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If there's one thing I miss about commuting to work every day on the subway pre-pandemic, it's people-watching. My ability to create fake narratives in my head about random strangers really helped flex the creative part of my brain each day. So, when I put on my virtual reality headset to find myself seated on a train next to people I didn't know in The Passengers, I felt right at home.
Premiering at this year's SXSW, The Passengers is an interactive VR experience that tells the story of four strangers, all dealing with their own internal struggles, traveling on a train together. As the viewer, you have the opportunity to embody each one, getting to know them on a more personal level via their inner thoughts and flashbacks.
Image: courtesy of Couzin films
"When you're taking public transit, you see different people and everyone's in their own heads. You start making assumptions [based on] their body language and maybe physical characteristics. So, this experience really immerses you in the thoughts of someone that you may have judged from the other point of view," Ziad Touma, director of The Passengers, said.
The game is built as something of a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure, with your experience based on the passenger you choose to play as and the characters you interact with. But rather than presenting you with options to physically tap through to trigger a scenario, the sequences are controlled strictly through your gaze and voice. Who you stare at impacts the narrative, and whether or not you speak up determines if the character completes their quest to solve issues in their personal lives.
The controls aren't as intuitive as they could be, but it's easy to get used to after a few tries. It's all based on visual cues: Depending on the direction you move your head (whether it's looking straight ahead, diagonally, or the right and left), it recognizes which character you're looking at. If you stare at a character long enough, you'll see an icon load above their heads that will trigger audio.
Other times, when the narrative calls for it, another circular icon will appear in front of you to prompt you to speak out loud. There aren't any specific keywords you need to say, though, it just needs to recognize a voice to continue on with the story. I really only stuck with "yes" or "no," along with "hi," depending on what the prompt was.
As of right now, only two chapters are available to view. They're titled "Him" and "Her," standing for the man and woman passengers you see in the train cabin. Later this year, users will also be able to access the young child and older lady sitting alongside them. But as of now, the narrative only goes as far as what you learn about the man and the woman.
Below are a few clips that I recorded of my own experience playing both the male and female passengers.
When you ride as "Him," your goal is to muster up the courage to talk to the woman across from you. When you ride "Her," your goal is to answer your boyfriend's call and admit to him that you don't want to have children. While these aren't directly stated from the beginning, you manage to piece it all together as the narrative progresses.
But whether you're riding as the man or the woman passenger, both are making assumptions about what the other is thinking. He assumes she's internally attacking his masculinity for not making a move. Meanwhile she can tell he's into her but shuts down the idea of his advances in fear that he'd also want children one day.
"He's infatuated by her, the passenger in front of him. And he remembers all the times in his life, from his teenage years, where he fell in love in his own head with different women," Touma explained, "All of her inner thoughts [change] depending on which character she's looking at....Whether she's looking at the lady, [who] will remind her of her mother, or the child [who] is going to remind her of the son she's not going to have."
Of course, it doesn't take much to see that both their situations are extremely different. Having to decide whether or not motherhood is the right path (a question women are constantly asked as they get older, and often wrestle with significantly) isn't quite the same as finding the courage to approach someone you're interested in (something everyone faces).
According to Touma, the goal was to provide deep personal experiences from different genders and ages. That way, viewers could experience specific point of views and themes that resonate with each character. By virtually embodying each character, viewers can gain a deeper understanding of what it's like to switch places among different walks of life.
Image: courtesy of Couzin films
Regardless of the difference in their situations, both characters can only change their path by speaking up. If you decide to stay quiet as the man, you're met with his same negative thoughts. If you do say hello by the last stop, mission accomplished, and you can hope that something comes out of it once they step off the train.
Meanwhile, if you don't answer your boyfriend's question while embodying the woman, the man across from you never ends up saying hello and you're stuck with your boyfriend continuously calling.
Eventually, when all the chapters are available, you'll be able to piece together the narratives surrounding all four characters on your own by going through them one by one. But here's the thing: The Passengers wasn't originally built as a one-player experience.
If SXSW wasn't fully virtual again due to the ongoing pandemic, it would've been more of a social and theatrical event. Users would enter a set that mirrored the same train cabin set in the VR world — complete with ticket stubs, leather seats, and a table — and your character would be chosen for you. Once it started, everyone would "play" along together, ultimately helping to influence the other's decisions depending on where they looked or whether they spoke up.
However, for me, the experience consisted of sitting on the hardwood floor in my room, with an HP Reverb G2 on my head, tethered to a bulky PC. And I'll assume that others who watch The Passengers will also be at home in their rooms. But while the aforementioned event setup sounds lovely, sitting alone in my room felt far more fitting for this type of thing.
The beauty of VR is that it allows you to escape your current setting. That meant I was fully tuned into what was happening in front of me — without all the distractions that come with being on a full-blown set alongside other people. I had the option to stare at one person the entire time, allowing the character's inner thoughts to zone in on one narrative, or go back and forth between multiple people to elicit a variety of thoughts. After a while, I found myself replaying the experience over and over in an effort to discover all the different audio combinations. Since both passenger experiences are only 10 minutes each, it goes by super quick.
Image: courtesy of Couzin films
While having to nix the in-person demonstration of it all wasn't ideal, Touma expressed the silver lining: The experience can now reach a lot more people.
"[The Passengers] was designed [as] onboard entertainment. Ideally, we wanted to see it on trains, while you're traveling and on airplanes. That was our ultimate goal. Now, having invested money and time to pivot into the single user [experience], it's going to have more accessibility [and] more viewers will be able to download it in VR stores," he said.
As of now, the experience will only be showcased at festivals, art galleries, and museums. And, at the moment, accessing it requires a hefty VR headset, a fairly powerful PC, and the patience to set everything up. But according to Touma, its availability will expand to more viewers over time. The team is also exploring the possibility of adapting it to non-tethered headsets, like the Oculus Quest 2.
And, even though The Passengers is still very much a work-in-progress, it still made for a nice little escape during a pandemic. After all, I can only rewatch my favorite TV shows so many times in one year. Having the ability to escape into a different world and virtually take on the roles of other people — thoughts included — provided some respite I didn't know I craved.
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