Here's a brief, early scene from Life Is Strange: True Colors
Meet Alex, in the cold confines of a social worker's interview room.
The bulk of Life Is Strange: True Colors might take place in the achingly pastoral town of Haven Springs. But a new trailer gives our leading empath Alex a much colder welcome—and shows off some impressive facial capture in the process.
Square Enix this week gave us a peek at Alex Chen's introduction scene, as she prepares to depart her foster home to live with her brother, Gabe. But first, she has one last chat with her social worker. Compared to the the guitar-twanging twee of previous trailers, it's intimately (and uncomfortably) quiet.
Okay, so the feelings wall is perhaps a little on the nose, and the writing is very expository. But the cold, sterile interview room is achingly familiar to anyone who's ever had to chat to a school counsellor, and the clip also teases that at least one person is already aware of Alex's supernatural empathy.
The clip also shows off some properly impressive expressions, using facial motion capture for the first time in the series. That's important, considering that this time around our hero's superpower is turbocharged teenage melodrama.
Those facial mocap techniques will also be applied to the Life Is Strange: Remastered Collection, breathing new life into the first Life Is Strange and LIS: Before the Storm. That arrives alongside Life Is Strange: True Colors when it arrives on Steam, the Windows Store and Google Stadia this September 10th.