

There's a quote from Samuel Johnson that goes "When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully." Given what was at stake and the immense pressure Deck 9 was under, their minds were probably very, very concentrated.

D9 had to make this new game in a crazily truncated time frame. They probably had very few additional resources and what I can only guess was a terribly demoralized staff. That the end result is playable at all is already noteworthy. That I ended up enjoying it I thought was almost miraculous.

Sure, people can accuse it of being fanservice and a blatant attempt at winning the fanbase back. But so what? I knew what I wanted from a post-DE game and Reunion delivered. The exploration of the Max and Chloe relationship was very well-made. It was a good experience. I thought the game wrapped around this "fan service" was competently made and was about as good or as bad as a lot of other narrative games. Would it be controversial for me to say that I thought Reunion was about at the level of TC or BtS?

The game had faults, the biggest of which were so many aspects left underdeveloped. The Back Talk, the conversation switching, and Chloe and Safi's relationship were the biggest ones for me. There are more, e.g. there should have been a lot more of Max being told that she shouldn't use her powers or her doubting what effect they have on others.

The game truly suffers from having to work with DE. It's a glimpse of what could have been. The two games would have been so much better if the base adventure had been Reunion, with DE working towards it, instead of having Reunion work backwards towards DE. The plot point of Max uniting the timelines also affecting Chloe was a really good one and could have remained the central theme. But then there should have been more of Chloe in DE so that her reappearance would not come out of nowhere. For instance, instead of having Pricefield be broken up prior to DE, DE can show their relationship at a turning point. Through phone calls and messages, Max and Chloe can be shown having a breakdown in communication. Dialogue choices can lead to an out-and-out breakup or just a relationship in trouble. This means there would still be a reunion in, well, Reunion, where they learn to repair their relationship and either part as friends or continue on as romantic partners.

Also-- there were so many obvious opportunities for the two to kiss at the end. For instance, while watching the fire, when they were about to leave the Snapping Turtle, or during the return to Arcadia Bay montage. This omission I found baffling. If they were going to make an explicitly Pricefield game, why chicken out at the end?

I honestly would not recommend Reunion to a non-LiS fan. It is not an introductory game since it requires too much knowledge and emotional investment in the previous games. I'm not entirely sure I would recommend it to a fan of Double Exposure either, although Safi and Moses are treated very well.

I'm personally glad I bought it right away, but I might encourage others to wait until it's on sale. It's a short, underdeveloped game that could have been great. It's too bad we'll probably never get an "extended cut" where they can add or expand more of the promising content.

Ultimately, I liked it overall, I loved parts of it, and I am truly glad it got made. It was an emotionally satisfying experience. It makes me somewhat more positive for the future of the Life is Strange franchise. The production stills of the upcoming show don't reflexively annoy me anymore because I'm no longer pissed off by the current state of LiS.

So my concluding thoughts on Reunion are: I enjoyed the game. It made me happy. I like that.

This question actually came to me after watching The Princess Diaries 2. The great Crown Princess Amelia Mignonette Thermopolis Renaldi, heir to the throne of Genovia, said she would absolutely be willing to marry Prince William before he was Prince of Wales. What would actually happen, especially if neither would be willing to give up their future claims to their thrones? Would it just not work? Would there be a modern monarchy which would allow an heir to give up their status to marry into another royal family?

"What is this?" "It's a mortar bomb."

"Hey guys I found a hidden room under my house where this old knight keeps asking me to choose a cup to drink from. There's a skeleton because the last guy apparently 'chose poorly' WWYD?"

I agree with a recurring sentiment here. I'm baffled by the reception by players. It's startlingly vociferous for such a "small" game.

Mixtape has about the same amount and style of game-y gameplay elements as What Remains of Edith Finch, more kinetic gameplay elements than Firewatch, and much, much more to do than Dear Esther. People love those games.

Better graphics than most. I love Life is Strange, but Mixtape had better background visuals than Double Exposure or Reunion.

I don't think it's any "shallower" than any of the other walking simulators. It has its own depth and it's also an exploration of the human experience.

I think it deserves most of its critical acclaim. It's a stylistic, well-written story with interesting characters. I thought it was good. Like all walking simulators it was an experience, not a "game" as such. And Mixtape was an excellent experience.

I like walking simulators as a form of story telling media. The reception Mixtape received will make it less likely we'll see more of them in the future.

Hot take and probably unpopular take: are some of the people who don't like it just people who didn't get to have that kind of fun in high school?

Serious question.

The game doesn't really have a definition of wisdom as an RP or character trait beyond explaining it as a game mechanic, right? So for the purposes of BG3 as a game, is it just shorthand for "divine magic ability"? Is it just for skill checks? Does Shadowheart's dialogue display any heightened intuition, perception, emotional awareness, or other such DnD definitions of "wisdom?" When playing as Shadowheart origin-- which I've never done-- are there options to make her "wise"? Can somebody whose brain has been scrambled as hers be "wise?"

I lived in Belgium from 1986-1990 and I remember owning a brown booklet about birds of prey. It had profile drawings of them, but also sections that explained their life cycles, predation, etc. I distinctly remember a part showing how they culled small rodent populations.

Any Belgians know where I can buy one? Find a scan?

Veel bedankt!

Don't more weirdos go to Arby's?

Aren't drunk people more likely to ask their drunk questions and tell their drunk stories at a Taco Bell drive thru?

First of all, I get it-- the differences between the weapons are there for flavor and for rule of cool. The weapons in Mass Effect take their cues from modern shooters, and the variety in weapons are to offer different but familiar play styles. Everybody knows how a "sniper" or a "shotgunner" plays in RTS games. Mass Effect is a game first and foremost, and any high-concept sci-fi elements have to take second place to gameplay elements.

But logically-- Mass Effect field technology would logically tend to a "universal gun." And these universal guns would basically be assault rifles.

Point A: Sniper rifles would be superfluous. Mass Effect weapons all fly at a near-perfectly flat trajectory within the engagement ranges portrayed in the games. They also travel so fast they are unaffected by ambient atmospheric distortion. Therefore, just on their own (independent of targeting or user proficiency), Mass Effect weapons theoretically can have near-perfect accuracy. That pretty much eliminates the need for sniper rifles. Recoil does still exist, so you can't just rock and roll and expect to hit a target at long range, but that seems to be the only limiting factor. Put in a rate of fire adjuster and a change of targeting optics/software optimized for long ranges and you have a sniper.

Point B: Submachine guns are especially useless. Those kinds of weapons are already very rare in modern warfare. They were originally designed to have a portable fully automatic weapon a soldier in WWI could carry to enemy trenches. With the technology of WWI, the only rounds low-powered enough to enable controllable full automatic fire were pistol rounds. These limited submachine guns' range and made them close quarter weapons. These days, their role has been replaced by fully automatic weapons using ammo with lower pressures. 5.56mm ammunition can be fired controllably. If a smaller weapon is required for space or ergonomic reasons, there's plenty of carbines to go around. It's different for police forces who require smaller, more compact weapons for building clearing, and which will not over-penetrate.

Given that battlefield submachine guns are now rare, there's even less reason for them to exist in the Mass Effect world.

Point C: There is a workaround which would be entirely consistent with in-world lore. And it rather surprises me that Bioware didn't go for it: the limiting factor in gun performance should be power draw and power output. The mechanics of Mass Effect guns revolves around power management, not heat management. This is only alluded to in game, not directly stated.

As said, because recoil still exists, a sniper can't go full auto and expect good accuracy. So if you're going to fire your gun at low ROF, then you'll need to pump more power into the shot you're going to get. In the Mass Effect world, they can say that these high-powered shots draw more power, and thus generate more energy for the slug. The downside is that, aside from the more powerful recoil, it'll take more time for the gun to power back up for the next shot. It'll also explain the more extravagant use of heat sinks for sniper rifles.

That being said, longer barrels would seem unnecessary since that's not how chamber pressure and accuracy work in the Mass Effect world. It was argued in the comments that the Mass Effect weapons are essentially railguns or coilguns and a sniper requiring power would benefit from a longer "barrel." A further in-universe explanation for really big sniper rifles like the Widow: they need for more power generation and recoil dampeners. But you could get clever. You could tune your sniper rifle for more rapid fire to take down shields, like the M-13 Raptor, but then increase power output once you've stripped the shields.

For submachine guns, the explanation is the opposite. To generate high rates of fire and keep the gun controllable, the gun would be tuned down, to put less energy into the slugs. Unlimited ammunition and future-tech recoil dampeners would give Mass Effect SMGs blistering rates of fire. The only limitation is cooling, but there are so many ways around that aside from the heat sinks. Just putting in baffles would help in atmospheric battlefields. They'd still be functionally useless in battlefields with typical combat ranges, however. Maybe security forces like C-SEC would find use for submachine guns. Just like police forces nowadays.

What about Biotics? Biotic powers are portrayed as extremely short range. If you're fighting a biotic,the obvious answer would be to just not get close to them and overwhelm them with fire. If a biotic had a chance to use their light submachine guns then something must have gone very wrong for their opponents. Maybe instead of the "lightly armored squishy wizard" archetype, Biotics would actually have to be extremely well-protected, using their shields, armor, and barriers, to enable them to get near enough to the enemy to use their powers. This is especially true for Vanguards. Instead of being glass cannon wizards, they would be the tankiest, best protected combatants. Biotics would be shock troops.

Last Thoughts: It's all a moot point. Mass Effect is a game, and it follows game conventions. But I've read through the Mass Effect lore, and while they make a big deal of heat dissipation they say remarkably little about power draw and power output. They allude to it mostly indirectly with the heat thing. If they'd emphasize power management as the main issue with Mass Effect weapons then the switch to heat sinks would have made much more sense. It'd be a way to dump a lot of power in the first initial bursts of power and in theory keep it'd help up ROF because changing out a heat sink/mag is faster than letting the gun cool down.

It's such a simple tweak that would make the tech lean more to the "sci" end of "sci-fi".

My Tav is a capital P, Paladin^(tm). He idolizes Keldorn Firecam. He weeps sainted tears when he sees suffering and injustice. He's so insufferably good that Astarion doesn't want to bite him for fear of his blood being holy water. Even Wyll thinks he should take it down a notch.

He is also very frustrated he can't open a refugee aid center in Baldur's Gate. I absolutely have the resources for a successful refugee center.

I was so paranoid I'd run out of supplies that I saved every single scrap of food. I was stuffed to the gills with thousands of points of camp supplies when I ended the game.

I also have a camp full of good-aligned healers: myself, Jaheria, Halsin, and Shadowheart. You can maybe count Minsc if you give him healing spells. I can deceive Minthara and tell her I want to use the refugees for labor later. Wyll and Karlach would love to help.

I'm only half-joking when I say it's too bad I can't use some of my resources to help more of the refugees. I didn't spend all that time and effort keeping the tieflings alive to see them live in shit. There's that kid whose parents got murdered. Mol's gang are stuck outside the gate-- they can stay in my camp if they keep scamming to an acceptable minimum.

Let me be an insufferable Paladin and help, damn it!