Life is Strange: Double Exposure launches today in Early Access for players who have purchased the ultra-premium Ultimate Edition, which includes a sneak peek at Chapters 1 and 2 before the game’s general release on October 29.
If you’ve played the sequels in the style of previous anthologies, Life is Strange 2 and Life is Strange: True Colors, you may remember being asked to give your final decision from the original game before starting the latest story. This is because the ending you saw in Season 1 may have little impact on what happens next, even if the newly introduced potential heroes, Sean and Alex, had no direct connection to Arcadia Bay.
Since Double Exposure is a direct sequel that returns to the perspective of original protagonist Max Caulfield, of course that choice of ending from a decade ago is now more critical than ever. That’s why it’s a little surprising when a novel game opens without any introduction and throws you straight into the action, with no warm-up quizzes about the timeline in which the game should run.
Don’t worry though, as there is a way to tell the game which path to take you, it works a little differently than in previous sequels. Also, before we continue, please note that the remainder of this guide will contain major spoilers for the original Life is Strange, but only minor spoilers for the beginning of Double Exposure (and none in any other game in the series).
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How to import Life is Strange selections into Double Exposure
Life is Strange: Double Exposure allows you to feed him your choices from the original game through the conversation between Max and Safi that takes place during the second scene.
After a lengthy open-cut tutorial in which they urbex in an abandoned bowling alley for Max’s latest photo shoot, the two friends retire to the Snapping Turtle, a bar on the University of Caledon campus.
During the conversation, Safi will reveal that she rummaged through Max’s bag and noticed a photo of the “blue-haired girl” that Max keeps in his wallet. This leads to the first of two options that will tell the game which of the original endings it should follow.
Choice #1: Max’s relationship with Chloe
First, Safi will ask you who is in the photo. Max will be able to respond in one of two different ways:
- “We Were Just Friends”
- “We Were High School Sweethearts”
This one is a bit of a vibe based one, as the original Life is Strange was pretty indirect when it came to the romance options. While there is at least one variant of the Season 1 ending that is overtly romantic between Max and Chloe, it’s entirely possible that the entire romance remained (almost) purely subtextual, even if you did everything in your power to bring them together. Hey, we’ve come a long way in 10 years, what can I say?
In tiny: answer this question based on your intentions and how you think Max felt about Chloe at the end, not anything you saw (or didn’t see) in the original game.
Choice #2: Bae or Bay
Once you’ve figured out who Chloe is to Max, Safi will ask where Chloe is now. This is the choice that actually determines which final route you will see during Double Exposure and will have far-reaching consequences, although not for the main narrative.
But it will determine which NPCs from the original are alive and therefore present in Max’s life via texting, social media, etc. throughout the game. This will also change some of the photos and other details in Max’s house, and most importantly, it will create a completely divergent set of memories whenever Max recalls his life before coming to Caledon.
The available options are:
- “She died”
- “We broke up” (the exact wording will vary depending on whether you chose a romantic or platonic answer to Choice #1)
There is no clever trick to this: telling Safi that Chloe has died will indicate to the game that you have selected the “Sacrifice Chloe” option at the end of the original Life is Strange. With apologies to all the staunch supporters of the Pricefield ship, you can’t glossy over their breakup by telling yourself that Chloe has died in the meantime; the game will very clearly take this answer to mean that Chloe died as a direct result of the events she witnessed in Season 1.
Conversely and slightly less ambiguously, telling Safi that you and Chloe have broken up will indicate to the game that you have selected the “Sacrifice Arcadia Bay” option in Season 1. And if you were worried that the “high school sweetheart” comment would sound a bit flippant, going down that route after choosing it causes Max to later relent a bit and explain that she and Chloe had actually been in a solemn relationship for several years, and their romantic history remains apparent throughout the game, even though they are no longer together.
