Impressions

Henry

I was not impressed with Henry. It’s Oculus Story Studio’s attempt at creating a Pixar-esque short film, but it lacks all the inventiveness of one.

Dear Angelica

Dear Angelica was the standout for me. The story was simple, but beautifully told. The environments featured in the film were reduced to their essentials giving the film a meditative, introspective mood. For me, the film demonstrated VR’s ability to focus on an single feeling or idea, and eliminate all other distractions. Instead of trying to create fully-featured environments with a myriad of unimportant details, which has always been the focus of screen-based AAA games, perhaps VR creators should focus more on a minimalist aesthetic, and play with pure sensation and universal themes.

Ambitions

Inspired by Dear Angelica, I realized that I’m interested in creating a self-analytical experience in VR, in which participants get a chance to look inwards and explore their past and/or about their current values and aspirations. Can you allow participants to recreate childhood memories in VR with limited interactivity? Can you allow them to create their idealized futures?

As an example, I’m imagining a scene where the participant can relive being in primary school, personalizing the scene by allowing people to choose how large the size of the class is, the environment surrounding the school (e.g. rich neighborhood, run-down neighborhood, small town, etc), the size of the class, etc.