Life is Strange – True Color Wavelength DLC Prints

Life is strange: true colors focuses on Alex Chen and his brother Gabe, once separated, but Life is strange: wavelengths, the DLC released in October, redirects the story to True colors‘Major supporting character, Steph Gingrich. People who played Life is strange: before the storm know her quite well, as does anyone who has had an affair with her in True colors.

Almost more of an epilogue to Before the storm than a prologue to True colors, Wavelengths is the best of Life is Strange, which unfolds the vaguely supernatural world with a character based on reality. Wavelengths is a much less experience than True colors, set entirely within the Haven Springs record store that Alex knows and loves. It’s an intimate look at a period of change in Steph’s life. You move to the charming country town on a whim, or rather, a gamble, after leaving Arcadia Bay for Seattle.

Image: Deck Nine / Square Enix

Wavelengths Starts Steph’s first day as the new local DJ and record store manager. Controlling Steph, I take over the booth to play music, answer caller questions, manage the record store, and ponder a Tinder clone. Everything is very simple and well written, a quiet part of Steph’s life that contradicts the isolation that Steph feels as a queer woman in a rural town that supports her, but not quite. Get it. It also finishes off the trauma of surviving Arcadia Bay, which left a trail of death, regardless of the ending it chose.

The wavelengths are focused on a topic that often intrigues me in games, movies, and books: How do normal people in those worlds, those with no major powers or plots, deal with the trauma left behind by someone else’s story? We see the answer to that in Wavelengths, where Steph acknowledges that she has not faced her past; she just left him behind. We see this through Steph’s musings and musings as she works in the booth and at the record store, in sometimes forced and flirtatious conversations on the dating app, or when answering questions like “radio psychic” on her shifts. by DJ.

Image: Deck Nine / Square Enix

These periods as “psychic” feel particularly intelligent, rather than having real Psychic powers, which wouldn’t necessarily be surprising in a Life is Strange game, Steph uses her d20 to roll for people’s futures, and I interpret that result myself. These on-air conversations end up revealing a lot about the people of Haven Springs, about being a queer person in a small town, and running away from their past.

It is a short and precise experience without any True colors‘big twists and turns, but it feels just as shocking as the main story, reminiscent of True colors‘ masterful live action RPG sequence, which again throws supernatural elements aside to focus on pure human nature. Wavelengths ends right where you’d expect it, just when True colors starts. In a way, Steph feels like the same character, but he’s still changed forever.