Goliath: Playing With Reality


VR Review  ★★★☆☆‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎
PCVR  Quest  Documentary  Education  Short Films  Moderate Comfort  Roomscale 
Stationary 

An arcade machine with the game title 'GOLIATH' displayed at the top. The screen shows a pixelated street scene from a video game, featuring characters, a dog, and a trash can. The control panel has multiple buttons and a joystick. The surrounding environment is dark, illuminated by pixelated red and purple lighting effects, creating a retro, cyberpunk aesthetic.

Goliath: Playing With Reality uses the unique immersive qualities of virtual reality to tell a true life story of someone who struggles to recognize actual reality. Winner of the Grand Jury Prize for best VR immersive work at the Venice International Film Festival, this experience begins with a narrative introduction by Tilda Swinton questioning the nature of reality that includes several interactive elements.

The story features Goliath, the multiplayer gaming alter-ego of a man struggling with paranoid schizophrenia. A sequence of inventive and striking scenes surround you as Goliath describes the effects of his mental disorder, how he became institutionalized and medicated for years and about how he successfully found a way to experience normalcy and happiness, in part through computer gaming with friends. Scenes transition between animated illustrations of events, to abstract interactive symbolic sequences. Because some of the effects can be mildly disconcerting, and we'd rate this experience as PG. It also includes occasional strong language that is appropriate to the story.

A digital environment featuring a humanoid figure in shades of pink and orange, positioned as if crawling or climbing. The figure is surrounded by glowing blue cubes and white wireframe cubes, forming a three-dimensional grid-like structure. The dark background enhances the contrast, making the illuminated cubes stand out, creating a futuristic and immersive visual effect.

Virtual reality allows for the telling of Goliath's story in a unique way and this 25 minute production achieves that in a sympathetic and impactful manner using a multitude of visual and audio effects. The story arc and duration is about right for this type of experience and the positive messages are on point. We do wonder however if it could have been even more effective combined with more of a first person point of view approach in a way that works so well in conventional cinema.

Since the main goal of this work is to provide awareness of mental illness it's unfortunate that this is a paid experience, though of course the creators have bills to pay. The interactive and immersive experience maker who created Goliath also has a second title focused on ADHD in the works.

This experience is close to identical on Meta Quest and PCVR. A menu screen including selectable chapter headings that also works as a pause function is available and obvious on the Quest version, but is only found on the PCVR version by pressing the space bar on your computer's keyboard.

A large, futuristic robot named 'Goliath' stands in a dynamic digital landscape. The robot has a bulky, mechanical design and appears to be in motion, with its legs positioned as if walking or preparing to take a step. The background features a vibrant sky with shades of pink and orange, while floating cubes are scattered throughout the scene, enhancing the surreal and digital atmosphere. The word 'Goliath' is prominently displayed in bold, pink text at the top of the image.

Summary:
⬤ Important story about mental disorder with positive messages.
⬤ Inventive visual and audio scenes.
⬤ Paid experience reduces its awareness objectives.

Supported Languages:
Cantonese[subs]  English  Mandarin[subs] 

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