Life is Strange: True Colors is a game all about grief, yet its world and characters never feel shackled by it. The opening chapter concludes with Gabe Chen losing his life, and our protagonist Alex is left without an older sibling she’d hoped would be her guiding light in a new town she knows nothing about. He was her fresh start, and this familial connection is selfishly torn away like everything else in her life. Now she’s alone, forced to reconcile with this loss and find purpose in an existence that now feels meaningless. Our heroine is lost and distraught, yet she continues to push forward in spite of the world working against her.
It’s a beautiful message, and True Colors never dwells on sadness or allows melancholy to define its overall thematic impact. This is an overbearingly happy experience, with characters smiling as they grow closer to one another and come to realise that the relaxing town of Haven Springs is a wonderful place, regardless of how many sinister secrets await beneath its whimsical exterior. As the narrative draws to a close, Alex can choose to travel the world with her partner or hunker down in the mountains of Colorado. Both decisions are perfectly valid, and Alex being cheered on by the brother she so desperately wants to be reunited with helps make this ultimatum all the more powerful.
The final moments of the game are some of the most intimate I’ve ever experienced in the medium, partly because they resonate in such a raw, personal way. For context - I lost my brother to cancer earlier this year, and the age gap was similar to the one between Alex and Gabe. I was the younger sister having an older brother snatched away from me far too soon, and I still haven’t gotten over it. Neither has Alex, but she keeps moving forward in service of his memory, knowing he’d hate for grief and sadness to become an inescapable part of her everyday life. Throughout the game’s five chapters we see her smile, laugh, find love, and overcome her grief while still remembering those she’s lost, and that’s a powerful message that people like me need to hear. I never got to say goodbye to my brother either, certainly not in the way I’d hoped for, so True Colors provided a way to experience that exchange no matter how cheesy or convenient it might seem.
After I had forgiven Jed for trying to murder me (which is totally the wrong way to make that decision) and also forgiven Ryan for being a coward and siding with his homicidal father, I found myself on the rooftop of Alex’s apartment sitting on the same rickety chairs she and Gabe shared a drink on months earlier. The beer cans from their reunion remain, remnants of stale alcohol stewing inside the metal with our heroine too afraid to move them in case she damages one of the few modern memories of her brother she has. Who can blame her? It's such a small, sentimental thing, but it’s these habits that keep us human, holding it together in the face of adversity no matter how much we’d love to break down and retreat from everything.
All of a sudden Alex starts talking to herself, clearly addressing somebody who isn’t really there. As she turns to her right, the camera cuts to the opposite chair and there Gabe sits, smiling back at his sister like the accident never even happened. This moment stopped me in my tracks, all of a sudden I had a few precious minutes with someone I lost, to ruminate over what could have been in the face of my own grief. Gabe isn’t really here, it’s all a figment of Alex’s imagination, but that doesn’t matter because True Colors does a tremendous job of helping it all feel real. Alex begins asking for advice, telling Gabe to run down the possibilities that await her in the future and how all of the decisions she’s made in the past month or so have carved a path forward she can look forward to walking.
His tone is sombre yet optimistic, acknowledging Alex’s grief as she declares that the only thing she wants is to have her big brother back, but that isn’t going to happen - and Gabe makes it clear that he’s gone forever, but can still be her guiding light from the heavens as she lives her life without stopping to let grief slow her down. Gabe teases a future where she leaves Haven Springs behind, establishing herself as a professional musician while the loved ones she met in this idyllic little town cheer her on. Or she can choose to stay, working amidst the local businesses as she ages alongside the town that wasn’t afraid to take her in and carve her into the woman she’s always wanted to be. In these visions we see people stay while others leave, mimicking our own reality and how things change, friends leave, and life doesn’t stop for anybody. It’s both happy and sad at the same time, yet Gabe encourages Alex to treasure the positives without letting the weaker moments define who she wants to be. Grief can do that to a person, it can swallow them up and make them hateful, unwilling to trust people because life will just turn around and take them away.
As the rundown concludes, we’re brought back to the present and Alex is asked to make one final decision. Like I said earlier, both of these options are valid, and I adore how Life is Strange: True Colors doesn’t present an ending where we’re forced to pursue a selfish option in exchange for our own happiness, or a heartbreaking one defined by nothing but sadness. After everything she’s been through, Alex is presented with a life she absolutely deserves, and the one person she lost who could justify that self acceptance is right here along with her offering a tender push in the right direction. Once the choice is made, Alex turns to the chair once again with a smile on her face, but Gabe isn’t there anymore. He’s gone, he always was, but now Alex has the drive to move forward and celebrate everything he stood for and wanted her to be. Their past was defined by trauma, but now their future can be defined by triumph.
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We often gravitate towards media we can relate to. Games, music, film, television, and literature let us project ourselves onto characters and stories that mimic reality while maintaining an understandable distance from our own existence. Life is Strange: True Colors struck a chord in that regard like nothing else before, allowing me to say goodbye to my late brother and recognise how important he was to me and so many others in the world. Nothing will bring him back, and I miss him everyday, but much like Gabe Chen, he had an unmistakable impact on those around him and made memories that will be treasured forever. I don’t have a rooftop to sit on, but I’ll be raising a beer in your name tonight.