AUTHOR’S NOTE
This is the first of several LIFE IS STRANGE: DOUBLE EXPOSURE pieces and is an impressions piece on my first play-through and not meant as an in-depth, critical look at the game. This post and play-through reflects my decision from the first LIFE IS STRANGE that Chloe and Max left Arcadia Bay together. A later post will report back regarding a different direction.
Also: it is worth noting that DOUBLE EXPOSURE is a Deck Nine game, a company that is no stranger to the LIFE IS STRANGE series. However, Deck Nine has previously employed sexual aggressors and racists and may still. That they’ve succeeded in creating nuanced, diverse and accepting games despite the efforts of some of their staff is a testament to those who believe in the spirit of the first LIFE IS STRANGE.
I’ve played and replayed every LIFE IS STRANGE game, read all of the comics as well as the WAVELENGTHS follow-up novel STEPH’S STORY. And I wrote about all of them, some more than a few times because it’s a series that means that much to me.
So you’d think I’d have more interest in the latest LIFE IS STRANGE installment, a direct follow-up to the game that kicked it all off, that I’d be elated to revisit a world with Chloe and Max, albeit post-Arcadia Bay.
Yes, you’d certainly think that. At first, I was.
Then I heard that Chloe wouldn’t be in it. That it was about the further adventures of one Max Caulfield.
Here’s the thing: I don’t really care about Max Caulfield.
My favorite playable LIFE IS STRANGE characters are:
- Chloe Price (BEFORE THE STORM)
- Steph Gingrich (WAVELENGTHS)
- Alex Chen (TRUE COLORS)
- Max Caulfield (LIFE IS STRANGE)
- Chris Eriksen (THE AWESOME ADVENTURES OF CAPTAIN SPIRIT)
- Sean Diaz (LIFE IS STRANGE 2)
(Sorry Sean!)
Max Caulfield is a bookworm, a shutterbug, a wallflower, and — as of the first LIFE IS STRANGE — she hasn’t had much in the way of life experiences. Her only other character traits are sticking her nose where it doesn’t belong and handing out unhelpful idealistic advice.
She’s someone fun to talk to in a used book store, but you wouldn’t walk out of that shop thinking that you’d met a complex, textured person.

DOUBLE EXPOSURE promised a new Max Caulfield for a new LIFE IS STRANGE adventure and, it does deliver on that. This Max no longer the doe-like youth standing in the shadow of Chloe. Despite her time rewind powers having atrophied, she’s more confident and self-assured and worldly. In my play-through, she and Chloe cut ties halfway through their cross-country roadtrip in Chicago and, following that schism, Max floated around as an acclaimed photojournalist before. Now she’s in her 20s and is an artist-in-residence at Caledon University, a small liberal arts school in Lakeport, Vermont.1
Unfortunately, despite being a respected artist, despite having lived and experienced so much — in Arcadia Bay and on the road — Max Caulfield is still pretty fucking boring.
We meet up with Max as she’s finally settling in at Caledon; she’s been there long enough to establish new friendships and know students names, but is still considered the new kid at school. Her two closest academic friends are poet and daughter of the dean Safi and astrophysicist Moses.

One night Safi and Moses and Max are having a few celebratory drinks to champion recent accomplishments. Safi gets upset by a call and takes off. Later that night, Max finds her shot dead. Max being the meddlesome kid adult she is, attempts to rewind time to prevent the murder and, instead, happens to open a portal to an alternate timeline where Safi is still alive, leading her to use both timelines to find the killer.
As LIFE IS STRANGE setups go, this one is bog standard, and shares a lot in common with Deck Nine’s LIFE IS STRANGE: TRUE COLORS: small, lush New England town, tightly-knit liberal community, death of a well-known citizen, and a protagonist with superpowers that aid in rooting out the murder mystery.
A protagonist who is an acclaimed artist with superpowers and is still pretty fucking boring.
Yes, Max has grown up. Her voice is no longer whisper thin, and she speaks in declarative statements instead of wishy-washy musings. She’s also queer now! (While I didn’t play her that way in the first LIFE IS STRANGE, yeah, a lot can change over the years!) She’s still frustratingly dull. Her taste in art and music non-offensive. She rarely has a bad thought towards anyone, even if they’re trying to -kill her-. She barely has any connections to anyone unless they’re right in front of her.
Max Caulfield in her 20s is still someone who, if you met in a bookstore or art gallery, you’d forget about the moment you walked away. Apart from her new split timeline power, very little has changed about her. That’s a problem, especially when you’re dealing with a series that has characters like the bitter and disillusioned Chloe, or Steph dealing with her queer crossroads, or Alex Chen’s dissonance juggling the good and bad in people as she’s thrust into independence after a life in foster homes.

One could make the argument that Max’s detachment and lack of decisiveness are due to enduring the weight of the events at Arcadia Bay but to that I say: “Nope, she’s always been that way.”
DOUBLE EXPOSURE could have course-corrected that, as it feels like a re-evaluation and response to the first game. Matters here are not as morally cut-and-dry, and there’s more nuance towards character motivations here in the first half of the game. It’s not all youthful indiscretions low-stakes teen criminal behavior. It’s an adult(-ish) world of academia, and motives here are far more complex.
At least, they are until you hit the second half of the game.
LIFE IS STRANGE has always struggled with its reliance on its super-powered younger protagonists, enough so that half of the games feature protagonists without powers. Unfortunately, DOUBLE EXPOSURE veers off into X-MEN-esque superhero antics. It pivots from allowing the super-human powers to enrich and deepen the narrative and characters. Instead of watching the emotional turmoil unfold by Max rewriting Chloe’s timeline in the first LIFE IS STRANGE, DOUBLE EXPOSURE turns one character into a Magneto-esque villain and force Max to either follow along or to maximize her powers to prevent something only she can prevent.
Between the superpowers and the academic politics, DOUBLE EXPOSURE is all about wielding power and influence and control. While that’s all well-and-good for say, the Marvel Cinematic Universe, that’s not what draws folks to the LIFE IS STRANGE games; we want out small-scale stories writ large. We want our nuanced characters and pathos and normal struggles framed against the chaos of the rest of the world. That’s entirely what the first LIFE IS STRANGE was built around: it was about Max and Chloe, their friendship and their estrangement, a world that would tear itself apart because Chloe’s continued existence was deemed that damaging, and one person who could rewind to save Chloe from her ordained fate.
DOUBLE EXPOSURE lacks that emotional core; it substitutes fleshing out Max’s personality with broader powers, more guilt, and more responsibility. If there’s any character here that shines, it’s because Max’s best friend Safi has secrets, Safi can be dangerous, Safi has objectives and goals and wants and needs.
In other words? She has a lot of what Max lacks, and what a follow-up to the first LIFE IS STRANGE needed.

DOUBLE EXPOSURE ends with the laughable declaration that “MAX CAULFIELD WILL RETURN” that, at first blush, reads almost as a threat. The majority of fans that wanted Max to return, wanted her to return with Chloe. I would have been happy if we had a more interesting Max, but on the other hand? They could have just made this game around an entirely new character, like they’ve done in the past.
However, this is meant as more an impressions piece, an examination of why — fundamentally — DOUBLE EXPOSURE was unsatisfying for me as a lifelong LIFE IS STRANGE fan. I didn’t get to touch on what Chloe is up to and how Max is dealing with it; Max’s adoption of digital versus analog; the soundtrack; the inverted scope of the game when compared to the prior major LIFE IS STRANGE entries; what exactly is canon in the LiS universe now, or even how Max Caulfield reminds me of GILMORE GIRLS’s Rory Gilmore.
And I do want to impress that, if you can let go of the franchise’s history, of all of that baggage, I would have enjoyed this game. Granted, I still would have laughed when I saw the closing placard, but I would recommend it to others. And I will be replaying it, and my opinion of it — and adult Max — may change! After all… “MEDIACLATURE’S LIFE IS STRANGE POSTS WILL RETURN”
- I’ve previously penned that the LIFE IS STRANGE series often reminds me of my life growing up in Vermont, and it’s not just because both rural areas of the northeast and northwest United States have similar topography and foliage. Quite a bit of LIFE IS STRANGE is influenced by Shirley Jackson, who is best known for penning THE HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL as well as other darkly weird tales. Jackson spent the bulk of her life in Bennington, Vermont right by the esteemed Bennington College and its unconventional and progressive teaching styles. Jackson’s novel WE HAVE ALWAYS LIVED IN THE CASTLE features the Blackwell family, whereas LIFE IS STRANGE’s school is named Blackwell Academy, after the rich Arcadian Bay Blackwell real estate developers. And now, here we are, in Vermont, in a school that could easily double for Bennington College. ↩︎
