Life is Strange: True Colors revealed with a surprising shake-up

As promised, today Square Enix announced what's next for the Life is Strange series. Life is Strange: True Colors is the name of the next game in the franchise, and it'll be arriving later this year. Just as well, Square Enix will be remastering the original Life is Strange and Life is Strange: Before the Storm, but we don't have a ton of details on those just yet.

What we do know is that Life is Strange: True Colors will focus on a new protagonist named Alex Chen, who will be attempting to solve the mystery behind her brother's death. Alex has empathic psychic powers, and she'll use those to uncover details about the accident that claimed her brother and the "dark secrets buried by the small town of Haven Springs."

What, specifically, does having empathic psychic powers entail? According to Square Enix, Alex will be able to "experience, absorb and manipulate the strong emotions of others, which she sees as blazing, colored auras." It sounds like Alex considers this power to be a curse rather than a gift, so she'll probably spend some amount in the game coming to terms with her capabilities.

In something of a shake-up for the franchise, Life is Strange: True Colors won't be split up into episodic releases. The game will be playable from start to finish when it releases on September 10th, and it'll be available on Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, PC, and Stadia with pre-orders opening today.

Those remasters of Life is Strange and Before the Storm will be bundled together in the Life is Strange Remastered Collection, which at first will only be available as part of the $79.99 True Colors Ultimate Edition. Square Enix says that the Remastered Collection will be available as a standalone game in the future, but we don't have any details on when that will happen. We'll keep an eye out for more information from Square Enix, so stay tuned for that.