Adventure Gamers - Forums

From interviews and their business moves (publicly stating they’ve turned down several buyouts) it’s fairly evident DontNod want to retain their independence and focus on building IPs they own. Since Square Enix has the rights to Life is Strange, they’ve moved on from it (for now). DontNod has said they haven’t written off returning to the series at some point, though.

Speculating, I also think the decline in sales and extremely mixed fan reaction to LiS2 probably led Square Enix to move away from DN as stewards of the franchise. The remastered collections almost feel like a clean break from DN—a way to continue the long tail sales of LiS1 and no longer profit share with them. Especially since, from the look of the trailer, it’s not much of a graphical change at all. But again, that’s just the impression I get.

At any rate with how good True Colors is turning out (just finished chapter 3) I’m happy with Deck Nine helming Life is Strange from here on out. My only complaint is I wish the powers were a bigger factor in problem solving and it was a bit more challenging. There were actually some puzzles in LiS 1 that made you think, not so much in True Colors. Still having a lot of fun with it, though.

Finished playing True Colors and overall I had a great time with it. All the aspects I praised before still stand. It’s a really polished game and aspects of it like the dialogue, secondary cast and animation even exceed the first game. The mystery at the core of True Colors is interesting but doesn’t quite live up to the original Life is Strange. Which had more going for it in terms of supernatural intrigue I.E ghost deer, unexplained weather events, premonitions, etc.

The powers Alex has in true colors do impact the plot in interesting ways, mostly by adding extra depth and color (heh) to the characterization of Alex and the townsfolk of Haven Springs. The ending was appropriately dramatic and satisfying. At this point I’m 100% okay with Deck Nine continuing to helm the franchise.

The Good:
Alex is a good protag
Haven Spring’s residents are rendered in 3 dimensions, likable and flawed all the same
Environments look gorgeous
Return to a focus on mystery & personal drama
Varied bits of gameplay in the form of mini-games & light puzzling
Empath powers add an interesting dimension to choice & consequence
Confident slow build that thoroughly fleshes out secondary cast
Cool soundtrack
Semi open-ended design allows for cool side interactions.
Strong and well-earned emotional conclusion.

The Bad:
Puts the core mystery on the back burner for too long sometimes.
Puzzles are too simple, even by the series standard, don’t incorporate powers enough.
Performance on the console versions seems to be somewhat of an issue.
Some of parts of the last chapter feel a bit too similar to LiS 1 IMO.
(not really a spoiler but just in case)

The Mixed:
Slow pace helps character writing but hurts the larger mystery plot to an exent.
Music is good but some of the choices in licensed songs are a bit too “on the nose.”
Alex’s “relaxation monologues” are well written but they’re almost too eloquent to feel like natural thoughts.

I’d give it like an 8.3/10, my favorite in the series under the first game. Congrats to Deck Nine on a job well done.

Good as a visual novel-style experience. Complete failure as an adventure game.

The gameplay reminded me mostly about those “hidden objects” games. You walk around a location, try to find everything interactable, and that’s it. There’s literally nothing that deserves to be called a puzzle - well, a single instance at the beginning where you have to remember the order of two characters. That’s as tough as it gets through the entirety of the game. Nearly at any other point Alex quite readily tells you what to do (“this key must open this lock!”), even when it’s the only choice available anyway.

A bit of an exception is one chapter that incorporates very, very, very basic jRPG style “combat” (it’s pretend combat). That offers a tiny bit of a gameplay in that specific sense ... but even that’s insultingly easy (you collect all these scrolls to heal and whatnot and absolutely do not need any of them).

As for the story and immersion ... even that I found slightly disappointing. As others have said, it just doesn’t live up to LiS (original), despite (or because of?) the advantages of having one full release ... that hypothetically offered so much more options to develop plot and characters instead of that episodic-stop-go approach of LiS. And yet they chose to stick to that artificially, even when it sabotaged pacing, and gave a rather choppy impression to the story telling.
It doesn’t help that the core mystery is so trite. I really thought that there’d be some twist to it, but evil corporation does evil things (not even a THAT evil thing, as far as those things go) for basic greed/corruption reasons isn’t very gripping.

Ever heard of stuff like the Bhopal disaster? Reality writes more dire plots than this game offered. I just kept waiting for there to be something else to it, but there isn’t.

The superpowers Alex has I find interesting, yet also tricky to use in an adventure game. Having to ability to read emotions is great to get to know characters and their state of mind, but what else are you going to do with it?
I did at the beginning expect some cliche uses of that power:
so for example you’d have to deliberately make someone angry to get them to move away from somewhere; or once it turns out that Alex can tap into other people’s emotions that maybe she’d need to find someone angry to be able to bash through a door ...
You know, a few REAL OBVIOUS uses of the power. But there’s nothing like it in the game; it’s all just “listen to emotions”.

I’d also from a writing-perspective criticize that the powers seem to very much do whatever is convenient for the plot. First it’s noting emotions, then somehow that also taps into thoughts, and then memories, and then some objects, and then some vaguely other stuff too?! Okay, it’s sorta implied you develop through the game and it make sense that powers would grow stronger and perhaps more variable but it feels unstructured and very much like an afterthought.

The ending (epilogue, not the climax) also kinda gave a weird “ok you got superpowers and used them for good so logically you are now doing absolutely nothing with them for the rest of your life” conclusion, which to me feels like the writers didn’t care about the implication of those powers in the first place outside of the specific purposes in the story.

Characters and visuals were fine though, and I love the attention to details. I know there’s some bugs but whatever they are I haven’t really found them (I did have a crash though and screw that stupid auto-save feature that doesn’t let me skip dialogues or cut scenes I have already seen).

Anyway. Play it for a nice little story with nice characters. But don’t expect gameplay, and don’t expect it to be the greatest thing since sliced cheese. Unfortunately, it just doesn’t manage to live up to the first LiS.