Life is Strange – True Colors

[Maryokutai]

A bit surprised this doesn't have a topic yet as I think the other games did have a few fans here. But then again I bought this on release and only now felt in the right mood to play it, so maybe it just came out at the wrong time.

 

This immediately feels a lot more like 1 than 2, which is most likely a byproduct of it being made by Deck Nine (Before the Storm) who feel probably more comfortable reproducing what worked in the first place and a desire to, well, get back to what worked in the first place. Alex, the protagonist, is extremely approachable in an almost ironic way as she's a bit of introvert with a loaded background, so not unlike Max from the original. Setting the game in a small, rural area in some fictional part of an American mountain range gives it a very idyllic and soothing feel where standing around and rotating the camera is a joy in itself. A byproduct of this is that it also goes back to a fixed cast of NPCs with their own jobs, motivations, backgrounds and personalities. It is not without its faults – Alex' superpower is 'just there' and I find it baffling how the promo material spoiled this game's Aerith moment – but I felt right at home from the first minute. It's just a wonderfully cleansing experience, though it'll probably throw some existential angst in my direction soon (I'm only on chapter 2).

 

One other thing I want to point out is that it looks phenomenal. The lighting, use of colours, the significantly improved facial animations all result in this not being the best-looking LiS title but a genuinely beautiful game even by other standards. It's also the first game in which I actually noticed Raytracing (which can be activated in Performance mode, too) when looking at the extremely realistic reflections on Alex' glasses. They look so good in fact that they almost clash with the slightly dreamy and soft art style.

 

Playing this amidst the recent Square Enix news feels a bit bittersweet as well because I'm unfortunately not expecting them to finance another one of these anytime soon. So I'm definitely taking my time with it and enjoying the ride.

 

 

 

Edit: Glasses

 

Spoiler

 

[Maryokutai]

Moving quicker through this than I hoped, but it's really enjoyable. Chapter 3, while it might not be everyone's cup of tea, was a wonderful case of meta-narrative.

 

Spoiler

The entire town comes together to organise a role-playing event to cheer up a kid. But instead of this being just a couple of cutscenes with dialogue options, it actually turns into a proper little LARP game where you run around as a party of two, collect coins, spells and other trinkets, complete quests and fight in turn-based battles. A lot of heart and effort put into it and I had the dumbest grin on my face the entire time, so it wasn't just cheering the kid up.

 

The protagonist's powers of channeling other people's emotions I find still a bit too vague as a concept, especially as the game treats it like some kind of situational mind-reading superpower. They are doing some interesting things with it, but just like LiS2 it feels like a feature born out of necessity. But it doesn't drag it down either, so I'm a bit ambivalent about it.

 

Noteworthy also is that this isn't the kind of rollercoaster the first one was, it's more steady storytelling that isn't afraid of spending a lot of time on more mundane things to ground it. It might end up being less memorable as a result maybe, but after years of TV shows aiming for that big cliffhanger to force engagement I'm kind of glad this just goes into the other direction instead, where you almost can't sense the cut between chapters.

[Maryokutai]

Played through this the other day. I rather liked it, even though its main storyline, the mystery of it all if you want, eventually turns out to be something extremely anticlimatic and also filled with quite a few substantial plotholes. But luckily this means that by extension your focus will move elsewhere and it's here the game does shine. Making friends and growing into the community as a lifelong outsider, helping certain characters face their demons, exploring the idyllic town of Haven Springs. I'm not going to give the developers the benefit of the doubt here and say they deliberately wrote an underwhelming plot, but I think it actually works in the game's favour in the end. It might lack some of the gut punches of previous entries but makes up for it by spending more time on the human element. Which I suppose is an extension of Alex's whole Empath Superpower.

 

Speaking of Alex, I think she was a really good protagonist. Enough background to give her a certain depth, but personality-wise open enough to make every decision you make feel genuine and not contradictory to what she stands for. Her design is also refreshing, as short, stocky, mixed-race women aren't usually protagonist material in videogames. She's obviously still really attractive, but unconventionally so.

 

The game also reaffirmed that I've always had a faible for small, but very intrinsically detailed game world. You move around along a single street and can enter five or so buildings, but they're all so wonderfully detailed and full of life that it defies the numbers game of making everything bigger.

 

This is particularly noticeable with its DLC, which I had access to for some reason (maybe a late-night purchase when it was on sale some years ago). Here you're playing as a longtime side character from the series and are tasked to keep the Record Store in order while also hosting a radio show, which you do from a side room in said store. So everything happens inside that building and its three rooms, but you play through four days, one for every season, and the decor always switches around. Combined with some funny or tragic calls you receive over the radio, some oddly engaging dating-app stuff and a few cool callbacks to earlier games, this was a surprisingly enjoyable 'experiment'. Also with, fittingly, some really good music choices, which the main game didn't quite pull off as convincingly.