Life is Strange: Double Exposure ends with a disappointing finale

At 1 constituent successful Life is Strange: Double Exposure’s 3rd episode, Max Caulfield tried to sermon the well-being of a pupil named Reggie with Loretta, different pupil connected campus. Loretta became somewhat bewildered, asking Max who precisely she was referring to. That was erstwhile Max realized, overmuch to her chagrin, that she had gotten the 2 parallel realities of Loretta mixed up. Turns out, 1 Loretta has met Reggie, but the different hasn’t. (Don’t inquire maine which; I can’t retrieve offhand, either.)

This infinitesimal is emblematic of however rapidly Double Exposure flits betwixt its 2 universes. There’s the “Living World,” successful which her champion person Safi was alive, and the “Dead World” wherever she wasn’t. Several puzzles successful the crippled travel this trajectory: to circumvent definite obstacles erstwhile investigating Safi’s death, Max would teardrop a monolithic rift into the different world to stitchery accusation she would different not beryllium privy to oregon drawback immoderate utile entity arsenic if pulling disconnected a magician’s chapeau instrumentality earlier returning to the first.

While this gimmick is simply a nifty mechanic that adds a fascinating magnitude to Max’s sleuthing, it tin besides get confusing and tedious, particularly arsenic events are spun disconnected successful wildly antithetic directions. Even Max’s fastidious note-taking does small to assuage this frustration. Ultimately, portion the powerfulness does connection a look into the different unseen facets of Max’s life, it’s besides troublesome arsenic a mechanic, astatine times reducing interactions to fetch quests.

This portion contains spoilers about Life is Strange: Double Exposure, its finale, and the archetypal Life is Strange.

This tedium is why, arsenic Max shuttles backmost and distant betwixt the 2 realities with the flourish of a seasoned illusionist, there’s a consciousness that her interior turmoil is lone growing. Her interactions alteration betwixt realities, and truthful bash the myriad events that instrumentality place, leaving ripples successful the mode her relationships make betwixt universes. For instance, Max is adjacent friends with the school’s administrative adjunct successful 1 beingness but simply acquaintances successful another. It’s nary wonderment she often engages successful moments of quietude and self-reflection, specified arsenic pondering her determination to bombard a person with relentless questions oregon ruminating implicit the soiled laundry of a disgraced colleague.

Thus it’s nary astonishment that arsenic Max starts utilizing her powers more, Double Exposure picks up from the mostly languid gait of the archetypal 2 episodes. The melodrama has importantly ramped up from occurrence two’s astonishing cliffhanger, with large twists hinted astatine and past audaciously delivered with a sleight of hand. While it’s casual for these to go contrived, and for Double Exposure to suffer the affectional halfway of its communicative — that is, the game’s smaller, much tender moments of affection — Double Exposure hardly falters, persisting without drowning successful these bombastic reveals. 

The bully quality is that Max is learning to unrecorded with her grief from the archetypal game. Small yet important choices, specified arsenic retaliating against a self-absorbed workfellow by interrupting his class, utilizing her supernatural powers to unravel clues, and adjacent choosing which emotion involvement to buss (or nary astatine all), overgarment a representation of Max’s identity. Then there’s the pivotal script successful which Max is seemingly confronted with the imaginable of making yet different intolerable determination but realizing that she tin simply take not to take astatine all. Double Exposure is besides astatine its astir assured narratively erstwhile it’s chronicling her growth, with the crippled deftly bringing unneurotic the grandiose crippled twists and the quieter, much intimate scenes with unthinkable sentiment.

But the last occurrence is wherever Double Exposure seems to tally retired of abstraction for specified ruminations. Episode 5 is yet reduced to a bid of rooms, with Max simply jogging from 1 doorway to the adjacent to rescue the formed from their ghastly predicament. Familiar artifacts from her past beingness successful Arcadia Bay, similar the alloy seat utilized by her ex-professor Jefferson, resurface, creating the macabre prime of a unusual lucid imagination sequence. A monolithic bowling alley mascot leers menacingly astatine Max arsenic she struggles to interruption retired of her restraints again. Binders afloat of photographs — the centerpiece of Jefferson’s twisted portfolio — taunt Max into perusing them erstwhile more. It’s a throwback to Max’s meltdown successful the last occurrence of the archetypal Life is Strange, but it felt similar specified an obligatory motion that it was much repetitive than inventive.

More disappointing inactive is that, successful its conclusion, Double Exposure has opted to clumsily reconstruct the bid — 1 beloved for exploring the affectional depths of mundane beingness — into a sci-fi communicative featuring a formed of troubled superheroic teens. It fails to recognize that these powers, similar Daniel’s telekinetic abilities successful Life is Strange 2, are simply a lens with which to analyse the anxieties of beingness astatine a heightened level. Without a stronger affectional hook, this improvement feels similar a ham-fisted effort to grow Life is Strange into an endlessly repeatable formula, acceptable successful different cinematic universe. A bigger nonaccomplishment is however Max is being established arsenic the look of this caller direction, with the credits announcing that “Max Caulfield Will Return.”

Perhaps an ending wherever Max gets a reprieve from the slew of misfortunes that the satellite seems to bask hurling astatine her is excessively idealistic. After all, world tin beryllium conscionable arsenic perverse for the remainder of us. But the thought that Life is Strange volition contiguous Max’s powers arsenic someway bonzer feels a spot discordant. This isn’t the decision that Double Exposure deserves.

All episodes of Life is Strange: Double Exposure are disposable present connected PC, PlayStation, and Xbox.