Where Thoughts Go review: an emotional journey in VR

Where Thoughts Go is an emotional virtual reality experience developed by Lucas Rizzotto, a very smart XR developer and community member. When I saw his tweets about this application that was about “going in VR and listening to what other people have said”, I thought it was absolutely something I was not interested in. Then, when he gave me a code to try the app, I tried it and I had the same reaction that I had while trying Dear Angelica:

I had to expect something like that because as I’ve said, Lucas is a very talented guy: I’ve never met him in person, but from what he writes (his review on Magic Leap is still one of the best I have ever read) and what he creates, it is clear that he is someone that will go places.

The problem with his experience is that unless you try it, you have absolutely no idea of what it does mean. This is a common problem of virtual reality experiences, because there is no way to convey presence through words and videos, but in this case it is even worse because this app is very emotional and there is no proper way to communicate an emotion (we’ll make this possible with Brain Computer Interfaces one day, maybe). So, as a writer, I find myself in a difficult position because whatever words I will write in this article, I will not be able to tell you properly how it is trying Where Thoughts Go. Anyway, let me try.

When you launch Where Thoughts Go, you find yourself in a low poly environment, with an initial menu that gives you basically no choice but starting the game. There are other options, but they are disabled until you play the experience at least once. So, you start the game by using your VR controllers.

Then the experience goes this way:

1. You enter in a new chapter of the game: every chapter features a new environment and soundtrack. You have to touch a dark creature with your controllers to trigger the start of the chapter;
2. Every chapter also corresponds to a question… a question that is quite intimate, like “Describe a person that you are missing” or “What would you advice to the younger self?”. This question will appear in front of your eyes with a fancy animation of its letters;
3. After the question has appeared, you start seeing glowing objects coming next to you. These are the answers that other people have given to the same question. These “other people” are the users that have played the app before you. Selecting these globes by touching them with your controller and pressing the trigger, you can start listening to these answers. After you have listened to an answer, it will vanish away going up in the sky;
4. When you are ready to go on to the next chaper, you must give your own answer to the question. Doing a special gesture with your hands, the application will start recording what you are saying. After you have finished, you give your thought to the dark creature of point 1. Notice that you can’t go on on step 5 if you haven’t recorded your own answer;
5. You go to the next chapter and restart from point 1. If the chapters have finished, you see the final credits and then you return to the main menu. In the main menu you have now more options unlocked and so, for instance, you can return directly to the chapter that you are most interested in and only listen to the answers of people without adding a new one of yours. Or you can go to the “prologue” chapter and hear the thoughts of the creator about his own game (very very interesting).
   

From my cold numbered list it doesn’t seem a big deal, does it?

Well, actually it is a big deal. And this warmer unordered list will explain you why:

• The questions are chosen so that the answers are very personal. They are not questions like “You like potatoes?”, but questions that touch our inner selves. And so the answers that you hear are very meaningful, they are very deep, they are very emotional. It is like entering into the heart of people. Listening to the voice of a woman that remembers her dead mother and that says that she misses her every day is terribly moving. Listening to a man that talks about his first love is somewhat cute and romantic. When you touch a glowing globe, you don’t only listen to a sentence, but you feel an emotion. It is like having a shower of emotions;

• We have all felt in love with someone, we are all afraid to die, we all would like to jump on a DeLorean and return to the past and change something. So these are questions that touch every one of us. And while playing Where Thoughts Go, you discover that in the end, we are all the same, we share the same feelings. When I played it, I discovered that there is this woman, that I don’t know how she is called, how is her face, where is she from, how old is she, that would advise to the younger self the same thing that I would have said. And I discovered that there are many unknown people that share my same fears, my same joys, my same feelings. All those unknown voices seem so much my own voice. And listening to someone else saying what you have inside is such an incredibly cathartic experience;
• The fact that there is the voice is very important. I am a blogger and I love written texts, but I also know that when we communicate, the words that we use count only 7% of the global communication, all the rest is given by non-verbal and para-verbal communication. Voice can carry with it the para-verbal communication, that means that it is able to communicate emotions at a more powerful level than the simply written text. Furthermore, listening to these people whispering in your ears, it is like they are there, very close to you;
• For every question, you must leave your answer. This means two things. The first one is that you will leave something of you in that ecosystem and that thing will live forever. And the second one is that you are joining a community: you listen to the heart of people and then you have to give a little piece of your heart so that other people will be able to take it. This creates a bond with the application and all his members.
• You may wonder why such an app should be in VR when in the end it is just selecting buttons and listening to audio files. Well, the reason is that virtual reality here gives you more the sense of the journey. Every question is a different environment and as Lucas explains in one of his audios, every question regards a different part of our lives, starting from childhood and finishing with death. So, in VR you can actually do this journey through the lives of people. Furthermore, VR isolates you from your surroundings, so you feel more all the sensations fostered by the voices. And the environments, that are low poly, are very neat and very relaxing, exactly as the music. So, they are the perfect environment to let your mind relax and receive this shower of emotions.

Usually, when reviewing something, I talk about the quality of graphics, UX and such. As you can see, in this case, I’m not caring that much (and by the way, they are all nice, even if something in the UX could be a bit better). This is because this experience puts the humans at center and not the gameplay or some technical stuff. This is a social network of emotions: you enter this experience, you take an emotional journey and then you leave something for the journey of the people that will come after you. And during that journey, you will feel a lot of sensations by listening to the human feelings of people that came there before you.

More than 1200 people have tried this experience, and I advise you to be one of them. Where Thoughts Go costs around 8€ on Steam. I can’t say if it is the right price or not because it is hard to give a price to emotions. I described Dear Angelica as “entering inside a painting”. I describe this experience as “entering inside the hearts of people, and discovering that in the end, it is our heart”.

For sure it is an experience worth living.