Façade
Creative Work
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, the authors undertook a five year collaboration to engineer a novel architecture for supporting emotional, interactive character behavior and drama-managed plot. 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.
(Source: Authors' description from Electronic Literature Collection, Volume Two)
Façade must be downloaded and installed. There is a brief instructions screen in the title menu, explaining that players simply type at any time to speak dialog, use the arrow keys to navigate, and use the mouse to pick up and use objects.
Critical writing that references this work:
Teaching Resource that references this work:
http://www.elmcip.net/node/1293
