One of the cool surprise announcements from this year’s June Xbox Showcase was Life Is Strange: Double Exposure . The latest entry in the supernatural adventure series will return to original protagonist Max Caulfield as she solves the murder of her friend by jumping between alternate timelines. While that’s an exciting prospect for longtime fans, the game has been mired in a bit of controversy as Square Enix has rolled out details about its release plans.
Like previous games in the series, Double Exposure will be an episodic game. However, it won’t be rolling out periodically like the first few games did, and will instead follow True Colors’ format of releasing all the episodes at once. Well, with one catch.
The game’s $US80 Ultimate Edition will let you play the first two chapters on October 15, two weeks before the game’s October 29 release date. Fans are criticizing this decision (thanks, Eurogamer ) both because it’s incentivizing players to pay up for early access and because it will open up fans who can’t afford or don’t want to pay extra to spoilers for two weeks. The move would almost feel like an homage to the original game’s structure if it wasn’t also kinda gross.
“I feel like Square Enix locked this awesome feature behind a paywall,” upper_camel_case wrote on Reddit . “[Episodic releasing] made the original Life Is Strange such a great experience when it originally released. Now only the people who are willing to pay a lot of money for.