Life Is Strange: Reunion Starting Choices Guide: Picking Your Poison
Reunion opens with five photographs asking you to confess your exact history with Amanda, Vinh, Chloe, and Safi before the title screen even shows up.
Building a sequel around a series famous for branching choices is an awkward puzzle. Deck Nine solved it by just asking you directly. Instead of scanning old save files, the game hands you five photos and lets you declare your canon on the spot, no hard drive digging required. If you hated a decision from Double Exposure, you can quietly rewrite it and nobody will ever know.
Here's the full menu you're working with:
Amanda Thomas: romanced her or stayed friends
Vinh Lang: romanced him or stayed friends
Chloe Price: died in Arcadia Bay or survived it
Max and Chloe: romanced her or stayed friends
Safiya Llewellyn-Fayyad: supported her or rejected her
Some of these barely move the needle. A couple of them completely change how the rest of the game feels. Here's what each one is actually doing behind the scenes.
The Safi Choice Matters More Than the Story Lets On
Safi's arc from Double Exposure gets mostly brushed aside here. Her search for other superpowered people barely comes up, and Diamond's introduction basically gets a passing mention and nothing more. It's a little disappointing if you were hoping for a follow up on that thread.
Where it does matter is mechanical. Late in Reunion, Safi ends up in serious danger, and your Legacy Choice quietly decides how that plays out. Support her back in Double Exposure and she trusts you enough that saving her becomes a lot smoother. Reject her and she's carrying a grudge, throwing bitter dialogue your way while actively working against you during the exact moment you're trying to help her. Unless you're specifically chasing a harder time, picking support up front saves you a genuinely frustrating sequence later.
Whether Chloe Lived or Died Changes the Entire Tone of the Game
This is the choice that actually reshapes things. If you kept Chloe alive by sacrificing Arcadia Bay, the two of them talk like people who've spent real time together since, reminiscing openly and acknowledging their shared history without much weight behind it.
Let her die instead, and Reunion gets considerably heavier. The Chloe you're spending time with is an alternate timeline version who never went through any of it. She'll occasionally point out, mid conversation, that she isn't the Chloe Max actually lost, and those scenes land with a lot more gravity than anything on the "she survived" side.
If you're the type who wants to see everything, you're signing up for two full playthroughs to cover both outcomes. When you get to that second run, my Life is Strange: Reunion Trophy & Achievement Guide is worth having open so the repeat trip feels a lot less like homework.
It Also Decides How the Romance Plays Out
Your survival pick and your romance pick work together rather than separately. Set things to friends only, and Max and Chloe keep it strictly platonic while they're dealing with the university fire, no lingering tension attached.
Lock in the romance option instead, and the whole dynamic shifts into repairing trust that got broken. Starting from that romantic history gives you a real head start, since Chloe responds to your advances a lot more easily later on. You can still work toward the romance even if you begin as friends, the specific moments and prompts are there either way, it's just a smoother road if you commit early.
Amanda and Vinh Get Written Out, Just Differently
Both Double Exposure love interests get quietly cleared off the board here, and it's a pretty blunt piece of writing to watch happen.
Amanda was the Snapping Turtle's bar manager. Stick with friendship and you'll get a handful of pleasant texts and not much else. Choose the romance path and Max actually brings it up early, in a conversation with Moses, along with a few dialogue trees where she and Chloe talk through the breakup. The breakup itself happens because of a plot device called Storm Amnesia, which wipes Amanda's memory of Max's powers entirely. Max decides she can't keep a relationship going built on that kind of secret, and that's that. It's a convenient way to clear the romantic slate, but it does the job.
Vinh gets the same treatment through a different door. Friends only gets you a light text thread here and there. Flag him as a past partner and you get some flavor text on why things ended, plus a small reference from Chloe if you go digging in the right conversations. None of it changes the plot in any real way, it just ties off the loose thread cleanly.
If you want to see how far these dialogue branches actually spread once the game gets going, the Life is Strange: Reunion Choices & Consequences Guide covers it in a lot more depth than the opening menu ever will.
None of these five choices are going to lock you out of content or break your save. The Safi and Chloe picks are the ones doing real work under the hood, while Amanda and Vinh mostly exist to tie up history without demanding much from you. If you're staring at that opening screen wondering how much thought to put into it, the honest answer is: enough to know what kind of Chloe you'll be spending the game with, and not much more than that.
The Double Exposure Exes
Let me rip the bandage off right now. If you spent hours carefully cultivating a romance with Amanda or Vinh in the previous game, Reunion is going to violently reset your relationship status. The narrative requires a clean slate to bring Chloe back into the spotlight, and the writers achieved this through a very heavy handed plot device.
Amanda Thomas
Amanda was the charming bar manager at the Snapping Turtle. If you tell the menu you stayed platonic friends, you will get some friendly text messages and basically nothing else.
If you select the romance option, the game actually acknowledges your history. Max will mention her past relationship early on during a conversation with Moses. You will also trigger a few specific dialogue trees where Chloe and Max discuss the breakup.
And yes, you are forced to break up. The game uses a convenient plot device called "Storm Amnesia" to wipe Amanda's memory of Max's supernatural abilities. Max realizes she cannot maintain a relationship built on secrets, and the whole thing falls apart. It is a cynical way to clear the romantic chessboard, but it works. If you are curious about how these dialogue options branch out further into the game, I strongly recommend checking out my Life is Strange: Reunion Choices & Consequences Guide.
Vinh Lang
The hotshot assistant is also written out of the romantic picture, just through a different lens. If you choose the friendship route, your phone will contain a few harmless text threads.
If you flag him as a former romantic partner, Reunion gives you a bit of flavor text explaining exactly how Max and Vinh's differences led to their eventual breakup. Chloe will also slightly reference the relationship if you poke around the dialogue options. It ultimately changes absolutely nothing about the core plot, but it ties up the loose end.
The Arcadia Bay Elephant In The Room
This is where your decisions actually carry massive, game altering weight. Max has the unique privilege of watching her friends die in multiple dimensions, and that kind of trauma does not just wash out in the laundry.
Chloe Price: Dead Or Alive
If you sacrificed Arcadia Bay to keep Chloe alive, the two of them will constantly reminisce about the time they spent together before they distanced themselves from one another. They talk as if they still spend a massive amount of time together, fully acknowledging their shared past.
If you let Chloe die to save the town, things get incredibly dark. The Chloe you interact with in Reunion is an alternate timeline variant. She never died. Max will have several gut wrenching conversations with this alternate Chloe, who periodically acknowledges that she is not the person Max actually lost, while they discuss the aftermath of her death.
If you are a hardcore completionist, you are going to suffer. The game demands you finish the story under both of these specific parameters. If you are dreading that grind, pull up my Life is Strange: Reunion Trophy & Achievement Guide to make the second playthrough as painless as possible.
Max And Chloe: Besties Or Better
This choice acts as a direct modifier to the survival question. If you tell the game you were just friends, their interactions start strictly platonic. They banter, they argue, and they try to survive the imminent university fire without the immediate burden of past romantic tension.
If you lock in the romance option, Reunion turns into a masterclass in repairing broken trust. Max and Chloe will actively try to reconcile the massive fallout of their relationship. Setting this to romance gives you a massive leg up, making Chloe significantly more receptive to your advances later in the campaign. You can technically still trigger the romance route and the specific kissing prompts even if you start as friends, but locking in the romantic history from the jump makes navigating their trauma a lot smoother.
The Safi Situation
The final photograph asks you to evaluate your loyalty to Safi at the very end of Double Exposure.
Safiya Llewellyn-Fayyad
I am going to be brutally honest here. The writers completely sidelined the massive cliffhanger from the last game. Safi's grand quest to find other superpowered people is barely mentioned. The introduction of Diamond is basically swept under the rug.
However, your choice to support or reject her still matters mechanically. Toward the climax of Reunion, Safi finds herself in a highly lethal situation. If you supported her in the past, she trusts you much more. Because of that established trust, saving her life during this sequence becomes vastly easier.
If you rejected her, she holds a massive grudge. She becomes deeply resentful of Max, bringing up bitter dialogue about the ending of Double Exposure. Trying to save her life while she actively despises you and opposes your actions is a frustrating ordeal. I highly recommend picking the support option unless you intentionally want to make your life miserable.
