#lis3 theories

[thealexchen]

Life is Strange: True Colors Theory (how do Alex’s powers work?)

We know already that Alex has the psychic superpower of empathy. But how exactly does it work? I’m going to break down Alex’s powers into three specific abilities based on how she described them.

From the trailer, Alex says this about her powers:

“I know what other people are feeling. I can see these auras around them. If they’re angry, or sad, or afraid, I feel it too. When I focus, I can even understand why they’re feeling it. And if someone’s feeling something big— it infects me. And I lose control.”

So let’s break it down piece by piece!

1. Aura vision

“I know what other people are feeling. I can see these auras around them. If they’re angry, or sad, or afraid, I feel it too.”

From the trailer, we know that Alex doesn’t see colored auras around everyone all the time. If they’re relatively emotionally stable, Alex sees people just like anyone else. 

However, here we see Alex in the record store, visibly uncomfortable and likely reacting to Steph’s angry aura in the other room. It seems like if these emotions are strong enough, Alex will pick up on them unintentionally. 

Here we see a weak purple (fear) aura around this guy. This is the passive part of Alex’s powers— she feels a psychic, intense form of empathy, seemingly against her will. If this is true, it’s clear why Alex thinks her power is a curse— if she can feel everyone’s strong emotions within a certain radius, that can very quickly become draining, unwanted, and invasive.

2. Emotional absorption/manipulation

“When I focus, I can even understand why they’re feeling it.”

Here, Alex raises her hand and gets hit with a wave of blue (sadness) from Steph. This is the active part of her powers— Alex will see auras if the emotion is strong enough, but she has to raise her hand to manipulate those emotions. However, we don’t know if Alex absorbs the emotion completely (taking away people’s fear or sadness) or if she just shares their feeling in that exact moment.

The other active part of Alex’s powers is focusing enough to figure out why the person is feeling that emotion. This is huge, and has the potential to be as precise and as powerful as mind-reading or memory-reading. It could also have very interesting uses in gameplay, like when Max could learn something about someone, rewind, and use that information for her own gain. 

This screenshot suggests what it will look like in gameplay: If you see an NPC in the environment with an aura, you can press and hold A to “focus” on it. From there, you can likely absorb it, read someone’s thoughts or see their memories, or maybe even manipulate their emotions.

3. Emotional outbursts

“And if someone’s feeling something big— it infects me. And I lose control.”

These emotional outbursts suggest that Alex’s powers have a limit, and they can have devastating consequences if she pushes herself too far. Here’s where it gets interesting— and confusing! Just look at these screenshots:

Here, the ground literally is falling apart around Alex and Ryan, who are standing in a massive black void. We saw Ryan with a red (angry) aura just before this.

Here’s that same void again, except with Alex, alone, free-falling into nothing. This is likely a representation of her sadness, possibly just after Gabe dies.

And here, Alex’s angry outburst is enough to break a whole row of windows.

Here, we see Alex absorb this woman’s fear...

And then we see the windows fog up, the flowers wilt, and the walls cracking, as if the environment itself is scared.

It seems like if the emotion Alex absorbs is too strong, she loses control and it affects the world around her. The question is, how much of this is reality and how much of this could be a stress-induced hallucination? 

In Life is Strange, Max was seemingly teleported to vivid nightmare-visions of the storm hitting Arcadia Bay. She could walk around and “feel” the rain and electricity, yet Chloe claims she just “blacked out.” 

Could the same thing be happening here? If Alex sees these visions, do outside people just see Alex losing consciousness? Or worse, does Alex have uncontrollable emotional breakdowns? Perhaps that was why she was in foster care for so long and struggled to find a stable home...

That’s all I could gather from what we have so far. Thank you for reading!

[onegirllis]

How do you really feel about all the new Lis content? Also hi! Miss seeing your post and reading TRNT. Hope you are happy and healthy!

Hi there! I miss writing it too!

So about LIS3… It’s hard to really put in words what I think of it and judging a book by its cover and a game by its trailer should be a crime. 

The environment and the characters with their animations (and lip-sync!) look great and everything looks detailed and top-notch level. The budget was well spent and dozens of talented and experienced people worked very hard on the game, no questions about it, but…

This is not something that hooked me to the franchise in the first place. I loved the nostalgic feel, the color palettes, the watercolor textures. Sure, the models weren’t as good and the animations not great at times but LIS1 and BTS had this special feel to them. LIS3 feels way more colorful, too colorful even, like an imaginary world, not something that I can associate with a real place (except Aspen perhaps). It’s like a watercolor story without the actual watercolor but a splash of digital paint instead, that creates something very generic, partly sims partly hidden objects, partly mobile. It doesn’t mean it looks bad.. it’s just… I don’t think I’m  the target audience anymore. 

As for the character - she seems alright and all but again, I feel like they trying so hard to capture the first LIS’s magic with a withdrawn, a bit shy protagonist who likes to play guitar and has a secret power. There’s only one legit protagonist in the LIS franchise who meets that description and it’s Max. Alex might be nicely written and with some nice dialogue lines but in the context and by comparison, she feels like a copy. And by the way, what’s with this trope with sad girls playing sad guitars, whispering instead of singing? Give them some other instrument. Like a piano? Or a banjo maybe? 

When it comes to the story, at the surface it feels like Twin Mirror 2.0 and that doesn’t grab my attention. I was bored out of my mind playing it and I’m not looking forward to experiencing a similar story. The main character getting back to a small town, where their male friend/brother died and we have to figure out if it was an accident (of course not) or murder. Plus the main protagonist has some kind of special power… Yeah, been there done that. It can still be good but.. 

Yeah, a lot of buts. 

I definitely will miss the episodic format. Not that I really liked waiting forever for another one to drop but the discussions and theories. It was a major part of the fun and with LIS3 everything is being released at once. I’m sure they had a good reason for it (no good cliffhangers perhaps? Not enough content?) but it makes me even less interested in the franchise. 

Will I buy it? I really don’t know. I feel the price is outrageous for a game that does not represent AAA quality (perhaps AAA budget though).  I might take a look on a stream or two and then perhaps change my mind but for now, I’m not holding my breath. Even Steph couldn’t really sell it to me. I think it’s smart that they're connecting LIS3 with Arcadia Bay with her but… I don’t know. I just don’t dig it.

Long story short - I’m sadly not very interested in the title. Everything that I really cherished about the franchise seems to be no longer the matter. It’s fine though. Well-established series, especially as profitable as LIS evolve and change but so do we, the fans. LIS3 seems to be aiming at younger folks, not trying to awake the nostalgia but comment on their reality. And that’s fine. It’s just.. something not really for me anymore.

[thealexchen]

Life is Strange: True Colors Theory (The Canary)

Theory: Alex’s animal symbol is the canary. (spoiler warning!)

During the Square Enix Presents showcase, we can see a canary on a record player right before they present the Life is Strange: True Colors trailer. Also, Alex’s hoodie has a canary with the word “FREE” on it. 

Canaries typically symbolize joy (and yellow is the color for joy when Alex uses her powers) and freedom. They are also songbirds, which ties into Alex’s talent in singing and playing music. Alex’s arrival to Haven Springs marks a new chapter in her life where she can start fresh. After the plot kicks off, Alex could use her powers to discover what really happened to Gabe and free Haven Springs from its current dangers.

The canary also made me think of the phrase “canary in a coal mine,” which refers to how miners would bring a canary with them to detect poisonous gases. If the canary died, it was a warning sign to evacuate. Haven Springs is a mining town in Colorado and Gabe’s death kicks off the plot. Since Life is Strange 2 had wolves represent the entire Diaz family, not just Sean, it’s possible that Gabe was “the canary in the coal mine.” His death is the warning sign to the town of Haven Springs that it is not what it seems, and there may even be a serial killer among them. 

However, you can also see a tiger patch on Alex’s denim jacket. I think that’s a nod to her Chinese zodiac sign, not her animal motif-- the game is set in 2019 (source) and Alex is 21 years old (source), so she would’ve been born in 1998, the Year of the Tiger. It also fits in with her cat-themed outfits in the preorder outfit pack!

[thealexchen]

Alex’s injuries (spoiler warning!)

So this new image of Alex that the LiS Twitter posted this morning is downright terrifying. But what if we already have the pieces to put together what happened? (tw: blood)

Alex has a huge gash on the side of her head, a cut on the bridge of her nose, and a bloody lip. But in this new promo image, you can see the same cut on the bridge of her nose, along with what looks like a blood stain on her shoulder:

And then in this shot from the most recent trailer on Tiktok that takes place in chapter 3, she has scars in those same places:

So what happened? In the first two images, Alex appears to be wearing her black sweater in chapter 2. It’s what she wears to Gabe’s wake:

What other scene do we see with Alex in that same black sweater? The scene with the gunman from the announce trailer:

After the wake, Alex must go investigating in the forest again, still hellbent on figuring out what happened to her brother. And when the gunman shows up, Alex won’t come out of this encounter unharmed. And this is only chapter two!! True Colors looks way more intense than I initially thought.

[thealexchen]

Idk what type of post this is (theory? Observation?) but did anyone else notice this? 

In the deep dive video, you can see Steph angrily talking to someone on the phone. In the other room, Alex is looking visibly uncomfortable and likely reacting to Steph’s angry aura (from my previous theory post).

But in the “Meet Steph” video at 0:17, Steph is done with her angry phone call (in fact, she looks pretty dang excited talking to Ryan), but you can see Alex in the background still looking like she’s about to throw up.

If her powers affect her that strongly... poor Alex! I just wanna hug her.

[thealexchen]

Life is Strange: True Colors Theory (Alex’s parents and her powers) (spoiler warning!)

What happened to Alex’s parents?

During the full True Colors presentation at Square Enix Presents, we learn that Alex has not seen her brother Gabe in eight years, that she has spent most of her life in the foster care system, and that she calls her powers a “curse” and has long suppressed them, likely for years.

While she’s playing guitar in her room, we see that Alex still keeps a family photo on her desk, likely during a happier time when everyone was together. If Alex is 21 and she hasn’t seen her brother in eight years, that means they were separated when Alex was about 13. Gabe looks older than her by at least a few years, so it’s possible that he aged out of the foster care system sooner, but wasn’t old enough or financially independent enough to become her legal guardian, which could explain their eight year long separation.

True Colors is the first LiS game with a protagonist who already knows about their powers at the start of the game. Given that Max unlocked her powers when she witnessed Chloe die and Daniel unlocked his powers when he saw his dad die, it’s possible that whatever caused Alex to enter foster care and be separated from her brother, that event triggered her powers. 

And how did she wind up in foster care? Abuse or abandonment seems less likely if Alex still keeps a framed family photo in her room. Most likely, it was because her parents died, possibly together and on the same day in some sort of freak accident.

Why an accident specifically? Because the townspeople of Haven Springs described Gabe’s death in the same way: “a senseless, tragic accident.” And after he dies is when we see Alex’s powers only grow stronger and more out of control-- enough to break windows and cause small earthquakes. When an entire town is grieving, Alex realizes she can no longer suppress her powers and must learn how to use them-- for good or for bad.

[thealexchen]

I'm seeing a lot of people theorize that Ryan is gonna end up being the bad guy or that he'll betray alex in the end. What do you think of this? I don't think they'd do that because they made him a love interest.

I’m almost certain Ryan has nothing to do with Gabe’s death for a few reasons:

1. Ryan is the one who insists to Jed “It wasn’t an accident” when Jed calls Gabe’s death “a senseless, tragic accident” in the reveal trailer. Ryan would never call attention to himself like that if he was the killer.

2. When Alex explains her powers in the trailer, it’s actually her speaking to Ryan. She says to him “I’ve never told anyone. But now, I can find out what’s really going on.” Ryan replies, “You’ll need help.” Again, Ryan wouldn’t actively encourage Alex’s pursuit of the truth if he was trying to keep his actions a secret.

3. In a GameSpot interview, Erika Mori (Alex’s VA) basically confirms that Steph and Ryan are safe when she says, “I will tell you that both the Steph romance and the Ryan romance are very aww-inducing. It's also nice because regardless of who you pick or whether you pick anyone at all, they will both still be around. They're still your good buddies. So you won't rule anybody out of your life." So it’s highly likely that Steph and Ryan will remain Alex’s allies until the end of the game.

Instead, I think Mac, Diane, and Duckie are looking sus. Here’s why:

1. In the “Meet the Cast” video, Mac is introduced with bruises on his face and ominously telling Alex, “We been together four years. She was the best thing that’s ever happened to me.” He’s clearly a little unhinged about his ex-girlfriend (likely Riley). The Square Enix article further elaborates that he’s “brash” and "hot-headed and prone to conflict, particularly with Gabe.” If anyone has a motive to hurt Gabe and is impulsive or violent enough to see it through, it’s Mac.

2. The same article reveals that Diane “has risen quickly through the ranks at her job and become the chief liaison on the massively valuable Colorado mining project.” She seems a little too put-together and too attached to Haven (”and now I’m never leaving!”) and might have some ulterior motive going on. Also, there’s that suspicious moment in the trailer where during the lantern scene, everyone has a yellow aura except Diane. 

3. Duckie isn’t given a description at all in this article, so that makes it sound like his character bio might be filled with spoilers. 

Thanks for asking!

[thealexchen]

In the trailer, who do you think Alex was yelling at? Or maybe she was trying to reject the memory? What do you think?

Do you mean this scene? Because this is confusing me too.

Given the background and Alex's outfit, this is from her first day in Haven Springs, and it looks like she's in her bedroom or Gabe's house (or wherever Gabe is staying). I don't know who would be around for Alex to absorb someone's anger nova, except maybe Mac?

I also don't think she was yelling at anyone, just reacting to the intense anger in her body. I also wonder if that "NO!" is a case of swapped audio from a different scene. TC's lip sync is too good and I think Alex is just wordlessly screaming in that moment. I mean, what if Alex is actually screaming "NO!" in shock and fear right before Gabe dies? That tone of voice (props to Erika Mori) could convey various emotions.

Thanks for asking! I'm curious about this scene too so feel free to put alternate theories in the replies!