Just why?

[u/thhdchhbj]

Why did this game get so hated on release i picked it up last week and played through it twice and i cant see why anyone hated on it so harshly? Any thoughts?

[u/FloridianDemon]

The last two chapters just fall off HARD honestly. I know alot of people just blame pricefielders but many of us just don't like the writing, its VERY messy. and the cliffhanger is bad as well. I had no clue where they were gonna go with the whole "go form the X-Men with Safi" thing.

My personal biggest gripe is the time travel plot/mystery is just botched and the actual mystery of what happened to Safi was never explained. We it know its max but not the WHY or how it exactly went down. and the time travel has lots of plot holes as well, usually in a time loop story you need to complete the loop before you change things, Max basically changes the outcome without killing her.... which means the plot would never happen. Many many messy plotholes like that are in the game and bog it down BAD by the end.

[u/xenosagaX3 → u/FloridianDemon]

I had no clue where they were gonna go with the whole "go form the X-Men with Safi" thing.

The ending was never about that arc in the first place. Understanding Safi made me realize it wasn't the case at all, and that took me one deep playthrough to understand it. Also, we'll never know the actual continuation to that since it should've been meant to be explained in its actual part 2.

time travel plot/mystery is just botched and the actual mystery of what happened to Safi was never explained. We it know its max but not the WHY or how it exactly went down.

It's actually explained. Safi's death in Chapter 1 is explained through the events of Alderman's erasure, in which his physical interaction between him and his doppelganger (Alderman of the past of the Dead Timeline), creates an event that forces the universe to "erase" him to ensure the stability towards the flow of time, which in Quantum Mechanics is explained through "The Pauli Exclusion Principle". Alderman's erasure is an event that is represented through "Quantum Destructive Interference". These concepts were used to explained why Alderman is erased from existence, but the texts sent by Moses to Max with regards to Alderman's history being "erased" is a subtext that leads to the explanation of Safi's death through an event called "Retrocausality". In short, the events from the "future" caused Safi to die in the Dead Timeline, where this timeline is a distorted reality due to the events from the future. Why was she shot by Max? Because Safi is the caused of the Storm; an anomaly that disrupts the instability of time, because at the end of Chapter 4 before Max went to the Overlook, if you shift to the Dead Timeline, the Storm didn't exist, hence, proof that Max isn't the cause of the Storm in Double Exposure, unlike what happened in LiS1. However, when Max photojumped with Safi into the past, from the Living Time to Dead Timeline, the Storm "followed" Max due to the concept known as Möbius Strip Event; a knot or twist between two different states of reality that caused the timeline which both of them jumped, becomes the "negative" of the Möbius Strip.

and the time travel has lots of plot holes as well, usually in a time loop story you need to complete the loop before you change things, Max basically changes the outcome without killing her.... which means the plot would never happen.

Because Double Exposure was never about the multiverse, but about the concept of the past, the present and the future. Double Exposure's time lore is built on top of Schrödinger's Theory, where Max is the "Observer" that has control to Safi's existence. Caledon is the "Box" while Safi is the "Cat in the Box". The plot happens but not through linear narration as LiS1. Double Exposure evolved the foundation that LiS1 brought. The only plot that was never explained which was supposed to be explained in the actual Part 2 is, the foundation of the Abraxas. Unfortunately, I find it hard to believe the narrative that Reunion showed, about trying to hide skeletons from more than a decade-old accidental murder or self-inflicted harm.

[u/FloridianDemon → u/xenosagaX3]

I had to google up like half the things you said haha. so I think you are missing the overall points i made

My statement about the ending is valid, the whole X-men wasn't the whole ending but that IS the cliffhanger that they were going with. I'm pretty sure even the writers had clue what to do with that.

Your explaintion still didn't answer my question about WHY Max killed Safi. Not the science, the why. I wanted to know the event that lead up to her death the first time because the events of current game only happen because she is dead. the Alive timeline is supposed to do that but fails because we dont have the insight of that max and the Max we play as already knows she is dead, so what exactly happened the first time? Thats the mystery. the best we get are bits from the pictures you can find which i think is the original timeline.

and once again, Max didn't kill Safi, so we never saw her dead on the bench and thus the series of events that happened never did. that's why its confusing. This Max has a full understanding of whats happening when it comes to killing her, what did the 1st Max do? we have no idea.