Life is Strange: Double Exposure, like a lot of modern blockbusters, released with an optional Ultimate Edition. To give you a quick breakdown of the game’s different versions: the base game costs $49.99. The Deluxe Edition, which gives you two additional outfit packs, costs $59.99. The Ultimate Edition, which gives you three more outfit packs as well as “Exclusive Cat Content” and ‘early access’ to the first two episodes, costs $79.99.
Early access, in this sense of the phrase, is a sham, but whatever.
I didn’t look at what the Ultimate Edition included when I downloaded the game, so I didn’t know that there was extra content waiting for me. While playing, I figured the outfits were free extras, since I could dress Max up as an elder emo with dyed grey streaks in her hair and purple lipstick or put her in a skeleton onesie, but I didn’t realise there was any extra story content at all. That’s why I empathise so much with the fans that bought the most expensive version of the game and came away disappointed. It simply isn’t worth the money, and very few ultimate editions such as this are.
Here, Kitty Kitty
A lot of fans were pretty intrigued by Double Exposure’s Exclusive Cat Content. There are a lot of ways this could’ve been used – maybe the cat acts as an emotional support animal, maybe it has a fully fleshed out side story, or maybe it has a heavy presence in Max’s life.
But the cat was so completely insignificant that I didn’t even realise it was supposed to be DLC – I thought it was just a completely tangential part of the story, a nice touch thrown in so you could have an Achievement for petting the cat. In Chapter 2, Max hears meowing outside her door and opens it to find, you guessed it, a cat.
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You get to pick the cat’s colour and name, feed it, pet it, and occasionally take photos of it. Later, when Max’s house is broken into, you can talk to it in an attempt to soothe it. At the end of the game, if you pick up the right clues, you return it to its owner, who’s been looking for it the whole time. Apart from that, it just lounges around your house in one of the timelines, waiting for pets, which I guess is very much like an actual cat.
Obviously, this is not a very substantial quest, if you can call it that at all. You barely interact with the cat, its quest has absolutely no bearing on the overall story, no other characters ever acknowledge it, and you don’t even get any cute collars to put on it. I assumed the cat was an afterthought, put in to give players a little bit to smile about amongst all the doom and gloom of Max Caulfield’s very bad couple of weeks. But to charge people for this? $30 for a bunch of outfits, early access to a bugged game (three TheGamer editors encountered the same game-breaking bug during this period) and a weird looking cat? Come on.
A Corporation With Bad Business Practices? Revolutionary
It’s not going to surprise anybody when I say that this is par for the course. Companies have been selling pointless DLC for as long as microtransactions have been a thing, because, you know, money. As long as there are people who love the series enough to shell out extra money for it, they’ll sell whatever they can.
What’s particularly unsavoury about this instance is that the Exclusive Cat Content is also advertised to players between chapters, something I didn’t see as I already had the Ultimate Edition. Yes, the game advertises more content to you while you’re already playing a game you paid full price for.
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And it’s not advertising a substantial expansion that would add significantly to your experience of the game, it’s advertising some new pretend coats and sweaters to put Max in and a cat that you can look at. For a whopping $30. That’s a couple days of groceries. That’s several tins of real cat food that I could use to keep the actual felines in my house fed so they don’t try to steal said groceries again.
I liked the game, and I think that it doesn’t deserve a lot of the flak it’s been getting from fans, but in this case, the backlash is entirely warranted. It’s blatantly disrespectful of the players who love the series most, and for no reason other than profit. This wasn’t a side quest, it was an afterthought.
Max Caulfield, photographer-in-residence at the prestigious Caledon University, discovers her closest new friend, Safi, dead in the snow.
Murdered.
To save her, Max tries to Rewind time – a power she’s not used in years… instead, Max opens the way to a parallel timeline where Safi is still alive, and still in danger!
Max realizes the killer will soon strike again – in both versions of reality.
With her new power to Shift between two timelines – can Max solve and prevent the same murder?
ORDINARY GIRL, EXTRAORDINARY POWER
Max is thrust into a thrilling supernatural murder mystery – more dangerous than ever before!
TRAVERSE TWO TIMELINES
Forge allies and pursue suspects across two versions of reality, shaping both timelines through unforgettable choices.
RACE AGAINST TIME
A relentless detective has Max in his sights, and Safi’s killer grows closer with every clue uncovered. Can Max survive long enough – to do the impossible?
DECIDE THE FATE OF CALEDON
Explore two versions of a vivid winter campus, each packed with clues, secrets, and tough decisions.