Author: Game Infliction

It’s been a long time since I’ve played a game that stuck with me in the way that 2015’s Life is Strange has. Its ability to tell a unique coming-of-age story about a rebellious but often shy teen without coming off preachy or overstaying its welcome was refreshing and had me thinking about it long after I discovered everything I could within the confines of Arcadia Bay. While the series has had a few sequels, prequels, and side stories since, none of them seemed to recapture the magic of those first five episodes for me – until now. Life is Strange: Double Exposure not only lives up to the sky-high standard set by the original but also manages to take it in a fresh new direction and improve on nearly every aspect from the previous games.

It was great to revisit Max Caulfield 10 years after the events of Life is Strange. Even though Max is well into her 20s now, she’s still very much the same character she was the last time we saw her: She’ll overanalyze her surroundings, make awkward jokes to herself, and, most importantly, take way too many pictures. But with her transition to adulthood comes a whole new set of issues she needs to deal with. Instead of worrying about fitting in and trying to impress everyone she met in Blackwell Academy, she’s now a grad student and has to act as an authority figure herself.

There are moments where she’s clearly coming to terms with the fact that she’s no longer young, such as when she questions some of the cringeworthy things she said in the original game or reminisces about when she was an undergrad and had to cram in as much studying and caffeine as possible before finals. It was the little moments like this that stuck with me and really helped make this new chapter in Max’s story even more relatable.

Writing on The Walls

As you’d expect in a Life is Strange game, you’ll need to make some tough decisions. Even though there are only a handful of major choices in each of the five chapters and not all of them will dramatically affect the overall outcome, they do all have consequences because characters will remember how you treat them and act accordingly – to a degree that previous games never managed to nail down. This time, conversations felt like I was talking to an actual person instead of playing a game of guessing the correct answer.

For example, in the first chapter, you are able to ask Amanda, the bartender of a local joint called The Snapping Turtle, out on a date if you play your cards right. On my first playthrough, I did everything I would need to in order to kickstart a romantic relationship with her by learning a handful of awful pick-up lines from other bar patrons. But on my second run, I opted not to ask her out and instead just became friends. While this didn’t necessarily change anything major with the story moving forward, I appreciated that there was a stark difference in how Amanda treated Max if they were dating or were just friends. In addition to romancing people, you can be mean, flirty, or even flat-out ignore someone if you want to. Without diving too heavily into spoiler territory, this is one of the few choose-your-own-adventure-style games I’ve played where I didn’t stress about making the “wrong decision” because every outcome felt natural and worth exploring rather than some being a consolation prize.

Double Exposure’s chapters each take around two or three hours to complete, which makes them shorter than those in some of the other Life is Strange games. This is actually a good thing, though, because I never felt like I was wasting my time dealing with a filler act or meandering around a party just to pad out the runtime. While there are a few plot points that don’t really seem to go anywhere unless you dig through Max’s phone, I never felt like I was missing out on anything too important to the overall story just because I neglected to keep up with my backlog of text messages and social media posts. I like a good epic-scale RPG, too, but the fact that Double Exposure respected my time and told a story that’s tight and concise was refreshing.

That story deals with a number of seriously heavy topics. Everything from divorce to anxiety to the different ways we grieve over the loss of a loved one is covered here in a way that’s so expertly written I never felt like any of these subjects were diminished or sensationalized – they just felt real. It would have been easy for Double Exposure to touch on a sensitive topic and then resolve it with a “thing bad” or “thing good” decision at the end, but instead the writing offers nuanced and appropriate approaches to its situations, many of which I’ve had to deal with in my own life. Seeing a video game character struggle to handle something like the anger and frustration one might feel after someone close to them takes their own life was an unexpected and especially well-executed bit of writing.

It works so well in part because every character in Double Exposure has their own backstory and is written to feel like an actual human being, faults and all. For example, Reggie, a student at the school where Max teaches, will overshare at times because he sees Max as an authority figure, while Gwen, another teacher at Caledon Univeristy, keeps private details to herself because, like in real life, not everyone immediately tells everybody they meet everything about themselves.

What really sells Double Exposure’s writing and story is its absolutely incredible performances and character animations. While this has always been a highlight of the series, this game has more moments where characters would tell me everything they needed to say without speaking a word thanks to their subtle facial expressions. Say something mean and a character may look at you with disgust for a moment before responding. Pull somebody away from a group and you’ll see other characters briefly look disappointed that you interrupted them. While this isn’t anything new in games, the way in which Double Exposure emphasizes these little touches made me actually care about my actions and how I treated people. Thanks to this attention to detail and directing, Double Exposure’s character interactions are easily the most believable and well-executed I’ve seen in a Life is Strange game.

Reinventing Your Exit

Without getting too heavy into spoiler territory here, Double Exposure’s mystery is one full of twists and turns that definitely kept me guessing until I reached the finale.

The decision to give Max different powers was the correct choice because her original time manipulation abilities just wouldn’t have worked within the story being told here. If she could rewind time with the turn of her palm then the entire mystery could have been solved in a few moments, and that’s just no fun. Instead, those powers have been replaced by a set of interdimensional travel abilities that fit this new tale perfectly. As its title suggests, Max is able to view and travel between two separate realities: one that’s vibrant, warm, and full of life, complete with Christmas decorations and a more upbeat soundtrack, and another that’s miserable, cold, and marked by death. These realities exist in tandem with each other and are, in many ways, polar opposites. Everything from flyers on the walls of the school halls to the music and even how people interact with Max can be wildly different between the dead and living worlds.

Puzzles this time around greatly benefit from Max’s abilities, too. I never found myself getting frustrated or lost, and I’m happy to say there were never any sections where I had to dodge a train or perform any sort of frustrating quick time events. Her new abilities instead allow for a slower-pace where I needed to use deductive reasoning and explore both realities in order to find a clue or spy on somebody. Need to find something for someone in the living world? It’s probably nearby in the dead world. Need to sneak around an active murder investigation in the dead world? Just hop over to the living world and walk past where the guards are standing, then hop back. It’s not wildly complex stuff, but the way Double Exposure utilizes Max’s powers not only to help you find clues and explore but also to show how the world around you evolves in two separate paths at the same time makes this one of the more interesting uses of a multiverse in gaming.

Double Exposure’s smart use of reality hopping also helps with the story in ways that no other power in Life is Strange has before. For example, someone could be dealing with some trouble in one world that informs how you interact with them in the other. Meanwhile, The Snapping Turtle in the living world is warm, people are conversing with each other, and the music is upbeat and welcoming, but its dead world version has aggressive music, there are fewer people around, and the lighting is cold and uninviting. Because I was able to explore freely and instantly see the differences between both realities, I found myself learning about the worlds, their characters, and the results of my actions in a more meaningful way rather than just searching for exposition dumps and waiting for text messages.

Caledon University itself is an idealistic-looking Northeastern college campus. The buildings are old and covered in a layer of snow and student art, and the cinematography when you take a moment to reflect on a park bench or overlook shows off how beautiful this location is. Unfortunately, it’s also a bit smaller than the areas from the other Life is Strange Games, and while it would have been nice to explore a larger world outside of the few accessible locations on campus, Max’s house, and The Snapping Turtle, every area in Double Exposure is pretty densely packed with things to interact with and explore.

They are also bolstered by composer Tessa Rose Jackson with some of the best original music I’ve heard in a video game all year. The soundtrack not only perfectly captures the emotions of each scene but also helps to amplify the tone of the world, making it feel even more alive or dead, depending on which reality you’re in. The same can be said about the color grading and cinematography. The series is known for its cinematic look, and Double Exposure is no exception thanks to its rich color palette and smart camera work. Vista shots, snap zooms, and following focus on characters are all artfully executed in a way that would feel at home in a feature film.

As I excitedly slashed, blasted, wooed, looted, and delved my way through the stunning and enthralling world of Dragon Age: The Veilguard, I kept having one thought: “Wait, BioWare made this? 2024 BioWare?” With this game coming in the wake of the debacle that was Anthem, itself preceded by Dragon Age: Inquisition and Mass Effect: Andromeda, which were both merely alright in hindsight, I wasn’t sure these former masters of the roleplaying game craft could make a game like this anymore. But putting together my team of interesting and endearing companions to save the world felt like getting the old band back together, in more ways than one.

The scope of this adventure is the whole North of Thedas, sending you from the coasts of Rivain to the blighted wilds of the Anderfels as you attempt to prevent the rise of an ancient and menacing evil. It was thrilling as a long-time fan of the series to finally see so many of the places I’d only read about in a journal entry way back in 2009. And the way BioWare has us go about that exploration is very focused and deliberate.

Veilguard’s level design was one of the first things that jumped out at me, reminding me of the original Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic more than anything. The slick, looping corridors with just enough little nooks to discover are cleverly interconnected in a way that proves how a BioWare-style RPG gains a lot and loses almost nothing by ditching the idea of a fully open world. (The exceptions to that are a couple of the more vertical sections of the city of Minrathous, which can be a pain in the ass to navigate.) Across the board, the environment art is really jaw-dropping, from the desolate peaks of Kal-Sharok to the surreal, floating elven ruins in Arlathan Forest.

I was very pleased with the character designs, too. The armor and outfits are fabulous. I spent more than an hour in the character creator, like I usually do, and came out with a version of our protagonist, Rook, who delighted me every time she was in frame. This might be some of the best-looking hair I’ve ever seen in a video game.

Even with all of that visual splendor I was able to get a stable 60 fps at 4k on my RTX 4070 Super with DLSS set to maximum performance, which usually didn’t affect the visual quality in very noticeable ways. The one exception to this was in the late game, when there could be so many spell effects going off at once that I’d not only lose frames, it’s also difficult to even see what’s actually going on.

Through the crackle and sparks, though, Veilguard’s combat is definitely a refinement of what we saw in Dragon Age 2 and Inquisition. I’ve always preferred the more tactical style of Dragon Age: Origins or Baldur’s Gate 3, but that ship sailed so long ago for this studio, not even the Evanuris remember what it looked like. And so, judging this very action-focused combat system for what it is, it’s pretty good! BioWare has committed fully to the fast-paced style and refined it to a point that I enjoy it quite a bit. And the ability to pause to issue party members orders, just like in Mass Effect, still gives some opportunity for more tactical players like myself to look around the battlefield and consider our next move. It definitely feels better on a controller than mouse and keyboard, though.

I was somewhat disappointed that party members are more like extensions of your own character in combat at this point rather than their own entities. They don’t even have health bars, for instance. They can’t be knocked out in combat, whereas you instantly lose an encounter if Rook goes down. They do have equipment slots and skill trees, though less than what Rook gets. But overall, the amount of customization available for the whole squad through piles and piles of interesting, upgradeable loot was more than enough to satisfy my RPG appetites, if not fulfill my wildest fantasies of intricate battle management.

In my 100-hour near-100 percent, almost obsessively completionist playthrough, I styled Rook as a Spellblade – a mid-ranged melee hybrid mage – and really enjoyed the play style once I’d unlocked all of my core tools. Dancing with a dagger through a lightning storm I summoned, darting out of danger and then back in for a lethal blow, is just a really good time that rewards precise timing and wise target prioritization. This isn’t the tactical Dragon Age of my youth, but it is a Dragon Age I can vibe with.

And the highlights of combat are definitely the boss fights, which offer a really satisfying challenge even on the default difficulty. While standard mob fights with Darkspawn or Venatori cultists eventually got a little repetitive after 90-plus hours, going up against a High Dragon never failed to get my blood pumping as I had to carefully study attack patterns and think on my feet.

In the sense that a BioWare RPG is really about your companions, also known as the friends we made along the way, this might be the most BioWare game of all time. Not only is the whole squad made up of complex, memorable, likable, distinct personalities from across Thedas, but they’re all treated as the stars of their own story. Veilguard is light on that classic kind of side quest that’s like, “Help Bingo Bongo find some nug grease,” and I don’t miss those much because they’ve been replaced by full-length heroic arcs for each companion, with twists, turns, a personal nemesis, major character developments, and a moment of triumph fit for a protagonist rather than a sidekick. It’s like the writers took the loyalty missions from Mass Effect 2 and blew them up into seven miniature games of their own. Almost every side mission ties into one of these, which obliterates the sense that you’re doing busywork.

Picking a favorite of the seven Veilguard members to talk about genuinely feels like an impossible task. I really want to say all of them are my favorite. But I had a rewarding romance with the stoic Grey Warden, Davrin, and became the mother to his fledgeling griffon pal, Assan, so he’s got to be my pick for this playthrough. Seriously, if anything ever happens to that little guy, I will wash Thedas away in a tide of fire. The Vincent Price-inspired gentleman necromancer Emmerich is also a delightful twist on the usual edgy goth death mage tropes.

And while we’ve been asked by the devs not to spoil specifically who I’m talking about here, as a non-binary person myself, Veilguard includes some of the most authentic representation of coming to terms with gender stuff – and having to navigate your family’s reaction to it – I’ve seen yet in a game. It doesn’t feel like an after school special or like I’m being pandered to. It’s quite well-handled, and finding out that the writer for this character is non-binary themselves did not surprise me at all.

The larger plot that’s threatening the world in the background as we’re doing all of these more personal quests is nothing particularly outstanding in its overall structure. We need to unite some factions to fight some evil gods who are trying to do bad things with tentacles. The major wrinkle that makes that interesting, however, is Solas – also known as the Dread Wolf, elven god of lies and rebellion – waiting in the wings, keeping me guessing about whether he was a friend or foe.

As a continuation of the Dragon Age series, Veilguard does feel a little disconnected from where we left off a decade ago. If you were expecting decisions from previous games in the series to carry over, I’m sorry to say they’ve never mattered less. You only get to import three choices, one of which only comes up in the context of a single letter you may or may not find and read. You do get to recreate your Inquisitor from Dragon Age: Inquisition, the same way Inquisition let you recreate your Hawke if you played Dragon Age 2. And the Inquisitor ends up being a fairly important character, which was cool.

But things like who you chose to make head of the Chantry at the end of Inquisition never come up. There’s no sign of the Warden from Origins, even though you visit the stronghold of their order. Hawke gets only a passing mention. There are some other cameos from both Origins and Dragon Age 2, but those characters conspicuously don’t reference any important choices you may have made in their presence. This story feels like both a send-off and a soft reboot, in a way, which was paradoxically a bit refreshing and disappointing at the same time.

The pacing early on is kind of weird, too, and I felt like I could practically smell the rewrites. For example, it’s hilarious that no one ever says the word “Veilguard” out loud across the 100 hours I played of this dialogue-packed campaign, exposing a last-minute marketing pivot for what it was. But it doesn’t take too long for things to get on a good track, story-wise, and when they do, they stay on it.

Aside from one huge choice you’ll make early on, the most interesting bits of narrative design don’t come until the very end of Veilguard’s story. And again, it’s hard to dig into this too much without spoiling something, but the finale is also very much in the spirit of Mass Effect 2, which has an ending that, up until now, may have been the best series of complex consequential choices ever featured in an RPG. The sacrifices I had to make in the closing hours hurt. The wise decisions I made paid off. And I even got the chance to dramatically flick an ace out of my sleeve at the last moment, specifically because I took a very thorough and careful approach to everything leading up to it. That felt like the ultimate reward.

Throughout all of that, the cinematic flair is off the charts, proving that BioWare is unmatched in the RPG world in that discipline. So much of the best stuff I can’t even tell you about, but parts of it felt like watching a big-budget fantasy movie in the best ways. A triumphant and effective – if not quite iconic – score elevates these moments further.

It’s the final week before the U.S. 2024 presidential election, and in the waning hours of her campaign, Vice President Kamala Harris is making a bid to a group that’s not often targeted in such races: gamers.

Today, Harris’ campaign is launching its own Fortnite map: Freedom Town, USA. It’s a custom creative map themed around some of Harris’ campaign pledges, including tax breaks for small businesses and a focus on affordable housing. The map can be found in Fortnite Creative starting today using code 733155366547.

Freedom Town, USA is joined by political takeovers of at least eight other Fortnite Creative maps by Fortnite creators Jordan “Huskerss” Thomas, Morgan “MODELMORG” Pope, Lyah “Himalyahs” Barberan, and Khairi “Kdot” Harris. These maps (Drive City, Troll Bed Wars, Meme Boxfights, Super Box PVP, Football Boxfights, Bullseye 2v2, Bullseye 1v1, and Bullseye 3v3) will include political in-game signage, custom models, and themed audio cues. One of these cues, played when collecting a cat, plays a quote from Harris’ rival former President Donald Trump: “they’re eating the dogs, eating the cats.”

This move comes as part of a recent, much broader appeal made by the Harris campaign to reach young, male voters through video games. Other recent efforts include a Geeks & Nerds for Harris fundraiser, a weekend Twitch stream where Vice Presidential candidate Governor Tim Walz played Madden NFL and Crazy Taxi with Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and a number of advertising efforts across mobile games, sports betting platforms, and YouTube channels. (The Harris campaign has also advertised on IGN. You can view our policy on the separation of editorial and advertising interests here.)

While the Trump campaign has not made a similar targeted push to gamer audiences, the former President has commented on video games before. During his tenure in the White House, President Trump blamed violent video games for a shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, saying that such games were “shaping young people’s thoughts” and publishing a reel of “violent video games” that included clips from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, Wolfenstein, Dead by Daylight, Sniper Elite, and Fallout 4. We’ve reached out to former President Trump’s campaign for comment.

Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. You can find her posting on BlueSky @duckvalentine.bsky.social. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.