Life is Strange: True Colours

 And that's why I love you

I have a very interesting relationship with Life is Strange, DONTNOD's claim to fame. If by 'interesting relationship' you mean a guilty-like seeped in waves of mediocrity that has me forever torn between wanting to go back to it and wanting to delete it from my memory banks. I think I've touched on it before, but I honestly couldn't impart my full opinion on LIS in an orderly fashion unless I literally did a full blown episode by episode breakdown to show you the waves of my sanity slowly melting away as the series went on. Although to be brief, I was intrigued by the premise and found the characters to be fine at the very start, as the episodes went on the premise slowly opened up but clearly fell by the wayside in favour of characterisation which bordered on trite at times, and that final episode was a total degradation of any sort of coherent narrative when it comes to the premise, making it abundantly clear that the team had no idea what they were doing when they started and the whole 'mystery' they proposed in episode 1 was made on ill faith. But I still like it.

Maybe it's the Stockholm effect. I was with the game episode by episode for so very long that after the fact I can't imagine my life without it, if I played it any longer I'd start wearing beanies and develop a music taste informed solely by bands who make so few sales that they have to live out of their touring bus. (The second they can afford a motel room they're dead to me!)Whatever the case I can't exactly say that LIS is a bad game, because I actually think it was very competently made and actually proposed some pretty cool narrative concepts at times that I don't regret going through. I just think the team dropped the ball in the home stretch and thus sort of sullied the memory in doing so, at least in my mind. I still think back to the game fondly, however, and when I see a new game on the horizon I'll take the time to give it a good 'ol look.

And yet somehow I didn't get around to playing 'Before the Storm' or even the dully named 'Life is Strange 2'. (You know, the one which shared neither any characters nor any creative threads with the first title and thus did not at all earn the moniker '2'? Didn't play that game.) So I guess my lingering good will and fond memories didn't extend to any degree where it counts, but luckily for DONTNOD I appear to be the anomaly amidst their fans, because they're brand of game development seems to be treating them well. In the wake of the oversaturation and subsequent death of Telltale games ("Do you believe in the resurrection, Latavious?") DONTNOD became the de facto seneschals over all things choice-based story game related, and though every single fibre of their being is owed to the path paved by The Walking Dead Telltale game, we look now to them for keeping the genre alive. Funny how life works out sometimes, isn't it?

Thus I'll admit it's in the pursuit of seeing the state of the choice-based story genre which I used to invest so much in that I've tuned onto the wavelength of this 'Life is Strange: True Colours' game in the hopes that it can be all I wanted the original to be. And as a dropped off fan of this series, I'll say that the team have managed to get me back through the door and interested; I want to know what's going on and am willing to actually play the game in order to find out. (That's right, DONTNOD, I tried to get out but you kept pulling me back in; bully for you!) I see genuine potential in what we've seen so far and think that both the overall story and individual set pieces could be simply insane if the team take as full advantage of this as I know they want to. 

True Colours follows Alex Chen, another teenage girl imbued with otherworldly abilities that will absolutely not got explained by the otherend of this game. (At least the storytellers might be smart enough not to tease about the mystery this time) And what is this ability, you ask? Max from the first game could freakin' turn back time to a limit degree, if she had a little more ambition to her should could have been an S-tier Stand user! Well this Alex character has the superpower of Empathy- and what? No it's not that stupid, she has the ability to see the 'aura' of those around her (represented in bubbles of different colours. Get it?) and thus ascertain the emotions that they are feeling at any given time. She sees this as a 'curse' and it- No wait, I'm sorry that is just basic empathy and a decent perception for reading others turned into a superpower... Yeah, on paper this is a hard sell.

In actuality Alex is looking into the truth behind her brother's apparently accidental death, which serves as the impetus to learn her power as she sees the secrets that others want to keep quiet. The interesting part, and something that has me reeling at the possibilities, is where she taps into the more 'empath' parts of her power and can feed extreme emotions in order to unravel them. One example we saw was of a woman fraught with anger, whom Alex 'bewitched' and made her emotion so powerful that is was actually manipulating and effecting reality around her, something which the protagonist commented could be dangerous enough to kill her! That's actually a ripe tool for some interactive story telling elements where you can let players really enter the deepest emotions of those around you and swim around their worlds, it makes for a decently unique and fecund storytelling opportunity that the team have lined up for themselves.

Of course, this new DONTNOD protagonist wouldn't be worth their salt if it weren't for the 'hipter' edge that they are contractually obligated to conjure up, and so this teenager also doubles as a singer, and her key art even features her with headphones around her neck and is that a flannel shirt I see teased in the background? What I'm saying is, prepare for a an almost oppressively obscure smattering of licenced indie songs in the soundtrack full to the brim of- wait, they licenced Radiohead? Seriously? Well damn, guys, now I can't even make the hipster jokes anymore, they're an actually established band! They at the very least better be a slew of characters with painfully outdated 'young people' jargon in their lexicon to rival the heights of 'hella girl' Chloe Price.

Apparently this is the brand new venture for the award winning Life is Strange formula, and I have to say I'm liking what I'm seeing. The premise seems promising, the world looks pretty and the soundtrack has Radiohead, what else could you want? Of course, Square decided to sully this announcement with the reveal of a 'remaster' for Life is Strange 1, which I'm not going to lie looks a little gross. How does 'remastering' the look of that game, which could certain use a visual improvement, evolve into giving the characters too much makeup? I'm being serious, Max looks like she's bathing in eyeliner before every scene, as though her entire contrived 'indie artist' personality wasn't already enough. Everyone else takes it a little easier with the face paint, but they're still just so shiny. Where went the subtlety and soft colours of the original design ethos, which matched the mellow soundtrack and the sleepy no-where-America town of Arcadia Bay? And why does Max looks like she's a box of talcum powder away from auditioning at the circus? (Why they gotta do my main girl like that?) Ah well, the new game still looks- £50 for preorder? Wow- sorry, my eyes were watering for a moment there. Full retail price, huh? Yep- that's totally fine. (Oof, that's gonna hurt the ol' wallet)