Open Roads preview: Bring me to life in 2003

I have a jacket that looks suspiciously like Tess's. Open roads. It's a blue bomber with pops of yellow and burnt orange, and that's not the only thing Tess and I have in common. As she quietly explores her childhood bedroom in the first few minutes of the game, Tess comes across settings that anchor her environment in the early 2000s. There's a big black TV and scattered DVD cases, small bottles of shiny nail polish, a black and white strip from a photo booth, newspapers remembering 9/11 and looking for bigfoot, and a bright pink tube of sickly sweet lip balm. . These are the remains of his adolescence: the room is messy and mostly empty, with most of his belongings packed away, ready to move. Tess flips through the room's remaining photos and yearbooks, her hand-drawn fingers reaching out to interact with 3D objects, revealing more of her story with each touch. The lapel of his jacket is eerily familiar every time he enters the frame.

Open roads is a narrative, exploration-driven game about the road trip Tess and her mother take when a death in the family uproots their lives. After emptying the house and finding a mysterious journal in the attic, Tess and her mother, Opal, print directions from RoadBuddy (not MapQuest) and go on a long drive. Emotional upheaval is bound to follow.

Open roads
Interactive Annapurna

I watched the developers play the first 15 minutes or so of Open roads, and the preview immediately captivated me. Visually, the game is polished and engaging; the settings and interactive objects are 3D, while the characters are hand-drawn, adding depth to each scene. Developers on the Open Roads team uploaded actual handwriting samples to create directory pages, postcards, and letters, eliminating the threat of immersion-spoiling pixelated text. In conversation, the characters float between movements like old-school Disney storyboards, making the whole experience feel like a lucid dream.

Tess and Opal are played entirely by two traditional actors, Kaitlyn Dever and Keri Russell, and in the scenes I've seen, their performances are fantastic. The interactions between Tess and Opal are both loving and tense, as mother-daughter relationships can be. The writing is also evocative and authentic; dialogue flows smoothly, even with the different player-chosen paths each conversation can take. These characters immediately seem real.

Open roads
Interactive Annapurna

The house Tess and Opal leave is lived in and has a sense of history. There are personal, handmade touches in every room, and the developers added pieces of their own lives to the game. The chair by that desk? It was modeled on a developer's childhood memories. Those creepy old ornaments in the attic? A developer's grandmother passed down these exact decorations in real life. The scribbles on the wall? These are drawings of the creators' children. These details won't be obvious to most players, but they lend a feeling of authenticity to the game as Tess explores the closets and corners of her family home.

Open roads not only provides nostalgia for the early 2000s, but it also reaches back and references the 60s and 70s, spanning multiple generations in Tess's family. As Tess investigates the house and collects various items, Opal provides context and tells stories about their lives, and there are branching dialogue paths. At one point during the preview, the playing developer decided to make Tess walk away from the refrigerator without closing the door, leading Opal to scold her. The relationship between Tess and Opal is charming and warm, but there is a sense of tension running through their interactions that I can't wait to examine in the full game.

Open roads looks like a mixture of Gone home, Life is strange And What Remains of Edith Finch, in the best possible way. The writing, voice acting and animation style come together from the first minutes of the game to create a realistic and nostalgic world populated by vivid characters. I'm ready to hit the road with Tess, Opal, and their printed routes when the game releases for PC, Switch, PlayStation, and Xbox on February 22. After all, I already have the jacket.

This article was originally published on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/open-roads-preview-bring-me-to-life-in-2003-170007873.html?src=rss

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