Façade Remastered: the 2005 drama, rebuilt so it hears you

The game

Façade came out in 2005, made by Michael Mateas and Andrew Stern. You visit an old couple of friends, Trip and Grace, for drinks, and over twenty minutes their marriage falls apart in front of you. You take part by typing whatever you like.

It was years ahead of its time. The story bent around you, and the two of them reacted to what you typed. But every answer had been written and recorded long before you said anything, so the game had to guess which of its prepared lines fit. The drama could follow you. The words couldn't. And anything it had no answer for, the evening simply carried on past.

What I built

Façade Remastered keeps everything that made the original: the apartment, Trip and Grace, their faces, the way they move, the music and sounds. What changes is that they hear you. You pick how the evening runs.

Classic

The original 2005 story, beat for beat, exactly as its authors wrote it. Only the words are new: every line is written fresh for what you just typed, while doing the same job in the story.

Remastered

A new evening every time. The original's scenes become a guide rather than a script, and what you say and do decides where the night goes and how it ends.

Both

Every line is voiced live, in recreations of the original actors' voices. Their faces and body language follow the original game.

The same moment, typed into both

Jack, the player, walks in, gets greeted at the door, and types *slaps Trip*. Below, the 2005 game and Remastered, at the same point of the evening.

The Remastered evening in full. The player typed one thing; everything after it is Trip and Grace, written and voiced as it happened. Bracketed words are how each line was performed.

1. 00:36Trip[forced cheer] Jack! Ah, man, look who it is! Come on in, come in!
2. 00:41Grace[calling out from kitchen, flustered] Wait, Trip, is that Jack already? You said he wouldn't be here for another hour!
3. 00:44Player*slaps Trip*
4. 00:44TripHis face goes to shock, a split second later.
5. 00:51Trip[shocked, stumbling back, forced chuckle] Woah! Jack… man! What—what was that for?
6. 00:56Grace[calling out from the kitchen, suspicious] Trip? Is everything okay out there? What was that sound?
7. 01:13Trip[forced cheer, clearing throat] Nothing, Grace! Absolutely nothing! Jack here was just… giving me a little high-energy, old-school greeting, right man?
8. 01:22Grace[skeptical, strained polite] Right. Hello, Jack. It's… so nice to see you, though you're certainly early.
9. 01:41Trip[forced cheer] Ha! Just a good old college sting to the cheek, right Jack? Let's get you a drink immediately!
10. 01:47Grace[skeptical] Trip, your cheek is bright red. Did you two already start fighting at the door?
11. 02:05Trip[forced cheer] Fighting? No way! Jack was just… reminding me of the old days, right buddy? Here, take this whiskey, it's top shelf!

Nobody wrote a reaction to being slapped. Trip and Grace each took it the way they'd experienced it: Trip felt it, Grace was in the kitchen and only heard a sound, so her first line is a question. When she comes out, she brings it up. I ran this moment ten times. Trip laughed the slap off seven times and demanded an explanation three times, which is Trip: the man who covers everything with host energy.

An evening that's actually live

In Remastered, Trip and Grace each want something at every moment of the night, and what you do changes it. They remember everything that's happened since you walked in, and they only know what they've actually seen and heard: talk to Trip at the door and Grace, in the kitchen, catches only a muffled voice. Neither of them knows the other's secrets until they come out.

They don't just talk. They can walk anywhere in the apartment, pick things up and hand them over, open the door, and use all of their original gestures. Nothing is pre-scripted: when Trip makes you a drink, it's because he decided to, and he does it the way he did in 2005, behind the bar, pouring and stirring, then holding the glass out until you take it.

In between, they carry themselves the way the original characters did: turning to whoever they're talking to, taking their places in the conversation, stepping back if you crowd them, sipping their drinks, glancing away when they're anxious, standing off with their arms folded when they're hurt.

Getting the faces right

Façade's faces are hand-drawn and full of small tells: a lid that drops, a head that tips back, a smile that doesn't reach the eyes. I rebuilt them from the original game's own rules for how each mood shows on each face.

To be sure, I built a test rig. It plays the 2005 game, holds Trip and Grace still, takes them through all 135 of their mood and expression combinations, photographs every face, and puts mine beside it. The first thing it caught: in the original, two layers of eyelid movement add up, and mine let one cancel the other. That's why my Grace never closed her eyes when she laughed. She does now.

Classic: the original story, in new words

A drama about two people talking over each other dies if every line keeps you waiting. In the original, about 0.7 seconds pass between one speaker and the next; my first working version took four. A lot of the work since has gone into closing that gap, and while an answer is on its way, the original actors' own recorded "uh…" or "oh!" plays straight away, so the conversation never stalls.

Two minutes from that session. The short "uh…" lines are the original actors' recordings.

1. 02:16Playergrace, you seem upset
2. 02:17GraceUhh…
3. 02:20Trip[nervous] No, no, hey, our friend just got here! Let's just… let the machine pick that up, okay? [forced cheer] We're having a night!
4. 02:28Grace[surprised] Oh, no, I'm fine, really— [clear throat] excuse me, I should get the phone.
5. 02:35Trip[confident] Ah, yeah, it really is something, isn't it, Alex? Twenty-three floors up, man [chuckling] I swear I never get tired of looking out over the city.
6. 02:45Grace[disdainful] [clear throat] Right, well… I really need to call maintenance to clean these filthy windows.
7. 02:46Playertrip, why are you so nervous?
8. 02:52Graceuh…
9. 02:54Grace[sarcastic, chuckling] Oh, nervous? [break] Trip isn't nervous, Alex, he's just maintaining his signature high-strung host energy. Aren't you, sweetie?
10. 03:21Playerare you two okay?
11. 03:24Grace[anxious] What? No, of course we're fine, Alex, everything is [clear throat] completely fine. Why wouldn't we be?

What's next

Planned: save and load, rewinding to any moment to say something different, talking out loud instead of typing, playing in your own language, the evening you played as a screenplay you can read back or share, and a background for the player, so you can come to the door as an old flame or a coworker instead of the college friend.