Life Is Strange: Double Exposure Finally Fixes The Series' Goofy Facial Animations

If you’re familiar with , you already know that these are character-centric games. The protagonists you inhabit and the people around them are always the focal points, and each new story has largely focused on themes of empathy, community, and the impact our actions have on others. Relationships are everything.

When came out in 2015, it had very 2015 graphics – some would even say that the graphics were already dated back then. Life is Strange: Double E💝xposure has just (partially) launched in 2024, and in a lot of ways, it doesn’t look that different. In fact, its art stဣyle is recognisable enough that one of my housemates walked through the front door to see me playing it in the living room, and said, “Oh, is that Life is Strange?”

In an industry so focused on heightened hyperrealism and increasing graphical fidelity, I have to respect this commitment to the ser𒈔ies’ signature aesthetic. While the graphics are certainly better in Double Exposure than in the first few games– environments look more natural, and lighting looks way more realistic and beautiful – the characters still retain a vaguely cartoony vibe, like they’re modded Sims and not at all like they’re real people.

But there’s a major difference here: the facial animations in Double Exposure are excellent, especially when it comes to the trio of Max, Safi, and Moses. Max, as the protagonist and the character we spend the most time with, is a standout, but the facial animations in general are just so much better. Watching characters in conversation, you’ll see brows furrowing, sly smiles, shifty eyes, smug expressions, and genuine smiles – you can even catch fleeting changes in e♓xpression betraying a character’s real feeli꧋ngs.

Split image showing Max in a Moogle hat on the left and Max holding a cat on the right

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The older games certainly have this too, but the techni𒅌cal improvements that Double Exposure has are immediately apparent when you compare th෴em. Expressions and emotion have always been at the core of the series, because they helped you judge how to react to other characters, but the first few games have chunky, blocky characters. It just wasn’t possible with that tech to make characters look as real as they do in Double Exposure.

Again, I🎐 don’t say real in the sense that these look like real people – they really don’t. But you can see there’s a huge step up in animation quality from even the last instalment, . These characters feel realer because their 🙈facial expressions are entirely believable.

And thi🔯s matters. In a game that’s so focused on relationships, being able to look at the nuances of someone’s expression when they hear something they do or don’t like makesꦗ all the difference. Not only does it add layers of complexity to every choice, it raises the stakes too. Knowing exactly how disgusted a character is by how viciously they side eye me makes me regret it more. God, I really wish I could rewind time in this game, because I regret it so much.