Life Is Strange: True Colors is taking its narrative seriously, with the developer behind the game confirming there are almost 2000 pages of dialogue in the title.
Publisher Square Enix and developer Deck Nine showed off more of Life Is Strange: True Colors during the Square Enix Presents presentation at E3 2021 today, and ahead of the new trailer being shown to the public, NME had the chance to sit down and chat with three key staff from the studio.
During the interview, narrative director Jon Zimmerman spoke about the dedication Deck Nine has to authenticity in the game – especially when it comes to making sure the tone feels right and accurately reflects the trials and tribulations of a 21-year old working through some existential personal issues.
“We’re fairly obsessive about every single line of dialogue – and there’s a lot of it over the course of the game!” Zimmerman said when we asked if the studio was weary of how the ‘hella sick’-type of language was received in the first game. “We love Life Is Strange, and Life Is Strange 2, but each entry has its own flavor to it, so we really focused on creating something unique for True Colors.”
“We have deliberately embraced an older story for this game. Alex is 21 – we love the first two games, and the things that Max and Sean go through are extremely adult, but we wanted to have an adult perspective for Alex for True Colors,” adds Felice Kuan, senior staff writer at Deck Nine. “She’s looking for her permanent life and is dealing with issues that we are all dealing with, but she’s still goofy and has her own way of talking!”
The studio confirmed to NME that the game has1958 pages of dialogue at the time of writing – that’ll include script for the various choices you can make in the game, and outcomes for various relationships depending on how you use main character Alex’s powers of empathy to progress the game.
“Another element we’re fairly obsessive about is choice: we’re always measuring every choice we present to the player – determining how impactful it is, making sure it’s clearly laid out,” explains Zimmerman. “There is a structure that plays out at the end of the game, but in our case it’s born organically out of the relationships you make. We wanted every single relationship that Alex forms – from Charlotte, who you see in the trailer with that incredibly powerful emotional moment and the choices that come off of that – to the romantic options, to Steph and Ryan (who are also very close friends and allies to her brother Gabe), and so many more, to reflect the choices that the player makes and have really significant consequences.”
If you liked the variety of options you had in previous Life Is Strange games, and appreciated the world’s response to you as you tried to find your place in the peculiar narrative setups, you’re going to enjoy True Colors just as much, it seems.
Life Is Strange: True Colors will launch September 10 on PC, PS4, PS5, Stadia, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S.
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