Life is Strange: True Colors

I really liked the first Life is Strange. I have since played every other game in the franchise so it was only a matter of time that I would play this.

Max, the player character in the first Life is Strange, had a really strong motivation right from the start to save her friend. And the whole game was about her progress in this task. This made her goals an exceptional propellent for the story and I couldn’t stop playing the first game.

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of the other games in the franchise, including this one.

Alex is the player character this time around and, as far as I could tell in the first few minutes of Chapter 1, she wanted not to get too close to people due to her ‘curse’. I didn’t think it was that compelling but I guess I could work with it. But she gets introduced to a lot of people in Chapter 1, kinda at odds with what she wants. In fact, it all felt like a setup, a prologue, where all the pieces were being put into place and Alex only got the driving motivation that propelled the story forward at the end of the chapter. Compare this to the first game where Max got her driving motivation near the beginning of the first chapter and the difference is like night and day. I was going through the motions with Alex, instead of wanting to see what came next for Max.

Chapter 2 was a step up from Chapter 1. There was a mystery to solve and Chapter 2 was about her trying to do that.

Chapter 3 was a huge step back, even worse than Chapter 1. It didn’t progress the story at all. It was about Alex taking a break from trying to solve the main mystery to get involved in a LARP!

Chapter 4 was slightly better than 3 since only half of it involved Alex enjoying a festival. When the dreary half was over, I could find myself enjoying the story again.

The only good thing I can say about chapters 3 & 4 was that I could progress the romance subplot.

The first half of Chapter 5, the final chapter, is dedicated to Alex’s backstory. I found myself wanting that part to be over as soon as possible. The ending felt nice but Alex’s arc didn’t really make sense to me. See, halfway through Chapter 1, she lost control of herself due to her ‘curse’, so I thought that was how it worked. She couldn’t get too close to people with strong emotions lest she lose control and be taken over by that emotion. But that was the only time it happened. At the end of Chapter 1, she had to get close to someone who was really scared, maybe even undergoing a panic attack, and she didn’t lose control then.

It was implied in the very first scene that her ‘curse’ causes her to lose control. So that was the way I played the game, choosing all the avoidant responses. It was reaffirmed with lines like “I’ve only been in Haven for one day and I already exceeded my hug quota for the year” and with the incident where she actually loses control. It wasn’t clear to me why or how a person such as Alex could go from avoiding people to being a hero.

And since I bought the Deluxe Edition, I played through the extra chapter where I played as Steph and this is probably the worst chapter in the franchise ever. There is literally no story here. It is just Steph going through the motions in her job as DJ and record store manager. It would probably have been a lot better if they had just focused on her trying to befriend the cat. At least then it would have some propelling force instead of nothing at all.

Which brings me back to the ending of the final chapter. In my playthrough I got a nice story about what happens to Alex after the story ends. Unfortunately, this story was narrated by a ghost. I think it would have been so much better if it was narrated by Steph instead, since she is the one that GMs role-playing games and it was established in the extra chapter that coming up with futures for people was something she was actually good at. I think it would have been a really nice character arc for her as well. Also, Alex ended up romancing Steph in my playthrough so it would really make more sense in this case.

Overall, there were some nice moments but it was a drudge to get to these moments and the story pales in comparison to the first game.

★✰✰✰✰