Life Is Strange: Double Exposure is coming out in just a few weeks and will allow players to step into the shoes of Max Caulfield, the protagonist of the first game, in a new adventure that takes her from one American coast to the other. We recently played a 45-minute demo of one of the game's early chapters that shows off her newfound abilities to travel between parallel realities with one major difference: in one world, her friend Safi is alive; in the other, she has been murdered, and the killer from the first reality may still be at large, setting Max on an adventure to save her friend before it's too late.
We also spoke with the game's creative director Jonathan Stauder and narrative director Felice Kuan about how this new story for Max came together, how she ended up in Vermont, and other details about the story surrounding the larger Life is Strange universe. You can read our interview with the team below, ahead of the game's launch on October 29.
Remarque : cette interview a été modifiée pour plus de clarté.
GameSpot : Est-ce que Double Exposure déclare une fin issue du premier canon du jeu, et si non, comment cela fonctionne-t-il ?
Jonathan Stauder : Oh, non. Non. Donc, au cours du démarrage du jeu, en jouant les deux premières scènes, vous aurez l'occasion de dire ce qui s'est passé dans le premier jeu. À partir de ce moment-là, vous avez déterminé votre canon.
Ok. Je ne sais pas si cela aurait eu du sens, mais je pensais qu'elle oscillait peut-être entre deux réalités issues de la fin du premier jeu.
JS : Ouais, non. Ça a été une [source] of confusion. So, just to be clear, the two realities are: Safi is alive and Safi is dead. Nothing to do with Arcadia Bay.
And she moved to Vermont, right? What motivated that decision? I can understand the idea of saying, “Let's get her out of the Pacific Northwest,” but why Vermont in particular?
Felice Kuan: I know we wanted it far away, right? So symbolically, literally on the other side of the country. [made sense]. I don't know if there was any other particular reason. I know we were excited about winter, because the last game was around Halloween, so the next season you have winter, you have Christmas.
So in a story about alternate realities, how can we be sure that this is the case? OUR Max from the first game? Why shouldn't we care?
JS: Yeah, no, so it's your Max. As we said, we're giving you this moment to confirm what happened with this major choice. From this point on, you should feel confident as a player, like, “I'm going to take the Max I knew from the first game and evolve her.”
The plot reminds me of the movie Another Earth. Have you seen it and was it an inspiration for you? [Both developers confirm they haven’t.] Are there any other particular inspirations that led you to this story?
FK: On the literary side, the multiverse [concept] is very, very trendy and very, very mainstream. So I think we really wanted to – not that we weren't inspired, and we didn't look at other media – but we really wanted to find Max's version. [What is her] a meaningful intersection with multiverse ideas that Max could traverse?
JS: And visually, I'm a big fan of the Remedy games and their particular brand of weirdness and how they find their own way to do it, whether it's alternate timelines, multiverses, that kind of thing. And so I think, just as a starting point, we're going to find our own way to do this particular flavor of time travel through alternate universes. I think, especially later in the game, you might see some visual flourishes that seem a little [like] Remedy.
This series always uses a lot of licensed music. Should fans expect more licensed music here? Can you talk about specific tracks or artists?
JS: There's going to be a bunch of stuff that you don't know yet, because it's all fresh and new and original to this game. My mandate for the soundtrack and the music was that you wanted Max's story and Safi's story, and how they influence and intertwine and change each other, to echo in the music and the soundtrack. And so, I hope you play all five chapters and feel that. And I know there's going to be a lot more music stuff coming out before launch as well.
I've seen fans suggest that bringing back Max is simply fan service. Can you explain why it's more than that?
FK: I think once you get through that [game]it will be very clear that it is [necessarily] Max's story. We all found the first game to be very formative and felt like after a choice as big as the one she made, there's a lot to unpack. It's also pretty much the [same] the time that has passed since the story of this game, so our own perspectives of what it meant, I think, give us something to say.
JS: Okay, so if we look at a list of powers that would be good for these protagonists and we look at this shift between two distinctly different timelines, I think [we found] that it was a good way for Max to maybe resolve all these issues from the first game, and provide some catharsis. So we were like, “Oh, man, this could be a good game for Max.” We went down this rabbit hole and found out, “Oh, I think we're right.” And here we are.
Is there anything that a Life is Strange game couldn't do in the first game that you could do now? It could be technical, narrative, or something else.
JS: Yeah. I mean, definitely, from a technical standpoint. So this is the first Life is Strange game on Unreal Engine 5. Visually, there are a huge number of improvements. You'll see it in all of our performance, the fidelity, the lighting, all of those kinds of things. […] Like Max's new power, the change, the immediacy of it – where you can go from one version of a space to another without a loading screen, that kind of thing. It's definitely something you couldn't have done, even say, at the time. [2021’s] True colors.
FK: We loved the first game. I think we tried to do everything it did, but more. I think the first game led the way in terms of introducing different types of characters that you don't usually see, and being very explicit about things like teen suicide, things like that. [games] It should not be done. So I think we are now at a point where, despite all the efforts made so far, we can do it and do it in an even more open way, and integrate it into the process.
Do all Life is Strange games share a common narrative universe?
JS: Oh yeah, one hundred percent. Everything Don't Nod has done, everything Deck Nine has done, it's continuity. But if you look at the comics, the novels, that's where things start to get a little fuzzy. But certainly every game that's been published to date is set in the same world.
GameSpot: So in one world, all these kids are discovering they have these powers and they're potentially like the Avengers for troubled youth. Thematically, you want to convey that these kids are all discovering their powers at their lowest point, right? Something traumatic triggers them every time?
JS: Exactly.
KF: And that means that not all powers are good powers in Life is Strange, because they're intimately tied to a specific trauma, and when you find a story context and a power that, like, clicks, that's exciting.
Life is Strange: Double Exposure will be released on October 29 for PC, PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and Switch. You can pre-order it now and receive bonuses such as a Steelbook case and other goodies, both digital and physical, depending on the bundle you purchase.