The Germans probably have a word for Life is Strange: True Colors, but I don’t. Like every game in the series, grief and pain are at the forefront. Our protagonist Alex Chen has been tossed around the foster care system and views her power as an Empath - literally projecting and absorbing emotions, often with no control over them - as more of a curse. She finally settles in Haven Springs in the hopes of starting a new life, only for her brother Gabe to be killed in a tragic accident she feels at least partially responsible for. Despite all this sadness, Life is Strange: True Colors is the happiest game of the year.
Part of this is down to leading light Alex Chen. She’s the most vibrant character gaming has seen in a long time, and the game embraces her vulnerability and emotional wounds perfectly. She is tender and gentle, but also funny, shy, brave, resolute, silly, intelligent, and endlessly relatable. I adore Life is Strange as a series, and I still would place the original over True Colors by a hair, but Alex underlines how tropey some of the previous characters have truly been, and this is part of why she exceeds them.
Life is Strange games want to make you cry. They earn this right with compelling storylines, complex themes, and characters you root for despite the occasionally cringe dialogue, but it still feels like a deliberate, planned assault on your tear ducts. In True Colors, you’re free to cry if you want to, but the game is far more concerned with making you smile.
The game is never really about Gabe. The plot is pushed forward first by his death, then by the town’s grief, then by the mystery that led to his demise, but throughout it all, Alex is the focus. Gabe, and thoughts of him, remain a huge part of her life and act as a throughline for the overall narrative message, but she is much, much more than that girl whose brother died. She’s much more than that girl with superpowers too - that Alex doesn’t regard her power as a power gives her far more freedom to be a real, grounded character. She’s able explore her grief in her own ways; sometimes with anger, sometimes with sadness, and sometimes with foosball. Because the game has no intentions of deliberately making you cry, it is much more comfortable letting Alex be happy, despite everything.
I am a walking cliche - I listened to Taylor Swift’s Red album on repeat after my first major break-up. We’d been going out for over three years, but the break-up was not sudden. I picked Red particularly for All Too Well, The Moment I Knew, I Almost Do, Sad Beautiful Tragic, and other melancholic musings, but ended up mainly listening to the far more upbeat We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together, Starlight, 22, and Red. True Colors reminds me of listening to Taylor Swift back then.
The musical connection is fitting, since music is a key aspect of True Colors’ joy. There are several zen moments in the game where you can sit and chill, just taking in the music. Our own Jade King even spoke to Julia Stone, the artist behind these moments, but music is everywhere throughout True Colors. In the first chapter, Gabe gets you the Mechanical Bull vinyl and you can rock out to Kings of Leon’s Don't Matter for basically the whole track. Alex also has a specific voice actor for her singing voice, bedroom lo-fi artist mxmtoon, who performs Creep and a handful of other tunes throughout the game. One of these moments is a live performance of Blister in the Sun, which is easily the most endearing three minutes in a video game this year for Alex’s performance, the way the game commits to letting loose, and the framing both before and after it.
I’ve already spent an entirely separate article praising the game’s depiction of Alex as canonically bisexual rather than playersexual with no attraction aside from that which you thrust upon her, but it bears repeating that the game’s embrace of Alex’s queerness, quirkiness, and loving heart is another cornerstone of what makes it so special and heartfelt. This is aided by your romantic options, Ryan and Steph, and the way the game slowly builds a flirtatious yet deep connection between all three of you, rather than making you jump through hoops to lock in your choices.
There's also a whole LARP session around town that embraces the fact you are playing a video game rather than participating in a story, and maintains the upbeat and warm tone the rest of the game enjoys, even if fragments of the pain and suffering everyone has had to endure can occasionally pierce through the day.
Life is Strange: True Colors is beautiful, heartbreaking, heartfelt, hilarious, and gorgeous. It's Taylor Swift on repeat. It's magical.