Life is Strange: Double Exposure review

There’s a moment in Life is Strange: Double Exposure where Detective Vince Alderman asks Max, “Are you just unlucky, or is it just everyone that happens to you?” Sure it’s a little harsh, but he’s not wrong to say it. Double Exposure plays heavily on the venerable narrative of its predecessor: dead friends, sus teachers, secret societies, a third girl whose secret permeates the overarching story… you get the idea.

Considering that Max’s ability to rewind time in 2015’s Life is Strange (the one by Don’t Nod, not Deck Nine) is nowhere to be seen this time around, I experienced a bit more deja vu than I expected. Ten years after leaving Arcadia Bay – which is either hurricane-ravaged with Chloe Price alive or still picking up the pieces from her murder – Max is in his behind schedule twenties and now hanging around the university as a resident lecturer, an artist rather than a student.

She has largely abandoned Arcadia Bay and its inhabitants – she regularly ignores text messages from her parents, and only one Blackwell Academy graduate (or two, if Chloe is alive) appears on her social media timeline. Instead, Safiya and Moses form a novel group of Max’s friends, the former being the university president’s daughter and the latter an astrophysics graduate.

Her time warp became dormant due to the injuries and subsequent trauma Max suffered during the first game. That is, until Safi is found shot to death. Cue the Force Awakening – this time in the form of timeline hopping rather than scrolling – and desperate attempts to avoid the same fate that befell Chloe or Arcadia Bay.

Aim and shoot

For the most part, I really enjoyed playing with Max’s novel powers. She can switch between a world where Safi is alive and well, a world of toasty colors and twinkling Christmas lights, and another, colder reality where Caledon University mourns her loss. In several puzzles scattered throughout Double Exposure, Max uses his powers to break into places inaccessible in one timeline, or to squeeze information from characters in one dimension and then travel to another to employ it as leverage.

My main gripe with this is that by the end of the game it largely comes down to “go to this timeline to talk to this person.” That’s fine, but there’s a particular part in Chapter 2 where Max has to grab objects and move them between timelines and employ positioning to avoid detection. This is certainly one of the best showcases of this mechanic, but the game will never come close to using it to this extent. There’s another fascinating bit in one of the later chapters that takes advantage of Max’s ability to view one timeline from another, but it’s tiny and a bit awkward to navigate.

I also have an issue with the sound that Double Exposure uses to mark predetermined spots where you can break through dimensions. It’s an awfully high-pitched, ringing sound that accompanies tinnitus that gets more intense the closer you get – it fits nicely narratively with all of Max’s throbbing headaches, but I’m not sure I wanted the intense level of immersion that it also provided I severe headaches after a few hours of listening to this. Considering there are also visual cues as to where to shift gears, I wish Deck Nine had toned it down a bit.

This is not the only sound problem in the game. I don’t think my volume buttons have ever been this useful in a single video game. The audio mixing is wildly inconsistent – the volume of conversations in cutscenes increased to the point of vibrating the speakers, and attempts to overhear conversation in another timeline or even discussions between characters in my current timeline were as tranquil as a mouse.

This was even more irritating because these random conversations with NPCs contributed greatly to much-needed world-building. A group of employees rallying for a four-day workweek provides a glimpse into a more unpopular side of university president Yasmin, while the whispers among students forming alliances for the campus-wide game Assassin are a nice, disconnected glimpse into university life.

If it weren’t for the subtitles, I would often miss these conversations. Even then, I found myself tapping my foot impatiently during the frustrating pauses of silence between each NPC’s lines of dialogue, which made me think the conversation had abruptly ended before they jumped back in, acting like they hadn’t spent the last five seconds staring into nothing.

Hot shot

I say there’s some much-needed world-building because Double Exposure is filled with fascinating concepts and a story that kept me on the edge of my seat at times. The ending of the second chapter particularly excited me and ultimately ended in a way that I felt satisfied with. But it often doesn’t work in more fascinating configurations either. A character I expected to stick with for a long time is suddenly erased from existence and never mentioned again.

A particularly damning implication of timeline tinkering had me hoping it would become a major plot point, only for it to never appear. More fascinating questions about powers and how to employ them responsibly begin to emerge towards the end of the game, but this was clearly done to set up a sequel rather than provide immediate answers. The choices ultimately have little impact on any of the larger narrative moments, and major decisions are mostly relegated to changing minor, non-intrusive subplots.

In Double Exposure, the events of the first game remain in the background. Personally, I think it was handled well. For the record, I’m talking about this as someone who exists in the main canon “Chloe’s sacrifice” and I haven’t had enough time to go over it all again because Chloe is still floating around. But watching Max deal with trauma, often in very unhealthy ways, was refreshingly realistic.

Little flashbacks like the storm and voice snippets of Chloe’s unfortunate bathroom encounter with Nathan Prescott pop up from time to time, and I never find them overstaying their welcome. The later passages where Max explores his trauma more deeply were impactful moments with just the right amount of punch, where I felt like Deck Nine didn’t lean too heavily on Don’t Nod’s work.

Ultimately, as someone who was Max’s age in both of these games, I couldn’t assist but feel a certain kinship with Double Exposure. I saw a reflection of a part of myself in her, now an adult – her increased self-confidence and self-confidence, while still carrying the weaknesses of her past and the resulting emotional wall that surrounds her.

It’s also nice to see a game with some pretty sturdy bisexual representation. While this was somewhat the case in the original, Double Exposure makes it much easier to play Max as an openly bi character. She has the opportunity to romance both male and female characters – while I still saw the game as leaning more towards female romance, it still felt much more balanced than the first game – and an entire scene is dedicated to this ability, which she happily goes down and get sullied.

The rest of the cast is mostly likable too: Amanda plays an exceptionally chilly bartender, half-wizard, half-ass Vihn still makes an impression, even if I think he’s underused, and I really liked Moses as Max’s companion. However, Safi is certainly the most fascinating character on offer. Even if her character development is largely delayed and a little rushed, she is still my favorite character and Olivia AbiAssi shines in the role and does a lot to bring her personality to life.

Ultimately, though, I feel like many of these characters didn’t have time to fully develop. I wonder if having two timelines – and then two branching character developments – hindered the story more than it helped it. Combined with Double Exposure’s parallel narrative, which is a little too similar and feels far-fetched at times, I have to wonder if we needed a sequel at all.

The answer is probably no, but I still couldn’t assist but get involved. Part of it may have been nostalgia, but I still found myself exploring every nook and cranny and eavesdropping on every side conversation to get a little more of that world-building.

Honestly, I think Double Exposure would have been better off eliminating some of the supporting cast members. First of all, he definitely should have taken the main concepts that he begins to develop in later chapters and made them the main thrust of the story from the very beginning. Instead, I guess we’ll wait for Life is Strange: Triple ISO.