Life is Strangeis never beating the cringe allegations. The series may have been formative for me as a teenager, but on this front, I can’t argue against the all too common criticism that its dialogue is just… wild. I was 19 when the first game released, and even then, some of the things coming out of its characters' mouths felt dated. Who says “amazeballs”?
But at the same time, Max Caulfield and Chloe Price were meant to be cringey teenagers. I was pretty cringey at 15 too, and I’m sure in ten years time, I’ll look back at my old tweets and Instagram posts and think that I’m cringey now.
These characters use outdated lingo and slang because the game wanted to point to a very specific cultural time period, and while it makes me bury my head in my hands now, it isn’t totally inaccurate. That’s just how a lot of millennials talked back then. I try not to think about that time if I can, because cringe can cause physical pain, but that’s the truth.
Modern millennial cringe is a little different: it’sadults defending Eminem by trying to rap like him, quoting vines like"you almost made me drop my croissant", and themillennial pause. Thankfully, I haven’t seen Max reference any Vines yet, but I’m only halfway through the game right now.
InLife is Strange: Double Exposure, Max Caulfield is all grown up, but she’ll never be able to escape being a millennial. Interestingly, the kind of cringe we hear her spouting has evolved with modern perceptions of the millennial, but she’s still cringe. The millennial teenager said wowzers and hella – the millennial adult, however, is overly sincere.
She’s not one of us chronically online losers who pick up slang the moment it picks up steam on social media – she does road trips, she’s a recognised photographer, and she’s a lecturer at a university. She’s authentic, even kind of cool in how dedicated she is to her art and how into horror movies she is, but she’s by no stretch of the imagination down with the kids. You won’t see her saying ‘slay’ or ‘delulu’ or even ‘drippy’, at least, not in the one episode of it I’ve played so far. She makes awful jokes. She says weird stuff at inopportune times. She uses words that fell out of fashion ages ago. And yet, she’s still pretty likeable.
Sure, Double Exposure has social media, but it’s more like Facebook than Instagram or Twitter. What’s more dorky millennial-coded than that?
Cringe is a subjective, even contentious thing. While I’m using it here as a catch-all phrase for being out of step with culture, a lot of people use the word cringe to describe something or someone who’s entirely earnest and unironic, because they’re too afraid to live life the way they want to, lest the word be turned on them instead. It’s a defence mechanism. I’m a believer in letting go of cringe in order to find joy – life is too short (and too strange?) to spend this much time worrying if other people think you’re a loser for liking things or acting a certain way. Don’t kill the part of you that is cringe, kill the part that cringes.
I can’t deny that Max is, and probably always will be, cringe. Most of the characters in any given Life is Strange game will be, to be honest, even the characters that are supposed to be cool. But in Double Exposure, this cringe is less because characters are functioning on a cultural understanding from a decade ago, and more because everybody is so damn earnest. They’re so largely lacking in irony and self-consciousness that honestly, it’s kind of beautiful. Imagine a world where we weren’t all suffering from internet brainrot – that’s what Life is Strange feels like.
If you cringed at Life is Strange, you’ll cringe at Life is Strange: Double Exposure. My housemates were visibly grimacing as I played through the first episode in the living room, and I get it. Cringe is inherently hard to look at. But if you can work through that impulse to roll your eyes, you’ll find that it really does make these characters more endearing. They’re totally earnest, just kind of weird. If only we could all live our lives so freely.
Life is Strange: Double Exposure
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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 POWERMax is thrust into a thrilling supernatural murder mystery – more dangerous than ever before!TRAVERSE TWO TIMELINESForge allies and pursue suspects across two versions of reality, shaping both timelines through unforgettable choices.RACE AGAINST TIMEA 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 CALEDONExplore two versions of a vivid winter campus, each packed with clues, secrets, and tough decisions.
