If you can't do life is strange without Chloe Price, you can't do life is strange

Most video games focus on the central character's most important journey in life. We follow their epic adventure from start to finish, through highs and lows and everything in between. This is true of the first Life is Strange, where we meet photography student Max Caulfield as she realizes she can rewind time. On a related note, she also learns that her city is in danger of being destroyed by a deadly storm, and must use these powers to save it.

This coincides with some non-magical events that really make this the most important time in Max's life. She falls in love for the first time (technically a choice between Warren and Chloe, although Chloe is too important to the story to be considered canon), and she discovers that her teacher has been stalking, abusing, and taking pictures of her fellow students. These three journeys are indelibly linked, leading to the iconic final choice of sacrificing Chloe to save the city, or sacrificing the city to save Chloe.

Life Is Strange : Double Exposure doesn't follow its protagonist through the most important time of his life, as it follows Max again. The games — in fact, all Fantasy Journeys — often have sequels, so this isn't too shocking. But Double Exposure didn't feel like a continuation of Max's story, but a dredging of his bones to force fans to buy. Now, life is strange: while the reunion will see Chloe return in direct continuation of the Double Exposure story, it feels like the same trick is pulled twice.

Double exposure should not use Max Caulfield

Max Life is weird with his camera at Krampus' party: double exposure.

I didn't care how Double Exposure treated Chloe. If she's dead in Life is Strange, then fair enough, she's still dead here. Max says he would say the objectively right thing without trading one life for hundreds, and mourns her death. But if she survives, if the most amazing, tragic journey of Max's life ends with him being unable to surrender the soul of his true love to the clutches of death in the romance of the ages, then yes, they were broken somewhere, funny story I guess haha now do you want to make a very good bone for yourself bartender or assistant in this douche?

I understand that, in real life, your first love is not always your true love. Teenagers go through tumultuous relationships that feel written in the stars and break up all the time after a few years. But life is strange real life isn't, and it presented a story with a very different ending. This led to one of the most well-known and beloved options in gaming: Bay or Bay.

Max Caulfield from Life is weird with the camera

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Stars aligned?

Then it seemed like it was written for convenience, for a story that doesn't really involve Max – he doesn't even have the same powers! Now, it's written back for convenience as well. Max's new power sees him fall between two different timelines, though not as seamlessly as his rewind power worked. It would, in isolation, make sense to bring Chloe back with those powers.

After all, there is a timeline where he lived, and a timeline where he died. But it seems Chloe has turned into a mascot. And while I disagreed with Chloe's decision to hand over the break-up, I somewhat respected that a real choice was made instead of a cop out. Now, the police have come out.

Chloe's return causes more problems than it solves

Chloe is strangely seeing a strange light in life: the reunion.

There are also a lot of issues raised by bringing Chloe back – issues that were already present in Double Exposure. We knew these girls best as free-spirited teenagers, the forerunners of the Quirk Chungus era who were beloved for their cringefest-laden language. I still find myself using 'Hella' or 'Shock Brah' and remembering Life is Strange, not because I think it's cool – if I ever did – but because I like to remember the feeling of that game. One who was truly, inevitably himself.

As these characters age comes difficulties, as we discover with Max. Get away from this kind of language, and it's not really Max (or Chloe). Lean into it, and they look too old to talk this way. It also feels more forced – a game that is endlessly exploiting its more successful sibling, not really on its own, but in hopes of success through osmosis.

The dialogue clips we saw of Chloe in the gameplay trailer only highlight these fears.

All this underlines the whole problem. Max and Chloe's story was told, and told well. Writing another chapter for Max with Double Exposure was already wrong, and this feels like an attempt to fix that. Either that or Chloe is being dredged up like Max, to sell the game behind her name.

Given the closeness between this game and Double Exposure, we can speculate that it was pulled out using several locations already designed (which sounds like an approach to fix it), or was always in the pipeline either to double the success of Max's return or to act as a safety net for its failure.

Anyway, life is strange, Max and Chloe should have moved on by now. And it was – Sean Diaz and Alex Chen both led the best entries in the series. But now Max and Chloe are back, and fans are expected to celebrate. It just doesn't feel like a glorious return. We seem to be haunted by their ghosts.