In theory, Open Roads should be an easy sell to someone like me, because I love a stylised narrative adventure game – see As Dusk Falls from a couple of years ago. Open Roads follows a mother and daughter (Opal and Tess) on a road trip after they learn a secret about their recently departed mother/grandmother. What was she hiding from them, and why? Who was she? The promise is an engaging mystery told through slow-burn character development – the kind of set-up that might teach us a thing or two about our lives along the way. Great; I’m all in.
Open RoadsDeveloper: Open Roads TeamPublisher: AnnapurnaAvailability: Releases 22nd February on PC, PS5, PS4, Switch, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One (and Game Pass)
Yet, after sitting through a half-hour preview of Open Roads, I’m left scratching my head about it – because nothing much happened. It was hands-off, I should say, and all I saw in that time was our character Tess, the daughter, walking around a house, picking objects up and talking to her mum. That was it. There was no sense of mystery and no real sense of story. Given the game is out next month, it was a very strange chunk of game to show.
I’m not sure about some of the things I did manage to see, either. To me, these kinds of games run on their performances; they are the engine driving them. It’s doubly true of Open Roads because it has limited character animations and almost no lip-synching, either. This approach can work very well though – again, see As Dusk Falls.
But here, it feels flat, and I’m not exactly sure why that is. The actors’ performances seem fine and the sparing animations can be effective, and the artwork is appealing. Put it all together, though, and something is holding it back. It doesn’t help that there’s no discernible audio accompanying it (which may be a byproduct of the game being demoed remotely). All together, it ends up feeling like you’re watching a rehearsal, rather than a final performance.