Test - Life is Strange: Double Exposure: Test: This is what the fans have been waiting for

Max Caulfield is back. Life is Strange: Double Exposure is, in a sense, the “real” one., which continues the story of the first part after fans were confused with the spin-off about the two brothers in the actual second part. It is not the developer Don't Nod, creator of the original, who is responsible, but rather the team at Deck Nine, which is already working on the spin-offsand lastdemonstrated their expertise in the series.

Ten years have passed since the events of the first part of Life is Strange. Max is now a photography lecturer at the venerable Caledon University and is trying to lead a normal life there without her time travel powers, which she used to only bring about disaster. By the way, you can decide which ending you chose for the fate of Arcadia Bay and Chloe in a dialogue at the beginning of Double Exposure, which the game makes subtle references to from time to time.

Apart from that, the sequel tells a new story that requires no prior knowledge. We experience Max as a young lecturer who tries to earn the respect of the mostly arrogant, long-established professors, while secretly still feeling drawn to the idleness of student life: afternoons chatting with colleagues in the cafeteria, evenings with awkward attempts at flirting funky bartender in the campus bar. The conversations noticeably often revolve around wistful memories of carefree parties and drinking sessions during college. But Max mostly spends her free time with teachers of the same age, such as the nerdy astrophysicist Connor and the brash literary scholar Safi.

Once again, Life is Strange embeds its mystery-thriller plot in an interpersonal microcosm of very worldly concerns and sensitivities, which became the series' success formula in the background emotional noise and into which crime and the supernatural only ever found their way in to bring it out of control lift.

Because on a contemplative evening of Christmas stargazing in the snow, Max? best friend Safi brutally murdered. But when she tries to reactivate her old superpower and undo the accident, something goes wrong and Max discovers that she has a new ability. She can travel between two alternate realities: her own, where Safi is dead. And another, largely similar to the first, but in which her friend is still alive. Max begins the investigation and searches both dimensions for clues to the killer's identity before he can complete his bloody work...

In the Multiverse of Sadness

By moving between dimensions, Life is Strange has something like real game mechanics and rudimentary puzzles for the first time. These never become particularly tricky or demanding, but they do not hinder the flow of the narrative, but rather increase the fascination with the exciting premise of the multiverse.

For example, if a police cordon blocks your path in one reality, you jump to the other, where there is no crime scene, and simply bypass it. If the friend has hidden a sensitive piece of evidence in a safe location, ask his unsuspecting counterpart in the other world to locate it. By opening the gate to the other universe just a crack, Max is also able to secretly eavesdrop on people from the other world in order to obtain explosive information. And even in love matters, she gets a second chance in the parallel world with her crush, with whom she messed up in the first reality.

Double Exposure thus brings its mystery and thriller elements more to the fore than in previous parts of the series, where the supernatural mostly only worked in the background as a trigger for the interpersonal drama at the center. This shift in focus proves to be quite refreshing for a change. Most importantly, the game avoids a problem that I've always had with the games in the series.

By making the murder case the central theme right from the start, the crime plot seems less forced and out of place, as was usually the case in its predecessors. I'm thinking, for example, of the outrageous serial killer revelation in the first part, the unnecessary kidnapping in Before the Storm or the silly conspiracy in True Colors, which put a clumsy robber's gun on the otherwise pleasantly personally grounded drama.

Life is Strange: Double Exposure succeeds, especially in its first half, in weaving its different plot threads into an artful pattern of exciting crime, supernatural spectacle and human melodrama that credibly deals with the problems of young adults. As a newcomer to the world of his parents' generation, Max is still looking for his place in life, trying to gain respect from his colleagues and not give up his own ideals in the academic intrigue of vanity and the desire to gain a profile.

And as if entering the serious life of the professional world wasn't hard enough, in her private life she is still plagued by the same worries that plagued her as a teenager: the fear of change, insecurities in love, the pain of responsibility , fear of failure and excessive demands, but also the difficulties of human interaction in the age of social media and online bullying. And above all, Life is Strange: Double Exposure is once again about the burden of accepting blows of fate in order not to lose yourself in the desperate attempt to change what cannot be changed.

The fact that the developers manage to deal with all of these topics in a complex manner without simply treading them lightly is due to their elegant narrative style in nuances and hints, as it characterized the first part: for example, by not showing friend Connor's nervousness through a clumsy manner Dialogue of the brand ?I'm so nervous? is signaled, but only by the neurotic clattering of his fingers, or the bullied colleague only expresses her displeasure with the world by taking a defiant sip from the bottle, then such gestures say so much more than a thousand words.

The graphic style in the Unreal Engine also plays a part that should not be underestimated. The purely technical quality is far from the semi-photorealism of similar games from Supermassive Games () oder Quantic Dream (), Double Exposure strikes a successful compromise between modern technology and the reduced look of the first part. Realistically animated hair instead of concrete hairstyles make the characters appear more alive, and cleverly used lighting such as the colorful Christmas decorations in the student bar reinforce the atmosphere and emotions that are so important to the game on a narrative level.

Above all, it is the characters' facial expressions that often provide more information about the characters' current state of mind than the words they are currently speaking: Max? Frowning in the face of unbelievable events, the arrogantly raised eyebrow of the self-absorbed best-selling author or the provocative smile at the corner of the flirting date's mouth.

WTF just happened?!

Nevertheless, in contrast to previous titles in the franchise, the interpersonal level seems more in the background. The game derives its primary emotional impact from the surprising mindfuck twists that seem to completely change the direction of the story more than once, each time shockingly raising the question: WTF just happened?! And most importantly: how will history resolve this?

But this is exactly where the game's big problem lies: the authors can no longer find a satisfactory way out of their thicket of plot threads. Instead of ultimately bringing the ball of story twists to a clever resolution, the authors, like Alexander the Great once did when faced with the Gordian knot, see themselves in no other position to untie it than simply and clumsily violently cut it.

The last third of the game is therefore exhausted in desperate attempts to explain the logic holes that have arisen, at least in a makeshift manner, instead of filling them in a meaningful way. Unfortunately, the result is quite unsatisfactory and merely illustrates the authors' helplessness in somehow getting out of the dead end into which they had previously so gimmickily gotten themselves with their numerous hooks. “Then that’s just the way it is,” just has to suffice as an explanation.

You then also realize that Life is Strange: Double Exposure, in an attempt to win back the goodwill of the fans that was lost with the second part, only repeats the process and plot of the first part in a somewhat uninspired way and vice versa Trying to deviate from it at unexpected moments is clumsy.