Square Enix has announced Life is Strange: True Colors, the next chapter in the narrative adventure anthology series. Ditching the series' previous episodic model, the entire story will release in one go for PC, PlayStation 4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S and Stadia on 10th September.

Set in the town of Haven Springs, True Colors stars Alex Chen, a new female Asian American protagonist, and feature a popular crossover character from Life is Strange prequel series Before the Storm. Here's our first look:

True Colors is, as expected, developed by Before the Storm studio Deck Nine, with the prequel series' lead writer and game designer Zak Garriss now True Colors' director. During tonight's Square Enix Presents livestream, Garriss said Deck Nine had been working on the game since 2017.

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Life is Strange fans will get a glimpse of the series' next instalment as part of Square Enix's newly announced spring showcase event, which airs next Thursday, 18th March.

Proceedings get underway at 5pm in the UK/10am PDT, and Square promises 40 minutes of trailers and announcements. The world premiere of Life is Strange 3 (or whatever it ends up being called) is obviously the headliner, but there's quite a lot more besides.

There'll be another look at Outriders, for instance, ahead of its launch on 1st April, as well as another airing for Balan Wonderland, which releases a little sooner, on 26th March.

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Life is Strange creator Dontnod has secured new funding to self-publish future games, sparking speculation it is no longer aligned with Square Enix, the publisher which oversees the Life is Strange franchise.

Yesterday, Dontnod announced a €30m (£26.5m) financing deal with Chinese tech giant Tencent for "new self-published intellectual properties" - a plan first mentioned to GamesIndustry.biz in an interview last November.

Dontnod has worked with various publishers in the past, including Focus Home Interactive for Vampyr and Xbox for Tell Me Why, though it ultimately self-published its most recent game Twin Mirror after an initial publishing deal with Bandai Namco was dropped.

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Life is Strange's popular graphic novel spin-off will return in April for a new season.

Titled as Life is Strange: Partners in Time, it'll continue the comic book adventures of Max, Chloe and Rachel begun last year.

The dozen issues released so far offer up a continuation of the original Life is Strange's "Bae" ending, with plenty of timey-wimey storytelling that roped in fan-favourite Rachel Amber, as seen in Life is Strange: Before the Storm.

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Life is Strange's official graphic novel follow-up launches next week, and we can now take a peek at how it looks.

Set after the events of Life is Strange's finale, the comic follows the Bay timeline and picks up Max and Chloe's story one year later.

I just finished reading its first issue and it's a great opener - the game's time-travelling weirdness is still causing issues, there are clues to the lingering fates of characters from the Bay ending of the game, and really it's just nice to see Max and Chloe together again - even if just on page.

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Life is Strange 2 is less than two months away and we still know very little about it - but that's all about to change.

On Monday 20th August, the day before Gamescom opens, Square Enix will broadcast a special reveal of the game worldwide. (Expect Eurogamer to cover this live.)

It's handy timing, too, since the first of the upcoming season's five episodes has already been dated for 27th September, on PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.

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The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit is a standalone narrative experience set in the Life is Strange universe that will launch on PS4, Xbox One and PC on the 26th June, and it's completely free to download - you don't even have to own any of the previous Life is Strange games to unlock access. It was developed by Dontnod at the same time as Life is Strange 2, and will serve as the first introduction of the Life is Strange 2 universe. I was shown a short demo of the game earlier this week by the game's co-directors, Michel Koch and Raoul Barbet. It wasn't at all what I was expecting, but I already can't wait to play.

Dontnod was keen to impress it would be properly revealing Life is Strange 2 "soon," but until then, Captain Spirit takes place in the same timeline, in the same setting and the same universe of Life is Strange 2, and players "will be able to discover a lot of clues and hints in this game as to what the story and setting of Life is Strange 2 will be." There are even some choices in Captain Spirit that will carry over and have consequences in Life is Strange 2. According to Dontnod, "it's a perfect entry point to the games we've been creating, but for fans of the games there will of course be nods to LiS1."

I asked the team why they decided to make an additional game set in the Life is Strange universe. Koch replied, "Because Life is Strange is not a single set of characters or a single town. It's not just Max and Chloe. For three years now, we've created lots of new characters working on Life is Strange 2, and Captain Spirit is one of them. When we started working on Life is Strange 2, started talking about settings and characters, it was quite a huge story. We saw potential in a lot of characters, to find a bit more about their backstory and their side stories."

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The places we visit in games are usually one-off affairs; we shoot or puzzle ourselves through a level and are done with it, always impatient to get to the next stage and exciting new sights. Many games recognise that virtual spaces are more than just levels whose walls funnel us through a series of obstacles. They allow us to spend time exploring or simply being in those spaces. Many RPGs, for example, let us return to locations we visited dozens of hours earlier, perhaps subtly changed by the intervening time or our actions. In the Animal Crossing series, the miniature world changes subtly in our absence, and NPCs will even admonish us for staying away for too long.

Usually a virtual place vanishes into the ether once we put away a game. They may continue to exist in our minds, but they're frozen in time; they have no historical dimension. Some virtual places, however, appear to exist in-between games almost independently.

The Legend of Zelda games have always alluded to the lost worlds of former entries through recurring names, musical themes or visual clues. Breath of the Wild takes this a step further by revealing the ruins of structures familiar from earlier games, like Lon Lon Ranch or the Temple of Time, to the diligent player. Nostalgia is as intricately tied to the passage of time as history, so it's no surprise that the two are near indistinguishable in BotW.
Not unlike those in Zelda, the events taking place in the Dark Souls series are spread out over millennia, far enough apart that the fact these games are set in the same world isn't immediately apparent. Exploring Irithyll of the Boreal Valley in Dark Souls 3 eventually leads to the realisation we are in fact in a strikingly altered Anor Londo, ascending the same steps we're already familiar from the very first game.

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Ever since the original Life is Strange concluded with that choice, fans have debated which of the game's two endings was canon. Now, Life is Strange's upcoming comic series will explore what happened next after one ending in particular.

(If for some reason you're reading this and haven't finished Life is Strange - full spoilers follow.)

Did you choose bae or bay? The game's final decision saw you either save or (incorrectly) sacrifice your best friend/girlfriend Chloe at the expense of your town, Arcadia Bay. Life is Strange developer Dontnod has been careful not to confirm either ending as canon, and its upcoming sequel series is believed to be entirely unrelated.

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Square Enix has announced that Life is Strange: Before the Storm's special bonus episode, titled Farewell, will release on PC, Xbox One, and PS4, on March 6th.

Farewell is an entirely standalone episode (only available to owners of the digital Deluxe Edition of Before the Storm) and marks the return of first series protagonist Max Caulfield. It's the only time that Max is the lead playable character in prequel Before the Storm, with previous episodes having centred around her Season One best friend Chloe Price.

Equally notable is the fact that Farewell sees actor Ashly Burch resume the role of Chloe Price for the first time since the original series. Rhianna DeVries voiced the character in Before the Storm's three main episodes, as Burch was unable to participate due to the now-resolved SAG-AFTRA strike. Hannah Telle, who played Max in the original series, also returns.

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