was always going to be a contentious game for its loyal fanbase. Bringing Max Caulfield back as protagonist for the first time since the very first 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:raised some issues around new developer Deck Nine using original dev Don’t Nod’s characters, and while many fans were really excited to see Max return, others were 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:preemptively upset about how Max and Chloe’s relationship would be tr♛eated.
Now that the game is officially out and players are finishing their first playthroughs (the first of many, knowing thiᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚs community), we’re already startingও to see discourse and anger around the story and how it handles Max’s character, some of which is valid, and some I disagree with so much I wanted to write a dissertation about it.
Obviously, turn꧑ back now if you hav💯en’t finished Life is Strange: Double Exposure or Life is Strange.
History Repeats Itself – Until It Doesn’t
Double Exposure is very intentionally and obviously crafted to mirror the first Life is Strange. We see parallels between the two games emerge again and again. In both games, Max’s best friend is shot to death, and she uses her powers to try and change the outcome. That best friend’s pre-Max best friend has also died in some way, and a suspicious teacher is involved in both cases, as both games take place in schools. In both♔ games, a magical storm threatens to destroy everything. In both games, Max has to make a choice. You get the picture.
These parallels are made explicit throughout Double Exposure, not very delicately, but certainl꧟y effectively. Max remarks several times that she fears the past is repeating itself, that things feel t🎉oo familiar. One particularly chilling moment that stuck with me was how after Safi died, you can flip through Max’s journal to see her latest entry about the incident as it unfolded.
The journal is usually ripe with colourful doodles of people and her surroundings, but the first pages after Safi dies are filled with scribbled drawings of screaming figures, and the words “not again” scrawled repeatedly and obsessively across the spread. Another time, while investigating what happened to Safi’s dead friend Maya, she asks herself if what⭕ happened at Blackwell could possibly be happening here too.
Life Is Strange's Max Caulfield Is The Funniest, Realest Depiction Of A Bisexual I've Ever Seen
Raise your hand if you’re terrified of women and want people who꧋ are mean to you.
This culminates in a surreal last episode where Max quite literally relives some of her past traumas, wandering through a surreal, dream-like setting and freeing people from Safi’s infꦐluence. She finds herself strapped to Jefferson’s chair again, and has to fight to free herself. She hides in the corner of the toilet 𒉰where Chloe died, then verbalises that she’s not that teenager anymore. There’s even a poster in the toilet where Chloe’s name is replaced with Safi’s, making the mirroring totally clear.
But not everything is the same, and that’s where Double Exposure’s major themes lie. Max is put into the same situation, but this time,🦂 she’s not helpless, and neither is her best friend. Safi doesn’t have to rely on Max to save her, because she has her own powers and can save herself. Max isn’t naive and fearful, but confident in her abilities and what she knows to be true. Double Exposure sets up a familiar story then twists it, giving its characters the strength to claw themselves out of the hell they’ve created for themselves and everyone else.
Not only does it finally show its characters standing on their own, but it creates a world where Max is no longer isolated. Chloe’s death (or Arcadia Bay’s destruction, depending on how you play it) was obviously incredibly traumatic for Max. Its impact on her reverberates through all her thoughts 🤡and choices from that point onward. When she writes in her journal, it’s as if she’s actually writing letters to Chloe. She thinks about her all the time.
But in the game’s final scene, Max also talks about how isolating that grief was because she couldn’t talk to anyone about it. At Caledon University, lots of people saw what happened, and so shared this new trauma with her. She told Safi earlier that she ran from Arcadia Bay and she shouldn’t have, because it was cowardly – she refuses to run from Caledon now. She feels she owe⛎s the people ar🉐ound her, and she doesn’t want to leave them in the lurch.
It’s a fitting end to a story that revolves so much around what it means to be altered by grief, and how we can end cycles through acting differently. You must break the cycle today, or the loop will repeat tomorrow. Max has grown, in so many ways, and she wants to do right by the people around her.🌟 Instead of abandoning 🎀them and acting the way her teenage self would have, she chooses to find community instead of breaking away, the way Safi did, and the way Chloe did before her.
You Can’t Fix Her
Another major way Double Exposure is in conversation with the first game is how Safi and Chloe mirror each other, and how their relationships with Max are similar and dꩵifferent.
It’s easy to see the parallels – both women are snarky, intelligent, and outspoken. B🌸oth have a lot of unresolved hurt within them that they wield as weapons. Both are shot to death in the beginning of their respective games. Max loves them both very much,🍸 even when they are hostile towards her, unforgiving and uncharitable, manipulative, possessive, even cruel. Her relationship with both is tragic to behold, as she works in their best interests and they rarely ever do the same for her.
In many ways, Max sees Safi as her do-over. She’s already been forced to let one best friend die, and she refuses to let another o🐲ne go the same way. But Safi isn’t Chloe, despite the traits they share. For one, Safi has powers. For another, she has a god complex about it.
Millennial Cringe Is Still At Thꦑe Core Of Life is Strange: Double Exposure
Double Expo🐎sure keeps up with a long tradition of dialogue that makes you want to scream. I 🉐love it.
Max manages to save Safi and Caledon University, but Safi still doesn’t really care about the consequences of her actions. To her, these powers make them better ꦆthan everyone. It’s fine to her that she’s shot her mother in the arm. It’s fine that the campus is destroyed. She doesn’t want to make amends to the people she’s hurt, she wants to move on and create a clean break, regardless of Max’s pleas for her to reconsider. Her anger at the inaction of the authority figures in her life drives her to ruthlessness. She leaves Max and her bleeding m༺other in the snow, alone.
When she tells Max she wants to find others like them, Max has a choice – tell Safi that she’ll back her when she returns, or tu✨rn her down. This is where Deck Nine rewrites Max’s story. Max spends much of the first game trying to influence Chloe into doing the right thing, forced to undermine or enable her at every turn. Chloe is such a force of nature that Max can only work around her whims and her will. Like the storm that threatens to destroy Arcadia Bay, Chloe is going to walk her path whether or not somebody tries to stop her.
But much like how Max refuses the binary choice of saving Caledon or saving Safi by pulling her into the storm, Max can refuse to enable or undermine Safi. Instead of trying to fix her or save her from herself, Max chooses the life she has now, and refuses to follow Safi. Instead of making her life all about this woman she loves, she can choose t🦂o focus on the people left behind and the world she’s built for herself.
This is how we kꦰnow Max has truly grown up – she🌃’s forced to live through the same story, but she writes herself a different ending, a better one. Instead of being a side character to people who are so desperate for control that they hurt the people around them, she can tell herself that she cannot fix them, and creates her own story.
Before the game came out, I wrote that I desperately wanted🍰 to see Max live a life where she’d left Chloe behind. I wanted her to move beyond this woman who never put Max’s interest﷽s first. Deck Nine one-upped me – not only did Chloe not make an appearance, but the entire game is about Max moving on from that grief, learning from h𝔍er mistakes, and breaking the patterns that kept hurting her. While other fans are furious that Chloe never shows up, I couldn’t be happier with the way Max has grown. Maybe it’s time for the fans to move on, too.
168澳洲幸运5开奖网: Life 🐈is Stran🅷ge: Double Exposure
- Top Critic Avg: 71/100 Critics Rec: 54%
- Released
- October 29, 2024
- ESRB
- M For Mature: Mild Blood, Strong Language, Suggestive Themes, Use of Drugs, Violen𝓡ce
- Developer(s)
- Deck Nine
- Publisher(s)
- 168澳洲幸运5开奖网: Square Enix
- Engine
- Unreal Engine 5
Max Caulfield, photographer-in-residence at the prestigious Caledon University, discovers her closest new friend, Safi, dead in the snow.
Murdered.
To save her, Max tries to Rewind time – a power she’s not used in years… instead, Max opens the way to a parallel timeline where Safi is still alive, and still in danger!
Max realizes the killer will soon strike again – in both versions of reality.
With her new power to Shift between two timelines – can Max solve and prevent the same murder?
ORDINARY GIRL, EXTRAORDINARY POWER
Max is thrust into a thrilling supernatural murder mystery – more dangerous than ever before!
TRAVERSE TWO TIMELINES
Forge allies and pursue suspects across two versions of reality, shaping both timelines through unforgettable choices.
RACE AGAINST TIME
A relentless detective has Max in his sights, and Safi’s killer grows closer with every clue uncovered. Can Max survive long enough – to do the impossible?
DECIDE THE FATE OF CALEDON
Explore two versions of a vivid winter cam💖pus, each packed with clues, secrets, and tough decisions.
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