Life is Strange: Double Exposure launches in early access today for players who forked out for the very premium Ultimate Edition, which includes a sneak peek at Chapters 1 & 2 ahead of the game’s general release on October 29th.
If you’ve played the previous anthology-style follow-ups Life is Strange 2 and Life is Strange: True Colors, you might recall being asked to input your final decision from the original game before you begin the latest story. This is because the ending you saw in Season 1 can have a minor impact on what happens later, even if fresh-faced leads Sean and Alex didn’t have a direct connection to Arcadia Bay.
With Double Exposure being a direct sequel that returns to the perspective of original protagonist Max Caulfield, naturally that decade-old ending choice is more important now than ever. So it’s a little surprising when the new game opens without any preamble, dropping you right into the action with no warm-up quizzes about which timeline your game ought to follow.
Don’t worry, though, because there is a way to tell the game what path to put you on, it just works a little bit differently from those previous sequels. Also, before we continue, please be aware that the remainder of this guide will contain major spoilers for the original Life is Strange, but only minor ones for the opening of Double Exposure (and none for any of the other games in the series).
How to import your Life is Strange choices into Double Exposure
Life is Strange: Double Exposure allows you to feed it your choices from the original game as part of a conversation between Max and Safi that occurs during the second scene.
After a lengthy cold open slash tutorial that sees them urbexing in an abandoned bowling alley for Max’s latest photoshoot, the two friends will retire to the Snapping Turtle, Caledon University’s campus bar.
While chatting, Safi will reveal that she snooped into Max’s bag and noticed a photograph of a “blue-haired girl” that Max keeps in her wallet. This leads to the first of two choices that will tell the game which of the original endings it should follow.
Choice #1: Max’s relationship to Chloe
First, Safi will ask you who is in the photograph. Max will be able to answer in one of two different ways:
- “We were just friends”
- “We were high school sweethearts”
This one is a little bit vibes-based, because the original Life is Strange was pretty indirect with its romance options. While there is at least one ending variant to Season 1 that was overtly romantic between Max and Chloe, it’s entirely possible for the whole affair to have stayed (almost) purely subtextual even if you were doing everything in your power to hook them up. Hey, we’ve come a long way in 10 years, what can I say?
In short: answer this one based on your intentions and what you think Max’s feelings towards Chloe were by the end, not anything you saw (or didn’t see) in the original game.
Choice #2: Bae or Bay
Once you’ve established who Chloe is to Max, Safi will follow up by asking where Chloe is now. This is the choice that actually establishes which ending route you’ll see throughout Double Exposure and will have wide-reaching consequences, although not on the main narrative.
But it will determine which NPCs from the original are alive and therefore present in Max’s life via texts, social media, etc. throughout this game. It’ll also change some photographs and other details in Max’s home and, most notably, result in a completely divergent set of memories whenever Max reminisces about her life before coming to Caledon.
Your options here are:
- “She died”
- “We broke up” (the exact wording of this one will change depending on whether you went with the romantic or platonic answer to Choice #1)
There’s no clever trick to this: telling Safi that Chloe died will indicate to the game that you chose to “Sacrifice Chloe” at the end of the original Life is Strange. With apologies to any literal die-hards for the Pricefield ship, you can’t get around their break-up by headcanoning that Chloe died in the interim; the game will very explicitly take this answer as meaning that Chloe died as a direct result of the events witnessed in Season 1.
Conversely, and somewhat less ambiguously, telling Safi that you and Chloe have parted ways will indicate to the game that you chose to “Sacrifice Arcadia Bay” in Season 1. And if you were worried about that “high school sweetheart” comment sounding a bit flippant, following this route after choosing it leads Max to later relent a bit and elaborate that she and Chloe in fact had a serious relationship for several years, with their romantic history remaining apparent throughout the game even though they’re no longer together.