Life Is Strange: Reunion Birthday Guide: Securing The Super Max Figure
Surviving a chaotic timeline is stressful, but forgetting your best friend's birthday is a fundamentally unforgivable offense.
The overarching narrative of this game is incredibly heavy. You are constantly switching perspectives, trying to figure out what is happening at Caledon, and dealing with the massive fallout of Max's supernatural abilities. Amidst all the grim reality, the developers tucked away a surprisingly sweet, highly missable interaction. Chloe remembers that Max has a birthday coming up and decides to scrounge together a gift.
Triggering this sequence rewards you with the 'Happy Birthday!' achievement, but the process spans across two entirely separate chapters. If you just blindly chase your main objective markers, you will walk right past the triggers and completely miss the event. I strongly recommend pairing this walkthrough with my Life Is Strange: Reunion Trophy & Achievement Guide if you are trying to secure a perfect completion run.
Here is exactly how you manipulate the environment to get the gift.
The Overlight Chapter Setup
The entire sequence begins during the chapter titled The Overlight. You will eventually find yourself controlling Chloe inside Moses' office. The game tells you to head to the upper level of the office to name Moses' recent find. Ignore that main objective for a minute.
Look around the ground floor near the stairs. You will find a calendar hanging on the wall. Interact with it. This prompts Chloe to realize the date and mention the upcoming birthday. Once she acknowledges the date, walk to the completely opposite side of the room and interact with Moses' 3D printer. Chloe will make a passing comment about asking Moses to print a gift.
Now you can finally go upstairs and complete your main objective by naming the find. Once that is done, head back down and talk to Moses. The game will present you with a list of questions you can ask him. Select the dialogue option specifically labeled '3D Printer'. Chloe will casually ask him to fabricate a present, and the two of them will get to work. That is all you need to do in this chapter.
The Rowboat Handover
You do not actually give Max the present until a later chapter titled Champlain Problems.
The scene is incredibly tense. You are actively escaping Safi at the Snapping Turtle, and both Max and Chloe manage to hop onto a rowboat to get away. A cramped rowboat while fleeing a violent confrontation is a genuinely terrible environment for a birthday party, but you have to work with the situation you are given.
As the two of them talk on the water, keep an eye on your dialogue choices. Eventually, a 'Happy Birthday' option will appear on your screen. Select it. Chloe will hand over the printed gift, which turns out to be a small action figure of Max dressed as a superhero affectionately dubbed Super Max. Max absolutely loves the toy, the tension breaks for a brief moment, and your achievement will pop immediately after the exchange.
The Scene Selection Trap
If you are reading this after already rolling the credits, do not panic. You can absolutely use the Scene Selection option from the main menu to jump back into the timeline and grab this missed achievement.
However, there is a massive catch. The game tracks your continuity. You cannot just load into The Overlight, trigger the printer, and then instantly back out to load Champlain Problems. You have to physically play through the entire stretch of the game starting from The Overlight all the way into Champlain Problems for the progress to carry over.
If you are already planning a second playthrough to mop up different narrative outcomes, I highly suggest just grabbing the gift naturally on your next run to save yourself the tedious replay loop.
