Open Roads

17.01.2024 - 17:03 / gameinformer.com / Keri Russell / Kaitlyn Dever / Wesley Leblanc

In my bedroom, I have a drawer lovingly dubbed my «drawer of sentimentality.» There's a hat signed by various members of my favorite bands of a 2010s Warped Tour, tickets to some of my favorite movies, sticks from my last year on drum line in high school, and cards. Birthday cards, Christmas cards, «just because» cards, ones I got for graduating high school, ones I got for graduating college – So. Many. Cards. I struggle to throw cards away with personal greetings. I struggle to throw out anything that means something to me, even more than a decade later, so my sentimental stuff lives in a single drawer to keep me in check. 

During a virtual hands-off preview of Open Roads, the player, as Tess, played by Kaitlyn Dever (Booksmart, Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End, and soon-to-be Abby in HBO’s The Last of Us), picked up an old birthday card they received from their grandma, who recently passed away, kickstarting the events of the game. It's an action players will do a lot of in Open Roads, given it's what I'd lovingly call a narrative-driven walking sim. This card is nondescript with a simple pre-written message inside. But Tess' grandma signed something to the extent of, «I'm so proud of you, love grandma.» It wasn't much, but I immediately felt tears in my eyes. 

Admittedly, I cry easily. Also, my grandma, a matriarch of sorts in my family, passed away suddenly in August. That grief rose to the surface during this Open Roads preview when I saw that birthday card. 

It reminded me so much of my grandma. I have at least half a dozen cards, if not more, from her, just like it. Perhaps there's a sailboat on the front (I've never been sailboating) and a prewritten message inside that says something like, «May you enjoy another year of new horizons.» And signed under it by grandma, «I'm so proud of you, love grandma.» My grandpa would sign it, too, of course. And I'd take the card home after birthday celebrations and stash it away in my drawer of sentimentality. Beyond my struggle to throw sentimental things away, I couldn't have told you a specific reason for keeping this or that. In hindsight, I guess it's for moments like these when I'm previewing a game and am reminded of my grandma and feel the need to pull out one of her cards, to remember those are real words she wrote to me, just for me.

I'd later learn during this preview that things like this card from Tess' grandma, or the colorful scribble on the inside wall of a closet done by a child, or the art of a Pikanese Pomeranian Tess and her mom, Opal, played by Keri Russell (The Americans, Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker), joke about, are all real things from someone on the Open Roads Team.

Notably, Open Roads was originally in development as