Life is Strange: the biggest clue of True Colors is in plain sight

Alex Chen has a unique power – she is an empath in the most literal sense. Life is Strange: True Colors follows Alex as she leaves the foster care system and moves to Haven Springs to live with her estranged brother. because of this system.

The game itself begins on Alex’s first day in Haven Springs, reuniting with Gabe after eight years and settling into a space she might be able to call home. She tries to live a normal life – a life balanced by freedom and connection – without being hampered by her empathic abilities which allow her to feel (and sometimes overcome) the strong emotions of others.

I wasn’t necessarily convinced by the power of empathy when the game was first announced; it was a little cheesy, and I couldn’t really situate how it could be used in an interesting way in Life is Strange: True Colors. But I was wrong. Empathy absolutely works in a way that showcases Alex’s story and fleshes out this quaint mining town. Because of this power, we are faced with difficult choices and unanswered questions that we gamers are forced to answer: Is it okay to tap into someone’s fears? Does it change if it’s to help them? Should you take away someone’s fear or anger? Where is this line?

Life is Strange: True Colors deals with grief and anger, but also pure joy. While there are some rough times, it feels natural that the characters can still, of course, experience some complicated joy. But there was one detail I couldn’t forget, something that made me wonder how much I really liked the game. It turns out that this question has an answer. It was just partially hidden in the game’s environmental clues, and I missed it.

Image: Deck Nine / Square Enix

[Warning: This story contains full spoilers for Life is Strange: True Colors.]

This part isn’t much of a spoiler, as it’s found in the trailer and in most of the game’s commercials, but Gabe dies on Alex’s first day in Haven Springs. A group of friends, Alex and Gabe included, are in the mountains searching for a child lost on the night of the planned explosion of a mining company. The mining company says it will delay the blast, but pursues it anyway during the search, killing Gabe.

During the game, Alex and his friends discover that the explosion that killed Gabe was a cover-up of a second secret explosion meant to hide evidence of an accident: Another mine collapsed many years ago. , killing a few miners. The mine owner was trying to hide the truth about this accident.

Image: Deck Nine / Square Enix

Here’s the big spoiler and huge twist: One of those miners was Alex and Gabe’s father, who presumably ended up in Haven Springs looking for a job after leaving the family all of the time ago. these years. (Earlier in the story, it was revealed that their mother died of cancer and their father abandoned the family shortly after his death, leaving Alex and Gabe alone.)

This revelation didn’t really touch me; instead of feeling shocked, I just felt confused. What are the chances that Alex and Gabe the two Would he end up in the same small town, across the United States, as their now deceased father? Did Alex’s power get her there? It just didn’t make sense. But I gave up and finally finished the game and then started to investigate. Was I the only confused person? Puzzled? Roll your eyes?

But it turns out that I missed a key part of this story that tied it all together. At the beginning of Life is Strange: True Colors, Alex moves into Gabe’s apartment, and she is able to inspect and sense the memories of a bunch of objects around the place. There’s a crack in the wall that Alex can investigate in the first chapter, and that’s when you learn Gabe has come to Haven Springs looking for his father and confirmed he is well gone through here. The crack in the wall was the result of Gabe’s kick out of frustration.

“He had been in town for a week and all of his free time was spent looking for daddy,” Alex wrote in a diary entry after experiencing the memory. “It was unnecessary, of course. Dad had been missing years ago.

Yes, I might have been able to deduce that Gabe was looking for his father, but no evidence had indicated that before. I’m glad I found out after completing the game that he was not a certain mystical power that drove Gabe and Alex to the small town; it was a key moment in Gabe’s emotional tale that I found easy to miss, and a detail that made me come to terms with Life is Strange: True Colors‘big revelation.