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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 in July 2005.

From interactivestory.net.

Since then, the game has been downloaded more than 500,000 times, received multiple awards and rave press reviews. Watch Facade’s trailer and see it in action.

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.

Procedural Arts, an independent studio formed by artificial intelligence researcher/developers Andrew Stern and Michael Mateas. (…) Integrating an interdisciplinary set of artistic practices and artificial intelligence technologies, Mateas and Stern have completed a five-year collaboration to engineer a novel architecture for supporting emotional, interactive character behavior and drama-managed story. Within this architecture they 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.

From interactivestory.net.

Download Game [For Windows] or Download Game [For Mac]

Related Links:
Procedural Art’s Website

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2 Responses

  1. TheBlueLotusPoet

    No role-playing game in thie days time is as realistic as Facade. The mainframe scenario is quite a realistic. One who hasnt been in such a sitch as a quarreling married couple, could get a small taste of what its like. You can either be the mediator or destroyer with the words you choose. While all that sounds all good and interesting, the gameplay is quite moderate. There are moments when Grace & Trip respond accordingly to such things as sexual references, harsh launguage, etc. and sometimes it seems they dont know what youre talking about. (If you go outside of the box, they obviously will just look confused.) Whether its a glitch or fairly poor programming, Facade is quite decent, but has some bolts that need tightening.
    Rating – 6.5/10

  2. TheBlueLotusPoet

    No role-playing game in thie days time is as realistic as Facade. The mainframe scenario is quite a realistic. One who hasnt been in such a sitch as a quarreling married couple, could get a small taste of what its like. You can either be the mediator or destroyer with the words you choose. While all that sounds all good and interesting, the gameplay is quite moderate. There are moments when Grace & Trip respond accordingly to such things as sexual references, harsh launguage, etc. and sometimes it seems they dont know what youre talking about. (If you go outside of the box, they obviously will just look confused.) Whether its a glitch or fairly poor programming, Facade is quite decent, but has some bolts that need tightening.
    Rating – 6.5/10