Life is Strange: Double Exposure Review — A Photo Is a Moment Captured Forever

Life is Strange: Double Exposure is the latest game in the Life is Strange franchise and directly continues the original’s story. After almost ten years, protagonist Max Caulfield returns for another story—one that manages to be nostalgic while standing on its own. While Double Exposure captures many of the original’s themes, character moments, and tone, the game feels a bit shallower and, at times, left me disappointed.

Double Exposure takes place ten years after the events of the first game. The choices you made in the first title, most notably how you ended things with Chloe Price, have shaped Max’s life since, inevitably leading her to a university in Vermont where she works as the artist-in-residence. Here, Max has built a new life, maintaining little connection to Arcadia Bay, and has new friends and love interests introduced mainly in the first chapter. Everything is going well until an unexpected tragedy shakes things up, tasking Max with unraveling a mystery full of murder, deception, and supernatural powers, all in the wake of another storm that could destroy her new home.

Double Exposure picks up and executes incredibly well on aspects of the original’s writing style. The game also delves into new themes that genuinely left me heart-wrenched.

Like the first game, Double Exposure tackles serious subject matter with nuanced writing. This is most apparent early on, during a stargazing trip to the campus observatory. At this point, Max’s life is depicted as cheery and wonderful, full of friends, new lovers, exciting career opportunities, and an overall happy vibe that feels almost too good to be true. Too good to be true it is, in fact, as looking into her cell phone reveals old texts and social media conversations that paint a much more nuanced picture of Max, who is still suffering from the aches of Arcadia Bay, is distant with her parents, and even struggles to be close to her current friends.

It’s a shockingly real depiction of many young adults, and using Max’s old texts is genius. It conveys that there’s more going on than meets the eye without breaking up the story and adds depth and realism to the world. It’s a heartbreakingly real moment, as I’m sure we’ve all gone through old texts, wishing we had said something else.

Some new themes the game captures are those very adult feelings of finality and time—a sort of distance from your past, especially the years in and around high school, and all the confusion, heartache, and trauma that can come from growing up and facing the world as an incomplete person. Double Exposure does a phenomenal job of capturing that weird middle ground between satisfaction and regret, accepting where you are while wondering what else could have been, dwelling on past mistakes and heartache, and questioning where you would be now without them and whether that place would be better.

Life is Strange: Double Exposure also introduces a new power, allowing Max to slip into an alternate timeline where the opposites of your choices are made. It’s a neat way to mix things up and entwine with the plot to create interesting storytelling moments.

That being said, in terms of overall storytelling, I’d say the original Life is Strange was much better.

Double Exposure has its moments; as a stand-alone story, it’s worthy enough that you won’t be disappointed. However, compared to the original, it simply doesn’t hold as much weight. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say Double Exposure doesn’t hold a candle to the story it continues, lacking much of the emotional depth, heart-wrenching moments, and having an ending that feels shallow by comparison.

The original also initially portrayed characters as tropey to then subvert expectations later. The characters in Double Exposure lack this subversion and generally feel less deep. I didn’t connect with them as much, perhaps due to less time spent around them.

There are also times where I felt the game didn’t respect its own story. I have a handful of examples, but most would be spoilers. One that comes to mind involves Max having to speak to someone freshly grieving—we’re talking within days—and Max shows up in a color-coordinated Moogle outfit I’d selected earlier in the chapter and couldn’t change before the conversation.

Try Hard Guides received a PC review code for this game. Find more detailed looks at popular and upcoming titles on our Game Reviews page! Life is Strange: Double Exposure is available on Steam, Xbox, and PlayStation.