Everything about the next Life is Strange game feels memorable. There’s Alex Chen, an Asian-American protagonist who takes center stage at the same time that the United States reckons with its violent (and ongoing) bigotry against Asian Americans. However, the performance goes further than the lead actress. Lead writer Felice Kuan writes the story on Deck Nine Games, and voice actor Erika Mori – along with Alex’s singing voice, played by singer-songwriter mxmtoon – will help bring that vision to life.
Asian-American visibility at this particular point in time has not been lost on Kuan. In a short interview with Polygon, the developer noted that while the timing is a coincidence, she knows what the game will mean for people in 2021.
“I’m very glad you know, for an Asian-American protagonist, that empathy is a big theme and the strength,” she said. “So I’m really moved by the response from the fans, some of which have talked about, you know, recent events … I’m really happy with what Alex and this game can potentially do for the community.”
Another big thing for the franchise? It finally moves on to the episodic model. When the game comes out in September, the full story will be available from the beginning. Players can still take breaks between major story beats, the story is broken up into chapters, but they don’t have to wait months between episodes.
“For the development process, it was also a big advantage that we could go back and adapt and make sure that the whole thing felt unified, and really told the story we wanted to tell from the beginning,” said Kuan.
But the biggest shift in general is, paradoxically, also the subtlest. While previous Life is strange games were extremely charming, much of the appeal rested in the writing. The animations and models, meanwhile, could sometimes seem stiff, almost pop-like. Which True colors jumps on current video game hardware, technology has also made a leap forward. There is full-body motion tracking that goes along with the voice actors, and it makes a huge difference.
In a short game clip shared with Polygon, the camera zoomed in on Alex’s face – and it’s like you can read every thought that goes through her mind, even when she’s not speaking.
The expressions are all minimal, be it a minor adjustment of the shoulders, a slightly furrowed brow or uncertain eyes. The enhanced facial animations aren’t just for show as one of the central themes of the game is empathy. Alex can feel and absorb other people’s strong emotions, so capturing the humanity of each character is essential. But beyond the ability of Deck Nine to tell an ’emotionally nuanced story’, as Kuan put it to Polygon, the technology also highlights how far we are from the cartoonish ‘realistic’ expressions found in games like The black.
In a conversation with Erika Mori, the voice behind Alex, it is clear that these seemingly restrained images were at the forefront of the creative process.
“We need authentic and very real performances, nothing like super cheesy [or] exaggerated, we’re not looking for musical theater here, ‘said Mori. “This is much closer to what you see in film and television. And you can be more organic and natural because we now have the technology to capture that. And specifically with … the facial voice and body performance all happening at the same time, it provided a very natural representation of some of these deep emotions that Alex and the other characters go through during the game. ”
“It actually asked me to become human,” she continued. What, you know, thank goodness. It was not that difficult. ”