Trivia / Life Is Strange: True Colors

• Actor-Shared Background: The Chen family are Chinese-Vietnamese American. The actors who played Alex, Gabe, and their parents are Asian American, with Han Soto (Gabe) being Vietnamese and mxmtoon (Alex's singing voice) being half Chinese. mxmtoon also identifies as queer and was Alex's age, 21, during press.
• Author's Saving Throw: Rather than release the game in episodes over the course of a year, it was announced that the entire story would drop on the release date, which was met with high approval from fans who were tired of the typical schedule. This was referenced in the debut presentation, with the developers explaining that they wanted players to experience it at their own pace.
• B-Team Sequel: The game was developed by franchise veterans Deck Nine, who also developed Life Is Strange: Before the Storm, as DONTNOD wrapped up Life Is Strange 2 and then shifted to work more on original IPs.
• Development Gag: The default outfit Alex wears at the start of Chapter 4 includes a shirt with the word "Siren" on it, which happens to be the game's internal project name.
• Fan Nickname: Is occasionally referred to by the highly unofficial title Life Is Strange 3 due to people looking to preserve a sense of the series' timeline and release order (or just pick up clicks when people go searching for a game of that title). Unfortunately, Life Is Strange 3 is also the Fan Nickname sometimes given to Tell Me Why — a Spiritual Successor to the Life Is Strange series which is technically the third game in the same vein made by series originators Dontnod Entertainment — which can make things a bit confusing.
• Limited Special Collector's Ultimate Edition: An ultimate edition of the game was released on digital storefronts with a pre-order bonus pack of clothes, the Steph DLC story, and access to both Life is Strange and Life is Strange: Before the Storm remastered.
• Non-Singing Voice:
  • Erika Mori provided Alex's motion capture and speaking voice, while mxmtoon provided her singing voice.
  • In the Wavelengths chapter, Leah Mack performs Steph's song instead of Katy Bentz.
• The Other Darrin: Once again, Rhianna DeVries voices Chloe Price instead of Ashly Burch.
• Promoted Fangirl: mxmtoon (Alex's singing voice actor) is a huge fan of the series.
• Queer Character, Queer Actor:
  • Alex is bisexual. mxmtoon (Alex's singing voice actor) is herself bisexual too.
  • Izzie's voice lines were provided by True Colors staff writer Deandra Fallon Warrick, who is openly transgender like the character.
• What Could Have Been: True Colors apparently went through “hundreds of revisions” when it came to its story and characters before settling on the final game we have now.
  • Alex was originally written to be much more Chloe-like due to her past, but they found it difficult to justify a character with such extreme empathy acting with such bitterness.
  • Erika Mori originally provided Alex's singing voice as well as her speaking voice and mocap, but her singing recordings were swapped out for mxmtoon.
  • Riley apparently went through one of the most changes out of any character, as she was originally going to be a stereotypical, shallow mean girl (like Victoria) and actually wasn’t intended to be related to Eleanor at all.
  • Mac was originally going to play a direct role in Gabe’s death at some point in development, instead of being a complete red herring like he is in the actual game.
  • There’s also Pike and Diane. In the final game, it’s hinted at multiple times that Pike has a crush on Diane, but in the original draft they were actually supposed to be in a relationship.
  • Diane specifically was meant to be the sole villain of True Colors for some time, but ended up sharing the role with Jed after the writers believed it would have been “too straightforward and easy to guess it was her.”
    • Going back to Pike and Diane’s relationship, in an earlier draft of the story, if Alex took Pike’s fear away, when she was down in the mines (how Alex managed to get into the mine was apparently completely different in this draft as well) Pike would become this “weird emotionless serial killer” and would start chasing Alex around in the mines in order to protect Diane.
  • Webb Pickersgill (the performance director for True Colors) streamed the game on Twitch around a month after it had come out and talked about a lot of the changes the game went through narrative wise:
    • Some smaller stuff was how Alex’s headphones were originally supposed to be handed down to her by someone important (her father or mother probably) and it was going to be a basic accessory to her where she would wear it all the time, but this apparently got changed/rewritten down the line. He also talked about how Main Street was originally going to be a driving street with cars parked on the side as well as driving through the street, but halfway through development they found walking around town wasn’t fun because you couldn’t cross the street without cars getting stuck and honking at you. Funnily enough, just before that stream, people dug through the files and found an old build of TC showing the original Main Street with cars.
    • But by far the most interesting thing Webb talked about in the stream was Gabe’s original role. Apparently, at one point in development, Gabe was going to be the villain. He was going to be an abuser, and the whole “leaving the toilet seat up” line when him and Alex are in the flower shop is actually from an old draft of the story where it was supposed to be an indicator that he was downplaying something he did that was actually really bad. The line “put this on my tab” that Gabe says to Riley was also from this old draft that made it into the final game, that was originally supposed to be a hint that Gabe would hurt Charlotte’s feelings all the time (or physically hurt her) and would have a tab at the flower shop because he’s always apologizing to her.
• Word of Gay: Ryan was one of the characters included in the LGBTQIA+ lineup in the game's Twitter post during pride month. His orientation hasn't been specified, however fans have observed some subtle hints that he might be a romantic asexual.