Life is Strange: Double Exposure - Everything We Know So Far

Are you a fan, or have you at least read and enjoyed any of the incredible literary works with ”whodunnit” murder mysteries and their surprising plot twists written by Agatha Christie?

Or, more popular nowadays, enjoyed watching any of the Knives Out movies, which have the same basic premise? Perhaps you’ve watched an episode of The X Files that left you intrigued and fascinated by the supernatural mysteries it revolves around? If the answer to any of these questions is yes, then the new game announced by Deck Nine in partnership with Square Enix might be just right up your alley.

Life is Strange: Double Exposure was revealed during the last Xbox Games Showcase with a trailer, and a few days after that the studio’s official channel held a Reveal Livestream, revealing further details about the game and its gameplay, on top of information coming directly from the directors or from the actors who play some of the characters, in interviews and several backstage scenes.

The game was announced with a release date already set to this year: October 29th and, just as has become tradition within the fandom when there are announcements of new installments in the series, it generated controversy and different opinions, both favorable and negative and varying a lot in intensity, but above all else, it spawned theories. Many theories.

In this article, we’ll put together the most relevant ones and consider their possibility based only on official information stated in trailers/gameplays or by people directly involved in the production, to try and get and idea of what’s coming our way in yet another game from this series that somehow manages to stay loved and relevant among both fans and haters.

Max Caulfield, again!

The first thing that was revealed, right at the start of the announcement, is that we will once more step into the shoes of our beloved protagonist from the original Life is Strange (which was, indisputably, a masterpiece and a pioneer within its genre), but years after its events and in an entirely different location.

Max is now a famous photographer, and a resident artist in Caledon University, Vermont, USA. She faces this stage of her life as yet another new beginning, and swears to no longer use her powers, over which she still doesn’t have neither complete control nor a good understanding of. However, one night she finds the body of her friend Stefi, dead, and by trying to solve the mystery of her murder, finds out a new power within herself: Now she can move between two parallel realities, making sense of the sequel’s name.

In this new reality she ends up crossing into, Stefi is alive but still in danger, there’s a murderer going after her, and it’s up to Max to gather clues from both realities to solve a murder mystery with supernatural elements to it and, certainly, unexpected plot twists.

Gameplay and Canon

When it comes to gameplay, the game will be very similar to the first one. In an interview, the developers at Deck Nine and especially director Jonathan Stauder have already established that Double Exposure will be Story-Oriented and Player-Choice Based, meaning, just like in previous installments, gameplay involves mostly dialogue, exploration and choices, and these choices taken by the player are what molds and influences the story they’ll experience as Max.

But then what about the canon? Everyone knows that in the ending of the first LiS you’re forced to choose between saving the life of Chloe Price, your best friend from childhood and potential love interest or saving the entire city of Arcadia Bay and all of its residents, including potential love interest number two, Warren. Whichever choice you take, the other option ceases to exist, be it by the city being decimated by a devastating hurricane when picking Chloe or by Max going back in time and allow Chloe to die way back in the scene from the beginning of the game, avoiding every catastrophe inadvertently caused by her manipulating time and reality and saving Arcadia Bay.

There is an official comic book, released in 2018, which tells a story that develops from the ending in which Max chooses Chloe and allows the city to be destroyed, so upon hearing the premise of the new game, many fans assumed that it would consider the canon in which Chloe is alive, but once more director Jonathan Stauder let us know in an interview that it will not be the case.

The idea the new game brings forward is respecting both canon endings to the previous game, making the choice and the will of the player themselves canon, regardless of which was it and, through that, respecting that choice and maintaining continuity. It looks like there’ll be a series of dialogues at the start of the game that will help in a subtle way to “recap” the actions and most important choices you made in the original one, including the infamous decision on whether to save your girlfriend versus save an entire city so that this continuity can be built.

Chaos Theory

Since the game revolves around the same character, with the same powers and apparently similar consequences on the use of said powers, it’s highly likely that Chaos Theory will play into something here once again, maybe as a result of the excess use of Max’s powers, perhaps because of changes in both realities caused by her meddling… Possibly this time it’s not even about Max, and it’s the fault of the supernatural element which will be present. A small piece of evidence we have to support it is the scene in the trailer where two moons appear in the sky, an occurrence which also happened in the original LiS and was precisely an indicator of the devastating butterfly effect approaching fast.

Appearances From Characters we Know

For now, we don’t have a lot of information about characters beyond our protagonist and our victim, Max and Stefi. During the trailer and the extended gameplay it’s possible to count appearances/mentions of nine characters beyond Max: Stefi and Moses, three names listed in Max’s phone: Amanda, Gwen and Lucas, and four characters which have not been named yet: Stefi’s mom, the police detective who apparently will be closely involved in the investigation, whether helping or going against Max we have yet to see, and two girls. The first is a black girl who wears her hair in dreadlocks (very similar to Senna’s hair from League, one of the cooler hairstyles you can have for a character’s design in the humble opinion of this GameDev who writes here) and a white girl with long, straight, light blonde hair.

At first glance, no one we already know, no familiar names or faces such as happened with Steph from the OG showing up in the last one, True Colors, but Twitter user @/ssjbestgirl has an interesting theory and dug deep in their investigations, detailed in the threads made by her on the social platform. All credits to the theory below are hers.

Before we get into the theory on the character itself, when we put together the facts that the game will consider canon both ending possibilities from the original Life is Strange, that parallel realities are a thing and that the first game proved to us that it’s possible for the same person to be dead in one reality and alive in another, such as Chloe’s Dad, a wide array of options opens up before us. Any character, alive or dead in the first LiS can show up again, also alive or dead here, but since we have zero evidence of this being the case for anyone else, let’s focus on the very interesting theory brought to us by a Twitter user.

She mentions the possibility that the character above, who appears beside Max in the gameplay streamed on June 13th as part of the game’s full reveal, but it’s never named, be, in fact, a parallel-reality-version of someone we know well: Rachel Amber, who has been dead since the beginning of the first game. Maybe in this other reality Max shifts to she’s alive somehow, who knows? The possibility is certainly very open.

Amidst the evidence collected by the fan, it’s worth mentioning a noticeable similarity between the teenager Rachel we met mostly in the Before the Storm DLC and the character in question. Eye color, hair color, similar facial expressions, and even her voice is quite similar and fitting to an older version of the same actress, just like happened to Hannah Telle, who plays Max. In the trailer alone it’s possible to notice in the dub that her voice has matured between the previous game and this one, obviously.

Another point, on top of it being perfectly possible to justify her presence within the limits and rules of the in-game universe’s established lore and of Max’s powers, is that the other unnamed girl was introduced as “a new person in Max’s life” by Hannah Telle’s own narration, and the same does not happen when the supposed Rachel shows up for the first time. In the comics, there is a parallel reality in which Rachel is alive, so why couldn’t this happen in this new game as well? We’ll have to wait and see.

Update: On June 19th, actress Ashlynn Hideman revealed through her instagram stories that she’ll be joining the Double Exposure cast, and will play the part of our Rachel look-alike. According to her caption, the character is named Loretta Rice, which goes against several points of this theory, but there are still fans who speculate that Loretta might be a false ID of Rachels, especially since no confirmation or information at all came from Deck Nine or Square Enix about her. For now, we’re limited to trying and theorize over the crumbles of info and content that directors, artists and actors throw our way before the full game release.

I could elaborate on everyone’s favorite, controversial, loved by many and hated by lots, blue-haired punk and number 1 emoji hater, Chloe Price, in the topic above, but then it would turn out gigantic and Chloe deserves her own topic, if for no other reason at least for being charismatic enough to make thousands of players sacrifice an entire city’s worth of people in the name of going off into the sunset to live an unbothered sapphic romance with her.

So, will she make an appearance? A good portion of fans think that she’s too iconic of a character not to do so, while another argues that exactly because she is so iconic, she’ll have no place in the center of this story due to no longer being the focus.

Thinking objectively about the information put together above, everything points to the most likely being that she will indeed show up or have some relevance somehow. The Devs specifically refused to give any statement on the Chloe matter, which in itself is basically a statement that there is a Chloe thing to be talked about, but their pointing out that both endings to the original game are canon pretty much confirms that there will be one reality where Chloe is alive, and Arcadia Bay destroyed, and another where Chloe died in that bathroom and nothing happened to the city.

gameplay review livestream, where Max holds a polaroid of Chloe in her hands, confirming that at least her name will be mentioned"/>

Maybe these dialogues and initial parts will play a part in deciding how the reality in which Max starts the game in will be, and the game will be even more choice-driven and interactive, branching out more to the specific experience of each player, which is one of the franchise’s premises from the start? It would definitely be something different that could take the story in countless directions, all of them interesting if well executed.

This was only the game’s first big reveal, and we still have a little over four months until it releases, so there are great chances of us getting more trailers or gameplay, or at least more clues and information that might help us solve this intriguing mystery when the game launches! Meanwhile, if you need to remember the first game and some of the reasons it became an instant classic, we talk about it in another article here at UmGamer.

Do you agree or disagree with any of the theories we spoke of here? Do you have your own theory on what’s coming? Share them with us here in the comments, and let’s theorize together!

In the meantime, we’ll keep an eye out and bring you any news! Thanks for reading, and until the next one!