Double Exposure took me back in the best way

The original Life is Strange was one of those “time and place” games for me. I first played it during a particularly isolated period of university, and so I found myself connecting deeply with teenager Max Caulfield’s loneliness. Sure, the quality of the dialogue could be hit or miss at times, but there was a powerful sincerity to the central coming-of-age story, particularly with respect to Max’s moving relationship with her friend Chloe, and it made for an unforgettable experience.

For that reason, I was truthfully a bit apprehensive about Life is Strange: Double Exposure bringing Max back — the first time a new entry in the series has starred a returning character. How would developer Deck Nine honour both Life is Strange endings, as it promised to do? Would Max’s latest journey — in which she must use her supernatural abilities to investigate the death of another friend — feel derivative? Hell, would Max as a character resonate now that I’m nearly a decade older?

Thankfully, after playing about an hour and a half of Double Exposure, I’ve come away much more confident with the direction Deck Nine is taking Max’s story.

That all starts with an appropriate added layer of maturity. Max, who’s now a renowned photographer in university, is someone who has obviously been through a great deal, and you quickly get a feel for how that informs her character. Admittedly, I didn’t get to see how either of the two radically different original Life is Strange endings play into Double Exposure, but in a broader sense, I loved how much Max has clearly grown. Here, she’s a lot more self-assured and meditative, which returning actress Hannah Telle captures quite well. At the same time, that endearing nerdiness hasn’t fully left her, which we see in corny pun-filled interactions with her friend Moses.

The demo beings with Moses being a person of interest in the death of their mutual friend, Safi. As the police prepare to search Moses’ office, he tells Max that he took Safi’s camera from the crime scene, which, naturally, won’t be a good look for him. When Max asks why he did that, he confesses that he panicked knowing that the camera had the last photo the trio ever took together and he didn’t want it to be lost to the police.

Life is Strange has always excelled at portraying believably messy yet sympathetic figures, and this is a perfect example of that, providing earnest emotional stakes for the focus of the demo: trying to retrieve the camera before the cops. That’s where Max’s new powers come in. Before, she could only rewind time by small amounts, but now, her abilities have evolved so she can literally rip a whole through time and space into another dimension. And before you say it: yes, the whole multiverse narrative gimmick already feels overplayed in pop-culture, but Deck Nine wisely focuses it on just two timelines — the main one where Safi is dead and an alternate one in which she’s still alive.

In this way, Max can still converse with her deceased friend in the “Alive” timeline to simultaneously humanize her and learn more about her killer in the “Dead” one. This sets up an intriguing dual-conflict where Max has to both solve one murder and try to prevent another.

On top of that, though, the timeline powers lend themselves well to exploration and puzzle-solving. With the cop guarding the door to Moses’ lab, Max has to hop over to the Alive timeline to find an alternative route in before returning to her world. Eventually, Max learns that the camera is hidden in a “safe,” but soon discovers that Moses — a science nerd — was referring to the constellation known as “Saiph.” This leads to a cross-timeline scavenger hunt in which you have to bounce around to uncover all of this and then turn on a star pattern in the room to highlight where the “Saiph” is.

However, the cop eventually gets into the room, leading to a stealth sequence in which Max must sneak around the desks and other furniture to stay out of sight. Admittedly, the cop’s hilariously poor line of sight — with which he was unable to see me twice while crouched directly in front of him — took me out of the tension of the scene, so hopefully, that’s tweaked in the final version of the game. But what I did like about this sequence is that it also leads to even more multidimensional puzzle-solving — in this case, going to the “Alive” timeline to find a talking toy that you can plant upstairs to distract the cop long enough to retrieve the camera.

All in all, I found myself really digging the timeline-swapping mechanic. It’s a clever expansion on the original game’s rewind ability that also creates a deeper connection between you and a given environment, as you’re tasked with studying it from two different perspectives. You can also tap the bumper at any time to highlight differences between the two timelines (orange hues for “Alive,” blue ones for “Dead”), which is helpful. It’s easy to see Deck Nine coming up with even more clever uses of these powers later on in the game.

For now, though, I appreciated how they provided greater insight into Max’s relationship with Moses and Safi. From polaroids of the three of them to the sweater Safi was wearing before she died, you’re constantly reminded of the emotional stakes here, and it made me even more invested in Max’s quest. What I’m especially interested to see is how Chloe’s fate impacts all of this; after all, it’s a decidedly darker tale if we’re talking about a Max who’s forced to deal with yet another dead friend.

In that sense, it does seem like Deck Nine could be setting itself up to disappoint players who have their own “canon” choices, and it’s a problem that I’m being cautiously optimistic about them solving in a satisfying way. After all, the team did incredible work on both the Chloe-focused Before the Storm game and 2021 spin-off True Colors, so they’ve definitely earned the benefit of the doubt.

And if nothing else, it’s just lovely to reunite with Max, a character to whom I feel particularly connected. It remains to be seen how the whole murder mystery story will play out, but I’m eager to learn more.

Life is Strange: Double Exposure launches on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S and PC (Steam) on October 29th, 2024. A Nintendo Switch port is confirmed for release on a yet-to-be-confirmed later date.

Image credit: Square Enix