Life is Strange: True Colors is a rumination on loss, empathy, and finding your place in the word. A great cast is bolstered by improved visuals, animations, and a truly remarkable protagonist in Alex Chen, making this the true highlight of the series.
Once Alex Chen left her bus and stepped foot in the small Colorado town of Haven Springs, I clicked the touchpad on my DualSense, checking her phone. I was greeted to a cluster of text messages to a character I had never met from characters I had never met, many that I never would across Life is Strange: True Colors‘ five chapters.
The snooping would have to wait. Alex was on her way to meet her brother, who she hadn’t seen in years because the two were separated by the foster care system. And I wanted to meet my protagonist before diving deep into her backstory.
About a half an hour later I spent ten or so minutes exploring those texts. A hopeful message from Alex’s therapist ended saying she had blocked the number. Years-old threats from a foster sibling. Alex had connected with several people and frequently asked for a couch to sit on. One skeezy guy offered his place in exchange for sex. He was blocked too.
It was a startling, intimate look into a character I barely knew… yet I felt that I had met her before. These conversations were written with such believability and conviction, in a kind of careful empathy only a person who had experienced them could pen. This was such a far departure from Chloe and Max’s heartfelt but angsty teen dialog.
Life is Strange: True Colors paints a vivid picture of heavy topics. It captures that slice-of-life feel of small town America. It’s a bit corny at times but never a parody. So often I felt drawn into the peripheral characters and the personal drama not laser-focused on the core mystery. True Colors is so obviously the best entry in the Life is Strange universe but also should be considered one of the better games of its kind.
Some important context: I’ve only played the first Life is Strange, taking in the narrative as each episode slowly released. The twists in the final episodes gripped me and I was swept away in melancholy by the time Max had reached the answer for her town being swept up in a storm. Though I can’t speak for its sequel and prequel, Life is Strange found its pulse early on and never really strayed from the beat. It may have ended violently, divisively but developer DONTNOD Entertainment had a vision and followed through with it. The music was folky, indie rock that tugged at the heart. Characters often acted with extreme emotion to make big decisions have more impact. And god were there plenty utterances of “hella” being tossed around.
But damnit, I loved every minute of Life is Strange, which makes me feel uneasy not having played anything else in the series until now. Still, True Colors fixes everything I thought was wrong with the first and manages to excel at nearly every conceivable challenge it faces.
Alex Chen is the focus of this story and while she cannot travel time, she can sense the emotions of other people around her. Alex’s “Super Empathy” allows her to see a visible aura around people when they feel intense sadness, fear, anger, and joy. If she focuses, Alex can dive into these emotions and understand why a person feels the way they do, or see the world through their eyes. Even objects radiate with these memories. At times, Alex is even capable of absorbing the emotions of another person, potentially taking away their worries or hatred.
By Life is Strange standards, Alex’s ability is far from supernatural but it remains unexplained and a viable tool for storytelling. People in the real world are extremely strong empaths, capable of communicating and reading others with an uncanny ability. Alex’s dialed up approach allows her to be more of an omniscient figure in her own story. When reading another person, players hear their thoughts, keeping the focus on Alex and how she and the player will translate what to do next. There won’t be any reversing a major decision this time, unless you decide to reload a checkpoint.
Upon first meeting Alex, she is reuniting with her brother Gabe and players are only presented with a handful of opportunities to use her ability to read the emotional minds of others. Of course, it isn’t long before things take a turn and a tragedy strikes Haven Springs. Those who haven’t been spoiled on the core catalyst for the rest of True Colors would be well to experience the story as blind as possible. And despite knowing it was coming, it still felt like a punch in the stomach when it happened.
Erika Mori, Alex’s voice actor, has delivered one of the better performances that I can remember. It isn’t just that Alex is written with a gorgeous amount of believability, it’s that Mori’s range transforms the script. The deep sadness and overwhelming joy Alex undergoes never fails to make an impact.
Surprisingly, developer Deck Nine has trumped DONTNOD in terms of writing here. By having a cast of characters in their twenties or older (with the exception of one kid), True Colors may appeal to a broader audience. Regardless of age, however, the game is focused on a heavy deluge of emotion, ones that almost any person has or will toil through in their lives.
Heavy emphasis is placed on loss, a focal point of Alex’s journey and that of others. From the grief of losing something, to the acceptance of yourself, multiple characters will address a spectrum of the human experience. With each new chapter, players will pry through the cast as Alex in hopes of not only solving the central mystery but also grow closer with the stellar cast of characters.
There’s Jed, the wise owner of the local bar who acts like a father figure to several characters. Steph runs the local radio station and is obsessed with LARPing. Ducky is the eccentric old man full of stories. And so on. Capping at about a dozen primary and secondary characters, players will become familiar with the stories of Haven Springs’ residents.
For the most part, it’s hard to ignore the needs and concerns of Alex’s fellow townsfolk because they are so integral to the narrative. But to keep them relevant, Deck Nine ensured that most threads are started in the first chapter and continued until the climax. When the culmination of my interference or assistance in these people’s lives happened, I understood why because of how true to life the relationships came off. Plus, I could understand how one decision or the other may impact a different ending.
Though Haven Springs is quaint, it does have its limits. Most of True Colors takes place in Alex’s apartment, the bar below it, a handful of tiny shops, a small park, and the one stretch of main street. It’s a small playable area that doesn’t often incentivize too much exploring. Additionally, there’s only a few “side quests” players can participate in which primarily consist of helping less important characters off the beaten path or checking in with them in several chapters. Maybe you help a man and woman find love, maybe you help a woman find a bird. Maybe you don’t do any of those things. At the end of each chapter, the game will tell you the stats of how other people around the world acted and reacted. Outside of some weird graphical glitches like a t-pose or a background character walking in place, I had few complaints with True Colors.
It’s also hard not to notice just how far True Colors injects the formula with new life despite being more grounded than ever before. I was often surprised at the unique choices Deck Nine made in their presentation. In Chapter 3, the main cast engages in a LARP that stretches across Haven Springs and features battles acting like actual RPG fights with hit points and spells. Once, Alex was overtaken by another character’s fear and saw a dragon rising up from a canyon.
These fantastical moments are supplemented by an exceptional amount of inventive shots that frame the action in creative ways. When Alex confronts a character in a major scene, the camera continues to move closer and closer into their faces, showing the fire in Alex’s eyes and the conflicting emotions in the other. Often these experimental methods of storytelling, give True Colors a flair that I hope continues with the series.
Deck Nine’s work to improve lip syncing and overall animation makes it impossible to get distracted by wonky delivery. As much as I came to appreciate the dialog in the first Life is Strange, often I could not ignore how bad the lip syncing was and it frequently became distracting. In True Colors, those issues don’t exist as characters can be expressive and human-like, in light of the stylistic visuals. And though small, Haven Springs is just a beautiful idyllic location to look at.
Life is Strange: True Colors is often a difficult game to process because it heavily relies on characters coming to terms with intensely difficult emotions. Thankfully, players have Alex Chen as their guide who has swiftly become one of my favorite characters in a narrative-based game. Expertly written and acted, the heartbreak, sadness, anger, and joy found in Haven Springs is filtered through her and supplemented by an equally exceptional cast.
It speaks volumes that the character drama in Life is Strange: True Colors kept me captivated as much as its central mystery. With her grounded ability to feel what emotions other characters are going through, Alex and the player will tiptoe through the human experience, ruminating on the nature of loss, what it means to feel at home, and how life can be so very, very strange, yet beautiful.
