I’ve always been obsessed with choices. Maybe that’s why I’ve spent thousands of hours (let’s not count, my therapist is already concerned enough) in games where decisions matter. Mass Effect and Dragon Age taught me about galaxy-shaping choices and political intrigue, but Life is Strange? It showed me that even deciding whether to answer a text message could butterfly-effect its way into changing – or ending – lives. With this in mind, I couldn’t help but ponder what went wrong with Life Is Strange Double Exposure. Though honestly, most of my decisions in choice-based games usually involve accidentally offending NPCs and getting overly involved in a man named Lucanis – here’s looking at you, Dragon Age Veilguard!
The first time I stepped into Arcadia Bay, I knew I’d found something special. It was like trying to spell my editor’s last name in my mind while smiling like a dead mannequin – Jack Deslippe? Jack Dee-slippee? Jack Des Slippppe?
(Oh calm down! Potato, potatooooe and all)
While other games had me saving worlds and sealing cosmic rifts (my boyfriend keeps suggesting I seal the rifts in my work-life balance instead), Life is Strange found magic in the mundane – and that’s what made it extraordinary. However, with the release of Double Exposure, fans and critics alike have been left pondering whether the series has hit a stumbling block or simply ventured into uncharted territory. Trust me, I wanted to love it – I even practiced my best mortician’s smile in the mirror every day.
For Square Enix, the tepid reception has been a wake-up call. The response to Double Exposure—a mix of lackluster sales and polarized reviews—has prompted them to do something truly supernatural: actually asking fans what went wrong. Yes, they’ve launched a feedback survey, which I expect to be about as effective as my repeated attempts to fix game crashes by blowing on my controller like it’s a 90s cartridge.
(Pro tip: If enough people write “bring back Chloe” in the comments, they legally have to do it. I don’t make the rules.)
A Game That Missed Its Mark?
On the surface, Double Exposure seemed poised for greatness. It had all the ingredients: a character-driven narrative, themes of identity and personal growth, and an intriguing supernatural twist. Yet something didn’t quite click. As someone who’s replayed every Life is Strange game multiple times (my plants have officially declared themselves self-watering at this point), I found myself checking my phone during cutscenes – something that would’ve been heretical during previous entries.
The magic of Life is Strange has always been its ability to make the extraordinary feel intimate and personal. Remember the first time Max rewound time to save Chloe? That moment made even my most dramatic dating sim decisions look tame by comparison. These weren’t just plot points – they were moments that made us question everything we thought we knew about right and wrong (while I sat there, paralyzed with indecision, stress-eating my way through a family-size pizza).
The Fallout for Deck Nine
For Deck Nine, the studio behind this installment, the stakes couldn’t be higher. Following a second wave of layoffs in 2024, the developer’s future hangs in the balance. The feedback survey isn’t just about salvaging a brand – it’s about securing Deck Nine’s place in the industry. Though given the depth of some fan responses, they might need to hire a team just to process all the “strongly disagree” explanations written in passionate caps lock.
Franchise at a Crossroads
The Life is Strange series occupies a unique space in the gaming landscape, celebrated for its emotional depth and relatability. Double Exposure serves as a reminder that even beloved franchises aren’t immune to missteps. With competition in the narrative-driven genre growing fiercer, Square Enix faces a crucial decision point – hopefully one with better consequences than my typical dialogue choices.
I’ve spent nearly a decade with this series (while my backlog of “real-world responsibilities” grows faster than my Steam library, which is saying something). The supernatural elements were never the real draw – it was always about the human connections at the core. Double Exposure‘s struggle isn’t just about game mechanics or technical issues; it’s about reconnecting with that essential humanity that made us fall in love with Life is Strange in the first place.
Will Square Enix’s outreach to fans prove to be the catalyst for a creative renaissance? Or will Double Exposure be remembered as a cautionary tale? Only time—and perhaps several thousand survey responses—will tell. As Max Caulfield would say, “Life is… Strange.”
Like surveys or that rude lady at the expensive perfume store who treated me like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman or that one time I was on a plane and decided to take a seat next to the air hostess during heavy turbulence because I thought it was her way of signaling impending death.
But sometimes the greatest stories come after the biggest setbacks, like when it turned out the death-signaling air hostess merely took a seat just to fix her shoe, not to die.
Life is really strange… Like. Really. The octopus is a prime example:
“Some octopuses have been observed hoarding two halves of a coconut shell, which they carry around like a mobile home and assemble together when needed.”
(Who needs ChatGPT when you have Octopus James?)
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