Life is Strange test: True Colors offers the license its most beautiful palette of emotions

Did the world need a new Life is Strange ? Ask the insensitive, embittered just good at banging his fist on his desk when he comes across stronger than him on Warzone, and you will not claim your remainder. Ask the esthete; the player who subscribes to the local arthouse cinema, the one who wears quotes from Jack Kerouac slung over his shoulder, and the response is already likely to be warmer. Or just ask me. I will answer you with a prose that poets envy me: “Well yeah, serious. »

Life is Strange test: True Colors offers the license its most beautiful palette of emotions View PriceRead ConclusionLife Is Strange: True Colors

Finally expressive characters
Actors and actresses inhabited by their role
Very nice balance between drama and lightness of tone
The audacity of the 3rd chapter

A plot that loses its interest over time
We would have liked to explore more Haven Springs
… which is expensive on the bill (60€)

Life is Strange: True Colors has been tested on PC and Switch using code provided by the publisher. It will be available September 10 on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and December 7 on Nintendo Switch for €59,99.

Call me a teenager addicted to teen movies if you want. I will continue to defend Life is Strange with a knife between my teeth. What do you want if all I need is a tracking shot stuffed with lens flares on a dandelion, three moldy acoustic guitar arpeggios and characters straight out of an M6 TV movie to mist my eyes. All that to say that I was not far from vagal discomfort when Square Enix formalized the release of a new opus at my license-doudou.

But Dontnod having moved on, it's up to Deck Nine to carry on the Life is Strange legacy. Already at the helm of the spin-off Before The Storm released in 2017, the studio based in Westminster, Colorado, has apparently benefited from a much more comfortable financial base to design Life is Strange: True Colors. To put it another way: it is in its clothes of light that this new episode presents itself to us.

In the shadow of the great Chen

Alex is euphoric. And nervous, too. It has been 8 years since she and her brother Gabe were separated. Now more accustomed to the coldness of foster families and orphanages than to fraternal embraces, she does not know how to envisage her reunion with the man who seems to have built a very quiet little life in Haven Springs, Colorado. The first choice that Life is Strange: True Colors offers us is indicative of the unease. Should we fall into the arms of the brother, or solemnly shake his hand?

Fortunately, Gabe is naturally expansive. In fact, it's even hard not to like it. You know that talkative, handsome, helpful, handy guy everyone loves? Suffice to say that Alex could not have come at a better time to put her at ease and make her mark in this typically American small town “where everyone knows each other”. And needless to say that after the adolescence she has just passed, the young woman would really need to finally feel at home.

He is the big brother; the mainstay of the Haven Springs community. The always attentive bartender and the caring boyfriend. Gabe is a light, but barely 24 hours after Alex joins him, he loses his life in a tragic accident.

Take up the torch, rise to the occasion. Honor the memories. The rest of Alex's story could have been limited to that. But she has a secret. A gift, in fact, as is the case with all the protagonists of Life is Strange. She is hyperempathetic, and can read other people's emotions like an open book. So when she notices Gabe's old rival getting scared stiff during his funeral wake, Alex begins to doubt his brother's death was accidental.

Le sang de l'Haven

“I can see your halo” sang Queen B 13 years ago (ouch). Well for Alex, it's the same. As soon as someone lets themselves be overwhelmed by their emotions, the young woman can interpret them thanks to a colored aura that surrounds them (red for anger, purple for fear, blue for sadness, gold for joy). A visual signal for the player, who can then use Alex's power to hear the thoughts of his interlocutor.

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Interactions which, sometimes, can open up new dialogue options, or simply give a little more depth to the Haven Springs extras. However, it is difficult to define the real limits of the "gift" of Alex, who can also analyze certain objects to discover their past. But after all, the young woman doesn't understand much about it either. She just knows that, thanks to this, she can influence others and, perhaps, find out the truth about Gabe's death.

The scenario will therefore revolve around the accident, and the investigation that Alex will lead with Ryan (Gabe's best friend) and Steph (seen in Before The Storm) to shed light on the events. . And as its "narrative game" label makes clear, all of this is essentially going to be done via multiple-choice dialogue.

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In his quest for the truth, Alex can count on Steph and Ryan to support him.

The color of people who lie

In terms of structure, Life is Strange: True Colors deviates generously from the road trip concocted by Dontnod in Life is Strange 2. Haven Springs will be your only anchor point, but you will always have one opportunity per chapter to wander there "freely". . I use quotation marks because you will quickly realize that very few places are actually explorable. And anyway, NPCs have very limited routines that make them look more like Truman Show puppets than flesh-and-blood neighbors. Whatever; we are not in an open world game.

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As the game reminds us at kickoff, Life is Strange: True Colors adapts to the choices of the person standing in front of the screen. An invitation to experiment, and especially the promise of multiple endings (the game has 6) which encourages the relentless to restart a game to approach things from a different angle. Moreover, True Colors makes it possible to return at leisure to any scene of any chapter (and to create a new backup on occasion) to quickly explore different possibilities.

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Some choices are more important than others in storylines.

Yes, because I have so far overlooked something important about True Colors. Unlike all previous installments in the series, this is an entire game. Understand that it is no longer divided into episodes…well, really? I admit that I expected something more linear after the statements of Square Enix. Replace the term "episode" with "chapter", and that's the job. In the end, Life is Strange: True Colors offers a cutting identical to any other opus of the saga. The only difference is that all chapter episodes are unlocked when the game is launched. And this pirouette allows Square Enix to charge €59,99 for it compared to €40 for the latest one.

What is the Nintendo Switch version?

Life is Strange: True Colors has undergone quite a facelift to be able to run on the Nintendo hybrid console. Deck Nine Games has optimized every aspect of its game to achieve this feat... And by "optimize", we must of course understand that the visual quality has been significantly reduced. But let's say it right away, the adventures of Alex Chen are perfectly playable on Switch. No big slowdowns or impromptu crashes to report during our playing time. Some drops in framerate are unfortunately observable at times.

However, almost all sets suffer from extremely severe aliasing. The number of polygons has been reduced on many elements, so that small objects and vegetation sometimes look like a real mush of pixels. For their part, the main characters are doing much better with their relatively convincing modeling. Impossible to say the same for the PnJs in the background whose animations are as choppy as they are minimalist. Outdoor environments are the worst off and can quickly hurt your eyes. Wandering the streets of Haven Springs isn't necessarily fun. Artistically, the game is relatively colorful with some nice lighting.

In terms of functionality, let's highlight the use of HD vibrations when Alex comes into contact with a person. Touch controls are put to use on very rare occasions. Also count 20 GB to accommodate Life is Strange: True Colors on your Switch.

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It is clearly not advisable to dwell on the details as the textures seem basic on Switch

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Quite pleasant interiors on Switch and the characters have been relatively spared

Coloradollywood

But let me play devil's advocate and defend the publisher's position. It's a fact, Life is Strange: True Colors is the most expensive episode of the license. Fully dubbed in English (exceptional), Spanish (very good) and German, the game benefits above all from the contribution of motion capture for its protagonists. And believe me when I say it's a game-changer, emotionally.

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Alex is a moving character.

Frankly, I don't remember being pushed around like this by virtual characters since The Last of Us Part II. The movement of the eyes, the quiver of a lip, the frown. Everything is overwhelmingly sincere. Gone are the days when extras were as impassive as a police officer to whom you promise you've only had one drink (and it was a half, too). There we talk. There we are offered acting, real. Authentic interpretations of characters who scream, suffer, laugh, whine until they want to die. And in the same way that we all know how to tell the difference between an actor who hides and an artist inhabited by his character, we are transported here to Haven Springs in the wake of the emotions of its inhabitants.

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The characters are all compelling.

Perhaps not as poignant as the Diaz Brothers' run through Trump's America was, the story of True Colors engulfs us in the maturity of its writing. Under its thin veneer of fanfic for teens, the title of Deck Nine regularly touches sensitive chords. Thanks to the fervor of its actors, once again, but also by having the decency not to do too much. There are moments that are very old-fashioned − it's the game −, or too referenced (Alex playing a pop hit on the guitar after losing a loved one, good…), but above all exchanges of great naturalness and a beautiful nuance on subjects such as fatherhood, the sense of responsibility or letting go.

Always cinematic, Life is Strange: True Colors goes to great lengths to mimic the aesthetics of low-budget independent films presented at Tribeca or the Sundance Festival. The framing is impeccable, the lighting perfectly underlines the moods of the protagonists and the folk laments in the background make us want to swap the suit and tie for a good old lumberjack shirt, extra 3-year-old beard and colored boots cream.

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In this regard, we can cite an original soundtrack composed by Angus & Julia Stone, and a ton of licensed music that has its share of small groups that are rising like Radiohead, Metronomy, Kings of Leon or Phoebe Bridgers. In short, a price spike, of course, but a fairly spectacular move upmarket when compared to Life is Strange: Before The Storm.

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Life is Strange: True Colors, l'avis de JVFR

We don't take the same ones, and we start again? Let's be honest: we knew in advance that Life is Strange: True Colors would not revolutionize the formula. But, in the same way that there are three million rogue-like-deck-builders, or games that imagine they will reinvent the wheel with a time loop concept, there is room for purely narrative titles.

And if that's your thing, rest assured that Life is Strange: True Colors fulfills its contract to the letter. Without changing anything, or very little, to the recipe imagined by Dontnod six years ago, the Deck Nine studio offers the license its most balanced opus.

Ideally paced, brilliantly animated and embodied by moving actors and actresses, this new spin-off synthesizes in itself what Life is Strange is all about. Very personal stories, which resonate (or not) in contact with the experience of the person holding the controller, and which encourage us to question things that we too often get into the habit of repressing.

It will cost you a little more than a psych session, but unlike life, you will have the possibility here of modifying your choices to discover new outcomes. So many new things to tell your therapist. Thank you Deck Nine!

Life Is Strange: True Colors

Life is Strange: True Colors is perhaps the best thing that could happen to the license. More beautiful, more sensitive, more authentic and thoughtful than the previous opuses, this new spin-off denies nothing of the legacy left by Dontnod. On the contrary, it sublimates it.