REVIEW: ‘Open Roads’ Embraces The Importance Of Asking Questions (Switch)

A narrative adventure with Keri Russell and Kaitlyn Dever is a selling point on its own. But Open Roads, developed by Open Roads Team and published by Annapurna Interactive, doesn’t rely on it’s famous voice cast. Instead, the developers understand the significance of dialogue and art as equal partners in developing an immersive narrative and, ultimately, a game.

Open Roads begins with Tess Devine and her mother, Opal, cleaning out a house. Tess’s grandma has just passed away, and the house is being sold from under them. Preparing to move out and clean out what the estate sale couldn’t sell Tess is a little out of sorts. Packing up her room, you interact with objects. Pictures that recall memories with her grandma and dad. You read birthday cards, pack up old trophies, and, most importantly, you find a ticket out.

As you work your way through the same process in the rest of the house, you discover a cache of old notes and letters carefully stashed away in the attic. The notes hint at deep-rooted family secrets, decades-old burglaries, and a lost treasure somewhere near the Canadian border. Who was Tess’s grandma? How much does Opal know?

Embracing a classic road trip structure and atmosphere, the game is a journey through the past and the present. Throughout your road trip, find long-abandoned family properties and unearth the past along the way. This includes things Opal has tried for years to forget, like a strained relationship with her sister August. However, Open Roads isn’t just about places; it’s about the relationship between Opal and Tess and bridging their divide.

Open Roads is gorgeous. The hand-drawn art style of the characters and the photos stand starkly against a mostly realistic three-dimensional background. The hand-animated character work highlights the important role artists play in the development process of the narrative. The disconnect between the two art styles is endearing. When the story is taking place, the illustrative art style puts a little bit of space between you, the player, and the narrative. However, when you’re viewing the realistic world in the first person, everything feels tactile. Like, you’re in the middle of the mystery.

This translates into the game’s simplistic gameplay, which is entirely about immersion. It prioritizes a tenderness that pays off in the moments between Tess and Opal. This is true whether in humor or in moments of reflection that come from words that come out sharper than intended. Instead of feeling like a grand and tense mystery, the intimate touch to every conversation heightens your connection to the game as you learn each character’s flaws, secrets, and buried pasts.

The game has a thoughtful dialogue system that will yield different paths as you choose responses. In true narrative adventure style, Open Roads offers many choices and branching paths based on how much information you choose to get from each interaction. If you don’t dig deeper into some questions, the paths you can take will change. The game is all about digging deeper and doing so with purpose. But perhaps the strongest point about the dialogue is that it feels real. There are regrets and vulnerabilities throughout the interactions.

At one moment, Tess and Opal discuss marriage, and if you choose the response that relates to a kid stopping a divorce, well, it gets emotional. The lightness of the conversations makes it feel like a mother and daughter trying to walk around each other; at the same time, that comes with their flaws. Some responses feel mean, even if the intention wasn’t there, and the shadow of Opal’s father lingers over their interactions. Dialogue is vital, and you’re expected to learn about the characters and story by exploring the environment.

Open Roads doesn’t only embrace the emotional atmosphere it is trying to create. Along with the score from composer Garry Schyman, it also embodies the early aughts with thoughtfulness. From the choice of patterns in houses to the fashion, all of it feels close to now but firmly situated in the past.

Open Roads is a family story about mothers and daughters and the secrets they keep. Opal’s mom died with secrets, and now, as a mom, Opal has her own. Tess is there to uncover the past, but she also realizes how she can relate to it.

Our parents lie. They do so to protect us, or at leas they think that’s what they’re doing. But they also make decisions with their life that cause ripples we may never understand. They choose to marry one person when they love another and choose to have kids they’re not ready for. They choose and their kids are left with the choices and not context. Just the life they’ve been given.

While playing this short game, I was immediately reminded of talking with my mother. Our family history is one that’s kept in its people. When my grandma died, part of our history died with her. Now, I ask my mom questions about my grandma. Her father who used to live on a Reservation we have never known. Her choice to marry my grandpa and take on raising his siblings. But even though I have started to get answers, my mom sometimes responds: I don’t know.

I am in love with Open Roads because of the intimacy it embodies. The connections that it explores. But above all else, it embraces the hope that not everything is lost when someone dies. My mom has boxes of my grandmother’s things. Stuff she couldn’t throw away. And now, I want to open them and reconstruct who my grandma was outside her role as a mother and wife.

We know who we are because of questions we’ve asked over the years. And now that our grandparents have both passed away, much of our time with family is going over the answers all of us were given. Open Roads captures this beautifully.

It’s easy to say that Open Roads is cozy and simple. Truthfully, though, its simplicity is its strength. Switching between interacting with your environment in first-person and having conversations in third-person builds layers of connection between the player and the characters. Everything you do feels personal, especially as a daughter who still has endless questions for her mother.

Open Roads will be available now on Xbox Series X|S (Xbox Game Pass), Xbox One, PlayStation 5|4,  Nintendo Switch, and Steam.