Life is Strange Double Exposure devs on bringing back Max: "everybody now has the Max in their heads that we have to compete with"

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"It's definitely something we thought about a lot"

Life is Strange: Double Exposure screenshot
(Image credit: Square Enix)

Life is Strange Double Exposure is set to see Max Caulfield make a comeback back in a new adventure after 10 years. In an interview with GamesRadar+, developer Deck Nine spoke on the pressure and challenges the team faced when it came to bringing back a beloved character in a "different life stage". 

"[The portrayal of Max] definitely something we thought about a lot," writer Aysha Farah says, "because whenever there is a big gap in time between things coming out, everybody now has the Max in their heads that we have to compete with. So I think having the distance helped too, because getting to know her in a different life stage, and she's a different sort of person. But yeah, we definitely did have to talk a lot about how we're gonna evolve her. What has she been doing in the meantime? What sort of personality would she grow into? What does she still do that's the same from the first game? We talked about it a lot." 

While Max had a rewind power in the original Life is Strange game that gave her the ability to reverse her decisions before committing to a path, she'll have a new Shift power in Double Exposure that will let her jump between parallel timelines. This power also presented the team with an opportunity to both honor what came before and go in a fresh direction. 

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"The new power gives us kind of an on ramp to not a new Max, but Max gets to have a different outlook and perspective on things via the new power," game director Jonathan Stauder adds. "And so that lets us tell this particular unique Max story that honors the first, but then also lets us do something new with Max. So we're not directly competing with a rewind heavy story. The new power lets us, I hope, kind of defy those expectations and that pressure." 

Max is set to try and put a stop to a murder that leads her to discover her new Shift power that allows her to move between timelines. It'll be interesting to meet Max at a later stage in her life, and we won't have too long to wait, with Double Exposure set to arrive on October 29, 2024.

Catch up on everything announced at Gamescom Opening Night Live 2024. 

Heather Wald
Heather Wald
Evergreen Editor, Games

Heather Wald is the Evergreen Editor, Games at GamesRadar+. Her writing career began on a student-led magazine at Bath Spa University, where she earned a BA (Hons) in English literature. Heather landed her first role writing about tech and games for Stuff Magazine shortly after graduating with an MA in magazine journalism at Cardiff University. Now with almost seven years of experience working with GamesRadar+ on the features team, Heather helps to develop, maintain, and expand the evergreen features that exist on the site for games, as well as spearhead the Indie Spotlight series. You'll also see her contribute op-eds, interview-led features, and more. In her spare time, you'll likely find Heather tucking into RPGs and indie games, reading romance novels, and drinking lots of tea.

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