Life is Strange: Double Exposure

[Maryokutai]

 

 

Very surprising and very welcome, considering about a month ago I played through True Colors and was complementing the idea that we would have seen the last of this IP.

 

So this, oddly, recasts Max Caulfield as the protagonist after a time jump of a couple of years. According to their press release her new power of crossing between dimensions manifests when she tries to turn back time again. I'm not yet sure how I feel about going back to those characters, particularly because the original had such a community-splitting ending. But overall I'm super happy this exists and Deck Nine so far has done a really good job of picking up where DontNod left off.

 

Also coming out on the 29th Oktober already, which is nice. There's also a 'pay more to play earlier edition' which I think is extremely stupid for a game like this that is so fragile towards spoilers, so I'll be going dark between then until it's out proper.

[one-armed dwarf]

Using my time dimension powers to leap between worlds and warn Sakaguchi against making Spirits Within even if it does look tasty on a plasma

[one-armed dwarf]

This is out, reviews are alright but not incredible. Anyone getting it? I've been trying to get into this narrative adventure called 1000xResist and all it makes me wish is I could play Life is Strange instead.

 

I'm curious to see where the story goes if the reviews are the way they are. The early release did them no favours, I think it might have hurt them tbh.

[Maryokutai]

I really should play 1000xResist, it takes up so much space on my Switch.

 

The whole 'play incomplete game two weeks early' stunt with Double Exposure is a bit dumb IMO. Haven't really heard anyone talking about it during that phase which hopefully means not a lot of people fell for it.

 

Anyway, I've ordered it, but I'm waiting with my playthrough until I have a week off work. I prefer playing these games in the evening but also without having to glance at the clock every now and then. Plus more than other games I think these narrative style experiences work better when you're precisely in the right mood for it. The only hard part is avoiding the spoilers until you are.

[Maryokutai]

This seems to have been a flop commercially: https://www.eurogamer.net/life-is-strange-double-exposure-was-a-large-loss-for-square-enix-report

 

I remember reading somewhere that the choice of going back to the original's characters was a 'break glass in case of emergency' pitch from its developers. It makes me wonder what the pull of these games is anymore, because I haven't read phenomenal numbers from True Colors either, or Lost Records for that matter. Like with Telltale before it might have just been a lightning in a bottle moment. Apparently there's also some stuff in there that put LiS1 fans off, which I'm not familiar with as I've made conscious efforts to avoid spoilers. Going back to Max was a very risky thing to do though and frankly impossible to realise in a way that would make every fan of the original happy.

 

Also makes me wonder if Deck Nine will be around for much longer. I can't find the article anymore but the one that said the emergency thing also didn't paint the picture of a particularly well-off studio and this might have been their last hurrah. And I wouldn't be surprised if SE would bury the IP with them if that ends up being the case.

 

Still haven't played this, maybe this week, maybe in a couple of months. Need to be in the right mood.

[Maf]

I really enjoyed the first game. Chapter 3 with the girl in the wheelchair is one of the few really heart breaking moments in video games.

 

But I don’t know. I think all these text based, choose your own adventure games was limited time fashion. Like The Walking Dead and all those Telltale games. It was cool for a time but I just feel like that trend is dead. 
 

Also, not to bring politics in to everything, but the things these games go for are extremely not with the times right now, either 

[Maryokutai]

I thought about that last part as well. It's difficult to judge how much of an impact it can have on a game's success and part of me wants to believe that it's minuscule, but on the other hand it might have stopped certain publications or youtubers to cover this game or similar ones in a more elaborate and detailed fashion. But on the other hand this had such a massive ingoing fanbase (20m lifetime players) so it's still baffling how many of those decided to not give this a shot at all.

[DANGERMAN]

For me it just feels a bit tired to be going back to these characters, especially after "they've" already gone back once. It wasn't a long awaited follow up, I don't remember anyone asking for a proper sequel