New Life Is Strange: True Colors out this September with remaster collection

What is essentially Life Is Strange 3 will be out this autumn and so too will remasters of the original game and prequel Before The Storm.

A new Life is Strange game will be released this September by the team behind the excellent Before The Storm, since series creators Dontnod recently announced they’ve moved away from the series for now.

The game stars a new cast of characters, as you take control of protagonist Alex Chen who journeys to the small town of Haven Springs to investigate the circumstances of her brother’s death.

As with all Life Is Strange characters (except Chloe) Alex has a superpower, although in her case it’s the rather lowkey ability to see other people’s auroras, whose colour indicates their current emotional state.

Alex is able to determine exactly what’s causing the emotion but if it’s too strong then it can feedback to her, making her irrationally angry or upset.

According to developer Deck Nine it’s a game about empathy, although seemingly in a more constructive fashion than The Last Of Us Part 2.

Sensibly, the episodic release structure of previous games has now been completely abandoned. Although it is still divided up into chapters, if you want to take a break between them.

Announced at the same time was Life is Strange Remastered Collection, which improves the first game and Before The Storm with enhanced graphics and animations.

It’ll be available as part of the Ultimate Edition of True Colors or as a standard release. Both games will be released on Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 5, PC, and Stadia on September 10 this year.

The reveal broadly matches with rumours earlier in the month, although they characterised Alex’s skills as reading people’s minds. The rumour correctly predicted the remasters but also mentioned a Switch version, which has not yet been announced.

The rumours also suggested that a second game is in pre-production and is a direct sequel to the original and again stars Max and Chloe. There was no mention of that officially but remastering the first two games certainly suggests that Square Enix wants to keep those characters in people’s minds.

True Colors was the biggest announcement to come out of the Square Enix Presents event on Thursday evening – Square Enix’s equivalent to a Nintendo Direct.

It was a slickly presented affair but focused on the imminent Outriders, the Tomb Raider 25th anniversary (Fortnite is getting a Croft Manor hub and there’s going to be a Lara Croft cookbook), and a Black Panther expansion for Avengers that finally adds something to the game that people have actually been waiting for.

Perhaps the most important revelation beside Life Is Strange is that what was previously only codenamed as Project Athia is now called Forspoken and is out in 2022 as a PlayStation 5 and PC exclusive.

It’s the next project from the team behind Final Fantasy 15 and it’s clear Square Enix is putting a lot of resources into it, with some already impressive visuals.

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MORE : Life Is Strange 3 rumours claims two new games and a Nintendo Switch port

MORE : Life Is Strange 3 coming from Before The Storm dev Deck Nine says insider

MORE : No new Life Is Strange for now, as Dontnod plan brand new IP

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