INTERVIEW | Hannah Telle on Coming Back to Max in Life is Strange: Double Exposure

Life is Strange: Double Exposure is finally here, bringing Max Caulfield back to our screens after almost a decade. Aside from a brief reappearance in the Before the Storm ‘prequel episode’, this is the first major appearance of Max Caulfield in a Life is Strange game since the first title debuted in 2015.

I had the phenomenal opportunity to sit down with Hannah Telle, Max Caulfield’s actor, to talk about the impact of returning to this iconic character after so many years.

Here’s the full video interview:

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Return of the Max

Double Exposure is already becoming a fan-favourite title studded with twists, turns, and emotional sequences—much like the other games in the series. It was assembled by Deck Nine over three years and is a direct follow-up to the episodic game released in 2015.

The difference is, that this is a one-shot game – there are chapters but no iterative episodes to download or wait for.

Hannah walked me through the changes she had to take on board to ensure that an ‘older’ Max Caulfield was properly represented in Double Exposure:

I was so excited that people wanted to see more Max and that she was going to get to continue her story. I love this character and I hold her very dear to my heart.

I knew that there would be a lot of people who had very strong opinions about what they thought Max would be like as an older person. I had a lot of pressure and wanted to make sure that the fans would be happy.

I also wanted to make sure that I stayed true to this character’s organic trajectory, and I really related to her journey of experiencing some success as an artist.

While many people expected a new Life is Strange title, not many could have predicted the return of Max Caulfield. In our interview, Hannah explained how she had to go off the radar and become very vague about her life as Square Enix facilitated a relocation across the country from California to Colorado to work on Double Exposure in the utmost secrecy.

By the end of the development cycle, Hannah had spent three years working on motion capture and various avenues of voice acting for Double Exposure’s Max Caulfield.

It’s not the end for Max, though. At the end of Life is Strange: Double Exposure, players are advised that the character will return in the next game – but Hannah was tight-lipped about that:

In terms of the future, I don’t know anything, but I’m really, really excited, and I hope Max is coming back, and that we get to learn more about her future and her inner world, and I think she’s got worlds within her.

There’s so much to explore with her, and I’m just excited to see where she ends up.

In case you were wondering, in a world where powers are possible, Hannah Telle would opt to become invisible at will, using that power to spy on people and be present without anyone knowing she was there.

For the full interview, stop by the Insider Gaming YouTube channel.

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