Eh... it’s quite sad and hard to be slightly disappointed in the new work of a team whose work you’ve been following for a long time. Open Roads from the team of the same name (from the former core of Fullbright studio) can hardly be called the next step for the creators of Gone Home and Tacoma, rather a child of its difficult development cycle. And it's really sad.
Well, the story is not bad. It brings you back to Gone Home in the way the game turns a slightly mystical premise into a down-to-earth, everyday ending, which is generally done quite well, but also quite simply. The game perhaps feels too short, and the choice of road trip structure, while fresh, seems to come at the expense of the excellent environmental storytelling skills that the team's previous projects have been known for. There simply aren't large enough locations to develop this skill beyond a very basic level of interaction, and the game as a whole struck me as disappointingly less interactive and detailed than previous works (only in the summer house segment does the story get an acceptably large location and path within it and layout plot-significant objects has at least a little more interesting thought behind the most basic level). However, the two main performances are not bad, the variety of dialogue between the heroines is pleasing (and there even seems to be some choice), and although the story itself does not feel too deep, the good chemistry between the characters lifts this aspect a little.
And at the same time, the hardest thing for me is to formulate my thoughts about a rather important and interesting decision in the visual aspect of the game. Despite (as before for the team) a rather realistic environment, this time the characters are drawn in a 2D style that seems to correspond to comics or animation of the era (and besides this, even in the environment there is a certain touch of “drawnness” that departs from realism (which, however, is not a bad thing at all and allows you to create beautiful background landscapes, especially in the segment with a summer house it is incredibly beautiful)). And if at first it looked rather repulsive and incongruous, then towards the end I came to terms with this stylistic decision a little. I just don't understand why they didn't use the characters themselves somewhere other than dialogue (where they look most unnatural), since in the scene in the car the mother looks pretty good while driving. Well, the characters themselves are drawn quite simply and without any attempt to synchronize speech with their faces, here they simply give out one of a small number of emotions and then seeing a static character while the dialogue is going on is quite sad. What's also sad is the technical part of the game. There is nothing critical here, but a few small moments that obviously could be seen in the very basic playtest (mainly with the mechanics of picking up items) slightly spoil the overall impression (considering that this is a very mechanically simple game and it is very difficult to break anything here). However, it's hard to criticize the game too much for this given its notoriously difficult production history.
So overall, I’m just a little sad that this project is more of a victim of circumstances and in no way a development for this team. I hope that these people will be able to create something more exciting in the future, perhaps separately and in new teams. Because it seems that Open Roads is a thing that needed to be finished and left behind, just as the heroines of this game actually do in their story.
Well, the story is not bad. It brings you back to Gone Home in the way the game turns a slightly mystical premise into a down-to-earth, everyday ending, which is generally done quite well, but also quite simply. The game perhaps feels too short, and the choice of road trip structure, while fresh, seems to come at the expense of the excellent environmental storytelling skills that the team's previous projects have been known for. There simply aren't large enough locations to develop this skill beyond a very basic level of interaction, and the game as a whole struck me as disappointingly less interactive and detailed than previous works (only in the summer house segment does the story get an acceptably large location and path within it and layout plot-significant objects has at least a little more interesting thought behind the most basic level). However, the two main performances are not bad, the variety of dialogue between the heroines is pleasing (and there even seems to be some choice), and although the story itself does not feel too deep, the good chemistry between the characters lifts this aspect a little.
And at the same time, the hardest thing for me is to formulate my thoughts about a rather important and interesting decision in the visual aspect of the game. Despite (as before for the team) a rather realistic environment, this time the characters are drawn in a 2D style that seems to correspond to comics or animation of the era (and besides this, even in the environment there is a certain touch of “drawnness” that departs from realism (which, however, is not a bad thing at all and allows you to create beautiful background landscapes, especially in the segment with a summer house it is incredibly beautiful)). And if at first it looked rather repulsive and incongruous, then towards the end I came to terms with this stylistic decision a little. I just don't understand why they didn't use the characters themselves somewhere other than dialogue (where they look most unnatural), since in the scene in the car the mother looks pretty good while driving. Well, the characters themselves are drawn quite simply and without any attempt to synchronize speech with their faces, here they simply give out one of a small number of emotions and then seeing a static character while the dialogue is going on is quite sad. What's also sad is the technical part of the game. There is nothing critical here, but a few small moments that obviously could be seen in the very basic playtest (mainly with the mechanics of picking up items) slightly spoil the overall impression (considering that this is a very mechanically simple game and it is very difficult to break anything here). However, it's hard to criticize the game too much for this given its notoriously difficult production history.
So overall, I’m just a little sad that this project is more of a victim of circumstances and in no way a development for this team. I hope that these people will be able to create something more exciting in the future, perhaps separately and in new teams. Because it seems that Open Roads is a thing that needed to be finished and left behind, just as the heroines of this game actually do in their story.