Life is Strange: Double Exposure is set several years after the end of the first game. Max Caulfield is recovering from the tragic events of the original 2015 title, but she has moved on with her life. She's now an artist-in-residence at the small Caledon University and a successful photographer. Her seemingly peaceful life is shattered when Safi, her new best friend, is tragically murdered by an unknown person. Faced with the ultimate déjà vu, Max discovers that her long-dormant powers have reawakened ... and evolved. Now she exists in two worlds at once, one where Safi is alive and the other where she is dead. It's up to her to figure out who murdered Safi and if she can prevent at least one timeline's version of her best friend's death.

Double Exposure is a bit odd in that both of the original endings are canon. Early on in the game, you make a choice about Chloe's fate at the end of the first game. However things went, it's clear that Chloe and Max's fate wasn't necessarily a happy one, and poor Max is still traumatized. At least for the first two chapters, the new game is largely self-contained. There are plenty of references to the first game, but it's a new cast, new characters and a brand-new supernatural mystery.

The gameplay has a lot in common with the other Life Is Strange titles. It's mostly an adventure game with a supernatural twist, but Max's powers have undergone a radical shift. No longer is she able to rewind time. Instead, she can step between two separate timelines: one in which Safi is alive and the other in which she is dead. She can hop between these two timelines freely but only at certain spots. Doing so instantly teleports her to the same spot in the other timeline. Everything she has changes, such as her phone suddenly having text message from one timeline instead of the other, but she can bring items from one timeline to the other. Several of the puzzles in the preview build require you to do this, such as bringing a key from one timeline to another to open a door.

In addition to the ability to teleport from one timeline to the other, Max also can emit a pulse. This lets her see the positions and rough surroundings of the other timeline as glowing auras. This can be useful for getting a glimpse of her surroundings, but it is also the ultimate eavesdropping tool. If Max wants to listen to people talk unnoticed, she can hop to the other timeline and use a pulse to spy multidimensional.

It's a significantly different power set for Max. Unlike in the original game, she can't really circumvent consequences for her actions. Characters remember everything she does — at least in that specific timeline. While the first two chapters don't go too far into that, there are some examples of situations where that comes into play. I accidentally pissed off one of Max's coworkers in the Dead timeline, but she was still perfectly friendly and welcoming in the Live timeline, which allowed Max the chance to gather information that otherwise wouldn't have been available.

However, it means she's got a lot more tricks up her sleeve when it comes to thievery and breaking and entering. She can sneak a key and then break into someone's locker in the alternate dimension, or she can figure out someone's phone code, free in the knowledge that even if they changed the code, it is still the same in the first timeline. The puzzles in the first two areas tended to revolve around these little dimension-twisting concepts.

It's obviously difficult to say how it will impact the actual story, but there's some clear indication that stepping between timelines won't be as simple as it seems. Max is dependent on her own knowledge of what happened, and if something drastically changed in the other timeline, then she might not be aware of it. There's also the small fact that there are hints that each timeline might not be as straightforward as it seems. After all, Safi is alive in one and dead in the other, but it's unclear what changed to cause that split.

The first two chapters of Life is Strange: Double Exposure do a good job of setting up Max's new adventure. The new setting and new mystery are intriguing, and the twists seem primed to come quickly. It's difficult to discuss too much without spoiling some of the more intriguing bits, but fans of the franchise should have a lot to look forward to. Thankfully it won't be a long wait, with Early Access to the first two chapters coming this week, and the final three chapters will be released at the end of this month (October 2024) for console and PC.