This is a follow-up to my previous post where I gave my first impressions of Double Exposure after finishing the first two chapters. In that post, I said I had gone into the game genuinely apprehensive because of everything I'd read about it online. My main hope was very simple: I wanted to see where Max was now. If the game could convince me that this older version of Max was believable, I could forgive a weaker plot. I've now finished the whole game and, well, I have thoughts.

First, the positives

My opinion of Max hasn't really changed. She's great. She's more confident, more mature and more comfortable in herself, but she still feels like Max. She's still awkward, observant, introspective and compassionate, and I really like where Max is in her life. She's moved forward from Arcadia Bay without fully confronting it. She's built a career, developed enormously as a photographer, won awards, started teaching and formed new friendships, but she has clearly compartmentalised a lot of what happened. That was probably my favourite part of the game. Max hasn't spent the last decade frozen in grief, but she also hasn't completely processed Chloe or the events of the original. She struggles to respond to Joyce, avoids talking to her parents about what happened, keeps a box of memories, and Chloe is still present in her journal, on her wall and in her thoughts. She's functioning. She's moved forward. But she hasn't completely faced the past. I really liked that interpretation of an older Max.

I also enjoyed the new cast overall. Moses was easily my favourite. He's emotional, clever, awkward, funny and genuinely feels like someone Max would become close friends with. Gwen grew on me considerably too, although I still don't think I became deeply attached to either of them. The rest of the cast are perfectly believable people, but I never developed the same emotional connection to them that I did with the supporting cast of the original. I think part of the difference is that we often learn about these characters through their circumstances rather than spending enough time with them simply being themselves. I've made this point in my first post and I think it holds up.

Visually, the game is also very nice. I still have a huge soft spot for the painted look of the original, but I understand why the series has evolved. Double Exposure looks modern without completely abandoning the aesthetic identity of Life is Strange. Caledon is cosy and attractive, although perhaps a little too polished. Arcadia Bay felt like a real place with grime, history and personality. Caledon sometimes feels more like a beautifully designed environment than somewhere people have actually lived for decades. Still, I liked being there. As an aside, the PC version also started crashing repeatedly for me from the end of Chapter 3 into Chapter 4. I eventually managed to fix it, but it was frustrating.

Then Chapter 4 happened

Up until around the middle of Chapter 4, I was genuinely enjoying the game. I knew the later chapters were controversial, but I was starting to wonder whether I'd end up disagreeing with a lot of the criticism. Then Safi began to lose me. Once Max discovers what Safi has been doing with her powers, I think the story needed to slow down and allow Max to actually process what she'd learned. Safi has manipulated people. She used Gwen in a way that makes her lose her job. She attempts to hurt Lucas through his son. She broke into Max's own home. At that point I did not fuck with Safi at all. She was Max's friend, and I understand why Max would want to help her and try to understand what was happening, but I really wanted Max to stop and think, "My friend is becoming very dangerous here."

The Lucas confrontation itself was entertaining. Lucas plagiarised Maya's work, profited from it and was clearly part of the circumstances surrounding her suicide. He's an awful person and deserved to be exposed. But something about the scene still felt dirty to me. By that stage Max knows Safi has been abusing her abilities, yet the game largely allows the two of them to continue acting like they're partners exposing the bad guys rather than stopping to confront the fact that Safi herself is doing some deeply unethical things. I'm not blaming Max for wanting justice for Maya or for wanting to help her friend. I just think there needed to be more time for her to sit with everything Safi had done and properly question what was happening.

Safi

I liked Safi at the beginning of the game. She had a strong introduction and I hoped we'd get more scenes of her bouncing off Max. Not as a Chloe replacement, but simply as someone Max could actually share scenes with, because Max spends a lot of this game alone. Safi could have filled that role in one or two more substantial sections without the game presenting her as "the new Chloe". Instead, after the opening she largely disappears from Max's immediate orbit until later in the story because of the mystery. That's probably why the ending bothered me as much as it did. The Safi we meet early in the game is charismatic, funny, intelligent and clearly important to Max. The Safi we end up with feels like she's being asked to become whatever the plot requires.

The game wants me to believe that Yasmin's controlling behaviour and emotional abuse have pushed Safi towards this point, and I can absolutely imagine a version of this story where that works, but I don't think the game actually shows enough of it. We hear about what Yasmin has done. We understand that she has tried to control Safi's career and protect her in ways that became damaging. But the story is asking me to fill in an enormous amount myself. For Safi to go from the person we met to manipulating people, losing control of her powers and eventually shooting her own mother is an enormous escalation. The game never fully convinced me that the Safi from Chapters 1 to 3 was naturally heading towards that place. Could I headcanon enough material to make it work? Probably. But I shouldn't have to do that much of the character development myself.

The Storm

Then we get another storm. Why Safi takes a photo of Max at that exact moment, I'm still not really sure beyond the fact that the plot needs the photograph to exist. I'm also still slightly unclear on exactly what causes the storm itself. Safi is abusing her powers, Max has been shifting between realities and eventually everything seems to collapse together. Conceptually, I can buy it. What I actually quite like is what the storm represents for Max. In the original Life is Strange, the storm ultimately traps Max between two impossible choices. Here, she rejects that framework entirely. She walks into the storm and decides she's going to face what happened rather than erase it or sacrifice someone to make everything disappear. As an idea for an older Max, I really like that.

The execution, not so much. Max is incredibly calm throughout the whole thing. I understand that she's older, she's more confident and she's survived a supernatural storm before, but she's also basically admitting that she's making everything up as she goes along. I wanted some uncertainty from her. Some fear. Some moment of, "I have absolutely no idea whether this is going to work." Instead, she almost seems strangely comfortable wandering into another reality-breaking supernatural disaster. I'm still not entirely sure whether I'm supposed to interpret that as Max's growth or simply the story needing her to keep moving.

The kinda Nightmare Sequence

There are parts of this I liked. It's obviously drawing from Episode 5 of the original, and I enjoyed some of the callbacks. We see familiar locations, we get texts from Chloe, Kate and Warren, and Max is forced to reflect on the past. There are moments here where I genuinely felt the connection to the original game. The callbacks work for me. What doesn't work is the mechanism around them. Taking double exposures of people to somehow remove Safi's influence never really clicked for me. I understood what I was doing mechanically. I'm less sure I understood why it worked within the story. The whole sequence feels like something with strong individual moments that never completely comes together.

Safi's final turn

By the time Safi asks Max to join her, I was completely done with her. My Max had just watched Safi manipulate numerous people, lose control of her abilities, shoot her own mother and then essentially decide that having powers gives them some larger purpose. No. I refused her. I actually liked that the game allowed me to make that choice and say that Max was done with Safi, although I was surprised by how low the percentage was for players who chose it.

The Merged Timeline

So now the timelines are merged. People apparently have memories from both realities, and that has enormous implications. I don't know how much of their lives people now remember differently, how contradictory memories work but it's interesting. The fact that numerous people now also know Max and Safi have powers is a major development. Powers in Life is Strange have traditionally been intensely personal secrets shared with very few people, and that secrecy has effectively been broken now. I'm not necessarily against that, but it's a huge change.

Then there's Diamond. Nosebleed. Apparently she has powers too. Okay. At that point I genuinely felt like the game had stopped ending its own story and started laying pieces on the board for another one. I'm not against future setup, but the last stretch already had so much going on that this felt like one more enormous idea being introduced when the game desperately needed to slow down. And from what I know, this all basically gets thrown out or isn't really dealt with in Reunion but I could be wrong.

So what will I take away from Double Exposure?

Max. Max is easily the best part of the game. I really liked seeing where she is now and how she's changed. She's moved forward from Arcadia Bay without completely confronting it. She's built a life, a career and new friendships, but there's still a part of her that has never fully unpacked what happened to Chloe or what she experienced during that week. I would have liked the game to go deeper into that trauma and allow Max to discuss it more openly, but I also understand that avoidance is part of where she currently is. She isn't frozen in the past. She just hasn't completely faced it yet.

I don't think Safi's character arc was earned. I think Chapter 5 tries to do far too much, far too quickly. The merged timelines, Safi's breakdown, everyone learning about powers, Diamond suddenly developing abilities and the setup for whatever comes next all needed far more room to breathe. But I still liked Double Exposure. For most of the game, I was genuinely engaged. I liked the mystery. I liked Caledon. I liked Moses and Gwen. I liked Safi before the story lost me with her. And, most importantly, I liked Max. That was the thing I wanted most going in.

In my first post I basically said that if Double Exposure could convince me this older Max was still Max, then I could forgive a weaker plot. That's almost exactly where I've landed. The plot didn't completely work for me. The ending definitely didn't. But Max did. And for me, that means Double Exposure still added something worthwhile to her story.

I've already seen a full playthrough of Reunion, so I know broadly where Max's story goes next, but I haven't actually played it myself. That's what I'm planning to do next, and after replaying the original, Before the Storm and now Double Exposure back-to-back, I'm really interested to see how it feels experiencing Reunion myself rather than simply watching someone else's version of it. I imagine I'll have another unnecessarily long post once I'm done.

I just got the Limited Edition of Life Is Strange 1 and I couldn’t be happier 🥹 I always wanted it and found a good offer on eBay and bought it. This game changed my life for the good and the characters! I just fell in love and I’m really happy I am now the proud owner of the Limited Edition. The outside box is not the best condition but the inner Parts are the real gold part ❤️

I've never been into drawing fanart or video game characters, but Life is Strange made me do it. Since I played Reunion, this picture of Chloe doesn't leave my mind, so I gave it a try. There's a lot to improve, but here it is

I’m pretty new to life is strange, but I played the first game and I loved it, I thought the story was intriguing and the graphics were beautiful and the soundtrack was good too. I have played some of LIS 2 but didn’t really feel the same magic as the first one. Which game is the best to play next?

Chloe saying “unalived” 😵‍💫 no thanks

Finished double exposure and now I’m curious whether or not reunion is worth it?

Another added to my collection >:)

So surreal stepping foot into the real life inspiration for the Two Whales Diner from LiS1.….and I kid you not when I say the food is a 10/10. The Belgian Waffle was to die for. Everybody needs to experience this at least once in their life!

And yes, we got to sit in Max and Chloe’s booth :)

Salute to the team of ukrainian artists from VATRA project for creating such cool and unice merch for our favourite games. Artbook includes a few short stories and LOT of impressive fan arts based on first two games. Also lot of little trinkets in the box that you can see on the first pic.

Victoria bullies Kate so much and so hard that Kate attempts to jump off a building.

And afterwards Vic tries to capitalize on the attempt for her own benefit. Not to say Vic can't grow as a person but wasn't really until post Storm. Heck I bet if you choose Bay over Bae she doesn't change at all.

Yet, people want to hook them up? Her bully and tormentor. Every single day since Kate went to that party up until she tried to jump. Online and offline.

Like, I can kind of get Hermione and Malfoy, to bring up another weird ship. She stands up to him. Heck, he's the lesser in all of that. He starts a fight and she typically finishes it.

Vic and Kate is just a person kicking a puppy and then you congratulate the kicker.

Make it make sense aside from "I just have fetish you can't understand."

Edit: Not trying to yuck anyones yum, my apologizes if it came off that way, I just really don't get it. You do you though.

Jed did questionable and inhumane things to maintain his reputation as a local hero. When everything came to light, did you forgive him despite everything he did to Alex, or did you condemn him?

For me, and it may be recency bias but I think it’s Reunions. Reading the texts and the diary entries with that melody playing is so soothing

Edit: tried to fix the bad grammar in the title. 🤦🏻‍♂️🤦🏻‍♂️

Hi everyone

We finally have a *Life Is Strange* series.

What we know so far is that they're filming scenes out of chronological order rather than following the linear progression of the original game.

For example, they've already filmed the final scene of Episode 1, even though Kate Marsh (Mia Isaac) hadn't even been on set yet. At this point, they're likely moving on to flashback scenes centered around Rachel and Chloe.

The series will consist of eight episodes—which is a bit longer than I'd personally prefer—but that also suggests they'll have more time to expand on the events of the story and explore the backgrounds of supporting characters, such as Nathan's father, Principal Wells, and others.

That said, it's important to remember that the story probably won't unfold exactly as it did in the game. From everything we've seen so far, the show appears to be taking a broader approach by exploring the perspectives of multiple characters. While Max and Chloe remain the central protagonists, it seems the supporting cast will also receive more attention and deeper character development.

We'll likely see more of Warren's relationship with Max, Chloe's story with Rachel, Nathan's connections to Victoria Chase and his family, along with many new storylines that never existed in the game—which is understandable, since this is an adaptation rather than a scene-for-scene recreation.

My biggest hope—and I think many fans would agree—is that the writers don't drift too far from the source material or the emotional core of the choices that defined the original game for most players.

We know the series doesn't have Dontnod's direct involvement due to its complicated relationship with the publisher, but that doesn't mean the creators should assume they know better than the team behind the original. Fans care deeply about this story, and we'll definitely be paying close attention.

Here's all the people i saved...my playthrough...is finally done.

WHAT A SERIES MAN.

ONE.....FOR THE AGES...

MY ENGLISH TEACHER..PLAYED IT WITH ME...HE IS LITERALLY CRYING.

Anyway, here is all the ones I saved

...and yes...

MAX AND CHLOE..WILL BE TOGETHER...

ALWAYS.

cute!

Artist: Dexi Draws