Max Caulfield, the protagonist of the first game of the remaster of the original Life is Strange. Taking place several years after the events of the first game, Max will have a whole new murder mystery to solve utilizing a completely different power than she had previously.

Max has come a long way since her time in Arcadia Bay, now serving as an artist in residence at Vermont’s Caledon University. The game features an almost entirely new cast of characters than the original LiS, including Safi, a friend Max discovers murdered in the snow. This time around, instead of rewinding time, Max has the ability to jump between universes - one where Safi has been killed, and another where she’s still alive. The choices players make in both worlds will have massive ripple effects on the story as they try to piece together the mystery of Safi’s death.

Screen Rant interviewed game director Jon Stauder, narrative director Felice Kuan, writer Aysha Farah, and Max’s voice actor Hannah Telle to discuss how Max has changed, the development of her new powers, and little secrets players should be on the lookout for in Life is Strange: Double Exposure.

Life Is Strange: Double Exposure Offers "Very, Very Divergent Experiences"

Evolving From Previous Games & Growing Max As A Character

Screen Rant: To begin, I would love to hear about the lessons that you guys learned from your experience working on True Colors and Before the Storm that you really carried into this.

Felice Kuan: I think Before the Storm, I don't know that there were lessons per se, but that we spent those years steeped in the first game, steeped in Chloe's perspective. I think that that has stayed with us and was a key piece of why we are so excited to be returning.

In of what we've learned from True Colors, I think that we found that there was a tremendous amount of power in the facial cap and the strength of our animators, so many times less was more in of the writing, I think. This time around, we're very consciously embracing that.

How much does the narrative diverge in Double Exposure? How much of a ripple effect are players having each chapter on other stuff?

Jonathan Stauder: Safi's death results in essentially two unique permutations of each major character. Within each of those characters at different points, you're going to hit those major choices where the story branches even further.

I think there's quite a bit right off the bat, because we wanted to give you two distinct flavors of each character so it really felt different when you hopped between the timelines, but then you also really need to feel Max's impact on the folks around her as she navigates the mystery and tries to figure out what's going on. I think I can't quite put numbers on it, it'll also get pretty spoilery, but the goal was to create very, very divergent experiences, chapter to chapter.

Felice Kuan: There's also, of course, the divergence you can get from the two different backstories that Max may come in with.

Hannah, can you talk a little bit about what it was like aging Max up in this new role? What changes were you looking to implement the most in your performance to show that she'd grown as a person?

Hannah Telle: Well, I also felt like I had grown as a person since the original game, and so I had the experiences of navigating my twenties, and what that's like in of finding yourself and establishing who you are. I think the main thing I wanted to focus on with Max in this older scenario is that she is stepping into her power as a young woman, as a potential superhero.

She's really learning that a lot of the introverted idiosyncrasies she had in the first game don't really serve her in this new position in her life anymore. She's experienced some success as a photographer, and she's in a situation where she's in a position of authority at a campus where she has a high influential position on all these young students who think she's really cool because she's a photographer. I just wanted to show that she had reached a strong level of self-acceptance.

What was it like developing this new power for Max? What made you want to change it in the first place, and how did you land on this really big concept of shifting realities, which seems like a big undertaking?

Jonathan Stauder: Early on when we started to develop these, you're thinking about the player character and the power in tandem, and if you're looking at a laundry list of potential supernatural powers and interesting things for the main character to do, we really liked this idea of basically being able to jump between two timelines, examining the impact of one person's death on a community and how that impacts folks around her.

But then, also, the ability to maybe look at a choice and be able to hop between - basically, live in a moment, and you have that sliding doors effect of, "If I'd have gone left instead of right," but live with those, and being able to examine how the ripple effect plays out over a 12-hour experience. Looking at that, and then realizing the power is a really good way to examine grief and possibly even give you the chance to save this person who lost.

The first game ends with that major decision, and then there's no examination really of the fallout of that decision. She's got her whole life ahead of her after that. Something that huge, that pivotal, is going to lead to an interesting life after that fact. The shifting between the two timelines we felt gave us an opportunity to really dive in and examine her.

To me, the shift in powers from being able to rewind time to now these choices having a really big ripple effect impact, it almost feels like it mirrors Max's growth. She's become more decisive, and instead of changing her mind and rewinding and fixing things, it's just going forward with choices and seeing what that does. Was that a conscious choice?

Jonathan Stauder: Having to live with the choice, not having the ability to rewind and magically undo something, meaning that every choice immediately inherently has more weight, which immediately feels heavier and more mature, has darker implications, because there's no way to magically fix this thing if you decide you suddenly made the wrong choice.

Aysha Farah: I do think that part of becoming an adult is realizing that you do need to take responsibility for your choices, and that can be scary, but also very empowering. In LiS 1, she waffles so much, she's like, "Have I done the right thing?" But now she has to just plow ahead regardless of whether or not she has.

Felice Kuan: This Max is someone who very deliberately has not used that going back power for years for that very same reason. At the same time, and I hope it's evident in the first two chapters, she's got a lot buried on the surface. It's unresolved. Yes, she is committing to and sticking with her choices, but maybe she hasn't yet made peace with that.

Hannah, without getting too spoilery, I'm curious if there are any moments from recording that stand out to you for whatever reason?

Hannah Telle: Yes. Peppered throughout the game, there's these inner monologue moments where Max's wrestling with the fact that she's a bit of a problem. [Laughs] I think that Detective Alderman, in one of the trailers, you hear him say, "All this death and destruction keeps leading back to you," and she's like, “No."

At the same time, she's realizing that her actions really do have consequences and these are real time decisions that have strong effects on other people's experience. She's just trying to handle that in the best way that she can, the most responsible, trying to rise to an impossible occasion, I guess you could say, and giving it her all as she's going to do from her strong moral background. I think that it's definitely a lot to manage for her.

There's "So Much Left For Max To Unpack" In Double Exposure

Continuing Past Narrative Threads & Developers' Favorite In-Game Moments

Going off that inner monologue thing, a key part of Life is Strange that I love is there are so many little object interactions that are peppered throughout the world, and there are some I feel a lot of players probably never even wind up seeing. Do you guys have any tiny little object interactions or details like that that are your personal favorite that maybe not everyone would discover?

Jonathan Stauder: In the early acts, in chapter one in the bowling alley, you wrote the line when she picks up the little bowling ball mascot and says, "Life finds a way," I love a good Jurassic Park reference.

Aysha Farah: In the bowling alley scene, there's a claw machine that is broken and all of the toys have been taken and she says, "Is this seizing the means of production?" [Laughs] Which doesn't even make sense, but it's so funny. I am like, "No, Max. That's not…"

Felice Kuan: We plug this all time, but if you get to a flyer that allows you to sign up for Platypus Facts on your phone, we recommend that you do.

Jonathan Stauder: That's early in chapter two.

From a narrative perspective, what was it like keeping some of those narrative threads, especially from the big choice that you make at the end of the original Life is Strange, incorporating those threads into this game while still incorporating a lot of original elements that feel like they fit in with that established universe?

Felice Kuan: I think that was a constant, and not just in the writing, this idea of honoring the old while creating the new. I think we all went through that multiple times. We had a large writing team, I think there were nine of us. I think all of us in our own ways were very careful to look at the original source material and both pick things that might persist for Max as well as evolve. I think her love of horror movies is one of the things that is an evolution of something planted in the beginning game.

Jonathan Stauder: I will say one reference in the first game that I didn't get into this one was her appreciation for Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. [Laughs] I let the ball drop. I thought at this point she should have upgraded to a 4K disc and have that in her house or had the poster on her wall or whatnot. That one's on me. I let that one slip.

Outside of that towing the line between old and new, what were some of the biggest challenges for you guys in crafting this new, extremely detailed narrative that you have?

Felice Kuan: It's a pretty complex mystery, which is something that we're very proud of. We really like that complexity. It is a lot to keep track of. Of course, not only is it the two timelines, but like you said, it's the branching from the prior story and then all the choices you make.

Aysha Farah: To the point that even Max sometimes gets confused. In the game, she'll be like, "Oh, that's the wrong person.”

Felice Kuan: Also, for Max, constantly weighing her choices was a cognitive burden on her. We hope that, on a mental level as well, the player and Max feels like, "This is a lot to juggle," and that ties into where the story goes.

Aysha Farah: I think one of the biggest things, and to a certain extent there is this in the original game, but just the interpersonal relationships that a bunch of the characters have with each other. It's like Max on the periphery of this bigger tight-knit group of people that have history and stuff like that. I don't know if that would be a surprise, because these games are always very concerned with people and their connections and stuff, but I hope people will have fun unraveling how everybody knows each other and the history everybody has that Max is like, "Whoa," coming in on.

Felice Kuan: This is my hope. I don't know yet if this is what fans will find, but I think there is so much left for Max to unpack. I think we even surprised ourselves as we dove in. The fact that after the first game, there was so much fan art, fan fiction, that a girl with rewind and this choice haunting her is really rich fodder for more to say, and she's got years and years ahead of her. She needs to process that for the rest of her life. My hope is that fans will be surprised and excited by the amount of story that's left for Max.

Perhaps it relates to those surprising elements, maybe it doesn't, but I'm curious in general, once players get their hands on the game and start streaming it, what you're most excited to see them reacting to?

Jonathan Stauder: I still need to go see, now that we've got those first two chapters out, everybody reacting to the end of chapter two. Without spoiling anything, the first two chapters, it's just a fraction of the turns in the story. The three subsequent chapters all have at least three moments each that I'll be keeping an eye out to see how people react to, but people are already clipping and posting that ending with the photo on the computer and whatnot.

One of the reasons you can play these two chapters early is there's still so much left to the story and how it evolves. I don't think I've seen anything theory crafting wise. I'm not looking at everything, but I don't think I've seen anything that really zeroes in on where we're going, which is exciting.

Felice Kuan: But people have been very…

Jonathan Stauder: Observant.

Felice Kuan: Yes. Nobody has nailed it, but people have also picked up on things that I'm like, "Yes, great, they I got that.”

Aysha Farah: I've been just really impressed in how people have locked in on the theme of the story, how they're like, "Oh, this is representing Max's trauma or Max's processing," or like, "The bifurcation of the timelines are representative of how Max lives in two places, how the ending of LiS One has split her." These themes are coming together, and I'm just seeing people pick up on them so gratifying because we thought about them so much.

Felice Kuan: I think it really showcases how much that original character, how much people understood her, identified with her, the fact that they're able to immediately pick up on where she's emotionally.

Aysha Farah: I think one of the big things is when she finds Safi in the snow, and instead of crying or screaming, her face just shuts down. There's some people who will be in chats or something that will be like, "Why isn't she reacting?" People will be like, "Because she's been through this before, because she expects this to happen." It's like she's reliving it again, so she completely turns to stone. It's so great to see people picking up on that moment.

Hannah, are there any moments you recorded that you're especially excited to see reactions to?

Hannah Telle: I'm really excited for the fans to get to experience Max's cat content, because I think that, just based on how she interacts with inanimate objects and plants and any living thing as well, she has a lot of empathy and love and joy that she gets from that. I think that people will enjoy watching her interact with a real live cat that it's her turn to care for this creature.

Aysha Farah: The cat content has one of my favorite of your line reads, so I'm excited for that, too.

Hannah Telle: I loved doing it.

Are you able to say it all the length of what the full story will be?

Jonathan Stauder: Everybody's play through is different. I don't know if I know the average off of my head. I know we've had play-throughs exceed 12 hours and whatnot. It really just depends on you. If you're going to thoroughly explore both timelines and all the differences, I think it'll be a pretty lengthy game.

Felice Kuan: Read through all the texts, social media.

Jonathan Stauder: The text messages are active this time around, so hopefully there's more fun to be had there. All the social media posts. If you dig into everything.

Are there any little details that have been in these first early access chapters that you would recommend for players playing it? Like, "Make sure you hunt this one little detail down, it's worth it."

Jonathan Stauder: Definitely the Platypus Facts. It's the second scene of chapter two. It's on one of the trees in the North Quad, there's the flyer for the Platypus Facts.

Hannah Telle: I'd say pay attention to Nebula. He'll be making new appearance.

Felice Kuan: It is an art school, and so there's a lot of cool art in both the Fab and the Snapping Turtle, and that was all done in house. All of our artists were able to express their different styles, and it's just really cool art.

Aysha Farah: I really like a lot of the replies on social media. You'll have the tweets, but then you'll have the replies to them. Some of them are just so funny that I'm like, "Who wrote this? You?”

Felice Kuan: The collectible Polaroids is very interesting, and I've been really gratified to see fan theories about that - look for those.

Jonathan Stauder: Yeah, try to find all of the Polaroids spread throughout the game, and hopefully it adds an extra little third dimension to the story going on.

Source: Life is Strange/YouTube