Life is Strange: True Colors Review

"All The Emotions"

Campaign

September 8, 2021 at 10:00am
By Jason Stettner

This is a standalone, entirely new expansion for the Life is Strange franchise. True Colors allows you to jump into this fresh world, without needing an prior knowledge of the series. With that, if you’re familiar with the previous games you’ll feel right at home with this one as it has a very similar play style.

It also takes place over five interesting chapters that feels cohesive, while each having their own important stand out themes. The story follows Alex Chen, a young woman that’s had many issues throughout her life. From a rough upbringing, to never really having anyone close that she can count on. Eventually she ends up heading to this small Colorado town of Haven Springs, to reconnect with a brother that parted ways with her years prior.

The two begin to bond, and then she’s immediately thrust into a situation of deep emotional trauma and has to deal with a town that has quickly become splintered. This is both a good, and bad situation as she happens to have the abilities to handle what’s going on. She’s somewhat like Mantis from the Guardians of the Galaxy in terms of being able to feel and handle the emotions of those around her.

They appear as an aurora, with different styles depending on the feelings of those in a particular situation. It didn’t initially sound too exciting, but the ways she’s able to handle them and have that almost fuel herself is quite surprising and very sudden. The general narrative in this one was fairly easy for me to predict very early on.

That being said, the journey there is filled with very shocking moments and twists that will definitely keep you engaged. There was a chapter that was a bit more sappy in style, but this really mattered in the overall scheme of what was going to happen.

As mentioned, this has five chapters and the traditional ending choices aspect comes into play. So you can sit there and play it all at once, or take in bit by bit. I played it as a singular block and had a wonderful time with it. Your experience time wise will of course vary by how you interact with the world. It’s a living place, with side stories for characters that you don’t even really have names for.

It makes you feel as though you’ve entered an actual location that you can make a difference within, and that’s quite special. I really wanted to help out these two obviously in love individuals, and I did slowly over the course of each chapter. They had their whole own little story going on to the side of whatever my main mission was. That made this whole place feel natural, and gave a desire for me to explore it further. There’s even some replay value there I suppose, to take in the place better.

I also wanted to mention there’s an incredible LARPing segment, very good. Past that, you care even more about the main characters you interact with. These people have lives, and you’re in the midst of everything being flipped upside down. There’s even an element of a deeper relationship that you might build, going either way if you so choose and that was quite special. I did also want to mention the beautiful tension of a climactic scene that was insanely intense and completely grabbed my full attention.

Gameplay

As mentioned prior this feels very similar to the previous entries. You have a set role and are able to mostly explore the world around you. You can interact with many options through a quick note, or also use your abilities to sense the feelings attached to them. It very much is heavy in cinematic moments, and discussion between characters.

You do have many open world type segments for exploration, but it’s light on being something that you’re actively interacting with. There are some minor puzzles to solve, nothing you’ll really get stuck on. You also get some secondary possible objectives to take part in, and a journal that I interacted with more than I ever had prior.

That includes the text messages between characters, there’s important context there. The music is of course just wonderful here, from the covers Alex provides to the background audio that helps bring life to the scenes. When it comes to the visuals this is an excellent maturation of the original game’s visuals.

It looks incredible having this unique style between being incredibly realistic, but also having such a distinct art aesthetic to it. It really is just such a treat to take in, with many moments providing an awestruck type of feeling. It’s quite a vibrant town whether that’s during the day or even at night. Each scene is filled to the brim with details, and a lot going on even in the backdrop.

A quick note on the visual details for Xbox Series X, the ray tracing functionality was not working pre-launch so I wasn’t able to try that. It does provide a very crisp 4k resolution target with HDR support being enabled.

The Conclusion

Life is Strange: True Colors is a near perfect offering providing a remarkable journey filled with twists and deeply emotional moments. I did find the overall story to be rather predictable, at the same time it continued to surprise me each step of the way. I really liked the characters, and the world that was built here.

It feels lively, it feels expansive and it was exciting to explore. It’s got a chunky story that aims to provide something emotional. I felt connected to what was going on, and I think it’s important that we see more games like this in the future. Ones that put the narrative first, and aim to provide something that does actually make you have some feelings.

It was a rather sorrowing time throughout, but that really did fuel the determination of the lead and I thought it came together wonderfully. It’s nice to have a piece of art like this deliver a range of emotions. It’s a shocking journey filled with traumatic moments across one beautifully well crafted story. The world is also rather lovely too, it’s great to explore and well worth your play.

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Life is Strange: True Colors Review on Xbox Series X
Review Code Provided by 47

Rating Overall: 9.5