You know what I’ve always said? Life… is STRANGE. Am I right? Like, why do we DRIVE on a PARKway and PARK on the front lawn? I think it’s super strange, and the looks I get from my neighbors suggest they agree. Well, almost 10 years ago, Square Enix published a video game about this very topic. And no, I’m not talking about Lara Croft GO. The original Life is Strange was an incredibly interesting and frankly bold idea for a game. It doesn’t deal in any real action or combat, it’s not a complex puzzle game; instead, it’s all about narrative. It’s almost like if you took a visual novel and swapped out the static images with fully animated characters and dynamic camera angles and just the coolest soundtrack ever. It’s a game where the choices you make have a profound and lasting impact on the story. It’s a game about consequences, and how, even if we had the ability to endlessly revisit the key moments in our lives, we still ultimately would have to choose just one path to go down. Now, Square Enix has brought us a sequel featuring the same main character as the original, Max Caulfield, in Life Is Strange Double Exposure.
I’m going to present this as though you know nothing about the original Life Is Strange, because there are probably a lot of you who have seen trailers for this new entry and are intrigued, but you’re maybe worried you don’t have all the prior knowledge you’d need to fully enjoy this one. As someone who DID play and thoroughly love the original game, I can tell you that for the most part, you should be just fine. There are a few sequences that might not land as strongly for you without knowledge of the previous game, but there’s no point where you’ll be confused as to what you need to do. But playing the original adds a lot of extra layers of nuance to this one, so if you have the opportunity, I’d recommend you grab the remaster of the OG game as well.
So here’s a quick rundown of the basic story premise. Maxine Caulfield is the recently appointed Artist-in-Residence at Caledon University, a liberal arts college in Vermont. Max is a photographer, and she’s been making a name for herself around the country in the years since the original Life Is Strange ended. While making art and teaching classes at Caledon, she makes friends with a young man named Moses, and a young woman named Safi. At this point, I’d say “Life Is Good” is a more apt description of things. But naturally, something has to go wrong or we wouldn’t have a game, and something DOES pretty quickly go wrong. Safi is shot to death by some mysterious assailant, and Max is determined to set things right.
See, here’s the thing about Max – when she was younger, she had the ability to rewind time. Which is relatively cool, I’d say. The thing is, though, that she hasn’t done it in a long time, and just like a muscle, her powers have atrophied. However, what she suddenly finds she IS able to do is cut open a rift between two parallel dimensions – the dimension she’s from, where Safi was killed, and another dimension where Safi is alive and well… but possibly still in danger.
To say much more about the story would be to do you a disservice, because like its predecessor, the story IS the game. You guide Max around Caledon, make difficult choices as she deals with other university staff and students, and ultimately have to solve the mystery of Safi’s death and what this whole parallel dimension THING is all about.
The gameplay is pretty similar to other games in the series. You walk around from place to place, interacting with people, observing the environment, and solving conundrums found both in the physical world and within conversations. Max’s new ability to shift between dimensions is obviously key to a lot of this, but her power extends beyond just being able to move from one plane to another. She’s actually able to do something called “Pulse,” which allows her to view what’s happening in the other dimension, and to overhear what’s being said, without actually going there. This makes her, essentially, the perfect spy. If you need to listen in on some suspicious students, just hop to the other dimension, return to where they happened to be congregating, and Pulse. Then you get your answer and they’re none the wiser.
If you’re hoping for much more to DO as a player than that, you might be disappointed. Life Is Strange, as a series, is much more akin to an old school adventure game, or like I said earlier, almost sort of similar to a visual novel – albeit with a TON more production value behind it. This is interactive fiction through and through. The storytelling is helped quite a bit by the aesthetics here. This is honestly a beautiful game. It doesn’t go for a full photo-realistic look, there’s still a hint of cartooniness to it, but it really works, and the remarkably good body and facial animation sells it. The performances, I should say, are like big-time quality. All the actors are phenomenal, and in particular the actress behind Max, who has to display such a wide range of emotions, from timidness to anger to love and lust and everything in between. Truly, there were moments where I almost forgot I was playing a game at all and was just taking in some of these scenes as if they were part of a gripping TV series or a movie or something. It’s really excellent.
Now, if you HAVE played the original game, you might be wondering, is Max still a giant cornball? The answer is yes. The cringe is strong with Max, at least when it comes to her inner monologue. I know some people rolled their eyes at Max’s corniness in the original game, and they’ll similarly roll their eyes here. She’s definitely the same person she was back then, albeit older and wiser. Personally, I’m down for a little corn from time to time. I find it endearing. Your mileage may vary there.
One other thing the series, and in particular the original game are known for is the soundtrack. The first game’s soundtrack basically lived on repeat on my iPhone for years, and I still return to it occasionally. It’s just a beautiful and eclectic mix of brilliant songwriting. The soundtrack in Double Exposure is good… but I’ll be honest, only one or two songs stuck out to me in a particularly grand way. This sort of music is of course going to be extremely subjective, and the fact that I didn’t resonate as strongly with this one is just a matter of my taste not quite matching up with the developers’ this time. At the same time, I didn’t hear a song I considered “bad,” either, so I don’t really have much else to say about it.
If I’m talking about elements that didn’t impress me all that much, I have a couple other minor gripes. As you’re walking around campus, you can overhear people’s conversations, but the way in which they fade in and out is distractingly unrealistic. You have to be pretty darn close to someone to hear what they’re saying, and as you start to walk away, instead of fading in volume as you’d expect, the audio seems to fade briefly and then just cut out entirely. Also, I did notice quite a bit of texture pop-in when a camera angle would change. It’s odd, I feel like with hardware as powerful as the PlayStation 5, which is what I played this on, that this sort of thing wouldn’t be an issue anymore. It’s an unfortunate ding against a game that otherwise is breathtakingly beautiful at times.
One other issue that bugged me a bit more, and I’m trying to be careful how I say this because it’s related to the story in a major way… I’ll say that the motivations of the antagonist are… vague to me. It almost feels like I must have somehow missed an important scene or something. Now, to be clear, the rest of the plot is very good and understandable – at least as understandable as a dimension-hopping murder mystery story can be. But I’m thinking I might need to either watch some video analyses or play again to better understand.
Speaking of playing again, that’s the great thing about this game. It might only take you 12 or 15 hours to beat it, but because of the branching nature of the narrative, there’s a ton of replay value. Scenes will change depending on what you’ve done, your relationships with different characters might be radically different in one playthrough than in another. If you want a nice, short and sweet experience, you can play through it once and be happy; if you want more, there’s plenty of reason to dig back in and see what changes you can make.
You know, one other thing got under my skin. The characters in the game frequently describe events as “weird,” and “odd,” but never as “strange.” Needless to say, my drinking game didn’t pan out the way I thought it would.
I’m kidding of course. I don’t need extra motivation to drink while I play excellent video games.
And this is truly an excellent video game. Understand that, if you’re not into these sorts of narrative-heavy experiences, where you’ll spend as much if not more time watching as playing, you may want to steer clear. But if you’re down for what is essentially an interactive television show where you get to make big choices about the outcome, then this game, and this series, will probably be up your alley.