REVIEW: ‘Life is Strange: Double Exposure’ Is One Step Away From Greatness (XSX)

Read our interview with Deck Nine Games developers about Life is Strange: Double Exposure.

Years have passed since the events at Arcadia Bay, and Max Caulfield (Hannah Telle) has finally found someplace where she feels she belongs in this sequel to 2015’s Life Is Strange. With friends and a job that embraces her art, Max is happy. But when her best friend Safi (Olivia AbiAssi) is gunned down, Max’s life takes a turn for the strange once again as she tries to unravel the mystery of who killed her. To make matters more complicated, Max has emerged with a new set of powers to use in Life is Strange: Double Exposure. Published by Square Enix, developer Deck Nine Games picks up Max’s return to the franchise after their loved entry to the series True Colors.

Crafting a great narrative is always a challenge, and continuing the story from another Life A Strange game, let alone the original, is no easy feat. Elements like pacing, character development, and a great ending must all be present and balanced well against each other. Narratives in gaming provide an added challenge as they must consider how players play the game. Introducing gameplay elements and how long the player is likely to take to overcome challenges must be worked into the unfolding story to keep everything running smoothly. While Life is Strange: Double Exposure manages to juggle many of these elements skillfully, a couple of key pieces never come together.

The game’s opening chapter creates a great first impression. You meet characters and get to know them quickly. Why Max cares about Safi and Moses isn’t hard to understand by the time the opening wraps up. It also does a great job of getting players comfortable with the layout and atmosphere of Caledon University. By the time the story gets going, the player feels just as invested in the world as Max is.

The opening chapter not only makes players care about the world, but it also makes you care about Max. With nearly a decade between Life is Strange: Double Exposure and the original, Deck Nine knew that many players would be meeting Max for the first time. With that knowledge, they wanted to ensure their narrative didn’t lean on the player already caring about the protagonist. There are plenty of moments where the player gets to know Max and understands her life and how it has shaped her into who she is. As someone who never played her early adventures, I can state that you won’t feel lost or lack a connection to the main character if you jump in here.

As the story begins to flesh out, Max’s new powers manifest. She now has a pair of abilities that let her interact with an alternative timeline. One allows her to see and hear people in the alternate timeline who are near her. The other will enable her to step through holes physically she pulls open in reality, permitting her to step into the other timeline.

As a cornerstone of the larger narrative, Max’s new powers are a great hook. It’s interesting to see what’s different where and how these changes impact the plot. Seeing how much Safi’s death impacts Caledon University makes the loss feel all the sharper. But while her powers are fantastic from a narrative standpoint, their implementation from a gameplay standpoint is not as gripping.

The problem with Max’s powers is that, while they are interesting on the surface, they quickly fall into a pattern concerning their use. Most of the time, Max’s powers get used to access areas blocked in your current timeline. By midway through the game, if something is inaccessible, you instinctively look for the nearest spot you can use to teleport to the other timeline (marked with glowing dots). Once in the other timeline, whatever you need to access is easy to tackle. While nifty the first couple of times, it becomes rinse and repeat pretty quickly.

Along with the myriad of places you need to access, virtually every object you need to find must come from the other timeline.  Mundane items like stepladders must be brought through a portal for Max to use. There is a multiple-jump puzzle players have to go through to get an Allen wrench. Life is Strange: Double Exposure leans so heavily on needing to access the opposite timeline to do things it comes to feel bizarre and a means of making exploration take longer as you backtrack to the teleportation spot, get a thing, and then go back to the other timeline.

Thankfully, this problem is only frustrating in Chapter Two. In the wake of Safi’s death, this chapter holds virtually nothing but Max teleporting around trying to put pieces together to the mystery. This makes this chapter, hands down, the weakest chapter in the game, though it still has a couple of good moments. However, once this section of the game is in the rearview, it picks back up as the situation escalates rapidly.

The back half of Life is Strange: Double Exposure is one of the best narrative journies a game has ever taken me on. Building on the rough start to the mystery, Deck Nine makes the Chapter Two struggles worth it as Chapters Three, Four, and Five just start snow-balling into places I did not expect. It felt like true greatness was upon us when I neared the end. That is, till it falls apart.

I won’t give spoilers, but a couple of core moments in the game’s finale felt extremely bad. The tone of the narrative changes sharply as the game sets up future entries in the series. Capping it all off is the final moment that is as cringe as it is out of time. I cannot fathom who the decision-makers think that is for.

A core component of Life is Strange: Double Exposure I haven’t spoken to yet is the choices players will face. There are a lot of meaningful decisions here, and Deck Nine crafts each one very well. Some are easy, others not so much. Some put you in a position where you know what’s right, but you also know that doing the right thing will hurt someone. It’s easy to appreciate the varying levels of nuance among the choices faced.

While some difficulty is good, not every choice should be emotionally painful. It’s fun to see a choice has no clear answer, but it’s also nice to have a solid idea of where some decisions will lead. Otherwise, it all just feels random. The game also allows for scene replays for players who want to know how a scene can play out with different choices but not have it affect their save.

Another area of the game that Life is Strange: Double Exposure nails is the visual presentation. The Caledon University campus, as well as the students and staff that fill it, all feel genuine. Each of the new characters has a style that distinguishes them from the other personalities you encounter. Time powers or not.

These characters are brought to life thanks to the excellent facial animation and body language that present their emotions to the player. Emotional moments are given a lot of weight while never going to cartoony levels. The voice acting is also strong across the board, helping to reinforce the characters’ feelings further.

The same level of visual care goes into the game’s more ethereal moments. As the name implies, things get reasonably strange sometimes, and the game embraces the weirdness extremely effectively. One particular sequence in a mysterious motel plays out perfectly. Composition, color, and interactivity all come together to make this sequence stand out.

Life is Strange: Double Exposure is a journey I’m thrilled I got to go on. Some rocky early moments and an ending that doesn’t wholly land hurt, but the time spent helping Max get through the latest chapter of her adventures is one I have come to treasure. Great characters, a wonderfully crafted world, and a twisting narrative all help elevate the game over what holds it back.

Life is Strange: Double Exposure will be available on October 29th for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series S/X, and PC.