Open Roads Review

Reviewer’s note: Given how much story is at the forefront of certain praises and critiques, it’s not possible to outright avoid SPOILERS here. Read on at your own risk.

After rummaging through her room and packing up whatever’s not nailed down, teenaged protagonist Tess continues wandering through her late grandma’s house. Like many modern walking sims/narrative adventures, there’s often a prompt to pick up sundry items for its own sake. Certain contextual queues may prompt a different interaction here: “Hey, Mom!” In a way, this nuance is also emblematic of developer Open Roads Team transitioning away from their previous name, Fullbright; instead of framing gameplay around detective work within an isolated environ, it’s a tale of mutual discovery between a mother and daughter. Even the team’s time-honoured tradition of a 0451 passcode at the start has been dropped. These shifts, though subtle, reveal a design and storytelling mismatch that never quite captures the enthusiasm and style of before.

When Tess yells for her mother, Opal, the scene transitions to a dialogue template for her to gain more insight about grandma and more. It’s Gone Home with cutscenes and dialogue choices splashed in between. As this tempo continues through more of the house, the pair stumbles upon grandma’s old correspondence with a mystery man, which inspires an impromptu road trip. While the inciting action hints at a risqué discovery, the grander revelations are of a mother-daughter pair learning more about each other and seeing their motivations in a new light.

That doesn’t mean all traditional game intrigue has been tossed aside. Like its forbearers before, Open Roads captures the usual template of traipsing through an environment, picking up random objects, and some light puzzle solving to get around a blocked path or open a locked door. Basically, to avoid the old “walking sim” as a pejorative – à la Dear Esther – there’s a nice collection of doodads to examine and glean more info about. It’s more of a first-person story excavator where you dust off old frying pans, newspaper clippings, and sundry items to learn more about this place in time, perhaps even unlock a new “Hey, Mom!” discussion. After all, most of the locations you go to have been well travelled by her.

Aside from being necessary to progress the plot, there’s a slightly higher incentive to scour through these interactables if only to admire the artists’ attention to era-specific detail. Before even starting the road trip, packing up Tess’ room feels like a small treasure trove of early-00s memorabilia that (naturally) avoid any legal hot water: a not-Apple iMac complete with translucent coloured outer shell, a knockoff Tamagotchi, and so on and so forth. Trips between locations often have Tess occupied on her flip phone while texting her shady dad (a sore spot for Opal since their divorce) and her best friend Francine. Between this, grandma’s house, her old abandoned mobile home out in the sticks, a rickety houseboat, and more, each place and all of its incredibly-rendered memorabilia feels like unearthing a mini time capsule of a different epoch.

Even though this panoply of items look nice and feel tangible in Tess’ invisible hands, they could’ve had more to say. In several ways, Open Roads feels like the magic monkey’s paw for those who wished Gone Home had more dialogue or character interactions. The latter’s context succinctly informed players about what to expect in an empty house with a few horror tropes tossed alongside it. Being with a young woman alone in a spooky house complimented the isolation and the inevitable discoveries. This structure, on the other hand, frames many contextual actions as though Opal is a genie in a bottle; despite talking directly to her during dialogue scenes, you’re all alone during gameplay. Sometimes this makes sense when Tess opts to go solo, but they’re few and far between. It also heightens the awkwardness given how often you’re investigating items from her past. Why wouldn’t she be a chatterbox over her or her family’s history?

It’s also quite strange how often this already-minimal gameplay feels further minimised than in times past. Various drawers can be opened, but – for some reason – bottom ones are typically off-limits. Fun items like acoustic guitars and record players can only be gawped at, but never touched. It’s a coin toss as to which kitchen items are interactable too. On the more technical side, Open Roads may rank as this team’s buggiest title to date: being unable to move Tess’ head vertically or horizontally after grabbing certain items is a consistent annoyance. That along with some framerate dips may be papercuts in the grand scheme, but it’s wild to experience with such a barebones template.

Even if these are incredibly minor, it saps some of the casual fun found in previous titles. The type of unscripted play of carrying and throwing items around just for their own sake has been replaced with being orderly and dainty with anything you grab; conversely, you can’t also act like a maid while going through what’s essentially a trash heap. The most that can be done when grabbing stuff is potentially hearing some scripted lines after flipping a card or letter over, but there’s not much past that.

In what’s already a mechanically limited sub-genre, a quality story could allay these annoyances. Sadly, development issues seem to extend to its broader narrative as well, and a waste of Kaitlyn Dever and Keri Russell’s acting talent. While the amount of genial leeway Opal gives to her daughter’s semi-sarcastic remarks strains credulity, there are morsels of genuine emotion in capturing this fraught time in both of their lives. However, the way in which most storylines are brought up and quickly resolved on their own leave the bitter taste of a flat soda; all the fizz – all the drama – has dissipated. It’s similar to Suicide Squad’s story problems: a smorgasbord of credited writers – minus Steve Gaynor due to past allegations – punching out what should be a simple script. Even if some only worked on unused drafts, it nevertheless feels like a mismanaged mess.

Sure, this team’s penchant for capturing a sense of place still earns some fair credit, even in a more competitive field than a decade ago; the voice talent, subtly-disguised licensed tracks, and more go a long way in appreciating its technical production. In both script and game design, however, several creative decisions feel more compelled out of eschewing a legacy than servicing the game proper. For a title centred around unearthing deeper meaning in buried secrets, perhaps the most disheartening quality to Open Roads is how little feels said by the end.