Life is Strange: Double Exposure was disappointing
The newest Life is Strange installment came close to being truly great
I have expressed my gratitude for Life is Strange: True Colors in the past. That game hit me under a rather particular set of personal circumstances. However, I greatly admire both Life is Strange 1 and 2. When I learned about Life is Strange: Double Exposure, I could not contain my excitement.
The newest installment to the LiS franchise launched on Tuesday afternoon. I completed the game in two play sessions. After my first play session, I was ready to praise the game as another incredible addition to this series. However, upon finishing the game, my view has drastically changed.
Life is Strange: Double Exposure comes so close to sticking the landing. It’s driving the ball down the field toward the end zone, ready to claim victory. But the game throws an interception in the end zone with three timeouts left. And they just walk off the field, not even bothering to try to get the ball back to go for the win in the dying embers.
In this piece, I want to break down some of the flaws of this game. I won’t score the game, since I usually only apply scores/grades to sports trades and contracts. But I hope to provide some context as to why some people may be critical of the end of this game.
Spoiler warning: the rest of this article will contain major spoilers for Life is Strange: Double Exposure. Click away now if you wish to avoid these spoilers.
An unaddressed mystery
Life is Strange sold itself as a murder mystery. Max Caufield, the protagonist from LiS 1, returns to the series as the artist-in-residence at Caledon University. At the beginning of the story, we meet her close friends Safi and Moses. The first chapter concludes with Max and Moses finding Safi dead on a bench with a gunshot wound near her heart.
This is the plotline the entire story is based around. Max works to solve who killed Safi and why they did it. She even reawakens her powers, which now allow her to travel between two parallel timelines with Safi being alive in this timeline. However, while the who is explained, it’s never exactly said why it happens. In fact, it’s not even entirely clear when this happens. You spend all of this time gathering information that’s meant to help solve the mystery. But in the end, nothing was really gained.
Sure, I learned about these characters. And getting to spend time in the Life is Strange world is fun for me. However, you cannot sell your game as a murder mystery only to not actually do anything with said murder mystery. It all felt underwhelming in the end, and it cuts into the replay value this game offers.
Compounding this is the fact that the mystery within the murder mystery is also never solved. There’s a huge plotline involving Maya Okada, Safi’s best friend who died before the events of the game. There is a lot of importance placed on what happened to her and the events leading to her death. Hell, the chaos of Chapters 4 and 5 begins because one character tells Safi “the whole truth” of what happened. But it’s never truly mentioned what that truth is.
The mystery surrounding these characters was the selling point. Go on any official Life is Strange social media account and you’ll see posts hyping up the murder mystery aspect of the story. In the end, though, the murder mystery remains a mystery.
Underwhelming and lackluster writing
Another aspect that fails woefully is the writing in this story. This ties into the aforementioned unsolved mystery, as well. We’re given a lot of information about these characters that just doesn’t lead anywhere. And the game even points out how fruitless it all is at the end of Chapter 3.
At the end of the chapter, “Living World” Max returns to her place of residence to find it vandalized. Come to find out, the perpetrator is none other than another Max Caufield. There’s a chase scene before the two run into a dead end overlooking a frozen lake. They have a back and forth before this other Max point blank asks why the player’s Max has been snooping around gathering information on all these people.
The player can choose between two response choices. They are along the lines of “I’m trying to help Safi” and “Why don’t you care?” I chose the former, but that second option got me thinking. I really had no reason to care about any of this. What Vinh and Yasmin and all these other characters got up to in their personal lives didn’t really matter to me. And, as we come to learn, it didn’t matter to the actual story of the game.
There’s a fine line between fleshing out characters and just simply explaining their background. A character is only fleshed out when their values and experiences have an effect on how they approach their world. For example, Nico Robin’s backstory in One Piece directly affects how she views the Straw Hat Pirates and is a major influence on her actions during the Water 7 arc.
In Double Exposure, this doesn’t really happen. Outside of Safi and Max, none of the characters have a truly developed set of goals and motivations. Their backstories don’t inform much of anything except that they have a relationship with these characters. The setup is good, but the payoff ruins the entire thing.
The parallel timelines were cool, but…
One aspect of the game I was genuinely excited about was the duel timelines. I know there’s some hesitation about parallel universes given how Marvel has handled the multiverse, but I was still excited. And I’m happy to say that it paid off for the most part.
I love how each timeline feels distinct. When you’re in the Living World, it’s bright and joyous as characters prepare for the Christmas holiday. There’s a lot of conversation and social outings, as you’d come to expect from a small-knit college community. In the Dead World, everything is muted. Even bright Sunny days aren’t quite as bright as those in the Living World. It’s much quieter, and there are no signs of the impending Christmas holiday to be seen. It really shows the impact of Safi’s death on the characters in this timeline.
The parallel timelines also provide interesting gameplay challenges. For instance, there are certain areas you may not be able to access in one timeline. However, you can cross over to the other timeline, enter the area, and then cross back. There’s also an element of stealth, as you’re able to eavesdrop on one timeline while physically being in the other.
These are incredible ideas and they were a lot of fun. But it wasn’t all great. The timelines are fun when there’s a clear distinction between the two. However, the timelines merge at the end of the game. And it’s not clear what aspects of each timeline win out in this new reality. The only major difference was Safi being alive or dead, so maybe that has something to do with it. But since the game doesn’t clear anything up, this is entirely left up to interpretation.
Ultimately, this is a very cool idea. And for the most part, I think it’s executed quite well. However, it also adds to the confusion surrounding the ending of the game. Which, speaking of…
The Ending…will come next time
The end of Life is Strange: Double Exposure is not too dissimilar to that of LiS 1. Hell, that massive storm that wiped Arcadia Bay off the map makes a return here. But this time, it does not actually destroy…anything.
The end of this game comes after Safi and Max expose a Caledon professor for plagiarism. He storms off in a huff, only to return later to request to speak to Safi. Remember when I said the chaos started when “the whole truth” was revealed? This is when that happens.
After this, every character sans Max starts freaking out and experiencing migraines. Max goes off to find Safi and sees her holding her mother, Yasmin, at gunpoint. Apparently, Yasmin had something to do with Maya Okada’s death. Or, at least, she prevented Safi from getting justice for Maya. Again, it’s not entirely clear. In any event, this has caused Safi’s shapeshifting powers to go out of control, causing that big storm to rear its ugly head.
The last major choice I made in chapter 4 saw Yasmin getting shot in the shoulder. Max and Safi then jump into the big storm that has literally killed an entire town. Max loses Safi after awakening in the eye of this storm. She realizes people have parts of Safi within them, and Max has to help them. Eventually, Max reunites with Safi and they talk. Max removes the part of Safi that’s within her, and this somehow merges our dueling timelines.
There are two endings in this game. The one I received is Safi deciding to go find other people with powers because she now believes she’s a God. Max has a heart-to-heart with her friends at Caledon…and that’s it. We get a screen telling us that Max Caufield will return, but it just ends there.
I cannot begin to describe how confused I was at how this ended. I knew the game was going to end soon. But I kept telling myself that it didn’t feel like an ending. Because it doesn’t. Nothing is resolved with the end of this game. In fact, it just sets things up for a different game that I guess is coming sometime in the future.
This lack of an ending makes me feel like I wasted my money. This feels like a game that was not complete in any sense of the word. There are certain qualities of this game that I enjoy wholeheartedly. Max Caufield is incredible, and Hannah Telle did a fantastic job in bringing her to life. Safi is a compelling character, though I feel her character takes a jarring turn midway through the game. And as mentioned, the parallel timelines are fun to navigate.
However, none of this makes up for the fact that the game simply was not complete. The story clearly needed more work. There’s a difference between leaving on a cliffhanger and just not having an ending. Double Exposure falls into the latter category. Not a single plot point in this game actually resolved itself throughout the nine or so hours I spent with the game.
Double Exposure veers so far off course from what Life is Strange has been that it’s hard to call this a Life is Strange game in anything but name. The game is set up as more of a clash between power users than it is a gripping and emotional experience with characters who have been through shit. I don’t want Life is Strange to become a shonen anime style game series. I want Life is Strange to be Life is Strange. Hopefully, the series can get back on track at some point.
