I have a jacket that is eerily similar to Tess's. open road. It's a blue bomber with yellow and burnt orange accents, and that's not the only thing Tess and I have in common. During the first few minutes of the game, slowly exploring her childhood bedroom, Tess encounters set pieces based on her environment in the early 2000s. There's a thick black TV and her DVD case strewn about, a little bottle of bright nail polish, black and white pieces of paper from a photo booth, a newspaper that reminded me of 9/11 and the Bigfoot hunt, a bright pink tube of sickly sweet lip balm. . . These are remnants of her youth. The room is messy and almost empty, most of my belongings have been packed away and I'm ready to move. Tess flips through her photos and her yearbook that remain in her room, reaching out with her hand-drawn fingers to manipulate her 3D objects, each touch revealing more of her backstory . The cuffs of her jacket look uncomfortably familiar every time she enters the frame.
open road is a story-driven, exploration-based game about the road trip of Tess and her mother, whose lives are uprooted by the death of a family member. After cleaning up the house and finding a mysterious diary in the attic, Tess and his mother Opal print directions from RoadBuddy (not MapQuest) and set off on a long drive. Emotional upheaval is inevitable.
I watched the developers play the first 15 minutes or so. open road, and when I saw the preview, I was immediately captivated. Visually, the game is polished and appealing. The settings and interactive objects are 3D, and the characters are hand-drawn, giving each scene depth. Developers on the Open Roads team uploaded real-world handwriting samples to create yearbook pages, postcards, and letters. This eliminates the threat of pixelated text ruining the immersion. During the conversation, the characters flit between movements like an old-school Disney storyboard, making the whole experience feel like a lucid dream.
Tess and Opal are fully voiced by two mainstream actors, Kaitlyn Deaver and Keri Russell, and in the scenes I saw, their performances were stellar. The interactions between Tess and Opal are both loving and tense, like a mother-daughter relationship. The writing is also evocative and authentic. Conversations flow smoothly even as players choose different paths that each conversation can take. These characters feel real right away.
The house where Tess and Opal leave is inhabited and gives a sense of history. Every room has a personal, handcrafted touch, and the developers have added pieces of their own lives to the game. That chair next to the desk? It was modeled after the developer's own childhood memories. Old, creepy decorations in the attic? The developer's grandmother inherited the decorations exactly as they were. Graffiti on the wall? These are pictures drawn by the creator's children. These details are not obvious to most players, but they add authenticity to the game as Tess explores closets and corners of her parents' home.
open road Not only does it provide some early 2000s nostalgia, but it also references back to the 60s and 70s, covering multiple generations of Tess's family. As Tess investigates the house and picks up various objects, Opal provides context and tells stories about their lives, causing conversation paths to diverge. At one point during the preview, the developer who was playing decided to make Tess leave her refrigerator door without closing it, which caused Opal to scold her. The relationship between Tess and Opal is charming and warm, but there's a tension in their interactions that I want to explore throughout the game.
open road It feels like a mix of Gone Home, life is strange and Edith Finch's legacy, in the best possible way. The writing, voice acting, and animation style come together in the first few minutes of the game to create a realistic, nostalgic world with vibrant characters. Be ready to go with Tess, Opal, and your printed directions when the game launches on PC, Switch, PlayStation, and Xbox on February 22nd. After all, I already have the jacket.