Sunday, July 6, 2025

I'm 5 hours into "Life is Strange: True Colors" and things are getting very emotional

Can I just go live here?

What a stunning game is Life is Strange: True Colors. I love everything about it. I'm five hours into it and I just reached Chapter 3. I discovered there's a run button, but who wants to hurry through this beautiful world? I'm totally enjoying walking through the fictional Colorado town of Haven Springs.

These aren't the flowers you're looking for...
And going from Chapter 2 to Chapter 3 I also noticed there were lots of optional quests I could have done. But I didn't know they existed. Which means I didn't even explore enough! Now, I do blame the game for that, because there's ANOTHER button that lets Alex use her powers on people, but this was never tutorialized. Because most of the time, the game automatically shows when it's possible to use your power, except not for these optional quests (like finding a man's lost dog, or helping out a birdwatcher in the park).

I can't even make decisions in real life, so why do I play games like this?

As far as the story goes, something unexpectedly tragic happened, so now it's a month later and I'm trying to uncover a conspiracy behind that accident. Meanwhile I'm going around helping people out, even in little things like playing a student's favorite song on the jukebox while she's studying in the bar. It's very hard hitting the brake like that on the main story. I'm not really a completionist like that, I just don't think it's fair that the chapter summaries are almost "blaming" me like "you didn't help so and so" when I didn't even realize those options were there to begin with!

Let's kick some foosball butt!

I really like all these characters, even taking pity on some of the more "disturbed" ones, once you use your power on them and figure out what's really going on. Of course now I'm starting to wonder whether it's possible for someone to totally fool Alex regarding their emotions, or if her powers are foolproof. Perhaps I'm thinking too much about it. Thankfully sometimes there are some mini-games to take your mind off it all, like playing foosball, the jukebox game (a version of Twenty Questions) or simply picking out another outfit to wear (I quite enjoyed that option in Crown and Pawns: Kingdom of Deceit as well...

You can even choose Alex's outfit for the day!

I've played through some very tense scenes, several funny ones, but also quite scary ones. The one that struck me most is helping out someone suffering from dementia. When Alex sees the world through that person's eyes when she connects with them, that's an amazing piece of cinematography. But I also quite enjoyed figuring out how to help them remember everything. Still, many decisions you have to make feel like the game is twisting a knife in your heart. So, I'm just trying to play the game being as honest as I can.

Really wondering what the second half of the game has in store!

You can find Life is Strange: True Colors on Steam!