Release Day!
Happy Reunions to All
Spoiler Warning: Nothing below spoils any plot details for Life is Strange: Reunion. But it expresses feelings which may, through extrapolation, imply certain plot details which may or may not prove true.
Realease day is here! I’ve already covered the disorienting feeling of releasing a game with a team that is almost entirely disbanded in my first post.
What I will add to that, and the feeling I want to live in today, is how incredibly grateful I am that this game exists. There are so many multiverses worse than this one. Ones that have all of the difficulty and none of the joy. At times it felt like we were mere molecules away from entangling ourselves with them and blipping out entirely. But we didn’t.
With every game I’ve been fortunate enough to make, my hope is that a portion of the joy and fun and love we were able to mine out of the process transmutes itself through the pixels and into players’ hearts. As incredibly corny as that sounds, it is literally the job.
In the end, Reunion is a game about miracles. The kinds that can only appear when everything is burning to the ground. Maybe we knew we were embedding our own eulogy deep within the fabric of the game, but I don’t think we were that clever. It was just the story that wanted to be told.
Every dev I know handles releases differently. Some dive in and read every comment on every thread and article. Some go full media blackout and try not to read anything. Most are somewhere between. Certain ways of doing it are probably healthier than others, but I am not sure there is a healthy version.
For myself, I am grateful to anyone reading this and of course playing today. I cannot wait for players to discover all the surprise details woven in. Some will hit right away, other might take days or even weeks to emerge. As a dev, that’s one part of it that never gets old.
I’m not sure what my next posts will be, if I’ll dive into some stories around the game or try to zoom out a bit. If you have any non-spoilery questions or topics you think would be interesting, please drop them in the comments!
I've been losing touch
Trying to shake a feeling
Everything at once
Listen, could it be, that we
Meet in a past life
Meet in a past
Did we meet in a past life?
You and I
Add Ons
Hannah and Rhianna have talked beautifully about what Max and Chloe mean to them. One thing I’ve learned about actors: they’re not always the most cerebral bunch. It is a writer’s dream to have one lead actor who thinks so deeply and insightfully about their character, who engages with the text of the story so profoundly. But to have both of them? Incredible.
The full soundtrack is out! I wrote earlier about one particular song that is special to me from the early story concepting, but my god we were so lucky with all the talent here, from Tessa Rose Jackson, to FFM, to all the other artists.
Lots to be proud of - as you say there are a million multiverses where this game doesn't exist. And maybe just one where it does, lets be grateful to live in that one. Good luck with your next adventure and thanks for everything.
Hello, Mr. Zimmerman! I just wanted to shoot you a message about how incredible I thought the game was. The quality of the writing was not lost on me as I noticed how natural it all seemed, as well as enhanced by some of the best performances in the series' history. I was incredibly happy when Rhianna revealed during the presentation that you were brought back to helm this game, and after playing it, it was the absolute correct choice.
I do have a question about something that bothered me a little bit though and I think you might be the only person who is able to answer it. It's about one of the endings, the "Bad" one so to speak so if anyone here doesn't want *SPOILERS* then stop reading from here on. It's something that is starting to be asked by a pretty big part of the community so I would absolutely love if you could shed some light on the subject!
In Life Is Strange 1, there exists one timeline. When Max photo jumps, she stays in the moment briefly, can change a few things, then when she comes back she witnesses the result of her efforts while an "Auto-Max" has lived her life up until that point. The timeline is "rewritten", as signified by the "memory polaroids" burning up and being replaced.
In Reunion however, I'm not particularly sure how it works because the ending I got (foolishly enough I gave Max the photo without saving everyone), seemed to imply that if Max photo jumps (not rewind) back to try to save more people, she just disappears from that timeline and starts a new one while the old one still trots on without her, leaving a Chloe abandoned and heartbroken yet again, as signified by the photo of her alone in bed crying her heart out rather than her simply getting rewritten like say paralyzed Chloe in the first game.
This seems like an incredibly depressing thought and also ultimately implies that Max doesn't actually ever save anyone (?) seeing as the people in that timeline still remain dead (along with the first versions of Moses and Chloe you see in the very beginning of the game when Max comes back from New York). The impression I got however, is that she creates a new "branch" where she has a chance to save new people she has essentially "created", and only creates a "best world" for herself. Am I correct in this, or does the previous timeline she came from get ereased? At least that way there wouldn't be a Chloe who's relegated to misery for the rest of her life.
The picture after Chloe alone on the bed, is of Max looking out towards Caledon from where the game started, seemingly confirming that she did go back. However, the picture after that is of her and Chloe kissing, which I assume is Max keeping her promise to the Chloe she abandoned that she'll always find her, or a version of her which is really sweet but still I feel bad for the Chloe who's alone, and I don't really know how Max is able to go without thinking of the Chloe she left, especially after the whole thing with Chloe having horrific abandonment issues.
If you manage to save everyone, it's implied that Max does burn the photo herself, although the slideshow doesn't actually show her burning it. She only holds an unlit lighter next to it. Was the intention to keep it vague and just having Chloe decide for her be the "Best" ending for the girls?
I hope these questions aren't any bother to you and I hope you'll indulge me! I could talk forever about the moments I adored, like the shroomed up Max, or just both of the ending speeches which Rhianna KILLED. My favourite moment of them all had to be the trust fall bit. Absolutely masterfully pulled off.