Façade

[keeks]

This "game" looks fascinating, I'm currently downloading it.

Façade is an artificial intelligence-based art/research experiment in electronic narrative – an attempt to move beyond traditional branching or hyper-linked narrative to create a fully-realized, one-act interactive drama. Integrating an interdisciplinary set of artistic practices and artificial intelligence technologies, we have completed a five year collaboration to engineer a novel architecture for supporting emotional, interactive character behavior and drama-managed plot. Within this architecture we have built a dramatically interesting, real-time 3D virtual world inhabited by computer-controlled characters, in which the player experiences a story from a first-person perspective. Façade was publicly released as a freeware download / cd-rom in July 2005.

You, the player, using your own name and gender, play the character of a longtime friend of Grace and Trip, an attractive and materially successful couple in their early thirties. During an evening get-together at their apartment that quickly turns ugly, you become entangled in the high-conflict dissolution of Grace and Trip’s marriage. No one is safe as the accusations fly, sides are taken and irreversible decisions are forced to be made. By the end of this intense one-act play you will have changed the course of Grace and Trip’s lives – motivating you to re-play the drama to find out how your interaction could make things turn out differently the next time.

Official site
A glowing review

 

[Naked_Lunch]

It's pretty cool and addictive, the only thing I don't like is how you have to exit the game to restart. The opening loading time is a bitch.

I've played through about, I dunno, 7-8 times so far and not once have I gotten even the remotely same ending. My favorite was when I tried to turn Grace into a lesbian. Trip kicked my ass out onto the street.

 

[Sirus]

Is it worth the huge download?

 

[DarkSign]

They use "Proppian" theory much like the story-engine narrative thesis I posted awhile back.

This is an idea whose time has come!

 

[Atrokkus]

WOw, it would be great to check it out... but damn it's huge... how come? The graphics are coreldrawish, programming code can't be that big... or there are lots of sounds?

 

[gromit]

LOTS of sounds.

 

[pyrrho12]

They use "Proppian" theory much like the story-engine narrative thesis I posted awhile back.

Interesting. This is also similar to the random plot generator being used for GH2, though Facade is way way way more advanced. I remember learning about Vladimir Propp during my literary criticism course, but didn't think of him when first designing GearHead. Looks like I've just found some reading to do.

 

[dipdipdip]

LOTS of sounds.

You betcha. It should be mentioned that the voice acting is fantastic for a freebie "game" like this.

My only complaint there is that when Grace calls my name, she suddenly sounds like Nico of the Velvet Underground.