Life Is Strange: Reunion Starting Choices Guide: Picking Your Poison
Deck Nine is forcing you to confront your terrible dating history and timeline destroying decisions before you even see the title screen.
Creating a sequel for a franchise built entirely around branching narratives is a logistical nightmare. The developers have to figure out how to respect the wildly different choices millions of people made across multiple games without writing themselves into a corner. Reunion handles this hurdle by explicitly interrogating you the moment you start a new save file.
The game presents you with five photographs representing pivotal moments from the core series. It politely asks you to establish your specific canon. If you absolutely hated the decisions you made during Double Exposure, you have the ultimate power to just lie. The game does not scan your hard drive for old save data. You can rewrite history with the click of a button.
I know how incredibly stressful it is to stare at a menu screen, terrified that checking the wrong box will accidentally ruin your entire playthrough. I mapped out the consequences for all five Legacy Choices so you know exactly what kind of misery you are opting into.
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.
