McKenna Frazzini

I gave this game a generous 3/5 and it breaks my heart to do it. I have been a huge fan of Life is Strange since the first game and absolutely loved the second with Daniel and Sean. I was stoked to play True Colors but even for this game I kept my expectations low and was still disappointed. The graphics have obviously tremendously improved since the last games and the setting was beautiful (was even excited for it to take place in the state I grew up in). I was personally excited for the main protagonist to have empathic powers but felt super underwhelmed by how they ended up being executed in the game. The game in general felt super rushed which could have played a part in why I hated the ending so much- I was expecting at least one or two more chapters after because of how insignificant I felt the last choice for the player to make was. LIS is notorious for having the last decision in the game feel so impossible to make or at the very least notorious for having a 50/50 split in choice statistics for the last decision because of how impactful both choices feel. The last decision in True Colors felt incredibly insignificant and felt like either choice didn’t really matter regardless of the rest of the choices you made in the game. Warning: SPOILERS!! The last choice being to essentially travel or to stay in the town you’re at…? My thought process was “Alex could do both at any literally any time?” The majority of the choices in the game felt easy to make as they felt either unimportant or obvious which one to choose-which was disappointing, usually I’m sitting in front of my TV for 5 minutes straight debating to myself with every other LIS game. I also didn’t necessarily understand what lesson the game was trying to get across as there were tons of different themes being thrown around but not exactly wrapped up well. The events in the game were tragic but I think the themes could have been expressed so differently to make me actually care about them. I also loved all the characters and think they were written really well, the dialogue felt natural and realistic though I still somehow felt so disconnected from this story. I also think neither of Alex’s love interests made sense. I didn’t feel any natural chemistry between her and Ryan nor her and Steph (though I obviously had to go the Steph route). It also just felt random and irrelevant to the story, they all definitely felt more like friends than love interests. Lastly, I also was sad to see that Steph made absolutely no reference to Chloe or any of the characters in the first Life is Strange, even the second game referenced characters from the first game. (Shoutout David!) Overall this game was hugely disappointing for me, usually LIS games can make me sob like a baby and make me want to force my friends to play the games so I can talk to them about it, but I ended True Colors feeling nothing at all and it’s heartbreaking for me to not care about the story at all because I really wanted to and really tried to have an open mind to it. I’m sure if someone had never played any of the LIS games before they would probably have enjoyed it a lot more than I did but I fell in love with the LIS games for the hard and impactful decisions, the lengthy gameplay, being able to explore with my character, having my characters powers actually have significant impact, and having such a beautiful story to be attached to. True Colors had none of that and I would have absolutely waited for a price drop on this game but I just couldn’t help but support them regardless.