Life is Strange Double Exposure Review

Reading Time: 25 minutes.

Life is Strange sunk its claws in me nearly a decade ago, and hasn’t let up since. I was hooked on the Life is Strange series from the very first trailers and screenshots I saw. The art style, gameplay, music, characters, all of it just jumped out at me. It felt tailor-made for me, at a time when I needed something like that most. Life is Strange was one of those few pieces of media that I just knew would be important to me from the first moment I saw it, and there’s been nothing else like it since.

Subsequent games haven’t been quite capable of capturing that same feel, the mix of mystery, introspection, anticipation, drama, and nostalgia, but I’ve been excited for them all the same. Every game has been phenomenal in their own way, even if none captured the novel yet nostalgic vibe that the first Life is Strange game possessed.

The games have been anthologies. The first game told the story of Max Caulfield, a girl who returned to her hometown to find she had the ability to rewind time. She used it to reconnect with her best friend, track down the truth behind her friend’s disappearance, and even fall in love. There was a prequel to that, starring Chloe Price, Max’s best friend she abandoned for five years. It was about how she got to know a girl who would later disappear, all while learning to work through her grief and see herself as an individual with her own wants and needs, while realizing what she wants to do is help others.

A sequel, Life is Strange 2, followed the young Diaz brothers who, after a police officer kills their father without provocation, go on the run, fearful of an unjust system that would blame them for the events of that day, and the power growing inside the 9-year-old Daniel Diaz as his older brother, Sean Diaz, takes care of him.

Finally, there was Life is Strange True Colors, which followed Alex Chen, a girl reuniting with her long lost brother in a beautiful Colorado mountain town, only to be forced into investigating a devastating mystery with her own growing supernatural powers.

These games have always had themes of found family, of adventures, and above all, of love. Double Exposure brings us back to Max Caulfield, a risk the series has not been willing to take until now. Fans were nervous. Would the game respect the final choices you could make when you played as Max Caulfield before? The creators said yes. They did, but not how players wanted. For a vocal group of fans, that cheapened a series known for its “choices matter” narrative. But the story’s not without opportunities to win back the trust of their fans, if they’re willing to give Deck Nine a chance to tell the full story.

 

This review will avoid major plot spoilers, but it will have one thing that gets brought up within the first 20 minutes of playing and is more setting than spoiler. No big story reveals, nothing that would spoil the mystery or the fun here. I may do a future recap of the events in a spoiler-laden piece, but this definitely isn’t that.

Chapters 1 and 2

For those super-fans who preordered the ultimate edition, we got to play the first two chapters of the game early. I personally played and replayed them a few times, ensuring I got every choice I wanted to make, along with every collectable. I took notes and recorded theories, not only for this review, but for my own enjoyment. Overall, I dropped about 40 hours into the first two chapters before the full game was released. Over a period of two weeks, for a story-based game, that’s quite a bit of playtime. I was able to form some early opinions and theories.

In many ways, the two-week gap between the first two chapters and gaining access to the rest reminded me of the first game with its episodic release schedule. Unfortunately, the fandom wasn’t interested in theories. They were all caught up about something that happened early in the game, and the fun of theory crafting was killed before it could begin. The writers broke up Chloe and Max, for those who agreed they were dating, and no one could think about anything else. Who can blame them? They broke up one of the most popular ships in gaming to force Max through the central theme of the game. More on Chloe later, but those themes we should dive into, especially since they offer an explanation for the breakup that the developers, frustratingly didn’t spell out on their own.

Forget the Horror Here?

A central theme you can spot even early in the game is Max’s need to move on from the trauma in her past, especially her guilt over the lives she destroyed—albeit accidentally—through her actions. She knows she must embrace what she learned, but let go of the pain associated with it. This inability to release her trauma, especially her guilt, was keeping her from forming any close connections, and it ruined her last relationship. Now, her new best friend Safi was pushing her back into the dating life, trying to get her to form roots in a place. For Max, she hasn’t done that in nearly a decade. The last time she formed roots, it was in a town slammed with tragedy, some of it Max’s doing. Forming roots is a way through Max’s trauma. Her willingness to start forming those roots is proof that she’s finally starting to take Chloe’s advice, push through her trauma and guilt and move into the future. Many long-time fans were not happy with how she began forming those roots.

Max is offered two romantic options in this game. There’s a cute bartender, Amanda, you can flirt with and ask out, and a guy, Vinh, who, while funny and mysterious, will flirt with you whether you like it or not. At least they captured that part of the female experience well. While he certainly becomes less of an obnoxious flirt later in the game, and we come to understand him better, it’s a jarring introduction to him.

But there’s much more afoot here. This isn’t a romance simulator game. In fact, romance is never deep, and clearly not something the developers wanted us to dwell on. Your new best friend, Safi, is killed one night. In the wake of this new trauma, Max finds she can unlock a new aspect of her powers. Rather than rewinding, something she seems to have blocked off for herself, she can seemingly jump between alternate timelines. In one, Safi is alive, but still in danger. Can Max use the two timelines to solve Safi’s murder, and save the Safi of the other timeline from the same fate? Or is Safi a tragic character, doomed to die in every reality?

A Whole New Type of Mystery

Max is essentially using two different timelines to solve a murder that hasn’t happened in one of them. She’s a detective who can talk to the murder victim and the suspects before they even know they should have their guard up. It’s a completely unique mystery story that alone could prop up a game, movie, or TV series. That dual reality carries some surprising implications, including mixing up your suspects and what they may or may not have done in each timeline. As a fan of a good mystery, I was hooked right from the premise. New mystery stories are so rare. They all follow so many basic patterns. Having something completely unique is exciting.

The suspects come from a variety of rich characters around campus, all with complex motivations and backstory. There’s a writing professor who hitchhiked across the country for her book and to save her life, the shady head of a secret student society, jumpy and private professors, and suspects galore. On top of it all, there’s a detective, suspicious of Max and Moses, Safi’s friends, who could either aid or hamper their efforts to find Safi’s killer. How can Max not be suspicious? She was the first person on the scene of a murder complicated with a lack of evidence. Will Max be able to rely on her friend Moses, a brilliant and lovable astronomy professor, or will she have to keep secrets from everyone if she wants to solve the case? How much can she use her powers without creating trouble like that she faced in Arcadia Bay? And what will those secrets mean for the detectives investigating her and her friends?

By the end of these first two chapters, you may have a notebook full of ideas, possible leads, characters who have said something suspicious, or threads you want to further explore. I found myself putting some of my ideas down in a notebook as I played, something I just haven’t done for other mystery stories. Hunting down the threads and searching for clues was fun, even if Max’s voiceover made each new objective a little too obvious. These two first chapters set up an incredible mystery with a supernatural detective trying to figure out who could be capable of killing her best friend.

The Final Three Chapters

(Again: No Spoilers!)

In the time since Life is Strange: Double Exposure came out, I’ve spent over twice as many hours in-game than I did for Life is Strange: True Colors. That could be enough of a review, especially considering how positively I reviewed True Colors. I’ve spent over 130 hours in this game already, and I foresee at least 20 hours more before the next game in the series comes out. The final three episodes had enough to not only keep me replaying, but trying all kinds of different choices to see how it impacted the outcome. Life is Strange 2 had the most variation in the possible endings of all the Life is Strange games, but let you change little leading up to those choices. The first game may have had a larger impact, but largely brought you down to two main differences, canonizing particular choices you could have made along the way in future games. Double exposure did something a little different.

Life is Strange: Double Exposure doesn’t have the same ending variations. The lives of the people you interact with can easily go in at least one of two ways for each character, and you still get a final choice that will impact any follow-up games, but not impact this game very much. The game’s finale basically spells out that there will be another Life is Strange game, hopefully starring Max Caulfield again, to wrap up her story. The fact that this game is clearly setting up a direct sequel limits it in the same way that Before the Storm being a prequel limited it. However, I think the story more than stands on its own despite that, and adds more variety into your everyday interactions and choices, rather than having it culminate in something as simple as a two or four choice ending. There are far more combinations for this game that will impact future games with a save import feature this game seems to set up. It’s not as satisfying as a trilogy conclusion, but it’s a much better example of how the second act in a trilogy should set up a finale.

The issues raised in this game are resolved in a satisfying way. That’s what a lot of people worry about with games that will obviously have a sequel. Does it feel like it has an ending, or is it all cliffhanger? Without spoilers, yes, this game does feel good to complete. Better yet, they set up a wide variety of variations for the ending of the characters in this game. The choices you will be able to import over to a future game will certainly be complex. Some of the characters won’t even be on speaking terms with you if you made certain choices, and that’s going to shape their role in future games substantially. I’m excited for the potential that this next game has.

With Double Exposure showing off game save importing by allowing save files from the demo to come over to the main game automatically, it seems clear the continuation of these choices could be far more complex than simply answering one or two yes or no questions in the first 15 minutes of the next game. I can’t wait to see what that will look like, and how many of these side stories will find their way into the next. Hopefully most of them!

The Mystery Setup: Does it Land?

Life is Strange: Double Exposure sets up a “whodunnit” in the first two episodes. LiS 1 had a missing girl mystery, True Colors had a mystery involving a corporation, but both of these did very little detective work. I was actually disappointed with the mystery solving elements in both games, especially True Colors.

In Double Exposure’s first three chapters, Max is in hardcore detective mode, asking tough questions, sometimes too tough, and doing the kind of exploration that make some film noir-inspired scenes that come up later in the game feel right at home. You may find you press suspects too hard and they shut you out, or go too easy on others and never get the full picture. It’s a delicate balance that you’ll likely want to replay multiple times to see how different each choice can make the game. Sometimes, I was really surprised. Often these games won’t literally slam the door in your face with characters you’ve upset, but Double Exposure is willing to do that with a few of them.

The mystery elements do sort of evolve after they get more of a focus. Much like a good detective story, nothing is as simple as it seems. A murder mystery turns out to be much more, and while the first two acts of a good detective story are about detective work, the last is about resolving a much larger problem. Double Exposure follows this recipe in a very Life is Strange way, full of unexpected twists, character development, and supernatural oddities. Still, the formula is here to the letter, by the time you’ve solved one mystery, you realize you’ve got much more to do.

The ending feels a little rushed. That is often the nature of detective stories. The mystery before the chase is almost always more interesting than the chase and resolution. I think they could have padded the last two chapters with more content. They give a satisfying enough conclusion, but it feels like some ideas are left on the table in an effort to get the main story wrapped up. It’s a sign of a good story when your biggest complaint is that you want more of it, but it’s one I was able to levy at Life is Strange 1, True Colors, and now Double Exposure. The real takeaway is that Life is Strange needs a larger budget and more time to work on creating something magnificent. It seems like they do a little more with each game, but I still am left wanting even more.

Were the “Life is Strange Feels” There?

I replayed the Life is Strange series in full before Double Exposure came out. Every game. That’s a lot of emotion to pack into a few weeks. However, there are clearly some themes that have followed Life is Strange games. There’s the beatnick On the Road reverence, the love for the road as a destination, not just a pathway to the next place. But Double Exposure is more the resolution of that. Even Kerouac’s characters eventually find a place to land, and this is Max trying to learn to stop running.

Then there’s the nostalgia. Some players may be too young to feel strong nostalgia for their college years, but those years were among my favorite. Learning has been a passion of mine all my life, and to be somewhere that was solely about learning (and cutting loose) was perfect for me. Returning to that atmosphere certainly ticked off the nostalgia checkbox for me. While Max tried to shake off her past, I was eager to jump back into this aspect of mine.

Life is Strange has always done a great job at making you care about characters. The second game may have been a weak point here, as it never spent much time with many of them, but that’s an outlier, and was the point of the journey. They couldn’t form strong bonds with anyone but each other. That was the tragedy. Double Exposure makes you feel for these characters so that, even when they do something horrible, you’ll feel almost compelled to forgive them. It’s something I loved about the first Life is Strange game, how it humanized even its “villains” (some of them, anyway), and that’s still present in this sequel to Max’s story.

Finally, there’s the tears. Every Life is Strange game has moments that will get the waterworks going. It’s no secret that this game is about Max’s friend being killed. But seeing the frantic texts from her mother, overhearing students lamenting the death of the TA that gave them confidence, inspiring them to be themselves, the glue that held so many people together being torn away, it’s impactful. Though Double Exposure doesn’t lean on them as much as they should. While this game has two universes to traverse, it’s heart breaking knowing there’s a version of Yasmin who will never see her daughter again, or a kindhearted professor who won’t celebrate the holidays with his best friend. If you come to these games for an emotional release, you could get that in Double Exposure, but not as much as previous games. Double Exposure seems to try to play light with your emotions.

PS5 Performance

While the PC version of this game may have had issues, the PS5 had only small, incredibly infrequent problems. With the performance mode set to high graphics, I only noticed an occasional frame drop, and these moments usually passed in a second.

Outside of that, the game looks gorgeous. They retain the classic Life is Strange method of painting with light in landscapes we don’t want to stop exploring. I’ve taken more screenshots and videos than I expected to, making me wish they had a photo mode in this game. Even if it was built in to the story, allowing us to use Max’s cameras to take photos wherever we wanted. I think it would be fun to play artist-in-residence at a beautiful university for a while and just take photos around campus. The game’s pretty enough that it’s a feature, with the classic golden hour lighting that Life is Strange clings to being on full display in its latest installment.

Incredible Performances

There’s a different kind of performance in play here too. These characters feel incredibly lifelike. Between motion capture picking up on subtle nuances in performance, to wonderfully acted and written voice lines, the characters in this game feel real.

Every character comes together with realistic performances that make the mystery element better, and help those heavy story situations hit home with the player too. I found myself caring about what was happening to these people and their lives. This series has always had some great performances, but with the focus on motion capture and realism in Double Exposure, they really shine. It’s hard not to fall in love with these characters, and the wonderful voice acting and motion capture performances of the cast are a huge part of that.

This is the best we’ve ever seen Max, and we’re introduced to a host of other characters that you’ll love getting to know.

Depth of Character

None of these characters are simplistic. The excellent performances helps flesh out complex motivations for each character, but they’re also written to be both dynamic, dependent on the choices you make, and have their own unique motivations and backstories.

No single character clearly fits a mold or stereotype. None of them are what they seem on the surface. Each one has this intricate history and motivations for their actions that aren’t directly explained to you, but shown through their actions, their artworks, and through conversations you can eavesdrop on. Everything from the art they create to their overheard conversations reveals a little piece of who they are, and moves the story along in a sneaky way. You’ll have to be a real detective to uncover all the “secrets of Caledon,” and you’ll still be in for some surprises. I wish the game leaned more into Max interacting with some of the side stories, rather than relying on a strange eavesdropping mechanic, but the story bites around campus still enrich the game’s world.

Outright Bugs

I’ve encountered doors that don’t want to sit on their hinges, but haven’t seen them as much of late. Perhaps a patch fixed them, or perhaps I just haven’t ran into the specific set of events that caused the bug. Only once did this lead to an issue bad enough that I had to reload from a checkpoint, when I used a misplaced door to access an out-of-bounds area.

However, there are two bugs that still frustrate me, and one’s a doozy. First, the little one. Audio. There is something wrong with the audio on the PS5 version that causes some lines or scenes to be much louder than others. Strangely, I found this is mostly fixed by using headphones connected to my PS5 controller. I prefer using headphones in games anyway, especially those with great music and voice lines where I want to hear every detail.

The second bug is one I finally overcame. There was one trophy I didn’t want to get, but need for platinum. There’s a choice from the first game that I never make, in all the years (almost 10!) I’ve played it, but is required to get platinum in this game. Usually, Life is Strange games do not force you to make every choice to get a trophy, understanding that some players may not want to do certain plot points. Double exposure forces you to do at least two playthroughs, one with this decision and one making the other. I decided to go with it anyway. I rushed through the game with the choice I never made playing the first game only to find that, at the end, I did not unlock the trophy. All requirements were met for the hidden trophy, but it didn’t unlock. I had to do another playthrough on the same save, erasing the first game, to fix it and get the trophy. At least I got to erase the timeline I didn’t like! Going off of the extremely small number of people who have completed it, I believe this is a bug, and should instead be available across game saves. With that, I became one of the ~2.3% of players to platinum this game.

Hey, when I review a game, I review the game.

Return of the Greats

Along with the character Max Caulfield, we also get her fantastic voice actress making a return. Hannah Telle does an excellent job portraying an older, more assertive and self-confident Max. She’s even up for an award for her performance! Now a professional photographer and artist-in-residence at Caledon University, Max is growing into the best version of herself.

There’s also so much of what makes Life is Strange great in here. Beautiful landscapes and screenshots that will make amazing wallpapers. Lovable and comfortable scenery, tainted by the events that happened in them. Music from indie creators that fits so perfectly in a scene you’ll remember the moment it came up years later when listening to your playlists on shuffle.

The first game had a style that felt like a painting, and each game since then has gone with more realistic graphics, but kept that same beauty. Life is Strange: Double Exposure is no different. This game looks and sounds gorgeous.

Voice actors make the game feel more vibrant and alive than the first. Re-playing the first game, you’ll frequently notice many of the same voice actors across multiple characters, breaking immersion. But with Double Exposure, every new character is voiced with sincerity, and captured with surprisingly good facial and movement capture. The result is an immersive experience with characters you’ll either love or distrust quickly. Max’s closest friends, Moses and Safi, especially, steal the show. Blu Allen and Olivia AbiAssi who played these characters, respectively, also deserve a heaping of praise. They brought these new characters to life with a vibrancy that makes their characters instant favorites.

The Theme of Life is Strange: Double Exposure

These games are more complex than anything that could truly sum them up in a few words. To say Life is Strange 2 is about racism is to ignore that it’s also about responsibility, entitlement, and brotherhood. Life is Strange 1 is about how our patriarchal society fails girls and women, but it’s also about friendship, finding yourself, and discovering your own queer identity. Before the Storm is about finding a friend to hold on to in a storm, but also growing up in a world that doesn’t listen to you, and, as it’s a prequel to Life is Strange 1, the damage the patriarchy does to women is still a strong theme. True Colors was about finding family, acceptance, and making a home for yourself. It’s a message that certainly resonates with queer players, who have their own definition of the word “family.”

In Double Exposure, Max has found her own family, but she’s still carrying the weight of her trauma. She spent so much time carrying her guilt, and assuming others blamed her, including her girlfriend Chloe (if you chose that). It caused her to isolate, never form bonds, never stay anywhere too long, and lose those she loved. But Double Exposure is about taking that guilt, the traumatic experiences Max lived through, and pushing through it. Learning how to move on from it and how to stop blaming past versions of yourself for your mistakes. It’s a lesson many people figure out in their late 20’s and 30’s, without the same time travel powers Max has complicating it.

While Double Exposure doesn’t directly deal with large societal issues like the patriarchy, racism, Islamophobia, homophobia, or transphobia, it does call out these issues with characters and their own struggles in subtle yet clear ways. Double Exposure is very much about the individual struggles we all face in systems that fight against us. It’s a game for the marginalized, the hurt, and those looking to rise above or move on. It presents hope for progress at an individual level, not just hope for societal change. In many ways, that may resonate with players more than larger issue discussions have.

Hearing Gwen talk about how transphobia held her back, seeing how Yasmin has to compromise for a board because she’s already a “combo breaker” as the first non-white, non-male university president, or how Moses calls out that he’s used to being a “suspect,” seeing how character’s pride in their heritage shaped their artwork, it’s all very powerful. It’s spread out across so many little interactions, but there’s something powerful in that too. These people are part of the tapestry that make up everyone’s lives, and it’s wonderful to see that as part of a game.

If you boil down the main message of Double Exposure, it’s about understanding your past does not need to shape your future, about dealing with trauma, grief, and guilt with the help of others. It’s about those personal internal battles that many won’t ever see. But like other Life is Strange games, there’s a lot more than that alone here. Each character has such a rich story, there are no 1-dimensional villains here, no scapegoats or easy targets. Everyone has so much depth, and the writers should be commended for that.

What about the Sapphic Sacrifice?

Warning: non-main-story spoiler about Max and Chloe in this segment.

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Even today, few games have come close to Life is Strange’s longstanding sapphic couple with Max and Chloe. Even Horizon Forbidden West made Aloy’s same sex attraction an optional choice that players could ignore. In The Last of Us 2, we see a sapphic relationship, but we also see it end in tragedy. We never get a happy ending. Life is Strange was different, if we wanted it to be.

Until Double Exposure.

Double Exposure ripped that comfort away right away. We got a limited explanation for it in the beginning of the game. However, as we play the game, it’s incredibly clear that Chloe was right, that Max needed time alone, and this game is about that time. Many great hero’s journeys have those pathways through self doubt, and this is Max’s hero’s journey. This is a chapter she has to handle on her own. If Chloe had been around, she might not have been able to see a pathway forward.

I will spoil this trivial element, if only to keep you from getting your hopes up too high. Double Exposure does not get Max and Chloe back together. But it does clear the way for that and leave an open ending regardless of your choices that points towards it. Whatever obstacles stood in the way of a reunion, Double Exposure clears them. On top of that, Chloe is at the forefront of Max’s mind throughout the entire game, regardless if you chose “bay or bae.” In many ways, this game is about Max’s relationship to Chloe. You could almost view it exclusively through that Chloe-centric lens. Max writes her journal “to” her. She thinks about her during nearly every “zen moment.” Chloe is Max’s focal point still. She’s where Max finds her balance and grounding. Having played both ending options from the first game, I will say the one that has Max and Chloe traveling together in the end is a better story in this game. It has more involvement with the previous story, but both revolve so much around Chloe, obviously for different reasons. So play it with confidence that your favorite sapphics might eventually get justice. Even if this game did not give them the respect they deserved.

Other LGBTQIA+ Representation

Besides that, there are opportunities for Max to date a male or female love interest (or both, if you’re feeling scandalous) in this game, finally confirming something everyone already suspected: Max is bisexual. There are queer characters all over this game. It feels more like the friend group you make as a queer person. Most of my friends are in the LGBTQIA+ umbrella. I’m a lesbian, and that’s just how it happens, you end up surrounding yourself, whether you mean to or not, with people who accept you completely. That’s most often fellow queer people. Double Exposure finally accurately represents that. Caledon University’s diverse cast feels far more realistic to what queer friend groups actually look like. People talk about their heritage and backgrounds, from Native American to South American to being Black in America, and the consequences of being queer in this country. This feels real and natural, and I love absolutely that.

So, yes, this game does have an early casualty in Max and Chloe’s relationship. It’s also the only game to confirm that relationship even happened. The Max and Chloe relationship has never existed in the game canon before Double Exposure. It’s also the best representation of queer friend groups in quasi-mainstream media. Most importantly, it leaves hope for Max to carve her own path forward, including paths that lead back to Chloe. Hopefully the next game makes traveling down that path a priority, they could avoid most of the negative press this game had due to breaking up this vital and unique part of sapphic storytelling in gaming.

Criticism and Controversy

Let’s get the first instigators out of the way, as they’re probably the smallest group but influential regardless. This is an unapologetically diverse and queer game. It features a trans woman. That alone is enough to summon misplaced anger. You can find in a number of review aggregators evidence of review bombing over the LGBTQ themes. You can also find them talking about going into communities and stirring up trouble specifically to upset fans.

The fans have the real criticisms though. While bigots may poke and prod, making their complaints feel like bigger deals, the fact remains, fans have a bit to be upset about here.

Pricefield Matters

The biggest sapphic ship in gaming is “Pricefield,” that is, Max Caulfield and Chloe Price. The actual first game, in a cop-out common for its time, never fully confirmed their feelings for one another. This lead to a fury of fanfiction, eventually a comic series and even books that explored their relationship after the first game, and a fanbase that stuck to Life is Strange. For some, myself included, it was one of those relationships that makes you feel better about who you are as a queer person who spent so much of their earlier life confused. To this day, it’s one of the largest sapphic ships on fanfiction websites. People need this.

And Deck Nine both confirmed they were a couple and broke them up in the same scene. How did they not expect backlash? The letter they used didn’t properly illustrate how Chloe was doing it to save Max from herself, and a lack of any scene with Max pouring over it or lamenting it really made it feel like they were trying to put their relationship in the past. The rest of the game didn’t do this, making it clear that Chloe was at the forefront of Max’s thoughts and still a driving factor behind her trying to get through her trauma, but you don’t get that in the first 30 minutes of the game, where people formed early and lasting opinions.

Deck Nine clearly underestimated how important this was to people, and it is a huge reason why the fan reviews are mixed. In fact, I’d argue it’s the primary reason. Had they given the break up more attention, really spelled it out that Chloe broke up with Max because it was the only way Max would ever deal with her guilt, a sort of self-sacrifice, then I feel like this game would have far more positive attention. A simple change, a few lines in a letter, would have been enough to win over fans and dramatically raise scores. They came so close to universal claim, and squandered it with a few tiny choices so small, they could fix them with a patch without even changing the story, just some of the wording in a single letter.

Hating Before Playing

Confirmation bias is a powerful thing. Fake “leaks” claiming the team hated Chloe, or partial game leaks that took lines completely out of context to make them seem worse than they were spoiled the game for many potential players. Between that and the anger they already felt for feeling mislead about the Pricefield situation in Double Exposure, there was no way players were going to go into the game willing to give it a fair chance. And perhaps they were right to be immediately dismissive. There were considerable failings here.

People rarely examine how confirmation bias shapes their views, but many of the complaints about this game have been said of every prior Life is Strange game. From being too focused on powers, or rushing through the final chapters, all have been complaints for every game in the series since day one. But they’re blown out of proportion here because gamers are already—and again, perhaps rightfully—upset. This is why so many of the complaints are practically copy/pasted from some tweet or Reddit thread. People are frustrated about one thing and want to make it deeper than that, so they copy what someone else claimed. Most of these are legit criticisms, but certainly smaller issues than they’re made to be. But when you’re already mad or frustrated, any explanation and any way to vent can feel like catharsis.

Pulled Punches

There are some gut punches in this game. There’s one scene in particular that made my heart race and palms sweat. (It’s worth noting here that you can turn on content warnings for various potentially triggering moments in the game.)

However, largely it felt like Deck Nine pulled their punches.

Without spoiling more than the very premise of this game, a woman loses her only child in this game. We get hints of her breakdown with long text bursts out to Max, as she sees her as both a connection to Safi and as a friend who will understand her. But I feel like we should have gotten a more visceral reaction to this. A simple voicemail would have been a cost-effective way to enhance those emotions.

In the case of Max, we time skip over her feelings. But a scene with her getting home the night Safi died and crying in her bed, a reflection of Chloe crying in a junkyard or in her bedroom, would have been impactful. We see signs of this depression later. Max may have held a photo of Chloe for comfort, she littered her house with tissues from crying, she went back through notes and journals from her home, where she made sacrifices and lost what she loved no matter what.

There were so many moments that could have been impactful to witness, but we only see the fallout. There are tear jerking moments here. Yasmin’s texts, tributes to Safi, all heartfelt moments. But nothing as raw as we’ve seen in previous games. Even True Colors, which is probably the most “cheerful” Life is Strange game (a low bar, to be sure), had more sharp moments. Hell, Deck Nine wrote some of the most powerful moments in the game, with Chloe finding her father’s car in the junkyard or listening to Max’s tape in Farewell. Deck Nine knows how to do a gut punch, so why’d they spare us? We come to Life is Strange for catharsis, I’m not going to get it if I’m not crying over someone else’s problems instead of my own. Those moments could have bought Deck Nine some forgiveness for how they dealt with Max and Chloe’s relationship. Instead, fans felt like they left having missed out on the true “Life is Strange experience.”

Gameplay On the Cutting Room Floor?

There is a larger than average cast of core characters in this game. Usually we don’t see as many characters make the “core group” in a Life is Strange game. However, the series usually lets us talk to the characters outside of this core group. In Double Exposure, we’re stuck eavesdropping. Unfortunately, there’s a large sum of emotional impact hidden in these eavesdropping moments. Characters lamenting the death of their favorite TA, needing therapy, worrying about their grade when they deal with a homophobic professor, wondering if they want to stay in grad school or take a job, so many side conversations that are just lost if you walk too quickly past the characters. On top of that, the conversations have large gaps in them, sometimes as much as two to three seconds, where you have to stand there, waiting for the rest of the conversation. One part of the game requires listening to the entire part of one of these conversations, and only a slim percentage of players accomplish it. In fact, the feature is somewhat bugged, because often if you wander too far from a point where you can overhear one of these conversations, you can’t pick it back up!

In the first Life is Strange, we could talk to Max’s fellow students. Most of them had perhaps one or two interactions in total, but we could chat with them. Even in True Colors, which was woefully short on content, we still got to talk to characters that we may not ever interact with again. Life is Strange Double Exposure didn’t even tell you the name of half these characters in the subtitles, even though, if you pay attention, you can figure out who they are between what they say and what they share in the in-game social network, Crosstalk.

Much like True Colors, it felt like budget constraints hurt the story they were trying to tell. It seems clear they wanted to tell far more story, but couldn’t do all the motion capture and scene creation necessary to make these interactions into full conversations instead of forcing us to stand still nearby people and listen. It’s likely why we also missed out on some of those emotional gut punches.

Clearly, this means Deck Nine should just get more money, because the more money they get, the better a game they make.

Overall 8.5/10

It’s hard for me not to write a book about Life is Strange. Even harder to review this without mentioning details. That is perhaps why I’ll need another post someday to go into the story itself more, because there’s a lot to talk about when you’re not avoiding spoilers.

Double Exposure is absolutely worthy of the return of its most beloved protagonist, Max Caulfield. That’s going to be a controversial opinion in the community. Some are unhappy Max is back at all, and far more are mad she’s back without her partner in time, Chloe. Still, I believe that it’s a good game on its own. If it’s followed up with a satisfying conclusion for Max in a third game for her, I think it’ll be remembered fondly as the story where Max dealt with her issues and fantastic commentary on the internal battles we all fight.

Life is Strange: Double Exposure is a satisfying, intriguing, repayable continuation of Max’s story. It presents my favorite version of Max Caulfield, and I can’t wait to see more from her. Life is Strange Double Exposure has become my second-most replayed Life is Strange game (after the first) in just a month. I’ve been playing these other Life is Strange games for years. I think that says a lot about the depth of this story. Every chapter has me coming back to try something different, to find things I missed, little interactions I only found on my fourth playthrough.

I love this tough installment into Max’s story and the Life is Strange series, and I think fans will too, even if it’s going to take some trust and hope on the part of the large number of loyal “Pricefield” fans. Newcomers could start here, but I think most of the beats would be better if they start with the wonderful first Life is Strange game. Play either the original or the remastered version (they both have their merits!), and then head into this. It’s a journey you’ll be glad you took. There aren’t many pieces of media that will impact you quite like this, and it’s definitely worth getting the whole story with the first Life is Strange, its prequel Before the Storm, and now Double Exposure. This is a rich story worthy of Max’s return, and players are going to fall in love with her and newcomers like Moses and Safi too.

My criticism is limited, and some of it comes down to what appear to be budget constraints and a fundamental misunderstanding of the relationships in the game, primarily, the importance of “Pricefield” to the fandom. Not spending more time discussing the breakup of the most important sapphic relationship in gaming was irresponsible and foolish. It was done seemingly with so little care in the early chapters and that hurt the game’s reception. Secondly, the game needed more interactive content. More Max seeing the campus, talking to random people, and, yes, seeing more raw emotion from Max and Yasmin, especially. People experience strong emotions in this game, but most are processed off-screen, dulling their impact. The last two episodes could have been padded better, mostly with emotional and investigative beats, and I think it would have saved them, even while keeping them short. Pacing should become more tight towards the end of a game, but moments to feel the impact of the story are vital in Life is Strange games. I also have some notes on details in the story that I won’t share here as they’re spoilers, but could have been presented better to, again, ensure they’re impactful.

Review	Life is Strange: Double Exposure
What I liked	Intriguing mystery Unique gameplay Incredible performances Characters with depth and complexity Gorgeous settings and graphics Beautiful and fitting soundtrack
What I disliked	Third act pacing was too fast Pulled punches on emotional beats Some confusion over what threads are open and which are dropped for a sequel Audio bugs Pricefield forever!
Rating	8.5 (out of 10)

Life is Strange: Double Exposure consistently feels like an intricately designed art piece, with tiny details all weaving together to form an exciting and unique mystery. At times, it felt too limited in its execution, but still an enjoyable experience. From the absolutely outstanding performances of the voice actors to the realistic dialog, characters, set pieces, and motivations. Characters are fleshed out and feel so very real. Often gaming fans have to fill in the blanks to figure out what characters are feeling, or why they’ve done certain things, but each character in Double Exposure is so perfectly portrayed and written to give us a full picture of each of these characters in a surprisingly limited number of interactions. This is perfect for a mystery story. All of this accompanied with a fantastic soundtrack that pulls together moments from each chapter and sets the mood.

I am in awe of just how well-constructed the story in this installment of Life is Strange is, and I cannot wait for Max Caulfield’s next adventure.

 

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Just for Fun: My personal Ranking

• Life is Strange
• Life is Strange: Double Exposure
• Life is Strange: Before the Storm
• Life is Strange: True Colors
• Life is Strange 2

These are all fantastic games, so ranking them feels a little silly. Before the Storm may have beaten Double Exposure if not for a weak final few scenes and game-breaking crashing issues.