Life is Strange: True Colors hands-on preview:  Not afraid to make you sad

Life is Strange: True Colors hands-on preview: Not afraid to make you sad

Life is Strange: True Colors wears its heart on its sleeve as Alex Chen strums a plaintive rendition of Radiohead’s “Creep” on the guitar.

From Portland, Alex embodies the hipster-chic look the series is known for.


Square Enix

Luckily for Alex, people tend to conveniently turn around whenever she needs to read their strongest emotional auras.


Square Enix

Haven Springs is a town that earns its name.


Square Enix

Alex accompanies her brother Gabe and his friend Ryan to an abandoned mining site.


Square Enix

There’s an underlying musical personality all over True Colors (even in the loading screen).


Square Enix

One of many sad scenes in the game.


Square Enix

Haven Springs strongly resembles an old western movie set.


Square Enix

This preview is based on limited impressions tested on PS5 and made available by Square Enix ahead of the game’s September 10 launch.

With four games released over the past six years (including one mini-spinoff, The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit), the Life is Strange series has established a reputation as an unlikely type of narrative adventure. Its YA protagonists, hipster-slanted coming-of-age stories, and proximity to trauma make it part of a specific genre, and the series has proven unexpectedly adept at mostly reinventing itself from entry to entry.

In theory, these underpinnings might suggest a (hear us out) Silent Hill-style problem that the series has so far managed to avoid. But where Konami’s survival horror series punished its protagonists through unique, hellish manifestations reflecting their specific inner demons, Life is Strange’s supernatural abilities empower its characters. Our protagonists aren’t defined by their tragedies. They could be anything, which allows series developers much more freedom to try new ideas.

A fresh start

Its latest sequel, True Colors, is a great example of just how versatile Life is Strange’s conceit can be. Rather than being able to rewind time or practice telekinesis, protagonist Alex Chen is an actual empath who can see people’s emotions physically. She feels their feelings as powerfully as if they were her own. Her gift is a kind of inversion on the normal series motifs, leading to a number of compelling scenarios and choice-based dilemmas over the several hours we spent testing out the game. It’s classic Life is Strange yet cast in a new, nonepisodic light.

Alex’s power feels more basic than that at first. Most of the first chapter sees her leaving a troubled life of foster care in Portland to live with her estranged brother Gabe in Colorado. While meeting Gabe’s friends and getting to know her new home of Haven Springs (or Haven, as the locals call it), the action mostly unfolds in typical Telltale-esque fashion—a minor dialogue choice here, a major branching moral decision there. This isn’t a big departure from the series, and the usual minor environmental investigations, interactions, and light puzzle-solving occasionally breaking up the conversations.

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That’s not to say this focused character development is poorly done. Though initially somewhat awkward (mirroring Alex’s feeling of being an outsider) and maybe a touch too emotionally earnest before you get a good grasp on what makes anyone tick, the dialogue is sharp and authentic, which hasn’t always been true with this series. Despite their distance, the bond is evident between Alex and Gabe, whose heart of gold and goofy exuberance is so infectious you can’t help liking him. This foundation becomes critical to the story as it progresses, and it gradually touches everyone in the town.

Pure empathy

A fascinating, if maybe overlooked, implication of Alex’s empathy is that it essentially allows to her to practice a form of, uh, benevolent emotional manipulation. At the beginning, she can only express a worried voiceover after experiencing someone’s intense anger or pain. But as the game progresses, she finds it necessary push dialogue in one direction or another. Gaining new information or changing her perspective on various situations soon becomes central to her solving problems.

From the chapters we played, Alex’s ability to manipulate other characters was only briefly addressed in the pages of her journal. (Reading her journal is optional, as are the social media and organically written text messages that illuminate the lives of the rest of the cast.) But her skills at manipulation could come to bear harder in the game’s final act. Either way, as Alex awakens to her true potential, she finds it’s possible to change her perspective in surprising ways. Without getting too far into specifics, this opens up rich, imaginative new layers of exploration, introspection, and her effect on the world.

While elevated by strong performances and writing, the script we saw didn’t always make an effort to prioritize the “serious” plot driving its central mystery, which may feel odd depending on what you’re looking for. And we found small inconsistencies in dialogue based on actions the player has or hasn’t already taken. The game is nothing to write home about from a technical standpoint, with sporadic frame drops while exploring Haven Springs and hit-or-miss visual quality. And don’t get us started on the inexplicable, upwards-of-10-second loading times whenever Alex enters a new scene or building, despite running on the SSD-fueled PS5.

Still, focusing on these quibbles would miss the point. Square Enix hasn’t been shy that True Colors revolves around loss, and it’s through Alex’s new relationships and shared experiences with her newfound community that the game shines. True Colors might end up being the series’ most genuine reinvention yet.

Life is Strange: True Colors trailer.

Listing image by Square Enix

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