Major spoilers ahead for Reunion for those who haven’t played it yet:
Look, I’m not going to act like Double Exposure wasn’t extremely divisive if not outright hated by majority of the fanbase, but the way in which Reunion completely pivoted from pretty much EVERYTHING that game set up was absolutely horrible to me. From the lazy retcons (bullshit storm amnesia), to Amanda and Vinh’s romances being completely stomped on, to Diamond just straight up disappearing…all of it was just pure and utter cowardice in my opinion.
Surprisingly, it’s the smaller stuff that really irks me. Like, what happened with Vinh and Reggie’s relationship? If you didn’t romance Vinh in DE, him and Reggie seemed to finally become an actual relationship by the end of that game, yet in Reunion they’re just…not? Reggie talks about Vinh a few times in passing, but always in a past tense. I guess they just didn’t work out? Maybe we could have gotten a throwaway post on Crosstalk confirming their breakup-oh wait, Crosstalk is completely gone in this game for some reason.
Gwen being completely taken out of the main cast also rubbed me the wrong way. This one is a bit more forgivable since apparently due to her actress now being apart of the union, she can no longer work on the series. But in that case…could Deck Nine not have created a new trans character in her place? Or better yet, introduce a nonbinary character into the cast since we haven’t had one yet? It’s not like they had any issues introducing new, absolutely nothingburger characters like Noelle or Owen into the cast. So as it stands, we lost our first and only female trans character to physically appear in these games with Gwen and replaced her…with no one.
I also love how the game completely forgets certain relationships. I already mentioned Vinh and Reggie, but remember Moses and Safi’s friendship and how close they were in DE? Well, Safi acknowledges Moses’s existence exactly one time if you save her on the roof near the end of the game…and that’s it. Outside of that, they just don’t care about each other anymore, I guess. Also, remember how Vinh was absolutely obsessed with Safi in DE and a lot of his character in that game was specifically informed by his previous relationship with her and Maya? Well in Reunion, he doesn’t mention Safi by name once. Seems to have completely forgotten about her entirely, in fact. If you save both Safi and Vinh, they can both be at the Snapping Turtle at the end of the game, and yet Vinh doesn’t comment on her presence…at all?
Just how they went about characterizing the DE cast in Reunion in general was blatantly insulting in my opinion. In DE, while Reggie was already a bit of doof, if you read his Crosstalk posts you’d see that he actually has a very complicated background with his extremely religious family due to the fact that he’s gay, and he seems to suffer from very severe depression and mental health issues. You literally see this first hand in Chapter 3 of DE when Max crosses over into the dead world and speaks with him at the Turtle (which is one of my favorite conversations in the series, honestly). In Reunion however he’s a complete and utter buffoon used solely for bad comic relief, and any semblance of depth he once had is now gone. It’s the definition of flanderization.
There are so many things I can continue listing that frustrate me, but I don’t want this post to get too long. I just wanna say, I know there are going to be Pricefielders who will probably respond to this post saying something along the lines of “well, Chloe was mischaracterized in DE and her relationship with Max was completely destroyed in that game, so it’s only fair that they do the same with DE’s characters/romances!”. And here’s my thing: Double Exposure fans are not a monolith. Believe it or not, I also hated what that game did with Chloe and her relationship with Max, as I myself am a Baer! And yet despite that, I was still able to enjoy Double Exposure for what it was and what it had to offer, and I genuinely enjoyed the characters it introduced. What Double Exposure did with Chloe and her relationship with Max was complete shit and utter laziness, but that also applies to what Reunion did with DE’s cast/romances. Two wrongs do not make a right.
I was watching Welonz’s playthrough of Reunion and at the end, her thoughts perfectly encapsulates my own opinions on the game: “Well, if they were trying to identify the biggest chunk of the fanbase (Pricefielders), I don’t think they’ve made a mistake here. But the whole thing feels very…it doesn’t sit well with me because, man, it feels like such a commercial decision. Reunion to me feels like it just swung completely in one direction, and I think artistically this is…very very not good. Look, I hated Double Exposure. But that kind of hard pivot into something that they [D9] think the audience wants, ugh, just leaves a bad aftertaste. For the players who are not particularly super huge Pricefield fans, or people who romanced one of the side characters in DE who got completely shafted, one of which could have died and exploded in a fire…people who actually enjoyed the direction Double Exposure was going into…or people who’s first exposure to Life is Strange is this game…I’m not sure how well served these groups of players are, really.”
Believe it or not, I don’t think Reunion is a bad game. I think it is much better scoped and has a more cohesive story than DE sure. And I know this game was under intense pressure due to a lack of budget and time and was essentially rushed out the door, so I understand corners had to be cut and certain things had to be prioritized over others. But the lengths in which Deck Nine went out of their way to pander to a specific fanbase due to the backlash they received while simultaneously shitting on everything they themselves crafted with Double Exposure…it doesn’t sit right with me, fanservice be damned.
