[ALL] How Life Is Strange: Double Exposure & Reunion made me revisit my relationship with grief, healing, and the wounds I carry
I’ve been replaying the Life Is Strange games from August to September, and recently I finally finished playing the new controversial games: Double Exposure and Reunion. (I’m currently replaying DE again just to sit with my feelings a little more, and then I'll replay Reunion)
So welp, here I am, writing down my thoughts just to properly grasp what I've been deeply feeling after playing these recent games (it's LONG huhu)
These are obviously just my opinions and my takes, and I’m simply expressing how I personally experienced them. So if you don’t agree with some of the points I’m gonna make (and choices/endings I followed), that’s alright too hahaha \o/ I'm quite aware of the massive hate these two games, especially Double Exposure, received.
⚠ If you haven't played these two games, there are spoilers ahead so lmfao (skip skip! unless you wanna know whether playing these two games are actually worth it—emotionally lol) ⚠
Ngl, I ignored these games during their release because they really did sound like a cash grab or fan service LMAO. LIS has always been about exploring different sets of characters and protagonists, so I found it odd, like some of the players, that they decided to bring back the goat of all protagonists in the LIS universe: Max.
As a longtime fan of the franchise, I’ve always been drawn to the games’ grounded nature despite the presence of supernatural powers. I’ve talked about this with a few people, but among all the LIS games, Life Is Strange 2 has always been my favorite—and pft, it still is. Not only does it touch upon my deep adoration for sibling love and dynamics, but it’s also incredibly political, dark, and cold underneath all that fuzz and warmth.
However, the first LIS game has always been the darkest one for me. While trauma and grief are constant elements we see throughout every LIS game, LIS1 really dabbles in the darker twists and turns of human behavior, and that’s something I’ve always sought out in media. Ironically, Jefferson himself talks about being obsessed with transformation (his whole “innocence to corruption” dialogue) and I think it encapsulates the entirety of the game: Max carries the burden of witnessing multiple deaths and living with the consequences of her decisions. Chloe plunges further into darkness as she deals with abandonment. Rachel inadvertently pays for her pursuit of freedom with her own life.
I wasn’t the biggest fan of Max despite empathizing with her as a protagonist who attempted to do what she believed was right and true while carrying the consequences of her decisions. But during these recent playthroughs, I realized that I struggled to connect with Max because I instead strongly resonate with Rachel, who externalizes so much of what Max internalizes.
Rachel moves towards life—expressive, animated, constantly reaching outward. Max, by contrast, retreats inward. It makes sense that younger me would find Rachel easier to recognize while empathizing with Max from a distance. (I’ll prolly make another post that focuses specifically on Rachel, because she’s another one of those deeply misunderstood characters.)
But damn, after all these years, replaying LIS, and especially finishing Double Exposure and Reunion, has made me appreciate Max’s quiet strength so much more.
DE has its execution flaws when it comes to addressing its plot and conflicts so imma look past it for now, but I’m not gonna lie: I think the game did a surprisingly good job of showcasing the imperfection of Max’s emotional and personal growth. The stutters in her development are noticeable in the way her avoidance still lingers through the way she refuses to communicate when she’s disturbed or in pain (we see that pattern when she refuses to text back Moses, Amanda, Yasmin, and even her parents—something that we also see in how she avoids Chloe in LIS: Before the Storm)
But while that tendency is still very much present, it’s also quite evident that she carries her wounds differently than she did in the first game.
Looking past the game’s lapses, the way DE mirrors the first game definitely felt intentional to me, particularly as a way of illustrating how Max has changed. I’ve always considered Max an old friend I hadn’t seen in years, and playing DE allowed me to feel this strange sense of pride and love for her and for the way she now navigates conflict as an adult. She now puts herself in situations that younger Max struggled to even attempt—actively socializing, asserting herself, and allowing herself to be present during important moments.
What’s also incredibly amazing about these recent games is how much her internal monologue has changed. I genuinely don’t understand how a lot of people believe that Max's character writing was assassinated in DE/Reunion. I’ve played LIS1 multiple times in the past, yet I could still feel Max’s essence in the recent games, especially in her internal monologues, just with a different tint of experience. She's less critical of others and more reflective of what she's experiencing at the moment.
She’s just simply an adult now.
Despite her wounds, she’s someone who has been to different places, met a diverse set of people in and outside of her career—and these experiences, the same ones we all go through, inevitably change our perceptions: how we navigate conflict, how we articulate ourselves, how we express ourselves.
But the thing about trauma and wounds is that you bring them everywhere you go, like a scar. You pick at it, and suddenly you're reminded of the sting from when you first got it.
Max finds herself picking at this wound in DE because of her deep attachment to Chloe, regardless of which ending you chose.
And this is why I find the Bay ending particularly compelling for Max’s character.
I’ve always seen Max as a deeply kind person who quietly carries strength in her willingness to make the most difficult decisions. Max choosing to honor Chloe’s wishes and save Arcadia Bay has always been more compelling to me.
The Bay ending is less about punishment and more about recognition.
Max’s love for Chloe runs deep, and the way Max chooses to honor Chloe’s wishes is, in itself, an act of honoring the relationship they had forged up until that point. Max had the courage to be selfless—to acknowledge Chloe’s existence and express her deep love by honoring what Chloe wanted in that moment.
Loyalty isn’t black and white. It’s not simply about sticking with someone through thick and thin. Loyalty has always been about being seen and heard. It’s about seeing someone’s flaws and still choosing to accept and respect them.
Chloe was always presented as a self-destructive teenager who lashed out here and there because of her circumstances. It was obvious how she saw Arcadia Bay as a whole—something she wanted to run away from because it represented so much of the chaos and pain in her life.
And choosing to destroy Arcadia Bay is letting pain swallow you whole. It’s self-destruction painted across a larger landscape.
But as Chloe articulates in LIS1's final episode, Max’s presence served as the biggest pivot in her life after she came back from Seattle. Chloe simply needed someone who could remind her of the many hues of life that she once enjoyed.
While Rachel represents the freedom Chloe has been craving for, Max represents the happiness she lost.
Rachel’s disappearance leaves Chloe chasing freedom, but Max’s return reminds Chloe that she’s still capable of attachment, tenderness, love, and even hope.
It isn’t simply “my best friend came back.” Max also reintroduces Chloe to a version of herself she thought had died with William. Max’s presence was what Chloe ultimately needed as someone who had been living in constant pain. It also allowed her to arrive at her own decision to accept her fate.
By choosing Arcadia Bay, this selfless act from Chloe becomes her own form of redemption.
In hindsight, it was always Chloe who saved Arcadia Bay—and so Max, in return, saves Chloe by also acknowledging and respecting what her bestfriend wanted.
Max respected Chloe enough to let Chloe make a choice in that moment, in the middle of the storm. And that alone carves a deeper meaning to Max’s capacity to love. Max's final act of love isn’t necessarily saving Chloe from death. It’s giving Chloe the agency to choose for herself.
Max isn’t really choosing between Chloe and Arcadia Bay. She’s choosing between her deep desire to save Chloe and Chloe’s expressed desire to accept her fate and save Arcadia Bay instead.
Max choosing the latter doesn’t necessarily mean that Chloe matters less. But again, it’s recognizing that loving someone doesn’t give you ownership over their life.
In DE, the consequences of that selfless gesture continued to haunt Max. In her journal, you get a glimpse of her internal tug-of-war: the lingering urge to be selfish and choose Chloe, even if it meant risking everything all over again.
>"If I wanted to, I could go back and see you again. Maybe I will. Maybe I'll break the world again."
But on the next page, she also acknowledges that she's glad she had the chance to be selfish, even if only for a short amount of time:
>"But I'm glad I got you to myself for the short amount of time that I did. I'm fine being selfish."
Again, the Bay ending is less about punishment and more about recognition.
Max recognizes Chloe as a person whose wishes matter—even when those wishes devastate her.
And DE makes Max live with that recognition.
Younger Max’s coping mechanism in her internal monologues always sounded something like, “If I can just figure out the right thing to do, maybe I can prevent anyone from getting hurt.” And that’s what becomes a problem in the first game. Every death becomes another problem to solve.
But adult Max in DE and Reunion doesn’t have that same intense illusion of control. She’s still avoidant, still uncomfortable communicating when something hurts, still retreats into herself, and still has difficulty confronting things directly.
But she’s no longer the girl who believes that if she just thinks hard enough, she can somehow engineer reality into becoming okay. We see this in the way she talks about her powers with Safi.
These stutters in her development make her character more believable in the recent games.
She’s still Max Caulfield, after all ;-;
Also, in DE's ending choice, the key turning point for Max, in my opinion, is choosing not to support Safi.
Safi shares a lot of the same traits Chloe had in LIS1—opinionated, outspoken, witty, charismatic, and volatile. In fact, I do believe Safi is meant to mirror young Chloe, the Chloe who Max remembers fondly. (It's also why the scene where Chloe confronts Safi in Reunion is so important)
Teenage Max struggled to challenge Chloe given their history, but that final choice not to support Safi was Max standing her ground and respecting her own principles, something she struggled with in LIS1.
Choosing to do what she believes is right instead of simply succumbing to what others want is a true display of Max’s self-confidence and self-trust.
By rejecting Safi, Max not only stands her ground but, in a way, confronts the past events she experienced in Arcadia Bay, and it's something she had constantly been setting aside throughout the earlier parts of DE.
I also think that choice mirrors the Bay ending in a way, especially because of the personal emotional significance I attach to Max deeply valuing Chloe’s agency. It mirrors how the Max who once allowed Chloe to choose is now learning that her own agency matters too by rejecting Safi.
Imo, the song that fully interprets Max’s trauma is “Little Melancholy” by Tessa Rose. It’s the song that plays when Max contemplates while drinking her coffee at the Fine Arts Building. It’s definitely my second favorite song in DE, next to “September” by Chloe Moriondo, hehe \o/
>Passage of time puts things into place
But some of this hurt won't ever quite fade
I carry it calmly, let it release
A little regret, little melancholy
>I rage like a storm when the memory finds me
White lights from before, never too far behind me
No, you can't save it all, it will always remind me
>Call me conflicted, call me undone
I've been in rough water more than a monster
Older now I've learned everyone bleeds
A little broken, little melancholy
I can’t articulate enough how much this song illustrates Max’s internal wounds (and, in some ways, my own wounds too)
There’s something truly comforting about sitting with pain. Giving it enough space to exist, to hurt, to breathe, but not so much space that it leaves you with nothing.
Maybe a little melancholy is what we all need to feel human and alive
Not really about romanticizing suffering but more about accepting that pain can become a part of our capacity to love deeply and appreciate existence.
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A lot of people also frowned at the fact that Chloe was nowhere to be seen in DE, and while I think it’s natural to feel that way, Max living her life without Chloe in DE is what she needed the most.
I’ve always believed that distance is what allows you to realize how deeply something matters to you.
Regardless of the ending, Max living her life without Chloe in DE gives her enough space to sit with herself. And with the Bay ending, it gives Max an even greater weight to carry because Chloe didn’t simply “broke up with her”—Chloe died.
With that weight on her shoulders, Max deserves so much respect for the quiet strength she radiated throughout the game.
To Chloe, Max represents the happiness she lost along the way.
But to Max, Chloe represents life itself.
Max has always been an observer—passive, a wallflower, someone who spends too much time inside her own head, even at such a young age. Chloe, on the other hand, has always been the bold, expressive kid who lives in the moment.
Max thinks about things while Chloe does things.
In the Farewell episode, Max admits that she experiences so many things because Chloe initiates these activities. It’s because of Chloe that she’s able to live the life she has led so far.
Chloe also represents home—someone who could tell her, “I knew you before you knew who you were.”
Max leaving Arcadia Bay in LIS1 wasn’t only difficult for Chloe. It also forced Max to live a life in Seattle on her own, which was unfamiliar territory for her internally.
How could she move through the world without the person who had pushed her to live her life to the fullest?
And we see Max handle that pain once again in DE.
Except this time, it’s not just about leaving Arcadia Bay. It’s Max saying goodbye to the person who carried a version of herself that can never exist again.
That’s what makes the Bay ending so devastating.
While that version of herself can never exist again, the game gently reminds us that it’s okay to let that version of ourselves go.
Max’s internal question in DE is something I always carry too: “Who am I now that the people who knew me before all of this are gone?”
And it’s genuinely a very, very different wound from simply missing someone.
It’s almost like grieving a part of your own identity that was anchored in a memory with someone or something.
But what about the players’ sentiment of, “They threw away the emotional weight of LIS1 by bringing Chloe back” in Reunion?
I understand why people feel like the emotional weight that LIS1 presented in its ending was thrown away, but I personally think Reunion is what makes Max’s pain from the LIS1 ending and DE more believable and valid.
Like I said, distance is what allows you to realize how deeply something matters to you.
Max losing Chloe doesn’t become meaningless because she eventually gets Chloe back in the end.
The loss changed her. The decade of pain changed her. The person who reunites with Chloe in Reunion is not the same Max who made that choice in the lighthouse.
The Bay ending isn’t erased by Reunion. It’s part of the reason why Reunion matters.
The idea that Reunion throws away the emotional weight of LIS1 assumes that the value of grief depends on the person remaining permanently absent.
But Max still lived those ten years.
She became a professor in Caledon, she earned a respectable career as a photographer. Basically, Max experienced a life that Chloe wasn’t there to witness.
And as the years went by, she learned that loving Chloe doesn’t require remaining psychologically frozen in the past. She learned that loving Chloe also means gradually learning to do for herself what Chloe once did for her.
The pain we carry in our hearts can give us more reason to live. And that’s essentially why Max is so protective and randomly appreciative of Chloe in Reunion: she constantly stares at her, looks after her, checks in on her, remarks about feeling excited to make more memories with her.
Because Max knows what it means to live a life without Chloe.
This is Max basking in the meaning of life—which Chloe represents.
Again, don’t get me wrong. That doesn’t mean Chloe is literally Max’s entire reason for living.
Chloe represents a part of Max that pushes her to go outside, do something, take more pictures, look around, feel something, participate, socialize, and be present.
We all have something that represents life to us. Some of us just haven’t discovered it yet.
But Max always saw that representation in Chloe.
I’m not even talking about anything romantic here just yet. I’m talking about the essence of relationships in our lives.
There are people in our lives who hold so much space in our hearts—platonic or romantic, whatever.
What matters is that these people can hold so much space and weight in our hearts that their existence alone can become enough to keep us going through this shitty life.
It’s always about the recognition that human beings can become anchors of meaning for one another. One person can become an access point to an entire context of ourselves. That’s the shitty part of life, because losing them can mean losing access to a part of ourselves.
But there’s also beauty in that aspect because losing them creates an opportunity to question the meaning we placed onto them.
It’s why I see Max and Chloe as deeply connected soulmates first before romantic partners.
I never shipped them during the first game because there were so many elements in their lives that contributed to my belief that they needed to mend their friendship first before pursuing something beyond that.
However, in Reunion, we see how much their separation shaped their relationship into something more meaningful. And it allowed me to now fully see their relationship as something more than just friends.
What’s always interesting about the concept of separation is that it can reveal the role someone played in our lives in ways that constant proximity can obscure.
Max lived for a decade with just a memory of Chloe. And memory freezes people. You remember who they were before you lost them. And so, knowing what it’s like to function with just their memory changes the way you perceive their presence once you experience their company again.
These two characters in Reunion gave me another language for something that’s already deeply familiar to me.
And that’s the return of joy after many years of experiencing the absence of joy.
After many years of never finding joy in the things I do every day, having an ordinary, mundane opportunity to experience joy in the smallest ways possible is a gift when you’ve spent years never knowing when you could feel that joy again.
Max’s apparent over-attentiveness for Chloe is gratitude expressed through presence—it’s something that I’ve always pursued in my own everyday life.
It’s not that Max and I are clinging to something because we are overly dependent on that feeling. It’s about appreciating that feeling because we’ve healed enough to understand what someone’s presence actually means to us.
It’s also not about chasing some permanent state of happiness, but appreciating the fact that happiness can exist at all.
It’s not Max simply reuniting with Chloe. It’s Max going forward with someone she once had to leave behind.
Life gives us multiple chances to love life itself despite the fact that it constantly leaves us wounded. With or without Chloe, with or without Reunion or DE, Max would still eventually find herself somewhere.
Heck, that’s why her reunion (and her slow romance) with Chloe felt more whole and authentic to me.
She was able to say, “I’m glad you’re here. And I’m glad I’m here too, despite everything.”
What I’m truly trying to say as I write this is that Life Is Strange—along with these new games—isn’t just about the concept of letting go.
It’s also about letting something change form.
Max and Chloe are still a little broken. They still carry a little regret. They still harbor a little melancholy.
Suffering isn’t inherently beautiful. But being human means carrying contradictory things at once.
Thank ye if you read it this faaaaar~