'Allumette' is an engaging VR story in which you are the camera
Allumette is about parents, children and lessons that pass from generation to generation. It's also an encouraging peek at the ways virtual reality can enhance animated storytelling.
The story follows a mother and her daughter as they arrive aboard their airship to a city made up of floating islands. They appear to be traveling merchants, and the sky-scraping community is teeming with customers.
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You are merely an observer in this beautiful, wordless story from Penrose Studios, towering over the fantastical city and its network of colorful isles. The plot and performances are all pre-ordained, but you -- as a sort of living camera -- determine how it's all is consumed.
For Eugene Chung -- who set the foundation for Oculus Story Studio and VR experiences like Lost before moving on to found Penrose -- Allumette comes at a critical moment for VR storytelling.
"We have to re-think all of our processes to make in VR," Chung told Mashable. "In the early stages of cinema when it first emerged as an art form, it was really a different language from the stage play or the opera."
He points to D.W. Griffith, whose early films The Birth of a Nation and Intolerance laid the groundwork for cinematic techniques like the close-up. In many ways, the current state of VR resembles those early years of film finding its footing as an expressive medium.
"One of the things that we always have to remember to do is almost be child-like again," Chung explained. "Try to forget that we know so much about an existing medium -- which is film, or video games -- and say, 'Let's approach this from square one.'
"How do we take everything and approach it from square one? Whether it's writing a story, whether it's animation, whether it's lighting or layout. We have to re-think of it in VR.""How do we take everything and approach it from square one?"
Since any VR user is effectively the "camera" in a virtual space, the minimally interactive Allumette plays with that. You have no control over the story, but you intuitively move around to follow the action as it plays out. That could involve anything from craning your head as you stand still to pushing your face "through" the exterior of an airship to see what's happening inside.
The characters and the trials they face compel you to follow along. With no dialogue to lean on, the story depends heavily on body language and the exaggerated expressiveness of cartoon characters. But it's the emotional core that gets you. This is a story of tragedy and growth, with roots that trace back to Chung's personal experiences.
"One of the key threads of my life has been the sacrifices of my mother," he said. "Throughout my life she did so much to support us and made so many sacrifices to give us the kind of life that she never had. That always has stuck with me."
Without delving into spoilers, Alummette tells a story about the lasting lessons our parents leave us with. Those critical moments together that carry forward to inform our future choices and experiences.
"As I sat down to write this story, [I thought]: what does it mean to sacrifice? What does it mean to love a child? What is a mother's love for a child, and what does that mean? How do you juxtapose that against really difficult moral choices?"
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Topics Gaming Virtual Reality
Adam Rosenberg is a Senior Games Reporter for Mashable, where he plays all the games. Every single one. From AAA blockbusters to indie darlings to mobile favorites and browser-based oddities, he consumes as much as he can, whenever he can.Adam brings more than a decade of experience working in the space to the Mashable Games team. He previously headed up all games coverage at Digital Trends, and prior to that was a long-time, full-time freelancer, writing for a diverse lineup of outlets that includes Rolling Stone, MTV, G4, Joystiq, IGN, Official Xbox Magazine, EGM, 1UP, UGO and others.Born and raised in the beautiful suburbs of New York, Adam has spent his life in and around the city. He's a New York University graduate with a double major in Journalism and Cinema Studios. He's also a certified audio engineer. Currently, Adam resides in Crown Heights with his dog and his partner's two cats. He's a lover of fine food, adorable animals, video games, all things geeky and shiny gadgets.
