In June 2008 a small game development company called Dontnod Entertainment started up in France. In 2013 they went on to develop a game called Remember Me. However, this is not how they’d be known. The team, needing to recover from the financial and critical failures of their previous game, teamed up with Square Enix Europe to release a small indie game, in episodic formats like Telltale Games, to release Life Is Strange.
The game is centred around Max Caulfield, a college student in small-town Arcadia Bay, who can rewind time and her adventures with an old friend of hers, Chloe Price. The game dealt with college life and topics that you don’t usually see in video games today. Receiving positive reviews around, and becoming one of my personal favourites, the game successfully captured a nostalgic view of small-town life in a time where social media was still on the rise…although through a lot of cringe-worthy dialogue, but you can’t blame them for trying as it still got them a lot of success in telling a unique coming-of-age story.
The success of Life Is Strange led Square Enix to ask Deck Nine Games, a small company in Colorado to develop a prequel to the game, Life Is Strange: Before The Storm. This time centred around Chloe and her relationship with Rachel Amber, 3 years before the events of the first game, also taking place in Arcadia Bay. The game also received critical praise with Episode 2: Brave New World called one of the greatest episodes in the series. A bonus episode linked the 2 games with an emotional journey to the childhoods of Max and Chloe. No special powers existed this time around, but, you could use Chloe’s wit and sarcasm, dubbed “backtalk” as a high risk, high reward system to progress through the story.
While Before The Storm was in development, Dontnod Entertainment started working on the next game in the franchise, Life Is Strange 2. Life Is Strange 2 follows the story of 2 Hispanic-American brothers, Sean and Daniel Diaz, on the run from police across the West Coast after an incident causes them to go on the run. The special power in this game: Telekinesis. While dealing with supernatural elements, the game was also very grounded in reality with commentary on social issues like racism and bigotry. With this game, we saw the DLC The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit which introduces us to the atmosphere of the game. The DLC is set around Chris Eriksen who dreams of adventure. It recreates childhood nostalgia like how the first game created nostalgia and also deals with social issues like alcoholism and grief.
And now we see Life Is Strange: True Colours. Again, developed by Deck Nine Games. It will follow Alex Chen, returning to Haven Springs, wanting to solve her brother’s murder, with her powers of psychic empathy, which will allow her to read emotions and sympathise with characters, comforting them and progressing the story through further character development. This game will be the first in the franchise to not follow the episodic format and we will instead get a full, standard game on release. The game will still contain 5 chapters, similar to the episodic format, for those who would like to play the game in smaller segments. I am sad that the episodic format is leaving, however, I do appreciate that the game is still divided into chapters. Will this work well? I’m sure it will. Many franchise fans liked the episodic splits for character growth and story development and chapters will have the same goals and similar pace. How well-paced it will be will depend on the lead writer Felice Kuan who plans to make Alex grow and create self-acceptance in a character.
With the release of True Colours we will also get remasters of Life Is Strange 1 and Before The Storm (necessary? Not really, but it can bring in new audiences which is good). The remasters will fix issues such as lip-synching, improved character models and refined gameplay. There will also be a DLC called Wavelengths. This will be a prequel bonus episode to True Colours which will centre around Steph Gingrich, a character from Before The Storm and will be some background into her character and how she falls into True Colours.
The Life Is Strange franchise certainly is one that has come a long way, from small beginnings to becoming a major franchise in the story focused, single-player world of video games, using superpowers and social commentary to tell stories and make characters that we as an audience can enjoy, relate to, and think about in ways we may have not considered. The future seems bright and I, being a big fan, cannot wait to play True Colours and where the future of the franchise leads. Dontnod seems to have moved on from the franchise with other story driven games like Tell Me Why so Square Enix may leave future projects to Deck Nine Games, however Dontnod may return for further sequels. Whatever the future holds, I will be watching with great interest and support.
Life Is Strange: True Colours will release on 10 September 2021 on Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 4 and 5, Nintendo Switch, Stadia, and Windows 10. Wavelengths will release on 30 September 2021 and The Remastered Collection will release in 2022 on the same respective consoles.
- Written By Chris.J
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