Developed by the Open Roads Team and published by Annapurna Interactive, Open Roads doesn’t rest on its laurels, which are its lead actresses, Kaitlyn Dever and Kerri Russell. Instead the game’s dialogue, choices, and immersive art style is core to this mother-daughter story. We spoke with the Open Roads Team developers which included Amy Fincher (Executive Producer), Noël Clark (Art Director), Aaron Freedman (Engineering Lead), Sarah Robertson (Operations Manager & Associate Producer), and Harrison Gerard (Graphic Artist). In our time together we discussed the story, what they hope audiences will take away from Open Roads as the developer, and the choice behind the game’s use of 2D and 3D art styles.
You can read a snippet of our interview below and press play below for the full 20-minute interview.
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Open Roads is a family story. It’s one about the relationship between mother and daughter. Whether this is Opal and Tess or Opal and her mother, who has just passed away. How they talk, the secrets they keep, and the lives they lead apart from their maternal relationships. To that point, Sarah Robertson explained the inspirations behind Open Roads’ narrative, “I feel like it’s not a relationship you see often. I feel like you see quite a bit more of [familial relationships that are] father-son relationships or father-daughter relationships or mother-son. It just feels like it’s oddly [absent], as a relationship that I think so many people can have some sort of [connection] to is the one that you don’t see necessarily reflected in games and media in particular, very often.”
Amy Fincher added, “That element, [the mother-daughter relationship], was already always there and important. My understanding is some of the early inspiration may have come from films like Lady Bird and things like that. But the story also had a lot of other stuff in it. As we worked on it more, we really realized that was the thing that was most important to us and made sure that everything about the story revolved around that relationship and served the development of that relationship.”
While Tess and Opal are the core of this short but immersive game, the art style is also one of the key elements to making it stand out. When asked about the distinct switch of third-person experiences being represented in an illustrative style and the background and first-person moments being three-dimensional, Harrison Gerard explained, “We really approached it from having a lot of variables… We knew we wanted to have that great illustrative style for the dialogue [and] knew that we wanted to have photorealistic examinable goals [too]. Then we like working from those two points, we kind of figured out like the best way to blend those together and have them live together.”
Gerard added, “But I think overall, the stuff me and Noel talked a lot about were about having really good color palettes and making sure that like the color palette of the level [meshed] together and having like a good amount of visual texture in the game as well. So it didn’t feel collaged, [so that it] felt more grounded.”
Noël Clark added to Gerard’s explanation, “I feel like the 2D versus 3D aspect of the game was decided on pretty early on, to explore at least. And at least from my perspective, I started out as an animator on the team and became the Art Director. But animating in 2D for characters was a dream of mine in games. These characters are so important to the story and they’re really strong personalities. I feel like 2D animation creates a lot of emotion through just a few frames. We felt like that would be a really good way to represent the characters.”
Finally, Robertson continued to break down the Open Roads Team’s art style choices for the game. “I think it underlines kind of one of those probably well-understood concepts [that] there’s almost no decision you can make in game development where it’s completely isolated. very little thing on its own.” She continued, “Do you represent the 3D things in a 2D form? Well, that’s not necessarily as fulfilling in the way that we want it because there’s something fun about being able to pick up the dog food cat and rotate it around and look at all of the details and ingredient list on the back… But then when you do have 2D items, then you have the opportunity [to] have a 2d character directly interact. We can have Tess’s hand [be] your hand in the screen showing [while] she’s holding that photo. She’s flipping it over. She’s got a bunch of matchbooks in her hand that she’s fanning through.”
But playing with dimension artistically goes even further as Robertson highlights the car sequences of this road trip. “When you have unique things like in the car,” she said, “You now have Opal as a 2d character, driving a 3d car, having to touch it and realistically look like she’s interacting with this whole 3d space. It was a challenge [we] set upon really early. Hopefully, we ended up with a really interesting, unique kind of space for players to experience both.
The artistic vision of the game and the immersion it offers all works to serve the game’s main focus, Opal and Tess. When we asked the Open Roads Team what they wanted players to take away from their experience on this short and sweet road trip, Aaron Freedman responded immediately, “Call your mom.”
He elaborated, “My longer form slightly less jokey answer is that as media, entertainment, a work of art, if we can have our players come out [and] feel moved and touched in a personal way—I think that’s all we can really ask for, right? Our greatest hope is that you, the players, can make the game your own experience. It’s not about us telling you how feel about the thing that we made.”
To close, Robertson explained, “I think everyone can probably find some way to relate to having family, friends, whatever it may be, people in your life, where maybe you didn’t think to ever ask questions about kind of who they used to be or what they used to do what they used to. I think it’s easy to get into a space of knowing someone as their relationship to you. That’s the primary beat of connection versus [the fact that] your mom was a whole person before you came around. [With] a whole different set of life experiences.
“It’d be really fascinating if people feel compelled to [think:] “I never asked what grandpa used to do,” or “I’d never thought about what my great great grandma,” whatever it may be. It feels like there are so many interesting things you can explore within that or even just what’s your whether it’s chosen family, like just it’s neat, I think it’s not uncommon to find that, like at the end, there are questions left and asked and you’re left putting pieces together of someone’s life without them there. If Open Roads motivates some people to go, “I’d love to learn more about that,” or dig more into it and go through that box of stuff from [their] grandma in the attic and just see. I wonder what sort of story that tells. It’s kind of cool if the game helps motivate someone to do something like that.”
Open Roads will be available now on Xbox Series X|S (Xbox Game Pass), Xbox One, PlayStation 5|4, Nintendo Switch, and Steam.
