Open Roads

Developer Fullbright Publisher Annapurna Interactive Format PC (consoles TBA) Origin US Release TBA

No road is long with good company, as they say, and so it’s fitting that Fullbright should be riding shotgun with Annapurna Interactive for its third game. Open Roads tells the story of Tess Devine and her mother Opal, beginning just after Opal’s mother has died. As they’re sorting through her belongings, they stumble across something that stokes their curiosity.

“There’s evidence of this episode in the grandmother’s life that neither of them ever knew about and that obviously she had kept hidden,” writer/director Steve Gaynor says. “And so it sends them on this journey to a summer home that Opal had spent a lot of her youth in.” It’s partly inspired, he says, by an episode of This American Life called The House On Loon Lake, in which a group of kids find an old, abandoned house and discover a treasure trove of secrets that leads them on a decades-long mystery. It’s worth a listen for hints as to where the game might end up.

The most obvious benefit of the publisher’s involvement is right there in the cast list. Booksmart’s Kaitlyn Dever will play Tess, while The Americans’ Keri Russell is Opal, with Annapurna’s extensive contact book ensuring it could secure the first names on Gaynor’s wishlist. But it’s also helped Gaynor and his team realise a goal they’ve had since before the studio was founded. “We wanted to make a Fullbright game where you had another character in the room with you,” he explains. “We went from audio diaries in Gone Home to Tacoma, where I was able to write these sort of ensemble scenes, but where you’re still an observer. And now I’m able to write a game where the player is directly involved with the dialogue. Having to write a lot of branching that’s based on the choices you make in dialogue was also a really exciting new space to get to work in for myself.”

Or spaces, plural. The beauty of the road trip format – and the extra resources that a publisher can afford it – is that Fullbright is no longer limited to a single location. Though you’ll be on the road for a relatively small percentage of the game (Gaynor points out that very few classic road-trip movies spend much time inside cars), the journeys will give a sense of time and distance. From Tess’s passenger seat you’ll get to look out of the window, fiddle with the radio, and talk to Opal. “Having someone that knows maybe more about the places and the implications of what you’re finding than you do and maybe raises that question of how reliable a narrator they are – that’s really interesting to explore as a player,” Gaynor says. We’ll unearth more of Open Roads’ secrets next month.