PEDESTRIAN.TV has teamed up with Square Enix to let you know about the upcoming Life is Strange game.
Okay, true crime heads and Booktok shippers, have I got a game for you.
The Life is Strange series has a brand new entry, serving up another murder-mystery plot scored to a banger indie soundtrack.
In Life is Strange: Double Exposure, you once again play as Max Caulfield several years after the first game’s events. Since then, Max has become a photographer-in-residence at the prestigious Caledon University. She’s also lost her ability to turn back time.
When walking home in the snow, Max discovers that her closest friend Safi has been murdered. As the college gears up to memorialise Safi, Max suddenly discovers she’s able to cross over to a parallel universe, one where Safi is alive but still in danger of a looming murder plot.
So, you once again put on your detective cap to start uncovering clues, interrogating the people around you, and learning more about the secrets of this new, snowy, small town.
What you’ll do in the game
If you haven’t played a Life is Strange game before, worry not, it’s not required before diving into this one. While added context is nice, you’re given enough background of Max’s history and the first game’s events to get started.
In Life is Strange: Double Exposure, the game puts conversations and relationships first. In the previous game, if you had an interaction with a character that you thought went poorly, you could easily turn back time and try again. Now, having lost that power, every conversation matters. If you mess up, you can ruin that person’s trust in you for good, which is exactly what I did at the start of the game after getting caught eavesdropping on someone’s phone call.
But only in that timeline. In this game, you essentially have two diverging relationships with the same characters, which change depending on which world you’re in. By jumping from one timeline to another, you can take wholly separate approaches to the same characters if you want to.
You could be best buds in one timeline and a jerk to them in another merely to extract more information from them to help your investigation. If you ruin a relationship in one timeline either by getting caught in a lie, you can learn from your mistakes in the other. While this is great for social anxiety, it’s also possible to mess up your relationships in both timelines, which may hold you back from getting all the right information you need.
You’ll also be able to bring items from one timeline into the next, which can help you enter into new areas or just help someone avoid getting shot with a Nerf dart. Either way, how you use your powers in the game will help you further figure out who murdered Safi and help you build your relationships with the characters in the game.
Series staples
With the new game comes a brand new cast of characters for you to fall in love with or viscerally share your dislike of. Characters in Life in Strange: Double Exposure can be snobby, messy, and arrogant people you love to hate, but I’d argue those are always the best characters in any story.
As you can expect with a game that focuses on your relationships with characters, you’ll also have the opportunity to romance people in the game. However, time is shared between the universes, meaning if you intend to date someone in one world, it might have consequences in the other. Which is good, simply because getting to swap timelines doesn’t give you the hall pass to cheat. You’d be a bad person if you did that… but the choice is up to you.
Like with any Life is Strange game, the soundtrack is at the core, always playing and enhancing those big moments in the story, like when “Illusion” by Tessa Rose Jackson blends into a creeping horror crescendo after hearing gunshots in the game.
When you can play
Life is Strange: Double Exposure is available now on Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5 and PC. You can also expect the game to come out on the Nintendo Switch in the future.
Keen to know more? Be sure to check out the Life is Strange website for more details.
Image credit: Square Enix
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