I have loved Max Caulfield for almost a decade now. When she burst onto the scene at the forefront of the original Life is Strange, she presented a new type of protagonist – one that an awkward, barely-more-than-a-teenager like me could finally relate to. Unlike her best friend (and potential lover), Chloe Price – blue-haired, bombastic, rebellious, and ready to set the world ablaze with her wit and a trademark lighter – Max was understated, uncomfortable, and unassuming. She had equal amounts of passion and compassion and a desire to see a changed status quo, but it often took a little nudge to push past her anxiety and questioning and understand that she was going to need to be the one to do it. She wasn’t a born hero, but was thrust into an impossible situation and forced to become both hero and villain all at once. Max was flawed – immature but a little pretentious, brave and cowardly, hesitant and too quick to act. She was just so human.
Life is Strange changed what I thought video games could be, and what they could mean to me – and most of that is because of Max Caulfield.
That context is necessary to understand why I felt the way I did playing what is now several games later in the overall Life is Strange series, but feels in many ways like its spiritual sequel. I can’t be objective about Life is Strange: Double Exposure, but Life is Strange is also not an easy series to try and approach with objectivity. Its core values – those of diversity, acceptance, curiosity, and a deep interest in the human condition, darkness and all – will affect every player in a different way. If you have bounced off other games in the series, I’m not sure this one will draw you in, despite its tonal differences to its predecessors. But if the others have, like they have for me, felt like a warm embrace and a way to feel seen and accepted explicitly in a way that few games achieve with such depth – you might fall in love with Life is Strange: Double Exposure the way I did. If you haven’t played Life is Strange at all… well, then you’re gonna need a whole lot of context, because it feels key to the game’s effectiveness.
Now almost a decade after the events of Arcadia Bay, Life is Strange: Double Exposure catches up with Max Caulfield in her new role as an artist in residence at the prestigious Caledon University. After a period of life on the road, she’s gone from art school student to art school teacher, her award-winning works now lining the halls of the campus buildings. In many ways she’s the same – awkward, a little dorky, a little shy, and still set on seeing the world through the lens of her camera – but in others she’s clearly grown. Making a huge decision about the fate of an entire town and its residents (spoilers, for those who haven’t played the first game) has unsurprisingly changed her, and with maturity and reflection on the consequences of her actions has come a new confidence in her convictions. Whether she chose to sacrifice Arcadia Bay for the sake of Chloe Price, the girl she loved, or chose to sacrifice Chloe, years of dealing with grief and trauma in whatever form it took has weighed on her – but also given her strength.
Whether or not Chloe Price survived Arcadia Bay, and the nature of the relationship between her and Max after she did, still plays a lot on Max’s mind – but this time, the story isn’t about her. Max has shut off the time rewind powers that led to that whole debacle, and now grapples with what it means to live life without them, but when we meet her at Caledon University, she is also trying to put all that in the past. She has a new job, new crushes, and a new best friend – Safi – who the game wastes no time in getting you to fall in love with. She’s a little edgy, and meshes well with this new version of Max – one who doesn’t hesitate to break into abandoned buildings and do some light crime in the name of art – but she has her own secrets. Soon after the friendship between Max, Safi, and physics researcher Moses is established, Safi prepares to share some life-changing news with the crew and instead winds up dead – sending Max into an existential crisis and straight back into mystery-solving mode.
At the point of her death, Max discovers a new variation on the powers she’d long-since (happily) left behind. She’s no longer able to rewind time (mostly) but instead finds herself able to jump between two timelines, which seem to have split at the fateful moment of Safi’s murder. By moving between the two worlds – aptly named by the game as ‘Living’ and ‘Dead’ – she can gather clues about what might have led to Safi’s demise, who could be responsible, and perhaps even prevent her death from occurring – but she’s also acutely aware of what happened last time she tried to disrupt the inevitable.
The powers themselves are narratively interesting, but a little finicky as a gameplay mechanic. Max can switch between the timelines at dedicated points throughout the world, meaning all locations can be explored in both forms almost at will. With a few notable exceptions (and they’re pretty good ones), the actual puzzle-solving involved in these sections is never anything too ground-breaking – usually it just involves switching to a version of the world where a certain door is unlocked, or a path is clear, or a password is written on a piece of paper. But it’s also used to allow Max to have discussions with different versions of the people of Caledon University and its surrounding areas. Sometimes, overcome with grief, they’ll reveal things to Max about themselves that they wouldn’t in the living world, and it will bring the two of them closer. Or, as is the case for most of the living world, they’ll be too caught up in their own shady activities to be interested in giving Max the answers she needs, and they’ll force you to do some running around fetch-quest style before they’ll co-operate. It’s not the best gameplay loop the series has had to offer, but it serves the story well. It’s also possible for Max to use her powers to ‘pulse’, or to glimpse into the other world like peeking through a curtain, which is used effectively at some key plot moments, but which otherwise I didn’t really feel inclined to make use of in any meaningful way.
Across the game’s five chapters, the focus of the story feels like it notably shifts. What starts as an intriguing murder-mystery turns into a more character-driven, human-condition focused affair to drive the narrative along. It’s here that it becomes clear that so much of what went into this game feels like a response to the first one – and to the response of those who played it. In Arcadia Bay, Max was forced to make huge, life-or-death, obviously impactful choices, and it was hard to feel confident in any of them. The consequences of your actions was often immediately apparent, and changed the world in some huge and dramatic way. Here, in Double Exposure, that isn’t the case. The existence of the two timelines is already highlighting how those life-shattering choices and differences can affect a world. Max’s choices feel subtler, and will usually be related to how a character sees her, and choosest to help or hinder her in her endeavours. I loved that subtlety.
Because honestly? It’s exhausting to be constantly making huge, often very binary choices – and the universe of Life is Strange has, over time, become much better at exploring that moral grey area. It’s less about presenting people as heroes or villains, and more about understanding why someone might make a choice that another person might see as ‘good’ or ‘bad’. It’s rare that a game manages to explore those concepts so effectively, while still making you as a player feel like you have a meaningful impact on the story, but here it’s done in a way that I can’t stop thinking about. I love every character in this game, and I mostly forgave them for their flaws without excusing their actions. Extracting that reaction from me is hard, but this game excels at it.
But remember what I said about objectivity? There are some things that make me know my judgement is clouded. The game is, in many ways, a little broken. There are textures popping in everywhere, occasional audio dropouts, and characters’ hair disappearing into their clothing like there’s no tomorrow. Eyes rolled around in some of their heads like there was no tomorrow. These are all things that can – and likely will – be patched out – but they aren’t the game’s only flaws. It takes a lot of big narrative swings, and doesn’t always do a great job of tying up its loose ends. It introduces entire concepts that it explores once and then throws by the wayside in favour of the next exciting thing. It underuses some characters, and probably overuses others.
The thing is, I honestly didn’t care. I didn’t care that sometimes it was a little janky, or that scenes loaded weirdly, or that some button prompts required you to be in weirdly specific locations. Because in so many ways, what it did was so special. Its characters are nuanced, and charming, and grating, and its’ true exploration of grief, and what ‘good’ people can do under pressure is something that will stick with me for years. Its narrative, though bold (and in some ways honestly wild – talk to me once you’ve finished the game) is an exercise in the perfect use of subtlety and thematic consistency, even though it is also, in many ways, inconsistent.
Like I said – I love Max Caulfield. I love that she exists in a world where most of those who surround her are queer, and that most of the time, the game doesn’t even need to make a big, over the top deal out of stating that explicitly. It tells you in small ways. Just like it tells you that Max is different, but is also still that same awkward bisexual disaster she has always been. That she still thinks of Chloe, and of Arcadia Bay, even when she’s dealing with a new life-altering event. That she understands that one person can’t decide the fate of the world, nor should they ever be burdened with having to try, but that you can make small choices that might change a life, or a relationship, or the course of a day.
I know this game won’t be for everyone, just like Max isn’t, and Chloe – and all her weird, exaggerated teen lingo wasn’t either. But it was for me. And I can’t wait to see what Deck Nine do next.
