Did Max let Chloe die to save Arcadia Bay, or did she sacrifice the town to save Chloe?
This was the final important choice players had to make in the original Life is Strange, and one of the first players have to make at the beginning of Life is Strange: Double Exposure. That narrative adventure game, out today, once again stars Max Caulfield as she deals with the fallout of that decision and her powers a decade later. A new mystery pops up around Caledon University, where Max now works, and digs into old emotional wounds that this heartbreaking decision created.
Like the other major decisions in Double Exposure, the story permutates depending on the players’ choice regarding what happened to Chloe. There has been some controversy online surrounding what happens if Chloe lives, as she and Max break up between games, and some dialogue, texts, and other moments reflect that. While breaking up that popular relationship was already a bold move by developer Deck Nine, Double Exposure is a more emotionally poignant game if you make the other decision.
While there’s no canon answer, I think Double Exposure is better if Max had to let Chloe die.
To understand why I believe Chloe being dead works, we have to look at Double Exposure on a more thematic level. On the surface, it’s about Max investigating the death of her friend, Safi, and finding out how that’s connected to Safi’s book deal being canceled and the suicide of a girl named Maya Okada years earlier. Thematically, it’s about how traumatic events or decisions we made years prior won’t ever truly stop being a specter and influence over us if we continue to ignore those feelings or isolate ourselves because of them.
That puts Max’s arc in Double Exposure in a strong position. Even though a decade has passed between games, she’s still dealing with the impacts of her decision in Arcadia Bay. She sees her time-traveling powers as a curse and hasn’t used them since. Max has also become resigned to the fact that it’s impossible to change events to avoid trauma entirely and that it’s better to just let those things happen to you. As a result, she spent most of that decade between games wandering the U.S. without putting down roots.
Shortly after she does so at Caledon, a traumatic event like Safi’s death happens, and digs all of those feelings up again. It also gives Max new powers that let her travel between two timeliness, symbolizing how Max wants to escape the more traumatic parts of her reality. Throughout Double Exposure, Max’s arc is ultimately about finding a way to acknowledge her past trauma and its effect on her.
Max must learn the hard lesson that you need to process your trauma and past choices because even rewinding time or going to an alternate reality won’t completely fix it. That emotional thematic arc becomes all the more poignant when Chloe is dead.
To be clear, there is no “right” choice here. Double Exposure is designed to adapt to players’ answers to what happened at the end of Life is Strange. Unleashing a storm upon a town is an understandable cause of trauma for Max, as is her fumbling her relationship with Chloe because she failed to properly process the events of the first Life is Strange. If Max had to let Chloe die, though, Double Expsoure’s emotional journey and hardship is rooted in a real, horrible choice Max had to make rather than a freak supernatural event.
If Chloe’s dead, then that meant Max tried to use her powers to change events, but ultimately accepted that she shouldn’t. While one can argue Arcadia Bay being destroyed was an unfortunate aftereffect of a good deed, letting Chloe get shot and die is a hard personal choice that Max will have to live with for the rest of her life. To me, that makes Max’s headspace and actions earlier on in Double Exposure make more sense.
Max feels that all of her trauma is her fault and that she’ll never be able to rely on or love anyone as she did with Chloe. It lines Max’s faults up with those who failed Maya Okada better. All of that makes Max’s fight to get out of that mentality, get justice for Safi and Maya, and embrace the found family around her all the more captivating. Double Exposure is about Max learning that her powers can’t just be an undo button, but that she can choose how to use them to help others. Failing to undo Chloe’s death gives Max the experience she needs to know the kind of moments and feelings she never wants to bring upon herself or anybody else again.
While I chose the death option on a whim when I started playing Double Exposure for the first time, I think I got a better character arc for Max because of it. That might sound like blasphemy to those who adore Chloe, but it speaks to how choose-your-own-adventure games like Double Exposure can give players control over the thematic undercurrent of their experience.
Life is Strange: Double Exposure is available now for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S. It’s also in development for Nintendo Switch.
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