The controller-free setup means that it’s accessible to an incredibly wide audience and the lack of artificial movement means it should be comfortable for most players. It’s a visceral, emotional journey that is best enjoyed in one sitting and with a box of tissues nearby. It’s a perfect example of how virtual reality can tell a story in ways that movies, games and other media can’t. Before Your Eyes Review – Final Verdictīefore Your Eyes is a narrative experience unlike any other. It’s one of the most interesting uses of eye tracking technology we’ve seen to date, without a doubt. It isn’t just a novelty, but a mechanic that is essential and thematically connected to the story.
#BEFORE YOUR EYES GAME PLATFORMS PC#
Regardless, the presence of the blink mechanic in the original PC release proves just how integral it is to the narrative. In fact, you’d be forgiven for thinking it was made for VR first, because it’s such a natural fit for an immersive platform. While I haven’t tried the original, there is nothing about the VR release that feels like a port of a flatscreen game. Scenes are faded in and out around the player and the entire story is played without a controller, making it quite an accessible experience.īefore Your Eyes originally released as a flatscreen experience for PC in 2021, using a connected webcam to track the player’s blinks. It’s a seated experience that remains stationary, spare for a handful of sequences with very slow artificial movement. It does deal with some heavy content matter surrounding death and illness, but also presents an experience that feels representative and parallel to how we remember our own lives.īefore Your Eyes should be comfortable for most users. It’s hard to speak more in-depth about the narrative, because it’s best to go in blind – no pun intended – but suffice to say that it’s engaging, touching and tragic. This intersection of cutting-edge technology and well-written immersive narrative results in an experience that is both beautiful and confronting at the same time. There were points where I just wanted to blink as soon as possible to skip through a difficult scene. There were points where I was crying, making it much harder not to blink. There were points where I blinked completely by accident, tragically cutting a beautiful moment short. There’s only so long you can stave off a blink.
You’ve formed connections with the characters and would be happy to spend a bit longer in each scene, but you’re constantly battling against the marching pace of life. As he gets older and the narrative progresses, you start to feel time slipping away. At the start when Benny is a child, you’ll often be happy to skip forward to the next scene, keen to see what’s next. The blink mechanic is compelling as a storytelling device because it forces you to constantly progress onwards and yet also makes you savor each moment as it happens. You can choose to blink straight away or try to prolong the inevitable.
At set moments in each scene, a small ticking metronome appears, indicating that the next time you blink, you’ll open your eyes to a new scene. There’s a small cursor tied to the centre of your field of view in each scene, which you can position over interaction points by moving your head and selecting with a blink. It’s absolutely captivating to behold and completely original in its execution, bringing you closer to the characters and connected to the world in a such a visceral manner.īefore Your Eyes is played completely controller-free, making it an incredibly accessible and intuitive experience.
Your blinks become a tool to shorten, lengthen and heighten the story being told around you, which deals with themes of life, death, ambition, creativity, family and so much more. Sometimes you’ll jump forward a few minutes, other times a few years. You’re literally experiencing his life flash before your eyes, one blink at a time. When you blink, the scenes will change and the story will advance forward from one moment in Benny’s life to the next. The catch is that you control the story entirely with your eyes – specifically, your blinks. You’re then transported back into the memories of the protagonist Benny, experiencing them from his first-person perspective as they happened. You begin aboard a mythical ship in the afterlife, traveling alongside a ferryman who wants to learn about your life.
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