YoBack in 2015, when I first played as Maxine Caulfield in the original Life Is Strange, it was only the second time I’d played a game starring a teenage girl. (The first time was The Last of Us: Left Behind, which came out the year before.) It was an uncomfortable game in some ways, particularly its embarrassing (mis)use of teen slang, but the intense, transformative and sometimes contentious relationship between Max and his (more than) friend Chloe rang true. It actually encompassed the entire game, more so than Max’s time-rewinding powers or the murder mystery that drove the plot. Yo believed in Max and Chloe. The ending of that game forces you to make a horrible choice between, as Max would say, two shitty futures, proving that even time travelers must live with the consequences of their actions. The repercussions of that choice run through this sequel, nine years later.
Now Grownup Max is an artist-in-residence at a prestigious arts college, which puts her somewhere between the students, with their parties, dramatic breakups, and secret societies, and the college’s professors, whose pettiness and preoccupation with their own agendas she rarely finds. time they portray them clearly. flattering light. He left his hometown and stopped using his time-rewinding powers after the events of the first Life Is Strange. Now tentatively try to form new relationships in this new place. And, when she discovers that one of her new friends is murdered, she too has a new power. You can slip between timelines, investigating the murder both in the timeline where it occurred and in an alternate reality where it didn’t happen.
I’ll say it right up front: double exposure doesn’t stick the landing. There’s a lot of potential in this setup and these characters, but it just doesn’t quite fit. Some characters are great, believable and consistent; others, like the cop who competes with Max to solve the murder, behave ridiculously or are infuriatingly inconsistent, like Vinh, the playboy actor who alternately mocks Max and confides in her. There are some really great scenes and individual moments here, particularly the intimate ones between Max and her friend Safi, and Max and the cute bartender she has a huge crush on – whoever wrote her first date deserves a raise. There are also two really good end-of-chapter twists in the story that made me want to know how things were going to turn out.
But in the end none of that works out. There are many small holes in the plot that, together, almost make it fall apart. In service of this sometimes dubious plot, the characters do things that simply don’t make sense, which makes me scream “W.hello Would you do that? on the screen on more than one occasion. I purposely screwed over a character over and over again just to see how they reacted, but they still seemed eager to be friends, because it turned out the story needed them later. The depiction of pain and its effects, which really should be a key theme of the game for all sorts of reasons, also takes a dull tone. I was so worried about this that it really killed my sense of personal investment in Max and his story and narrative games. rely in which their players feel involved.
The diary that once provided a little more insight into teenager Max’s inner life returns here, along with messages and a social network found on his phone, allowing him to view conversations between characters and catch up on what’s happening. It happened to the survivors of Max’s hometown. . I personally hated this; Phone notifications kept popping up relentlessly as I explored the beautiful surroundings of Caledon University and, just like in real life, I ended up overwhelmed and ignoring them completely. But they do provide some much-needed additional context about the people around Max and their relationships with each other.
The first Life Is Strange was a clever twist on the idea of choice and consequence in narrative games: how do things change if you can always rewind and choose a different option? The message of Double Exposure is very different: an adult Max is now determined to live in the present, no matter how difficult it may be. This Max knows that nothing has consequences if you can just undo it. But she hasn’t lost her spark; she is still thoughtful, determined and a little embarrassed. It has been a pleasure meeting her again. There are some wonderful lines and concepts in this game, enough to frustrate me even more at its inconsistency. The ending, in particular, was infuriating, although it sets things up intriguingly for another sequel. I hope Deck Nine can build on this for whatever comes next.