The Life is Strange series has passed through the hands of several developers over the years, with both Dontnod Entertainment and Deck Nine taking the reins for various installments. Life is Strange: Double Exposure marks Deck Nine’s third venture into the series after their success with Life is Strange: True Colors. This latest entry brings back Max Caulfield, the original game’s beloved protagonist. Now an adult teaching at a university, Max faces the complexities of everyday life, balancing her career and personal challenges while still grappling with her supernatural abilities.
Known for its rich characters and emotionally driven storytelling, the Life is Strange series has always delivered an engaging experience, even if each game had its highs and lows. Typically, each installment introduces a new protagonist, so returning to a familiar character like Max and exploring her life in a fresh context was a promising concept. However, Double Exposure falls short of fully realizing this potential.
With Life is Strange: Double Exposure, Deck Nine faced the daunting task of upholding Max Caulfield’s legacy without diminishing her original character. Many fans regard the first game as the most iconic, making Max’s return a sensitive undertaking that required careful storytelling. While Max retains much of her core personality and the traits that endeared her to fans, the game stumbles in its gameplay execution and suffers from uneven pacing. The writing, while sincere, sometimes overstays its welcome, particularly in moments like the prologue, which serves as a lengthy, lackluster introduction to the new cast in Double Exposure.
If Life is Strange were a standard teen or adult drama, it likely would not have garnered such a strong following. The series’ defining supernatural elements—particularly Max’s unique ability to rewind time—set it apart from other titles. In Double Exposure, however, Arcadia Bay and Max’s old friends are gone, and she is making a conscious effort to distance herself from her past. She also loses her time-rewind ability, which may initially seem disappointing, but the game introduces a new twist: Max can now jump between timelines, offering her a fresh set of powers.
These new abilities are compelling and hold greater potential than her previous ones, but the question remains: how well do the developers implement them? This is where the game falls short. Crafting a narrative that provides players with meaningful choices while maintaining cohesive gameplay is challenging, and here, Max’s powers feel largely linear. Often, the player is funneled into a single path, making her new abilities feel somewhat redundant. Although moving between two timelines provides an intriguing perspective on the game’s world and narrative, it feels more like a narrative device than an impactful gameplay feature.
Midway through the game, the developers introduce some clever uses of Max’s powers, but these creative moments are not sustained until the end. By the time the main story concludes, her powers are primarily used to follow standard quest objectives, diminishing the satisfaction of wielding her abilities. The central plot revolves around the murder of Safi, Max’s close friend in this sequel. The two timelines Max can explore are anchored to Safi’s fate, with one timeline featuring her alive and the other depicting her dead. Safi emerges as a well-developed character whose loss feels genuinely impactful, adding gravity to the timeline-switching mechanic and grounding the story in a personal, consequential narrative.
In her investigation to solve Safi’s murder, Max teams up with a few intriguing characters, including Moses and Amanda. Initially, Amanda appears primarily as a romantic interest for Max, but their relationship deepens as the main story unfolds. While Safi’s character is well-developed and memorable, not all characters in this sequel receive the same attention. Ironically, Safi is the very first character introduced in the game, which sets a high bar for the rest of the story, yet other characters fall short of these expectations.
The primary issue with the writing in Life Is Strange: Double Exposure is that it does not provide enough development for most of its characters, with only a few exceptions. This leaves some characters introduced in the game to simply fade from relevance, making their initial presence feel unnecessary. Another disappointment is the limited impact of the alternate timelines on the overall narrative; instead of influencing the story’s direction, these timelines feel secondary to the main plot objectives. The ending, which seems to set up a potential sequel, feels more like a missed opportunity as if the developers chose an easy path forward for future installments with Max Caulfield. Online reactions have been largely unfavorable, especially toward some controversial changes to the original game’s storyline, raising questions about the future direction of the series.
Life Is Strange: Double Exposure is a solid game overall, but it doesn’t quite reach the level of the best entries in the franchise. I played the game on both PC and Steam Deck, and it’s worth noting that on the Steam Deck, shadows and lighting effects initially appeared broken. This issue seems to result from the default setting, which disables shadows. Fortunately, enabling shadows manually appears to resolve these visual problems.
In terms of Steam Deck performance, the game is somewhat inconsistent. However, because Double Exposure is primarily a story-driven experience, even a sub-30 FPS frame rate is manageable, especially if you value the portability the Steam Deck offers for narrative-focused games.
Life Is Strange: Double Exposure Game Information
- Price: $49.99
- Publisher: Square Enix
- Developer: Deck Nine
- Platform: PC (Reviewed)
- Disclaimer: A review code was given by the publisher
