“Finding the language of VR is our role,” writer/director Saschka Unseld tells me as I sit with pen in one hand and tissue in the other, decompressing from my time inside Oculus Story Studio’s (OSS) Dear Angelica. “Nailed it! And how many tears does it take to void the warranty on a Rift?,” I quip.
Dear Angelica is OSS’s third visual story, but it’s by far the deepest, most poignant, and best use of the VR platform from the studio to date. It’s a very personal narrative — but also one that focuses on universal themes — highlighting the emotional bond between child (Jessica, voiced by Arrested Development’s Mae Whitman) and mother (Angelica, voiced by Geena Davis).
I won’t get into the details of the story so as to not spoil anything, but I will say it was so intimate that I couldn’t help but think there was something specific in Saschka’s own life that compelled him to explore these themes. “I thought about how the stories I told came from the things my parents taught me,” Saschka pauses before finishing his thought… “It gives what stories you tell greater importance.”
The experience starts in Jessica’s bedroom, with the teenager nestled in her bed writing to her mother. Loopy script appears in the vast space overhead. I’m peering over Jessica’s shoulder as she writers, and I feel like a ghostly interloper invading her private sanctuary as she shares her most cherished thoughts and feelings.
The narrative unfolds as vibrant illustrations by artist Wesley Allsbrook envelop me, teasing my eyes to dance around the scene. The ribbon-like strokes promote a sense of movement and chaos reminiscent of van Gogh and Hokusai. It makes me feel as if I’m walking through a series of frantic, fluid paintings as they’re being created, and I’m enthralled as I take it all in. Some scenes are harried and frenetic, others sedate and calmly introspective; the varied drawing pace complements the voice-over to create a synchronized emotional timbre.
I had a chance to talk about storytelling in VR with three of the co-founders of 
They all emphasized to me that it’s still very early days of figuring out the unique affordances of virtual reality as a storytelling medium, and that Oculus Story Studio is still doing quite a bit of experimentation. They were in agreement in believing that it’s likely going to take a long time to figure out what narrative in VR looks like, and that it could be another generation before VR finds its true form.
While I agree that VR storytelling is still very much within a Wild West phase of development, at the same time I do believe that there have been a lot of solid lessons learned about VR as a storytelling medium that I’ve covered on the Voices of VR Podcast. At the bottom of this post is a Top 50 List of Voices of VR interviews about storytelling in VR where the list is broken up into the following seven categories: the language of VR storytelling, interactive storytelling, multiple perspectives and empathy in storytelling, social storytelling, world building & environmental storytelling, plausibility & presence in narrative, and audio.
