Guide Alex Chen on a wonderful journey to discover emotions and empathy. Your choices will radically change the course of events.
Life is Strange: True Colors is the highly anticipated new chapter in the series developed by Dontnod Entertainment and Deck Nine Games.
The game tells the troubled life of Alex Chen: a young girl not very inclined to social interactions and strongly intimidated by the opinion of other people.
Get ready to experience an exciting adventure and be overwhelmed by emotions and empathy. Discover and master the true power of the protagonist and reveal the mysteries of Haven Springs.
Life is Strange: True Colors is available from September 9, 2021 for PC, PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo Switch and Google Stadia.
In this new review I intend to thoroughly analyze all the distinctive features that characterize the new Deck Nine Games project. Follow me and you will not regret it!
An emotional and moving story
It was from the conclusion of the story of Max & Chloe that fans were waiting for a chapter worthy of the series.
The new Deck Nine Games project hits the mark, bringing a narrative sector of fine workmanship. A new story full of twists, strong emotions and manly tears.
Get ready to experience an incredible adventure as Alex Chen: a young twenty-one year old girl who is indecisive, shy and terrified of the judgment of others. After spending a lot of time in a foster home, Alex reconnects with her brother Gabe.
Meanwhile, Gabe has settled in the charming city of Haven Springs: a place of peace and serenity, where he has rebuilt a new life in a desperate search for clues to the origin of his family.
Alex’s move to Haven Springs is the breakthrough the protagonist needed. Life smiles at her and she seems to have finally found her comfort zone.
This dream will soon crumble when her brother Gabe is the victim of a tragic accident and dies under mysterious circumstances.
Alex‘s heart shatters into a thousand pieces. All her fears, her insecurities reappear with consequences and implications even more tragic than expected.
You will have to control her emotions, her enormous power and investigate the alleged activities of the Typhon. An unscrupulous corporation that exploits the mineral resources of Haven Springs, in order to enrich themselves on the skin of the citizens.
Shape Alex’s personality and relationships
Life is Strange: True Colors makes the relational component and the dialogues its two pillars.
Alex’s character evolution is of fundamental importance for shaping social interactions, building solid friendships and understanding who you can trust.
Alex will have to interact with some characters who will prove to be very important, including the bartender Jed, the animated Steph (already present in Life is Strange: Before the Storm), the friendly Ryan and many others…
Alex will also forge her personality above all through dialogue. You will therefore have to make sure right away which people should become part of his life and which ones to stay away from.
The writing of the characters is very good and captivating, although I would have preferred more attention to some secondary characters and greater narrative implications dictated by the player’s choices.
However, the writing of Alex‘s character and her wonderful relationship with Steph remains flawless.
The “curse” of Alex Chen
When we think about Life is Strange, our mind imagines a story with incredible events and a protagonist with supernatural powers.
Alex Chen is an extraordinary girl, endowed with incredibly powerful dormant power. Alex is able to feel the emotions of other people, physically manifesting them through auras of different colors.
Its power is not limited to this. Alex is in fact able to feel, perceive and incorporate the emotions of other individuals, reacting positively or negatively depending on how disruptive the emotion is.
The emotions of the characters are identified and highlighted through 4 main colors: red represents a strong feeling of anger, yellow represents joy, blue represents sadness and purple represents fear.
Alex can also dig into the minds of others and relive memories. A decidedly tempting opportunity but which, if abused, can completely turn the situation upside down and endanger both her and those around her.
Its power is so fascinating that it not only characterizes the composition of the gameplay, but shapes both the protagonist’s interactions and Alex’s entire training path.
Is it perhaps more important to amaze the player with a profoundly tragic event, or to focus his attention on the relational component and on understanding how and how much to exploit the power of the protagonist in order to build her personality and her psychology?
Well, in my opinion the choice of Deck Nine Games is just the second. And it’s precisely for this reason that I consider the power of Alex my favorite!
Haven Springs: a hellish paradise
Haven Springs is one of those places where you could sit comfortably on a bench, admire the beauty of the landscape and overhear the conversations of passersby.
The gameplay of this new project has greatly surprised me precisely because you feel that feeling of loss and you are undecided on what to do. On the one hand you would like to continue the main quest, but on the other hand you feel enticed by that little corner that you have not discovered, or by that secondary mission that you would like to do so much…
True Colors takes numerous strides forward, bringing gameplay chock-full of side activities, collectibles, and endless dialogue that could make you build a close relationship with that specific NPC.
The real surprise is precisely the fact of wanting to lead the player into a wider, greater environmental exploration that almost gives the idea of discovering a more open and free world.
I also really liked the choice, by the developers, to include arcade minigames within the game. Mine Haunt and Arcade Arkanoid were both a sort of childhood memory and a challenging challenge to test the skill and patience of the player “under stress”.
A new and unexpected surprise
Life is Strange projects have always stood out from the crowd for a strong emotional impact, an excellent characterization of the characters and a respectable narrative.
Deck Nine Games takes numerous steps forward in the technical sector, bringing a setting modeled and finished down to the smallest detail.
It’s amazing and astonishing the work done by the developers on the faces of the characters. The expressiveness, the facial expressions, the emotions that exude from the faces of the characters are meticulously crafted.
Every visual detail makes the technical sector decidedly superior to its predecessors. I also consider excellent the work done on the dubbing and the choice of the soundtrack.
A note on this for the excellent work done on Alex Chen by Erika Mori and Steph Gingrich by Katy Bentz.
The verdict
Life is Strange: True Colors hits the player’s heart deeply, bringing into play an excellent narrative sector with excellent character writing.
The gameplay is interesting and varied and offers the player both the opportunity to focus exclusively on the main story, and to have fun with interesting side missions.
Despite some minor flaws and few revisable oversights, the game absolutely deserves more than an opportunity and I promote it in all its facets.
Although I would have preferred to delve into some interesting subplots and the game sin for longevity, True Colors amazed me by the impressive step forward that Deck Nine Games wanted to bring to the game, with particular attention to the technical sector.
Should we prepare for an even more complex Life is Strange? In the meantime, if you haven’t already done so, Wavelenghts is available: an interesting DLC to further delve into Steph‘s story.
Does Deck Nine Games work outweigh the much-loved story between Max and Chloe? The verdict goes, as always, to the players. See you next time!
Life Is Strange: True Colors
8.5/10
