Life is Strange: True Colors hands-on preview: Not afraid to make you sad

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  Life is Strange: True Colors wears its heart on its sleeve as Alex Chen strums a plaintive rendition of Radiohead's "Creep" on the guitar. [credit: Square Enix ]

This preview is based on limited impressions of the game as tested on the PS5 and made available by Square Enix ahead of the game's September 10 launch.

With four games released over the past six years (including one mini-spinoff, The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit), the Life is Strange series has established a reputation as an unlikely type of narrative adventure. Its YA protagonists, hipster-slanted coming-of-age stories, and proximity to trauma make it part of a specific genre, and the series has proven unexpectedly adept at mostly reinventing itself from entry to entry.

In theory, these underpinnings might suggest a (hear us out) Silent Hill-style problem that the series has so far managed to avoid. But where Konami's survival horror series punished its protagonists through unique, hellish manifestations reflecting their specific inner demons, Life is Strange's supernatural abilities empower its characters. Our protagonists aren't defined by their tragedies. They could be anything, which allows series developers much more freedom to try new ideas.

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